forEVER obsessed with fanfiction

Sofia || 27 || confused ace || inbox open || writing for The Pitt, Stranger Things, Detroit: Become Human, (Squid Game) || English is not my first language

[everwhovian]

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My name is Sofia or Mai. I use she/they, I’m 27, and I’m aroace. This is a personal fandom and writing blog.

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[everwhovian]

Quiet as a Mouse -> read on ao3

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

Jack Abbot/Michael "Robby" Robinavitch/Dennis Whitaker

Trinity Santos is the go-to person for gossip. If you want to know something, you ask her. No one knows how she gets her information. She’s never at the scene of the crime. And somehow, she’s always the first to know. They don’t figure it out until one day. Or: nobody notices Dennis Whitaker. He's as quiet as a mouse, accidentally overhears everything, and supplies Trinity with a steady stream of workplace gossip. He does have standards, though. Some secrets are worth keeping.

✦••──────────•• ✧ ••──────────••✦

Everything that had happened during the shift seemed to catch up to Dennis the second he settled properly against the couch. His limbs felt heavier now that he’d stopped moving, the leftover tension slowly bleeding out somewhere between reheated leftovers, the low drone of the documentary, and Robby’s warmth pressed steady against his side.

Robby’s arm tightened around his shoulders again, absentminded and familiar, pulling him a little closer as the documentary shifted to grainy footage of some underwater station that looked one bad decision away from imploding. Dennis glanced up just in time to realize Robby was actually paying attention to it.

That made him snort quietly under his breath.

Some British narrator was calmly explaining deep-sea pressure while blurry footage of rusted equipment drifted across the screen, and somehow Robby looked genuinely invested instead of treating it like the background noise it was supposed to be.

“You know,” Dennis muttered, glancing sideways at him, “most people pretend to care about documentaries like this.”

Robby didn’t even look away from the screen. “You’d learn something if you listened.”

Dennis huffed softly, the sound warm with amusement as he shifted a little deeper into Robby’s side. “I learned plenty today, thank you.”

That finally earned him a glance, brief but faintly amused before Robby looked back at the TV like underwater implosion risks genuinely mattered to him at this hour. Dennis shook his head a little, still smiling to himself as he let his attention drift instead, his body sinking further into the couch now that there was finally nothing demanding anything from him.

The apartment had gone quiet around them at some point without Dennis noticing exactly when. Their plates were still abandoned on the coffee table in front of them, pushed slightly to the side to make room for the remote, and the lights had been dimmed low enough that the glow from the television softened the edges of the room. Outside the windows, the city had settled into that late-night hush where everything felt further away.

Dennis let his eyes slip half closed for a second, listening to the steady rhythm of the narrator’s voice blend into the low hum of the apartment. He could already tell Trinity was going to become unbearable tomorrow. Not because of anything dramatic, not yet, but because she’d gotten exactly what she always wanted: information. Ellis’s account alone was enough to keep her entertained for days, and Dennis knew her well enough by now to know she was probably already mentally reorganizing half the department based on a couple tweets and three passing comments.

And somehow, despite fully recognizing the danger, Dennis still found himself amused by it more than anything else.

Maybe because he was warm. Maybe because Robby’s thumb had started absentmindedly brushing once against his shoulder without him seeming to notice. Maybe because after years of feeling like he existed somewhere at the edge of things, there was still something unreal about ending a shift here instead, tucked into Robby’s side while Robby took a documentary about underwater engineering catastrophes far too seriously.

Honestly, the fake farm excuse was becoming less believable by the day.

The thought made another quiet laugh slip out of him before he could stop it. He really didn’t want to imagine Trinity’s face once she finally figured out where he had actually been disappearing to every time he casually mentioned “staying out at the farm.” At this point she was probably one suspicious glance away from staging some kind of intervention over his increasingly mysterious overnight absences.

Which was unfair, honestly, because he had actually been out there sometimes.

And he liked it there.

Amy had somehow turned into his best friend over the last months without Dennis fully noticing when it happened, and little Theo had made himself comfortable in Dennis’s life almost immediately after that. Some days it felt weirdly easy to sit at Amy’s kitchen table with a baby balanced against his shoulder while she complained about animals or work or life in general like they’d known each other for years instead of months.

