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2002
Dennis doesn't get sick often. They've been looking after him for a year or so now, and in that time, he's had the sniffles once. For a little kid who spends time in daycare, that's pretty impressive.
Jack keeps expecting him to bring home some flu, some disgusting kid bug, and then they'll contract it, too. But no, he stays healthy and hale and full of energy. Even when he stays out for hours in the snow, despite their demands he come back inside, he never picks up a chill from it.
Jack suspects it's a combination of being fed good, real food - Caroline might work a lot, but she's always made sure the kid eats well, and sends them both home with leftovers - and Jack and Robby taking him for his vaccine boosters religiously.
So when the little boy comes to Jack looking miserable and complaining of a headache, well.
It's unusual. He doesn't like it.
"Uncle Jack," the boy whines, crawling up into his lap like it's second nature. "Don' feel good."
Robby's been tied up at the hospital, charting having piled up over the shift that he just couldn't get out from under. Jack offered to stay back with him, let Caroline know they'd have to bail, but Robby shook his head steadfastly.
"No, go see our boy," he'd insisted, kissing the back of Jack's hand. "I'll come join you guys when I finally fucking finish this. He'll be sad if you don't go."
So he's here, alone, with a little boy in his lap who - honestly doesn't look great.
"No?" he asks, brow furrowing. "What kinda not good?"
Dennis' little face scrunches up, and he points to his head, and then his stomach.
"Head hurts," he whimpers. "Feel all weird and yucky."
It doesn't give him much to go on, but kids aren't always amazing at describing their symptoms. They don't have the words a doctor would use. The clear distress Dennis is in is more than enough to concern Jack.
"Oh, baby," he murmurs, and lifts a hand to press against Dennis' forehead. It's warm. His wispy soft hair is a little matted from sweat. "Yeah, you feel a little too hot. You feel yucky in your belly? Like maybe you want to puke?"
Dennis nods.
Shit. Well, that has all the hallmarks of a bad flu. Or something much worse. Jack's doctor brain immediately starts running a differential, which is not especially comforting to the Jack who loves this kid with all his heart and is beginning to worry.
"Okay," he says, quiet, thinking. "Let's get you some baby Tylenol, try and get rid of that fever."
As he very gently tries to tip Dennis out of his lap, the boy clings to his neck, refusing to let go. Well, alright. Carrying it is. He stands, holding up Dennis in his arms, and investigates the bathroom cabinet for the Tylenol.
"M'not a baby," Dennis protests, and he chuckles.
"No, you're not," he agrees. "It's just what it's called. There's no Big Boy Tylenol."
Dennis grumbles against his neck.
"Okay, c'mon, kiddo, open your mouth," Jack tells him, setting the boy down on the bathroom counter and pulling out the plastic measuring cup for the dosage.
Dennis eyes it, the bright red liquid, and scowls.
"No," he snaps, crossing his arms. He still looks like shit, too pink in the face and sweaty, but he's determined now, not to cooperate.
Jack sighs.
"Kid. It'll help. I promise. Doesn't even taste bad. You can have milk after."
Dennis shakes his head, petulant.
"Said no. Don' wan it. M-my body. My choice."
Jack would, in this moment, like to kill Caroline for teaching him that.
"Okay, fine," he huffs, pretending to give up. He's getting the medicine into the kid one way or another. "Your body, you wanna choose to keep feeling gross? Fine by me."
Not the most mature, maybe. Does he sound just as petulant as the three year old? Yeah, maybe.
It works.
"No!" Dennis cries, eyes welling up. "No gross!"
"Okay, then, you gotta swallow the medicine," Jack maintains. "Those are your options, sweetheart."
For a second, he thinks he's about to be treated to a full-blown tantrum, but Dennis' bottom lip merely wobbles, and then he's nodding.
"... 'Kay."
He lets Jack tip the cup up to his lips, and swallows messy, coughing a little.
"That's it, good boy," Jack soothes, rubbing his little back. "All done, good job. You'll start feeling better soon."
He hopes.
