Archive of Our Own

“Okay,” Shen says, and his voice is thin and worn, “let’s call it.” 

Ellis speaks next, but Dennis doesn’t hear her despite her clear, loud tone. He’s too focused on the person—the corpse—lying on the gurney beneath the atemporal lights of Trauma 2.

Christopher Sinclair, fifty-three years old, jumped off Liberty Bridge just as Dennis had been beginning to hand off his cases to the night shift. He’d been telling Shen about a patient with a suspected fracture waiting for an X-ray when EMS had rolled him in, calling out his vitals—not great—and the pain meds dispensed in the field, known allergies. No LOC, which was promising. 

Dennis had only heard bits and pieces. It had already been a long shift, and he wasn’t planning on staying to help with this particular trauma case.

But then he’d gotten a closer look. Christopher Sinclair had dark shaggy hair, graying at the temples, and an unkempt beard, also going gray in places. He was conscious, but his eyes were bleary as the gurney had been wheeled into T2, so Dennis couldn’t figure out what color they were, and he’d realized as soon as he spent more than a moment thinking about it just how irrelevant it should have been. 

Christopher Sinclair had graying hair and a graying beard and he’d jumped off a bridge. 

So, Dennis stayed. 

Most of the time, Dennis likes to think that he’s found the balance Robby told him about that first day. Or at least, he can pretend to have found it. Put on a brave face and deal with the death and pain and tragedy that comes with being an emergency medicine doctor. 

Staring down at the corpse of Christopher Sinclair, he feels like someone has reached down his throat and scooped out all of his essential organs. His lungs are in a heap on the floor, his bowels unspooled and strung across the tiles. The longer he looks, the closer he gets to thinking that maybe, if he stands still enough, looks long enough without blinking, that he can see Mr. Sinclair’s chest rise with breaths that aren’t there anymore. 

A hand on his shoulder. It pulls him back a bit, but he gets caught on something somewhere along the way. The noises of the room feel far away, like a TV left on in the other room, speaking through one or two closed doors. 

“Go home, Whitaker,” Shen says, giving him a little shake. 

The world blurs as Dennis’s legs move, separate from the rest of him. A flash of color in his periphery, a muffled sound carrying down the hallway, a shout that sounds wrong. What color were Christopher Sinclair’s eyes? Dennis can’t feel his hands or the floor beneath his feet as he moves. He doesn’t feel the metal of his locker, or the press of the buttons beneath his fingers. It all blurs together as he pulls the locker open. 

His breath feels like an obstacle in his chest, an obstruction. Like he needs to swallow something that isn’t there. A drawing is taped against the inside of the door. White printer paper from Robby’s relatively unused office, crayons from the big box tucked in the cabinets beneath the surface of the living room coffee table. Calling it a drawing is generous, honestly; it’s just swirls of different colored wax, jagged lines that go right off the edge of the paper. In the recesses of the locker, his bag and jacket are hung on the same hooks he always hangs them on, but the scene feels unfamiliar. 

None of this belongs to him. 

Nothing belongs to him. 

He grabs the jacket and bag anyways, barely feeling the fabric of either beneath his fingers. As he pulls them free, something else from the bottom of his locker slips free and flutters through the air before it lands against the toe of his shoe. A piece of hospital stationary, folded over itself a few times, with his name and title written on one of the folds in a shaky hand. 

He barely recalls shoving it hastily into his locker this morning, but he does remember it. A father, eyes red and watery, cheeks irritated because he’d been wiping tears off of them all morning, tracking him down and putting it in his hand hours after he’d cleared the man’s daughter for discharge—if you could call it that. 

Dennis's head swims as he bends down to pick up the letter. He doesn’t open it. He shoves it in the breast pocket of his scrubs and and shoves the memories of a baby crying long before her parents down with it. With shaky fingers and short breaths, he pulls the jacket over his shoulders and shoves his stethoscope into the backpack before slinging that over his shoulder, too. 

He’s underwater as he walks past Central, chin pulled like it’s on a string towards the transparent doors of Trauma 2. He can’t hear much beyond the rushing sound in his ears, can’t see much past the frosted glass, but he can picture the bruises of broken bones, the bleary mystery-colored eyes of the dead man still resting on the gurney. And the longer he pictures it, the more creative his tired mind gets, and suddenly Christopher Sinclair had brown eyes, a longer nose, maybe his glasses are floating at the bottom of the Mon. 

Dennis doesn’t realize his feet have carried him to the ambulance bay until he’s stepping outside, the cool May air brushing over his heated cheeks. The bay is quiet, no sirens to be heard in the distance, and the sun is completely gone, disappeared behind the skyline hours ago, when he should have been leaving. 

He walked to work this morning, because it was cool and not too humid and he’d wanted to. His plan was to walk home, too. But in the dark… he should take the bus. The stop is just around the corner, illuminated by the hospital’s exterior lights. Robby would want him to take the bus, even though the walk is less than twenty minutes and their neighborhood is as safe as it gets. 

He turns the other way, instead. Towards the river. The route is so familiar at this point that he could probably walk it with his eyes closed, and, in the dark with Christopher Sinclair’s ghost at his heels, it almost feels like he is. His feet move him without conscious effort. They carry his body away from the hospital, away from the day’s corpses, towards the pedestrian bridge. He doesn’t feel his legs or even his feet, really, as he makes his way across it. Just static. The water moving beneath him. 

He slows in the middle, he thinks, eyes following the current beneath him. He can see Liberty Bridge in the distance, downriver. The jump doesn’t look that high from here, with the distance, but it must be. High enough, at least. Christopher Sinclair was missing one of his shoes when EMS brought him in. Maybe it’s still floating down there, somewhere, or sunk to the bottom with the glasses Dennis's mind has convinced him that Christopher Sinclair had. 