He missed his nieces and nephews too, more than he usually let himself think about when the shifts got busy enough to drown everything else out. Theo helped with that a little. Not in the same way, obviously, but enough to settle some quieter part of him he hadn’t realized had been homesick.

Apparently Trinity had picked up on some of that too.

Dennis could still remember the look she’d given him the first time he casually referred to Amy as his “best friend,” her expression doing something oddly betrayed before she recovered quickly enough to turn it into suspicion instead. Dennis had immediately gone red trying to backtrack and explain that Trinity was different, which only made it worse once he awkwardly muttered that Trinity was “more like an annoying sister at this point.”

That had been a mistake.

Trinity had looked unbearably pleased with herself for all of three seconds before immediately shoving him into a headlock in the middle of the staff lounge and loudly declaring him “the best little brother” she could’ve asked for while Dennis nearly suffocated trying to get her off him.

He hadn’t even bothered correcting her that he was technically older.

Dennis shifted again automatically, settling closer without thinking about it, and beside him Robby finally glanced down.

“What.”

Dennis smiled faintly, eyes still half on the TV. “Nothing.”

Robby looked unconvinced but let it go, his attention drifting back toward the documentary while Dennis let himself sink further into the couch, the warmth, the quiet, and the steady weight of Robby’s arm around him.

Yeah.

He definitely wasn’t trading this for the actual farm tonight.

Eventually the documentary ended without either of them really noticing when. One minute the British narrator was still talking about catastrophic pressure failures, and the next the credits were rolling quietly across the screen while the TV automatically suggested three more documentaries that looked equally depressing.

Dennis squinted at them. “Why are all documentaries either about the ocean trying to kill people or capitalism.”

Robby huffed softly through his nose, finally reaching for the remote. “Go to bed.”

Dennis made a vague sound of protest anyway, more out of obligation than actual resistance, but he let Robby pull himself upright and followed a second later, dragging himself off the couch with the kind of reluctance that only happened once he’d already settled in somewhere comfortable.

The apartment stayed dim around them as they moved through it, Dennis grabbing the abandoned plates off the coffee table on instinct while Robby turned the TV off behind him. He dropped the dishes into the sink once they reached the kitchen, fully intending to rinse them and immediately deciding that sounded like tomorrow’s problem instead.

Robby clearly agreed because he didn’t even comment on it.

By the time Dennis wandered into the bathroom a minute later, Robby was already standing at the sink brushing his teeth, one hand braced lazily against the counter while he stared at nothing in particular with the exhausted thousand-yard look of someone who had worked emergency medicine for too many years.

Dennis, meanwhile, reached automatically for the increasingly alarming amount of skincare products currently occupying one side of the counter.

Robby noticed immediately.

Slowly, visibly, he lowered the toothbrush from his mouth. “There are more bottles every time I look.”

Dennis ignored him completely, already washing his face. “That’s because your bathroom had the skincare routine of an old man before I got here.”

Robby pointed the toothbrush at him. “I used moisturizer.”

“Expired moisturizer,” Dennis corrected. “From the Bush administration.”

Robby looked deeply offended by that.

Dennis snorted quietly to himself as he reached for another bottle, patting something cold onto his face while Robby watched him with the same expression he usually reserved for particularly questionable patient decisions.

“You don’t even know what half of that does,” Robby accused around toothpaste foam.

“I do actually,” Dennis said easily. “Trinity explained it to me.”

Robby’s eyes flicked toward the collection of products crowding the counter before he gave Dennis another look through the mirror.

“Ah,” he said dryly. “That explains a lot.”

“Exactly.” Dennis pointed at him without looking away from the mirror. “Your skin could be glowing too if you stopped resisting progress.”

“My skin is fine.”

Dennis finally glanced sideways at him then, eyes narrowing slightly as he took in the exhausted ER shadows, the sleep deprivation, and the fact that Robby apparently thought hand soap counted as a skincare product.

“Mhm.”

Robby rolled his eyes hard enough to be visible in the mirror. “You’re twenty-seven. Of course your skin looks like that.”

Dennis grinned faintly, entirely unbothered as he reached for another bottle. “And yours could too.”

Robby made a low, unimpressed sound and went back to brushing his teeth while Dennis continued what had somehow become a genuinely complicated nighttime routine over the last couple months.

The worst part was that Trinity had been right.

His skin had gotten better.

He hated that she knew that too.