An hour passes, Dennis curled up on his lap and whimpering slightly. His fever doesn't abate. If anything, he looks worse.
"Hey, kiddo," Jack asks, trying to keep his tone calm and level. Trying not to panic. He's never seen Dennis like this. Ever. "Does your neck hurt? Feel a little stiff, maybe?"
Dennis shakes his head, sniffling.
Well, thank fuck for that. He can at least rule out meningitis.
"Hot," the kid says instead. It sounds pitiful. "Bad."
Yeah, bad. Caroline won't be home for hours yet. Robby's still at work.
He's a doctor, he should be able to handle this. He should know how to deal with a little kid with a fever. Hell, if this was a kid who came into the ER, he'd be fine.
But it's Dennis.
"Okay, sweetheart," he says, making up his mind. "You wanna go see Uncle Robby?"
Dennis is limp, and his usual bright eyes have dulled. Still, he looks up with as much interest as he'd had all night.
"Robby?" he repeats, all hope and want.
"Yeah, Den, let's go see Rob," Jack says, and wraps Dennis in his tiny jacket before carrying him out to the car. They bought a carseat about a month into hanging out with the kid. Easier to just have one in their car than try to lug around Caroline's from car to car.
"Feel bad, Jack," Dennis moans from the backseat, and goddamn it, he really doesn't want to have to scrub puke out of his seats.
"Almost there, baby," he reassures. He's starting to feel that prickle under his skin, a warning that he's not entirely in control. That worry and panic are starting to take over.
Dennis, amazingly, manages to avoid puking in the car, just. He lets it go on the pavement outside the hospital, a stream of it splattering as he moans.
"S-Sorry, Unc' Jack, sorry sorry sorry," he whines. He's shivering now. God fucking dammit.
"S'okay, kiddo," Jack tells him, picking him up and sidestepping the puke. Someone else can deal with it. "S'okay, you haven't done anything wrong."
He bypasses the waiting room. Swipes himself in, straight through triage, Dennis in his arms.
"Jack?" he hears, and Robby's looking up at them with wide eyes from where he's sat with a pile of charts in front of him. "What happened?"
He's up and out of his seat in a moment, by their side. Dennis looks queasy again.
"He's sick," Jack murmurs, low. "Fever, headache, he puked outside. I gave him Tylenol, and - and nothing, and he's just getting - "
"Hey," Robby cuts in, smooth and level. "It's okay, baby. You brought him in here, you did the right thing. Come on, let's get him checked out."
Dennis is reaching out for Robby with grabby hands, and Jack hands the boy over into Robby's arms with a stab of jealousy.
"Oh, my sweet boy," Robby coos, directing them straight to an exam room and yanking a senior attending in with them. Adamson. Robby's favourite. They have some kind of rapport, those two. "Jack, bullet?"
Jack's still looking at Dennis clinging onto Robby, shaking. It takes him a long moment to speak.
"Uh. He was fine when I arrived at five. Little quieter than usual. Then he got sick. Er. Sicker. Fever, headache, nausea. No stiffness in the neck, but no response to Tylenol," he explains, eyes on Dennis.
"Yucky," the kid murmurs into Robby's neck.
Adamson is deeply professional. Checks Dennis over like any other patient, manages to peel him out of Robby's arms. Jack still can't get rid of the prickle under his skin. The worry bubbling.
"I think he just has a bad stomach flu," the attending says finally. "We'll give him some fluids, and something for the aches and pains. But he'll be fine, boys."
Robby, too, is on edge.
"You're sure? Shouldn't we rule out anything worse?" he asks, anxious.
Adamson looks at him hard over his glasses.
"You wanna do an LP on this boy?" he asks, and Robby blanches. "That's what I thought. Trust me, Michael. It's the flu. Keep him here for a few hours, if it eases your mind."
He leaves them be, and Jack can't help but stroke his fingers through Dennis' damp curls.
"You wanna have a little shower, kiddo?" he asks, but Dennis shakes his head.
"Tired."