There were nights that I thought about jumping off one of them.

It’s Robby’s voice, pulled from the back of Dennis’s brain, clearer than any of the things actually happening around him. A walk after a bad shift. A view of the river, of the bridges lit up. And Robby, back early from his sabbatical with no warning, confessing to Dennis the thoughts that scare him most.

Dennis blinks, and he’s across the bridge. He doesn’t look back. 

No one had shown up for Christopher Sinclair. There hadn’t been an emergency contact listed. No family, no friends. Picturing a shoe at the bottom of the river, Dennis wonders if that was by design. If, at some point, Christopher Sinclair did have an emergency contact, if he had that information removed when he decided to jump off a bridge. The hospital social workers would find them—anyone that he had, anyone who loved him—but it’s too late to say goodbye. Maybe that’s why he didn’t have anyone listed. Maybe he wanted to go without saying goodbye. 

Dennis's hands shake. He’s at the bottom of a tall, concrete staircase that will take him up the hill and onto their street. Almost home. He starts the climb, holding onto the metal railing as he goes. He makes this climb regularly enough that it isn’t particularly taxing, but his thighs still start to burn a bit halfway up. The metal beneath his hand is cold, the brown paint peeling in some places and smooth in others. By the time he reaches the top, his breath is heavier than it’s been in hours, the cool air truly fills his lungs for the first time since this morning, and his body feels a little bit more like his. 

The rest of the walk is quick. The new heat of utilized muscles keeps him grounded, his breath comes a little easier. 

The porch light is on. Most of the windows are dark, but the one that looks in on the living room glows slightly, flickering blue and white lights. Dennis fishes his keys out of his backpack as he climbs the steps. The deadbolt is picky—you have to jiggle it, kind of—but Dennis's fingers know this door like they know how to find a carotid pulse. He doesn’t even get the chance to think about it before he’s pushing the door open and stepping over the threshold. 

The house is dark and quiet. That makes sense—bedtime is eight-thirty at the latest—but it’s different, outside his typical routine. Liminal, almost. He doesn’t flip the lightswitch for the hallway, so the only light that reaches him is the jumping colors from the living room as they bounce off the dark wooden archway. There isn’t any sound. Slowly, his eyes adjust as he wedges his feet out of his boots and nudges them towards the wall. He drops his backpack next to them with a gentle thud and hangs up his jacket. 

For a moment—a brief, terrifying second—Dennis is afraid the living room will be empty. It isn’t. When Dennis steps through the archway and into the room, his eyes instantly go to the couch immediately to his right where Robby is stretched out, head propped up against one arm and bare feet grazing the other. Robby’s eyes are closed, glasses crooked on his nose and mouth slightly open. A conspicuous lump of blankets with a tuft of blonde hair is bundled against his chest and cradled by both of his arms. 

Dennis feels frozen, eyes wide and fixed, trying to see if Robby’s chest is moving, if his breath is making the bundle he holds rise and fall. Dennis stares longer than he should need to, thinks he can see the movement he’s searching for. 

But he thought he’d seen Christopher Sinclair breathing too, after Shen called a time of death. 

Dennis swallows and blinks, his nose stings and his eyes feel watery. He tries to take slow, deep breaths as he moves around the couch to kneel at the opposite end, next to Robby’s head. He fixes his eyes on Robby’s shoulders, still feels like any movement he sees is an illusion meant to break him into a million little pieces. 

His hand shakes as he reaches out to search for Robby’s carotid. Two fingers against the side of his neck, gentle pressure. Dennis only gets the chance to feel a single beat of Robby’s pulse before Robby makes a noise in the back of his throat and shifts, just a bit. 

Robby never wakes up gracefully, not once in the three years they’ve been together, and this time is no exception. With a snuffle and a soft grunt, Robby blinks once or twice before blearily focusing on Dennis. When he speaks, his voice is rumbly in that specific way that makes Dennis feel warm all over. 

“Hey…” he mumbles, near-sleep trying to pull his eyes shut once more. 

Dennis watches the way the wrinkles at the corner of Robby’s eyes bunch and fold, focuses on the press of his lips as he yawns and then clenches his jaw. His shoulder is warm beneath Dennis's hand. He’s here. Still here. 

Robby blinks a few more times, his focus sharpening, and he twists his head to right his glasses with his shoulder. Then, he looks. Dennis feels his gaze like a touch, tracing over the bags underneath his eyes, over the furrow in his brow, down to where his hand has fallen to rest against the leather of the couch. Those brown eyes flicker to the window past his feet, where the sun no longer shines, and then down to his wrist where his watch is securely fastened. 

Hand settling back against the mass of blankets on his chest, Robby looks to Dennis once again. “You okay?” 

And Dennis wants to answer. He wants to tell Robby that he’s fine—that he’s home, that he can’t feel the remnants of a dead man and a crying baby and fifteen hours at the hospital clinging to him like a second skin. But his hands shake, and his throat feels swollen, choking on something he can’t name. 

He shrugs, instead. 

Sometimes, Dennis forgets that Robby knows him. Inside-out, upside-down. Robby understands that shrug as if Dennis had told him, point blank, that he’s not okay, but he can’t talk about it. Not now. Not yet. 

With a nod, Robby reaches out with his nearest hand and settles it at the crook of Dennis's neck. His fingers are soft and warm against the collar of Dennis's scrubs. With his other hand, he gently rocks the bundle against his chest until it starts to shift on its own. 

“Hey Bug,” Robby mumbles, sleep still clinging to his voice, “Daddy’s home.” 