“Jack started using some of this stuff too, by the way,” Dennis added casually. “Not just the moisturizer anymore.”

Robby paused mid-brush, eyes narrowing slightly in the mirror.

Dennis kept going before he could ask. “Cleanser. Serum sometimes. I caught him using the eye cream last week.”

Robby let out a low grunt that sounded deeply betrayed and immediately reached over to pinch Dennis lightly at the side.

Dennis jerked away with a quiet laugh, nearly smearing serum across his cheek. “Ow. That was targeted.”

“Good,” Robby muttered.

Dennis watched with poorly concealed judgment as Robby finished brushing his teeth, rinsed, and then very obviously prepared to consider that an acceptable nighttime routine. The pointed look Dennis sent him through the mirror was enough to make Robby sigh quietly and at least wash his face properly, though Dennis still considered the effort deeply insufficient given the amount of sleep deprivation and ER stress Robby’s skin had been surviving on for years.

Still, there had been progress lately.

Small, stubborn progress, but progress.

At the very least, Robby had finally started taking care of his beard after both Dennis and Jack complained enough about beard rash to wear him down. Dennis still remembered Jack dramatically announcing that he was “being exfoliated against his will,” which had apparently been the final straw. Now there was beard oil sitting in the cabinet beside the sink, which honestly felt like a bigger victory than it probably should have.

The skincare would happen eventually too. Dennis was patient. Trinity had trained him well. And honestly, if Jack had somehow gone from mocking the entire routine to secretly stealing cleanser, moisturizer, and occasionally the eye cream when he thought nobody was paying attention, then Robby didn’t stand a chance long term either.

Dennis lingered another minute, rinsing his hands and pushing damp hair back from his face as he caught his reflection in the mirror. Trinity really had ruined him a little. A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of owning this many skincare products, let alone using them consistently enough to notice a difference. Now the routine happened automatically, built into the end of his shifts as naturally as kicking off his shoes or checking whether he had remembered to charge his phone.

Unbelievable.

He flicked the bathroom light off on his way out and wandered down the hallway barefoot, the apartment quieter now after the constant noise of the ER. The muted glow from the living room still stretched faintly across the floorboards, softer than the harsh hospital fluorescents his eyes had spent the last twelve hours under, and somewhere ahead he heard the quiet rustle of paper turning.

Warm light spilled out from the bedroom when Dennis stepped inside, catching on rumpled blankets and the open journal resting across Robby’s lap. Robby was already stretched out against the pillows with one leg bent beneath the blanket, reading glasses low on his nose while he worked his way through dense blocks of text like this counted as relaxing. He looked unfairly comfortable for someone who had worked nearly the same exhausting shift Dennis had.

Dennis slowed at the sight.

It still did something strange to his brain sometimes, these small moments that felt so deeply domestic they almost caught him off guard. The reading glasses. The low bedside lamp. The complete concentration on Robby's face, like the world had narrowed down to whatever was on the page in front of him. The whole thing felt steady in a way Dennis still hadn't entirely gotten used to. Robby half asleep with reading glasses on probably shouldn’t have affected him this much anymore, and yet Dennis still felt something warm loosen quietly in his chest every time he saw it.

Robby glanced up briefly over the top of the glasses when he walked in. “You done conducting your chemistry experiment in there?”

Dennis ignored that completely.

The mattress dipped beneath him as he climbed onto the bed and settled onto his side facing Robby. The blankets were warm from where Robby had been sitting there for a while already, the journal balanced comfortably across his lap. Dennis shifted closer automatically, one hand slipping beneath the blanket to rest across Robby’s stomach.

He pressed in close for a second, nosing tiredly against Robby’s shoulder.

Robby made a quiet sound under his breath, something acknowledging without really requiring a response. His attention drifted back toward the journal almost immediately. A second later, his free hand came up on instinct alone, fingers dragging slowly through Dennis’s still damp hair while he continued reading.

Dennis closed his eyes briefly at the touch.

The movement was familiar enough now that neither of them really thought about it anymore. Robby turned another page. Dennis felt the slow drag of fingertips through his hair again, absentminded and steady. The apartment had gone almost completely still around them, the kind of late-night quiet that only settled properly once the city outside finally started winding down too.

“What are you reading,” he mumbled eventually, voice rougher with exhaustion than he intended.

Robby hummed softly, eyes still moving across the page. “Article.”