Yeah, he would be. Jack peels him out of his clothes, out of the jacket, and wipes the sticky sweat off him with a warm washcloth that a very curious nurse has brought them.
Even the kids' hospital gown drowns Dennis, and he falls asleep uneasily in the bed, covers at his waist.
"Fuck," Jack sighs, head in his hands. "That was fucking terrifying. How do parents do that?"
Robby's sitting on Dennis' other side, holding his tiny hand.
"You got him here. I would've done the same, Jack," he says quietly. "He'll be okay."
A head pokes in through the door, and Dana raises an eyebrow at them. She's been here longer than either of them, and they've quickly learned she's not only a good nurse, but a good friend.
"You boys have a baby and keep it a secret?" she teases.
It does look that way, Jack can see. The two of them glued to either side of their little boy, worry lining both their faces.
"We babysit him," Robby answers. "For a friend."
She looks between the three of them, and smiles.
"Very sweet," she says, fond. "You need anything?"
"Nah. Maybe some juice for him when he wakes up," Jack replies. "He likes apple, not orange."
He sounds like a father. He can hear it.
He feels like one, too.
Dennis does get better, of course. It is just a rough flu. They take him home after a few hours, and Dennis snuffles against Jack in the backseat of the car, curled up on his lap instead of in the carseat.
Jack allowed it because he needed it as much as the kid.
By the next time Dennis gets sick, they're already out of his life.
2026
Dennis is getting sick.
He fucking hates getting sick. It didn't used to happen that often. He was pretty decent at avoiding the bugs going around, and keeping himself healthy. But being a med student didn't always mean the healthiest habits. He lived on ramen and beer for a long while there, and his immune system never quite recovered.
He can feel the creep of it as he finds it harder and harder to get through his shift. The exhaustion at the edges of his consciousness, the increasing thump of a headache at his temples. He sniffles, just once, and he gets about three side-eyes from the nurses.
"You look kinda green," Mel tells him, and he fights down the urge to snap. He gets mean when he's sick. Contrary and irritable, and she doesn't deserve it.
"Yeah, don't feel awesome," he mutters.
"Should you go home, maybe?" she asks, as if just bailing out of his shift is an option. As if it's ever an option for one of the residents to be sick enough to go home.
"I'm fine," he dismisses.
Three hours later when he can finally finish, and he is not fine.
Fuck.
He feels dizzy, and disgusting. He's holding back having to puke, but the roil in his guts is very there.
By the time he's made it home, he feels … distinctly not well.
"Hey, baby," Robby calls out from the kitchen, where the smell of roasting meat makes Dennis' stomach turn.
He bolts for the bathroom, and retches violently over the toilet. The taste of bile brings tears to his eyes, too bitter to be anywhere but back in his stomach where it belongs.
He hears footsteps, and then Robby's standing in the doorway, looking down at him.
"Oh, baby, what's wrong?" he asks, all fond concern.
"Fuck does it look like?" Dennis groans, wiping his mouth. "M'sick. It's fine. I'll clean it up."
Irritable.
Robby frowns.
"No, you'll get into the shower and I'll clean it up," he corrects.
Dennis rolls his eyes, and heaves himself up to his feet. The room spins a little.
"I can do it," he snaps. "My mess, I got it."
Contrary.
He's definitely sick.
Robby's ignoring him, fully, stepping forward and putting a hand on his forehead. It's blessedly cool, and Dennis realises how hot he's been.
"Fuck, kid, you're burning up," Robby murmurs. "Okay, come on, shower. We'll cool you off a little, get you into bed."
Dennis is not used to be being fussed over when he's sick. In high school, his Mom did his best, but mostly, he just rode it out on his own. In college, he holed up in his dorm room with paracetamol and Netflix and dealt with it.
This - concern? The look on Robby's face, and the worry in his eyes? He's not sure what to do with it.
"M'fine, Robby. You were cooking, go back to that," he mutters, and tries to step out of the bathroom. He wobbles, and Robby grabs him by the arm.
"You're sick, baby boy," the man corrects. "Let me take care of you."