A little head pokes out of the blanket pile, blonde hair in disarray and big, blue eyes blinking rapidly. A grimace wrinkles the tiny mouth and nose that appear. 

“She threw a fit when you weren’t home for bed time. This was our compromise.”

Dennis takes a slow breath as his shaky hand moves of its own accord to pull the blankets further away from the tiny, grumpy face looking up at him. 

Her name is Evelyn—Evie. She’ll be eighteen-months in a week.

Dennis curls his hand around Robby’s arm. His thumb brushes against the tail end of Robby’s AMOR FATI tattoo where it peeks out from under his sleeve. As he leans over to rest his cheek against Robby’s shoulder, his back arcs into a round curve, his face close to hers so he can make eye contact. 

“Sorry,” he whispers. His voice feels like it doesn’t belong to him. 

Evie reaches out with a tiny hand and pats next to his nose. 

Robby tilts his head to press a kiss against the wavy hair at the crown of Dennis's head. “Have you eaten?” 

Dennis closes his eyes. He’d honestly forgotten that food was a thing he needed. He doesn’t so much shake his head as roll it against Robby’s shoulder, but he knows Robby will read it right, anyways. 

Beneath him, Robby’s shoulder rises sharply as he heaves a sigh. His voice is gentle when he says, “Okay, take her. I’ll go find you something.”

Dennis nods, and Robby starts to sit up. Dennis’s cheek slides against his arm for a moment before he pulls himself upright, leaning back on his heels beside the couch. Robby swings his legs down to set his feet on the floor, Evie still cradled against his chest, wrapped in her cocoon of blankets. On his knees, Dennis looks up, traces the details of Robby’s face like he’d once traced the straight wooden edges of the cross that hung on the wall of his childhood bedroom. This view brings him more peace, especially with the sleep still clinging to the corners of Robby’s eyes. He looks tired, but not in the way he used to, when they first started seeing each other. 

Before Robby can stand up, Dennis puts his hands on Robby’s knees and leans into his space, Evie between them. He can feel her against his chest, but there’s no pressure, really. Just warmth. Robby is warm, too, when Dennis leans in to kiss him. Warm and soft and solid, real beneath Dennis’s hands and mouth. Robby is here. Robby is not on a gurney in Trauma 2. Robby is not at the bottom of the Monongahela.

Hands still braced on Robby’s knees and feeling more present than he has all evening, Dennis pulls back to give him room to stand. Instead, Robby leans right back in, pressing another kiss to Dennis’s lips, quick but just as soft, simple. Like the kiss Dennis gave him wasn’t quite enough. A satisfied sigh leaves Robby’s nose as he starts to pull away, the warm air blowing against Dennis’s chin. 

“Okay, get comfy, hm?”

Robby stands and Dennis uses one of his hands to sluggishly push himself up and onto the couch. The leather is soft and warm, the heat of Robby’s large body lingering in the worn hide. Before he settles down, Dennis reaches up to pull his scrub top up and over his head. Nothing got spilled on him today, but he doesn’t want Evie exposed to anything that might have gone unnoticed. Somehow, as he tosses the top into a small pile on the floor, it feels like a bit of the day goes with it. 

Bouncing Evie in his arms, Robby waits until Dennis is nestled in before leaning down to set her and her blankets on Dennis’s chest. She squirms a bit as Dennis adjusts where she rests, her tiny little head resting just over his heart. She’s a bit bigger than typical for her age—Robby’s genes shine through in ways that often hurt Dennis’s spine—but the weight brings him into himself the same way kissing Robby does. He’s in his body, and Evie is in hers, and they were just in for her eighteen-month appointment and everything was routine and ordinary. 

With a deep breath, Dennis allows his eyes to slip closed and his shoulders to sink into the throw pillow that Robby had propped up against the arm of the couch. His fingers search for a gap in the fold of blankets wrapped around Evie, and soon his hand is against the soft fabric of her PJs across his back—the ones with unicorns on them, based on the frills he feels at the collar. His eyes stay closed when he feels Robby’s broad hand slip into his hair, brushing his curls away from his forehead. 

“You want anything specific?”

Breath slow and even, Evie warm beneath his palm, Dennis shakes his head. “Think you could feed me dog food right now and I wouldn’t be able to tell,” he answers, voice a bit closer to being his own once more.

Robby snorts and tightens his grip in Dennis’s hair just enough to gently tug. Dennis can hear relief threaded through his voice when he says, “Spaghetti leftovers it is. Don’t fall asleep.”

Dennis hums and Evie snuffles a bit against his sternum. 

With one more gentle tug to the hair at the top of his head, Robby makes his way towards the kitchen, his heavy footsteps audible on the floorboards of their remodeled early-twentieth-century home. 

Settling into the couch even further, Dennis rubs his palm up and down Evie’s back. He peels one eye open to look at her and finds her already looking back. 

“Did you and Papa have a good day?” he asks her, voice quiet and gentle. 

In an instant, Evie begins to babble. She’s at the age where she’s starting to figure out words a little bit; Dennis is “dada” and Robby is “apa” because she’s still learning how to make that hard P sound. She yells “up” over and over again when she isn’t being held and wants to be, but the P sounds more like a B most of the time. Santos gave her a little cow stuffy that has earned the name “Moo” because that’s what Evie says when she wants it. She has a couple of favorite foods, but she calls all of them “nanas” because, at the top of the list, bananas have yet to be knocked out of the number-one spot. 

There aren’t any words in her description of her and Robby’s day, but she goes and goes and goes while Dennis rubs gentle circles into her back. At some point in her long and unintelligible tale, she wrestles her arms out from her blankets so she can wave them about, and Dennis fights to keep his eyes open so he can watch her move around. He's a little worried they won’t be able to get her back to sleep, but that’s fine. The more she talks, the more she gestures with her pudgy baby arms, the more this room begins to feel like reality. He can be tired tomorrow. 