Dennis cracked one eye open just enough to glance down properly at the journal spread across Robby’s lap. Dense columns of text. Highlighted sections. Anatomical diagrams squeezed between paragraphs. Something trauma-related from the look of it, probably newer research Robby had decided to read at midnight because apparently decades in emergency medicine still hadn’t cured him of voluntarily assigning himself homework.

“Boring,” Dennis informed him quietly before letting his cheek settle more heavily against Robby’s shoulder again.

That earned him the faintest twitch at the corner of Robby’s mouth as he turned another page.

It didn’t take long for Dennis to fall asleep after that.

The steady rhythm of pages turning faded first, then the low glow of the bedside lamp behind his closed eyes, and eventually even Robby’s hand drifting absently through his hair slipped somewhere out of reach as exhaustion finally pulled him under properly.

The next time Dennis stirred, it happened slowly, awareness returning in uneven pieces instead of all at once. The mattress shifted behind him with a second dip of weight that didn’t fit the shape of what he’d fallen asleep against, and Dennis frowned faintly without opening his eyes yet, his brain still slow and heavy as it tried to catch up. Sleep clung stubbornly to him, keeping everything slightly out of focus. For a few seconds he stayed exactly where he was, suspended somewhere between asleep and awake, not quite invested enough to figure out what had changed.

Robby was still there.

He could feel him immediately, warm and solid at Dennis’s front, one arm still loosely wrapped around his waist beneath the blanket. The familiar weight registered before anything else did, grounding enough that Dennis relaxed slightly without even thinking about it. For a second Dennis assumed that was all it was, Robby adjusting in his sleep or shifting closer again. Something normal. Something familiar.

Then the mattress moved a second time.

Something else threaded into the space behind him, heavier, less careful about settling in quietly, and Dennis blinked sluggishly as his thoughts finally started reconnecting. The shift in weight felt different from the way Robby moved. Less absentminded. Less concerned with whether anyone noticed. It took another second for his brain to process that the movement was on the other side, awareness dragging itself reluctantly into place.

And then he caught the smell.

Coffee.

Strong, fresh, and entirely too present for someone who was supposed to be asleep. It cut through the remaining haze almost immediately, familiar enough that Dennis recognized it before he fully opened his eyes. The realization slotted itself together piece by piece, connecting the second weight on the mattress to the presence behind him until the answer became obvious.

“Jack?” he mumbled, voice rough with sleep.

“Go back to sleep,” Jack muttered immediately, his voice rough with exhaustion and faint annoyance at the fact that Dennis had apparently become conscious long enough to perceive him.

Dennis ignored that completely.

Not now that he was awake enough to be curious.

He shifted just enough to look over his shoulder, blanket dragging with him as his eyes adjusted to the low light. Jack was halfway through pulling his shirt off, movements slower now that the shift had finally caught up with him, his hair a mess from repeatedly dragging his hands through it over the course of the night. One hand was already reaching down toward the prosthetic, fingers moving through the familiar routine of loosening it and setting it aside before he climbed fully into bed. The exhaustion sat visibly on him now that he’d stopped moving long enough for it to catch up, shoulders looser than usual, posture softened by the simple fact that he was finally off the clock.

And the coffee smell was strong.

Dennis squinted at him. “You smell like a coffee shop.”

Jack stopped mid-motion, fingers pausing where he’d been kneading at the muscles in his leg after finally getting the prosthetic off. He let out a long, deeply offended groan, dragging a hand down his face like the entire night had personally insulted him. “I hate coffee,” he muttered flatly. “I hate this job. I hate Shen. I especially hate whatever radioactive sludge he was carrying around tonight.”

Dennis felt his mouth twitch immediately, sleep-heavy amusement creeping in before he could stop it. “What happened.”

“Shen,” Jack repeated, like that answered the question completely. He gave the muscles in his leg one last irritated rub before abandoning the effort and throwing an arm over his eyes. It looked like his body had finally remembered it had been awake for far too long. “He is no longer allowed to bring coffee into my ER. If I see him walk in with another oversized caffeinated abomination, I’m escorting him right back out.”

“Kinda dramatic,” Dennis murmured, voice muffled slightly against Robby’s shoulder.

“Still generous,” Jack shot back immediately. “He spilled half of it on the floor and the other half on me.”

There was a brief pause before he continued.