And his head is spinning, and he feels a little clammy, so. He lets Robby lead him into the bathroom, sit him on the edge of the bath, and stick a thermometer in his mouth.
It blips after a minute or so, and when Robby pulls it out, his face pales.
"That is a bad fever," he says, deeply unhappy. Dennis can see it in the lines of his face, the way they're deepening. "Oh, sweetheart."
"M'just sick, god."
But he peels his clothes off slowly anyway, leaves them in a heap on the floor that, for once, Robby says nothing about.
Robby's thumbing out something on his phone while the water heats up, and Dennis peers up at him.
"What're you doing?" he asks, suspicious.
"Telling Jack to come home," Robby replies distractedly.
Dennis squawks.
"Don't do that! I'm fine, I don't need - "
"Oh, kid, if you think he'd ever let me live it down if I didn't call him," Robby cuts him off, snorting. "He'll lose his shit either way, better to have him here."
"It's just the flu."
"Yeah, and last time you had just the flu, Jack didn't recover for days."
Dennis' brow furrows, and it hurts.
"Whaddya mean? Haven't been sick with you guys before."
Robby pockets the phone, and helps him into the shower. His legs are so weak that he has to use Jack's plastic chair. He quietly thanks God it's there, or he doesn't think he'd be able to stand this long. Jeez, he feels like shit.
"Mm, you have," Robby tells him, climbing into the shower, nude, with him, and standing behind the chair. "When you were - three and a half, I think? You got a fever, just like this. Jack flipped out."
Dennis has absolutely no memory of this. Though - there is a flicker of some kind of feeling, when Robby gently strokes warm water through his hair.
"Don't remember that," he murmurs, eyes closed. This does feel nice.
Robby opens his mouth to reply, but the front door clicks open and closed, and then Jack's right there, looking frantic.
"Jesus, did you break the speed of sound?" Robby teases, but Jack only has eyes for Dennis.
"How bad is it?" he asks immediately. "You okay, sweetheart? How high was the fever? Should we take you to the hospital?"
Dennis stares at him, disbelieving.
"Jack, I have the flu," he says, but he follows it up with a wracking cough, which isn't super helpful.
"Yeah, and you sound like shit," the man responds. He turns on his heel, and leaves. Dennis looks up at Robby, eyes wide.
"What the fuck?"
Robby laughs.
"Told you."
By the time Robby gets them out of the shower, Dennis feels weak. He's still shivering, despite having just been under hot water, and he lets Robby towel him dry with little complaint, his head fuzzy.
"Think I - need to - lie down," he groans.
When he makes it to the bedroom, Jack has laid out paracetamol, water and is taking off his leg.
"C'mere, baby," he murmurs, holding out his arms.
Dennis goes without thinking, on autopilot. Jack wants to hold him, he goes.
He's on his back under the covers in an instant, Jack's hand on his forehead, mirroring Robby's. He swears under his breath, and gently props Dennis up enough on the pillows so he can swallow.
"Take your pills, sweetheart," he says, and Dennis grumbles.
He just got comfortable, and he feels nauseous as fuck. He doesn't want to.
"Later," he groans, batting them away.
Jack and Robby share an amused look, and he feels irritability flare again.
"What's that about?" he snaps.
Jack grins at him, and tips the two pills into Dennis' hand.
"You were exactly the same at three, little one," he says, fond. "A real bitch about taking your medicine."
Just to prove him wrong, Dennis swallows the pills with a swig of water.
Robby has disappeared to go rescue his meal, and Jack slips into bed beside him, one arm around Dennis and holding him close.
"You can go to sleep, baby," Jack murmurs. "Daddy's got you."
He gets another flash of something - not quite a memory, but a feeling. Like he's heard it before.
"S'ry, Daddy," he mutters against the man's chest, fuzzier with every passing moment. "Hate being sick."
"I know, Den. You're okay. Let us look after you, yeah?"
He still thinks he doesn't need it. The looking after. He could handle this on his own. But. It's warm, in Jack's arms, and he can feel himself drifting off.
Maybe, it's okay to let them fuss. A little.