“What happened next?” he asks when she pauses for a moment and makes eye contact with him.

Immediately, she launches back into her story, this time with even more vigor, and Dennis can’t help but smile, nodding as she babbles. She presses both of her hands against his cheeks when he does. 

Robby is only gone for five minutes, but Dennis is fully present by the time he walks back into the room, a plate of last night’s spaghetti and a glass of water in hand. Evie is still going when Dennis moves to sit up, holding her against him. 

“Big day?” Dennis asks Robby with a small smile, glancing at her as she talks and talks. 

“We went to the park.” Robby sets the glass on the end table and holds the plate in one hand while Dennis passes Evie into the other, like a two-person juggling act.. “She saw a dog.”

Dennis takes the plate from Robby’s hand and reaches around to grab the water, setting it on the coffee table instead. He twists pasta around the fork resting against the edge of the plate, and his hunger hits at the exact moment the food is in his mouth. He doesn’t bother twisting the next forkful, just shovels it straight in and gets sauce all over his chin. 

“Want me to get her in bed?” 

Dennis shoves another forkful of spaghetti in his mouth and shakes his head. “Wanna sit in on story time.” 

“Don’t talk with food in your mouth. You’re not beating the raised-in-a-barn allegations.”

Dennis snorts and presses the back of his hand against his mouth to make sure no chunks of spaghetti get past his teeth. Evie is sitting up in Robby’s lap now, still rambling despite Robby and Dennis’ conversation. They both listen to her as Dennis devours his plate of food and chugs his water, Robby only interrupting to tell him to slow down. Even when he isn’t coming off ten hours without eating, it’s a reminder Robby gives him often—a hard habit to break after growing up in a house with three other, older boys. 

Dennis sets his fork on his plate and sinks into the couch, two important bodily needs met. Robby leans over to press a kiss to his temple. 

“I’ll do the dishes tomorrow. Drop ‘em in the sink and we’ll go pick out a book.” 

Dennis nods and Robby stands with a grunt—a dad grunt, Javadi had called it the last time Robby brought Evie through the ED to say hi. Dennis heaves himself up off the couch as well, and then Robby and Evie go left while Dennis goes right. As he steps through the hall into the kitchen, he hears Robby’s footsteps start to climb the stairs, Evie quieting a bit on the walk. It had been the only way to get her to settle when she was in her first six months, picking her up and walking her back and forth across her nursery, and it’s a bit of a miracle that it still works as well as it did then. 

Dennis sets his plate in the empty sink basin and rubs his hand across his eyes, then refills his water glass and chugs it once more before placing it next to his plate. 

Going the long way around, back through the living room to grab his scrub top, Dennis makes his way upstairs. He tosses the top through the open door of his and Robby’s room before turning to step into Evie’s nursery just across the hall. 

The room is simple but cluttered. The walls are painted a butter yellow that Robby hates and Dennis loves, and Evie’s crib is pressed up against the wall opposite the door so that Robby and Dennis can see her from the door of their bedroom. The armchair and shelving system that holds all of Evie’s many, many toys and books are in the corner beside it, and the changing table is on the wall opposite everything. 

Robby and Evie are sitting on the floor in front of the shelves when Dennis enters. Robby has two books, one in each hand, with Evie in his lap, holding them out in front of her. She’s vigorously smacking her hands, both of them, against the cardboard cover of the one in Robby’s right hand. 

Robby sighs. “The Cow Loves Cookies, it is. Again.” 

“I can read tonight, if you want.”

Robby turns to look at Dennis over his shoulder. “You don’t do the animal sounds as good as I do. Right, Bug?”

“Moo!”

Dennis instinctually reaches over the rail of Evie’s crib to grab the small, stuffed Holstein cow nestled amongst Evie’s blanket. As soon as she sees it, she clambers out of Robby’s lap and towards Dennis like he’s got a magnet in his hand. She fists one of her hands in his scrub pants while the other makes a grabby motion in the air above her head. 

Robby scoots, undignified, across the carpet until he’s seated in front of the chair in the corner. “Take a seat, Dr. Whitaker,” he says as he bumps his elbow against the soft, rounded arm of the chair. 

Dennis passes Moo to Evie. “You’re gonna mess up your back if you keep sitting on the floor, Robby.”

“I’m already here,” Robby says as he adjusts his glasses and opens the book. “Besides, I got my cuddle time already.”

Dennis knows that tone, and he sighs because it means that Robby isn’t going to give in. And he’s too tired to put up any kind of fight, anyways. So, instead, he looks down at Evie, still holding onto his pants. 

“Up?” he asks. 

With Moo held tight against her chest, the hand tangled in his pants lets go and gives his hip a firm smack. “Up! Up!”

Dennis leans down to scoop her up in his arms and carries her over to the chair. He climbs past Robby and settles down, one leg pulled up so his foot is tucked under the opposite thigh. Robby shuffles back a bit so he can lean his back against the chair, his head cradled in the nook created by Dennis’ calf and knee. Evie gets comfy beneath Dennis’ arm, and Robby rests the book on his propped-up knee.

“Everybody cozy?” Robby asks. 

Dennis hums an affirmative and lets his hand drift to the top of Robby’s head, combing through his hair as best he can with the weird angle. 

Robby clears his throat. “Whenever Farmer feeds the horse,” he starts, words slow and low, before flipping the page, “he feeds the horsey hay, of course.” Robby chooses that moment to neigh like a horse, and it sounds nothing like a real horse despite Robby’s earlier confidence, but it makes Evie giggle. “The horse just loves to nibble hay. He eats it every single day.” 