“Lena made him clean everything and promised to keep him late for it.” Jack shifted slightly behind him, sounding much more satisfied now. “I got to leave early. Lena’s the best.”

Dennis huffed softly into Robby’s shoulder, his shoulders shaking with quiet laughter as Jack continued sounding genuinely betrayed by the entire concept.

After a second Dennis shifted, rolling onto his back before turning properly toward the other side of the bed. The movement earned a sleepy, instinctive adjustment from Robby, the arm around his waist tightening briefly before settling again. Dennis barely noticed. His eyes were already on Jack.

“Unbelievable,” Jack added, still sounding personally offended by the entire experience. “I’m surrounded by incompetence.”

Dennis smiled faintly at that, already sinking deeper into the mattress again now that the initial curiosity had worn off. The exhaustion in Jack’s voice sat heavier underneath the sarcasm now that he was closer, roughened around the edges in a way that usually only showed up once the shift had fully caught up with him.

“Are you coming in earlier then,” Dennis asked softly, shifting slightly to get comfortable again without actually moving away from either of them.

Jack made a vague sound, something halfway between acknowledgment and dismissal. “I’ll come in early. Later. At some point.” He paused. “Time is fake.”

Dennis let out a quiet breath that almost turned into a laugh, the logic – or lack of it – familiar enough not to question too hard.

“That’s not how time works,” he murmured, eyes already slipping closed again.

“It is tonight,” Jack muttered back immediately, like that settled the matter completely.

Dennis didn’t bother arguing further. There wasn’t much point, and he was already drifting again anyway, awareness softening around the edges as the warmth of the bed pulled him back under. At some point he rolled back toward Robby without really thinking about it, chasing warmth more than making an actual decision. Dennis felt Jack shift behind him a moment later, the mattress moving slightly before an arm slid around his waist and pulled him back just enough to close the remaining space between them.

Robby didn’t wake. He shifted slightly at the change in the bed, something instinctive rather than conscious, his arm tightening around Dennis just enough to pull him closer against his chest like his body had registered the movement and adjusted automatically without ever fully surfacing from sleep.

Dennis let out a soft breath that turned into a quiet laugh before he could stop it as he realized he was now effectively pinned between them, warmth pressing in from both sides in a way that made the idea of moving feel completely unreasonable.

Not that he had any intention of trying.

Jack leaned in a second later, pressing a brief kiss against the side of Dennis’s head before settling properly behind him. The contact was quick, tired, deliberate enough to linger for a second afterward, and then Jack shifted closer fully, one leg hooking loosely over both of them like he had already decided this was where he was staying for the rest of the night.

“Shut up and sleep,” he muttered quietly.

Dennis smiled faintly into the pillow but didn’t bother answering. The earlier wakefulness was already slipping again, dissolving beneath the steady warmth surrounding him and the familiar weight of both of them anchoring him in place. Somewhere behind him Jack exhaled heavily into the mattress, exhaustion finally settling into stillness now that he had stopped moving long enough to feel it.

Dennis let himself sink with it.

This time he didn’t wake again until morning.

Awareness returned slowly, more sensation than thought at first. A shift in the mattress. Movement somewhere beside him. The gradual absence of warmth when Robby pulled away just enough to sit up. Dennis stayed exactly where he was for another few seconds, clinging stubbornly to the edge of sleep while his brain struggled to catch up with the fact that morning had apparently arrived without his permission.

“Dennis.”

Robby’s voice came with a nudge against his side a second later.

Dennis groaned immediately and dragged the blanket up over his face like that might somehow protect him from both consciousness and the responsibilities attached to it. “No,” he mumbled into the fabric.

“Work,” Robby said simply, already moving around the room.

Dennis made a vague protesting sound that didn’t contain a single actual word, but it pulled him a little further awake anyway. He blinked slowly against the morning light and rolled onto his back just enough to track Robby moving around the bedroom pulling clothes on, glasses abandoned on the nightstand beside the trauma journal from the night before.

For a second Dennis just watched him in silence, thoughts still lagging somewhere behind the rest of him.

Then Robby reached back without looking and jabbed a hand in Jack’s direction. “Up.”

Jack reacted immediately, making a deeply offended sound as he turned away and dragged the blanket with him like he was retreating from something genuinely hostile.

“Absolutely not,” he said into the mattress, voice muffled but no less firm. “Just got here.”