Dennis would need all of his and Robby’s fingers and toes, and even then maybe a few extras, to count how many times they’ve read this book for bedtime. If they give Evie a choice, she chooses this one. So, when Robby flips the page again, the whole family knows what comes next, and everyone chimes in. 

“But the cow loves cookies,” Dennis and Robby say in unison while Evie babbles in the exact same rhythm. 

The rest of the book continues in the same way. Robby continues to read, and each time he flips the page and the next line is the cow loves cookies, everyone reads out loud. Robby makes noises for each new animal introduced, oinks for the pigs and quacks for the geese, buck-buck-buck-buck for the chickens. And then, towards the end of the book…

“Yum, says Farmer. Cow says—”

“Moo! Moo!” Evie interjects.

“Cow is happy. Farmer too.” Robby takes a breath, because this is the other line all three of them say together. 

“They both love milk and cookies.”

Evie claps as Robby flips to the last page on which a duck is using its wing to dig into an open box of crackers. He turns his head back to look at her. 

“But the duck loves quack-ers.” Robby quacks like a duck, and Dennis thinks about how ridiculous his life is while their daughter laughs and claps. 

Robby closes the book and groans as he attempts to stand, hand reaching back to use Dennis’ knee to help him prop himself up. It takes him a moment, but he makes it to his feet, and then he crosses over to the shelf to put the book back while rubbing at the small of his back. 

“You should’ve taken the chair,” Dennis says as he stands and begins pacing the room, trying to lull Evie as close to sleep as he can. 

With a stretch and a wave of his hand, Robby dismisses him. Robby goes about tidying the room a bit while Dennis makes his laps, bouncing Evie in his arms to hopefully move her even quicker towards sleep. By the time Robby has all of her toys at least off of the floor, her voice has turned off and she’s pliant and warm in Dennis’s hold. 

“Okay,” he breathes, “bedtime.” 

Robby crowds up against them, an arm wrapped around Dennis’s waist to pull the both of them into his chest. He leans in to kiss the top of Evie’s head. 

“Night, Bug.”

Dennis kisses her in the same spot and walks her over to her crib, settling both her and Moo on the mattress. 

“Sleep tight,” he whispers, tugging the blanket up and over her back. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” 

They watch for a moment as Evie gets settled, her eyes closing and Moo pulled tight against her chest, before they turn on her nightlight and leave the room, door wide open. Robby keeps his hand against Dennis’s hip as they cross the hallway into their room. He takes one more glance across the hall before he shuts their door behind them, just while they go through their own bedtime routine. 

Robby steps around him to walk towards his side of the bed, to the bedside table where he puts his watch at night, right next to whatever book he’s reading. Dennis watches him as the weight of the day rests heavy on his shoulders in the quiet. It doesn’t smother him like it had on the walk home or when he’d first stepped into the living room, but it’s there, weighty and exhausting to carry. It clings to his arms and legs as he moves to follow Robby’s lead. The top of his scrubs is sitting directly in his way, and, instead of leaning down to pick it up and toss it in the hamper like he should, he just kicks it out of the way, towards the wall. As it goes, something slips out of the pocket and lands on the edge of the rug. A piece of folded paper. 

The letter.

Something slips loose—the first piece of broken glass in a shattered pane. The rest fight to hold tight as he stares and stares until the only thing he can see is his own name, staring right back at him from where it’s been written in black ink. The rest of the bedroom gets muddy, hidden from him, and he’s afraid to move in case other pieces of glass slipped free without him noticing. 

“Dennis?”

He swallows around a sudden breath. Blinks. The bedroom comes back, Robby on the other side of the bed, shirt halfway off and brow furrowed as his eyes analyze the set of Dennis’s shoulders. The same way he used to look at patients when they were behaving erratically, or when their movements needed to be meticulously observed. 

Dennis has never been a good liar. He omits, sure; if he can avoid a topic altogether then he’s fine. Sometimes he can manage to redirect from something he doesn’t want to or can’t talk about. But his voice shakes when he lies—he stutters and gets weird and anyone with any flicker of common sense can tell that he’s not being truthful. 

“I’m okay,” Dennis lies. 

It was the wrong thing to say, obviously, because Robby’s lips press tightly against each other and his nose scrunches like he’s smelled something off. 

Like he’s trying to prove it, Dennis leans down to grab the letter from the floor. His hand shakes—just a bit—as he reaches out to set it on his bedside table. He looks away from it as soon as he can, focuses too hard on the strap of his watch, breathes through his nose as he undoes the latch of the chain around his neck. He can feel Robby’s eyes on him, unconvinced and concentrated. 

As Dennis moves his shaky fingers to the ties on his pants, as he attempts to undo the knot, Robby makes his way around the bed and comes to stand in front of him. He gently bats Dennis’s hands out of the way and makes easy work of the knot. 

“What’s that?” Robby asks as he pulls the strings apart, his chin jerking towards the letter. 

Dennis looks at it as Robby’s hands settle on his hips, as his own find the warm skin over Robby’s forearms. Robby isn’t going to go anywhere. Dennis knows he isn’t. But he holds on like Robby might, just in case. 

Dennis swallows before he speaks. “I, uh… I diagnosed a five-month-old with Krabbe’s today.” Dennis doesn’t see it, but he feels when Robby manages to pull the life expectancy for that particular diagnosis up from his long-term memory in the way Robby’s hands grip him tighter. “Her dad gave me… that. Before they left.” 

Robby pulls him in closer, until the only thing between them is the thin layer of Dennis’s T-shirt. “You seem scared of it.”

Dennis tries. He rests his cheek against Robby’s clavicle, his forehead against Robby’s neck, and he tries to focus on the warmth. On Robby’s arms wrapping tightly around his waist and the feeling of Robby’s strong shoulders as he hooks his own hands around the backs of them. He tries, but his nose starts to sting anyways, his eyes start to water. 

“I haven’t read it yet,” he murmurs. “I didn’t—I didn’t want to think about it anymore.”

“You don’t have to.” 

Something ugly rears in Dennis’s intestines, a nausea he can’t get rid of. “They’re losing their daughter, and they—they wrote me a letter and—I can’t just…” 

When Robby sighs, it ruffles the hair at the top of Dennis’s head. “You don’t have to,” he repeats. He sounds so sure. 

Dennis shakes his head. Robby is right often, about many things, but he’s not right about this. 

Robby sighs again, deeper this time. It fills his chest and lifts Dennis’s head with it. 

“I can read it, if you want.” 

Dennis balks. He pulls his cheek from Robby’s shoulder to look at him, face twisted with objection. “I won’t make you do that.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m offering instead.” 

With that nausea rolling around in his gut, Dennis tracks his gaze over the fine details of Robby’s face. Robby knows him inside-out, and Dennis likes to think he knows Robby, too, even with the thick walls and bad communication habits. And the first thing that Dennis sees, looking at Robby’s eyes and mouth and the wrinkles between his brows, is the same kind of tired that Robby used to wear, before his retirement, when the emotions of strangers on the worst days of their lives dug deep and held tight. 

But, right alongside the tiredness, determination. Care. The kind of passion that sometimes went missing from him in the ED, at the end.

Dennis swallows. “Out loud?”

“If you want.”

He thinks for a second, just one, and then he nods. 

“Okay,” Robby murmurs as he pulls Dennis closer, presses a kiss to his forehead. “C’mon.”

With one arm still wrapped around Dennis’s waist, Robby pulls the both of them over to the bed and grabs the letter. Dennis lets himself be moved and positioned, lets Robby take care of things. Instead of walking around the bed to get his glasses, Robby just leans back to stretch out across it, careful to keep one hand on Dennis’s hip the whole time like he knows it’s a tether. His own hand reaches out to push against Robby’s back when he tries to sit back up. 

Robby shakes the letter out with one hand and holds Dennis with the other. 

“You’re sure?” 

Dennis nods again. He squeezes his own hands in his lap, rubs and bends his fingers like it’ll help, somehow. 

“Okay…” Robby takes a deep breath, clears his throat. “Okay. Ready?”

“Yeah…”

Robby clears his throat again, and then he reads, “Dr. Whitaker,” and Robby has called him that many times—affectionately to tease him, professionally at work before he retired—but it’s never felt this impersonal before, this detached. 

“I hope it’s okay to write this to you,” he continues. “I don’t really know what I’m doing. This has been one of the worst days of my life, and my therapist used to tell me to process stuff through writing, so maybe that’s what this is.” 

It’s weird, hearing these words in Robby’s voice. He remembers the face of the man who wrote them—Mr. Reeves—and it’s hard to reconcile the two. Robby isn’t saying these things, Mr. Reeves is, and Dennis logically knows that, but his nervous system is still struggling with it. 

“I don’t know if Ashley told you before I got here,” Robby reads, “but we took Harper to Westbridge a few weeks ago after she got a fever for the third time in two months. We were there for four hours and they sent us home with some infant Tylenol and not much else. Maybe we didn’t explain things well enough. I don’t know.

“I wish we’d come here first. It feels like wasted time, knowing that we could have caught this earlier. I’ve just been going to work every day. My daughter is sick—” Robby’s voice breaks, just a little, a crackle on the last word. The part of Dennis’s brain that is struggling to separate Robby from the words goes tense. Robby clears his throat for a third time, but his voice sounds wet when he says, “Sorry.” 

Dennis’s throat is too tight for words. Instead, he just curls into Robby’s side and hopes that Robby understands. 

With a deep breath, Robby goes back to the letter. “My daughter is sick and I’ve been going to work and now there’s—there’s a limit on how much time we have with her.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you. Thank you for being with us and for taking such good care of her. Thank you for holding Ashley’s hand before I got here. Thank you for giving us answers and being so patient with us. I’m… glad you were Harper’s doctor. 

“Thank you. Adam Reeves.”

The room feels too quiet without Robby’s voice filling it, but neither of them speak as Robby folds the letter back up and holds it between his palms, almost completely obscured from view. The silence stretches for an unidentifiable amount of time as the words roll around in Dennis’s skull. He lets himself sink into Robby, focuses on the heat of his skin beneath Dennis’s cheek and the slow, steady rise and fall of his shoulders. 

Then, quietly, his voice his own once more, Robby speaks again. “You okay?”

Dennis hums, shrugs. “Are you?” 

Robby’s answer is identical to Dennis’s. “You gonna shower before bed?” 

Dennis groans, because he should, he really should, but his body feels heavy, weighed down by the day and the letter. He sinks into Robby’s hold, and Robby’s chuckle sounds worn. 

“Maybe a bath, then?” 

“Will you come with me?” 

“Yeah, Dennis, I’ll come with you.” 

Slowly, they rise with Robby’s hand still glued to Dennis’s hip. 

Their bathroom smells like water and soap and the sandalwood beard oil that Robby uses every morning and spills everywhere at least once a month. With a final lingering squeeze, Robby lets go of Dennis to plug the tub and turn the elegant silver handles to get the water flowing, and Dennis reaches down to sluggishly pull his shirt over his head. It gets stuck around his ears and nothing more than the dead weight of his arms manages to get it past. 

"It a hair-washing day?"

Dennis hums an affirmative as he strips off his pants and boxers and realizes that if he brushes his teeth now, he doesn't have to do it after. He can just pull on one of Robby's shirts and crawl into bed and the day will be over. Behind him, Robby adds Dennis's preferred amount of Epsom salts but foregoes bath oil that Dennis would use if it wasn't a hair-washing night—both habits born of his years spent under the same roof as Trinity. 

Robby stirs the salts in with a broad swirl of his hand and then moves to join Dennis at the vanity, pushing him a step to the side with a gentle pat against his hip. 

"I like the outfit," Robby jokes as he grabs his toothbrush and gestures at Dennis's socks with it. 

Dennis snorts around the foamy toothpaste in his mouth. A glob of it falls onto the quartz of the vanity, directly in front of the sink, and Robby doesn't hesitate to swipe it up with a finger and stick it under the running faucet after wetting his toothbrush. Dennis spits first and makes quick work of his socks before climbing into the tub with a distinct lack of grace. 

The water wraps around him like a hug, warm and comforting, the faint scent of lavender drifting up with steam. He settles back against the smooth porcelain of the tub and lets the water lap at the very edge of his jaw. He's just starting to contemplate sinking down even further when Robby's fingers comb through the parts of his hair that are still dry. 

"Scooch," Robby says with  a gentle prod to Dennis's shoulder, and Dennis does. Robby settles in behind him, legs on either side of Dennis's hips, Dennis's back pressed against the soft line of his chest. The water rises a few inches with Robby's added mass and wets even more of Dennis's hair before he can sit up a bit more. Settled back against Robby, Dennis pulls one of his knees out of the water and uses his foot to turn the handles, and the water slows to its final drips, the gentle plops the only sound in the room besides the quiet hum of the fan and Robby's breath against Dennis's ear. 

Something in Dennis settles, calm and held. He pulls Robby's arms around his waist to sink even further into the feeling. 

"I love you." 

Robby doesn't say it back, not with words. It used to bother Dennis, back when their relationship and the commitment to it was new and fragile—used to make him feel like Robby was unsure. But he knows better, now. Robby says I love you with packed lunches and forehead kisses and baths drawn exactly the way that Dennis likes them. 

Robby kisses the crown of Dennis's head. "Can I wash your hair?" 

Acts of service. Physical touch. Dennis knows there's no real empirical evidence for love languages, but they fit, in Robby's case. 

Dennis nods and, immediately, without thinking, dunks his head beneath the water. 

He's not in the river. The water is too warm and vaguely salty. His hands are holding onto Robby's legs to help him stay under long enough for his hair to get thoroughly wet. This is their bathtub, not the Mon, but the image of a pair of glasses buried in the silt and tugged at by the current sinks back into his thoughts, and he rises from the water suddenly with gasp that's less about being underwater than it should be. 

"What, forgot to take a deep breath before you went under?" Robby teases as he curls his hand around Dennis's shoulder. His thumb presses into the knob of Dennis's spine as he twists around to grab Dennis's shampoo from the shelf behind them. 

Dennis doesn't respond. He's silent as Robby begins to massage the soap into his hair, thoughts back in Trauma 2, with a bruised corpse on a gurney, soaked to the bone and with no one coming for him. 

"I'm still your emergency contact, right?" The words flow out of him fast and low, sudden in the quiet. Robby's fingers still for a moment.

"What?"

Dennis takes a deep breath. "Am I, um, still your emergency contact?" 

Dennis can't see Robby's face—he's facing straight ahead, neck tense—but he can practically hear the confusion in the way Robby slows down. His fingers make one last circle near Dennis's temples and then they slip from Dennis's hair and into the water. 

"You… should be, yeah," he murmurs. "Dunk and rinse." 

The answer does little to quell the nausea that has rekindled in Dennis's gut, but he follows Robby's direction, giving his head a little shake once he's completely underwater to both get the soap out and try to keep the thoughts at bay. When he comes back up, it's to the sound of Robby snapping the bottle of conditioner shut. His fingers are back in Dennis's hair shortly thereafter, and Dennis tries to focus on that—on the feeling of Robby there, and present, and touching him—but the river and Trauma 2 are back to haunt him like ghosts. 

"Will you double-check in the morning?" Dennis asks. "Please?"

"That you're still my emergency contact?" 

Dennis nods. "Just… just to make sure? Please?" 

"Yeah," Robby says, fingers combing from Dennis's forehead to the base of his skull. "I'll check." 

Some of the tension leaves Dennis then, and he sinks back against Robby like the anxiety had been propping him up. Robby rinses his hands in the water near Dennis's shoulders and scoops large handfuls of water over the top of Dennis’s head, slowly rinsing the conditioner from his hair before reaching for the mildly-scented bar of antibacterial soap settled in the nook of the soap dish. He doesn't ask before he lathers the soap against a washcloth and begins to scrub the day from Dennis's arms and shoulders, and Dennis allows himself to be shifted and moved as Robby moves to his chest, down his belly. He passes the cloth off to Dennis for the rest, but the quiet remains. 

Dennis drifts a bit as they rise from the tub. Robby takes both of Dennis's hands in his as they step out onto the bath mat and only lets go to lean over and pull the plug. As Robby bends, Dennis stands, water dripping down his back and legs, and watches the pull and shift of muscles beneath the freckled skin of Robby's back. Dennis idly reaches out to touch the base of Robby’s spine, where the skin is pink and warm. Obvious signs of a body that still lives and breathes. 

Robby runs a perfunctory towel over his own body, quick and efficient before he wraps it around his waist, but he goes slow with Dennis. He drapes the towel over Dennis's head and gently ruffles, and then slowly makes his way down his shoulders, takes his time with each arm. The touch is soft, soothing, intentional in a way that makes Dennis aware of every touch and caress. His hand goes to Robby's shoulder when Robby kneels and pulls to set Dennis's foot atop his knee, moving the towel in long strokes from Dennis's hip to his ankles, curling around his Achilles tendon. 

Once he's dry and the towel is wrapped around his waist, Dennis doesn't so much move back into the bedroom as he is herded there. He's gently pushed and pulled by Robby's warm hands until he's left standing next to his side of the bed as Robby goes to their closet. Clothes are tossed onto the bed—two pairs of underwear, some soft jersey pants and a thermal for Robby, a worn T-shirt from Robby's drawer for Dennis. 

Like with the towels, Robby quickly dresses himself first. He's being quick—trying to get away from the cold undoubtedly, not trying to put on a show—but watching him in movement pulls at a deep-seated longing that settled in Dennis's chest years and years ago, during a late-night walk around the neighborhood Robby lived in before he bought the house. A desire to be closer, to understand. To settle with Robby's feelings about dying. 

It's a conversation they've had many times. Too many times, maybe, when Robby was just starting to do the work and Dennis didn't know how to let him do it on his own. It's no longer a constant shadow hanging over every quiet moment, just a cloud on harder days that they know how to address, now. 

There were nights that I thought about jumping off one of them.

"One leg at a time, Denny," Robby murmurs, standing right in front of him with a pair of boxers in hand. 

Dennis reaches out as he lifts a knee and steps into the boxers, palm flat next to Robby's clavicle. He can feel the shift of Robby's muscles through his shirt, the residual warmth from the bath, his heartbeat if he moves his thumb just a bit higher to his carotid.

Robby is here.

Robby wants to be here. 

His hands pull the boxers up to Dennis's hips, and Dennis gives in to the urge to wrap his arms around Robby's neck and sink into him. Robby's  arms wrap around his waist and fit like it's where they were made to be. He doesn't say anything even as Dennis begins to sniffle against his collar, just holds tighter and rocks them back and forth. Somehow, Dennis's body tells him they're not close enough. He holds tighter, too, and blinks away the tears that are threatening to fall onto Robby's shoulder.

"During hand-offs," Dennis mumbles, voice raw, "um, the medics brought in this… older guy. Fifty-ish." He pauses for a moment, standing at the ledge. "Suicide attempt." 

Robby's hold on him doesn't loosen, but the way he rocks them slows. "Oh." 

"He, um—he coded, uh, three times? Before—" Dennis swallows around the knot in his throat. "I left right—right after Shen called it."

Robby doesn't speak, but Dennis can feel the way he swallows roughly, the movement obvious where his ear is pressed to Robby's neck. His arms tighten around Dennis's waist.

"There wasn't—wasn't an emergency contact, so Kiara was looking but—" The breath that leaves him is harsh, cutting against Robby's shoulder. His fingernails dig into the fabric of Robby's shirt. "He didn't—he… no one got to say goodbye."

Against his ear, Robby's own breath is slow, but it shudders and shakes like the winds before a tornado. "That's, uh—" Robby clears his throat. When he speaks again, it's low and wet. "Fuck, sorry."

Dennis is too frantic—too overwhelmed—to parse through that to figure out what that sorry is really for. An indication of sympathy. An apology for not having more to say or being unable to say it. The part of him that knows Robby deep in his bones thinks that maybe it's an apology for the fact that suicidal middle-aged men is a trigger for Dennis in the first place. Maybe it's a combination of all three. 

It doesn't matter.

What matters is that he's holding Robby in his arms, and Robby is holding him. It matters that Robby is pressing shaky, wet kisses to the bare skin of his shoulder. It matters that they're getting married in four months and the rings are in a box on their dresser and they're going out for breakfast on Sunday because Dennis has the weekend off for the first time in a month.

Dennis takes a deep breath and his nose is filled with Robby, Robby, Robby. They stand there, holding each other, breathing, for long enough that  Dennis feels his heartbeat slow, feels himself calm and settle, home in the cradle of Robby's arms. Robby's heart slows down, too. The beat is gentle in Dennis's ear where it's pressed to Robby's chest. 

"Hey," Robby starts, even and sure, "I'm not going anywhere." To Dennis, it sounds like the answer to a question he didn't know he was asking. 

Breakfast on Sunday. Rings in a box on their dresser. "I know."

"Good," Robby breathes, pressing his lips against Dennis's hairline. "Good."

They stand like that for a moment longer, and then Robby takes half a step back and reaches up to brush Dennis's still-damp hair away from his forehead. He allows himself the quiet luxury of leaning into Robby's hands. 

"My body feels like it's made of soup." 

Robby snorts, but his fingers remain gentle and stable. "Yeah, well.  You had a day."

Dennis hums. "Can we go to bed?" 

"We can do whatever you want," Robby answers as he leans in to press another kiss against Dennis's forehead. 

With that, they separate, hands lingering on each other until they're too far to reach anymore. Robby heads around to his side of the bed, but Dennis stops at the door to the hallway, to pull it open so he can see across, into Evie's room. It's dark—the nightlight throws shadows over the wall, but there isn't definition to anything it highlights—but he can see the shape of her, bundled in her crib. He takes a step closer to he can count her respirations, and he believes his own count.

Evie is healthy, sleeping peacefully fifteen feet away. Behind him, he can hear Robby settling into bed, shifting and rolling to account for his back.

His family is here, safe and sound. Just like they will be tomorrow, and the day after that, and a month, a year from now. 

Dennis leaves the bedroom door open and joins Robby in bed, tucked up against Robby's side, swaddled in soft sheets that smell like both of them.