Dennis let out a quiet, sleep-heavy laugh at that, the sound catching in his throat as he shifted slightly. The movement was enough to remind him that Jack was still half wrapped around him beneath the blanket, one arm loosely anchored at his waist like he had no intention of moving anytime soon either.

“If you’re here,” Robby said, already heading for the bedroom door with complete indifference to the argument, “that means you got enough sleep to help with breakfast.”

Jack went completely still for half a second.

Then he shoved the pillow down just enough to glare in Robby’s direction, eyes narrowed with genuine offense. “Nope,” he shot back immediately. “You were asleep, Mike. You know nothing.”

Dennis pressed his lips together harder to keep the laugh in this time, warmth settling low in his chest at how absurdly predictable the exchange felt now.

Robby didn’t even slow down. “I heard you complaining. You got here early enough.”

“Emotionally,” Jack muttered as he dropped face-first back into the pillow with dramatic finality, “I just arrived.”

That finally broke Dennis properly. A quiet laugh slipped out before he could stop it as he pushed himself upright just enough to lean against the headboard, the blanket bunching loosely in his lap while Jack continued radiating deeply personal betrayal into the mattress beside him.

Robby disappeared out into the hallway without another response, apparently deciding the conversation had reached its natural conclusion already.

“Coffee?” he called a second later from somewhere outside the room.

Jack groaned immediately, louder this time, and dragged the pillow fully over his head like he could physically shield himself from the word.

“No, never say that again,” he complained, voice muffled beneath the pillow but somehow still intense. “I’m serious. I’ll file a complaint. I hate coffee. I hate this house. I hate all of you.”

Dennis snorted softly as he reached for his phone on instinct, blinking against the brightness of the screen while his eyes adjusted.

“Tell Shen I’m filing a formal complaint,” Jack added from underneath the pillow, shifting just enough to turn further away like he was doubling down on the protest.

Dennis didn’t bother looking back.

A quiet smile tugged at his mouth as he unlocked his phone and opened Trinity’s messages. The coffee smell was probably still trapped somewhere in the blankets, and Jack was undoubtedly still glaring at the concept from underneath the pillow. Dennis glanced at the time in the corner of the screen and felt his smile widen slightly. It was technically early enough that he could already be at work, which made things considerably easier.

Jesse had worked nights, right?

Dennis frowned faintly as he thought about it. He was pretty sure Mateo had mentioned switching a shift with Jesse. Or maybe Jesse had mentioned it… Either way, Mateo had somehow ended up getting absorbed into the Night Crawlers after Jack decided he belonged there, and Dennis distinctly remembered hearing something about a schedule swap. Mateo had been on days with him yesterday, and now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen Jesse once.

Good enough.

Luckily, Jesse loved gossip almost as much as Trinity did. Just with a little more tact, and he had his own ways of getting the good gossip. With Jesse on nights and Dennis conveniently arriving early, he barely had to change anything. Jesse noticed everything. Especially when something ridiculous happened. Jesse saying something about Shen was practically a law of nature. The story could start there and nobody would question it.

The truth would probably be more interesting. Unfortunately, the truth also involved Jack climbing into bed smelling like coffee and launching into a five-minute rant about Shen, caffeine, and workplace incompetence. Dennis was absolutely not handing his relationship over on a silver platter. Trinity would have a field day with that, and Dennis was already giving her enough material without openly admitting where some of it came from.

Or how he had somehow managed to start dating the two attendings he’d spent months quietly crushing on.

Yeah.

Absolutely not.

His thumb hovered briefly over the keyboard as he mentally rearranged the details into something Trinity would appreciate. The coffee smell. The dramatic suffering. The formal complaint against both Shen and caffeine. Close enough to the truth that he didn’t feel particularly guilty about it.

Then Dennis started typing.

Staring at Trinity’s final message, Dennis felt a faint grimace pull at his mouth. He scrolled back up through the conversation, eyes narrowing as he reread parts of it. The coffee disaster had been funny. Jack declaring war on caffeine had been objectively hilarious. Unfortunately, somewhere between those two things, Dennis had apparently volunteered the information that he had personally seen him after the incident…

In hindsight, that might have been a mistake.

Had he given her too much?

The thought lingered as he stared at the screen. Trinity was annoyingly good at noticing patterns, especially when she had absolutely no business noticing them. Most people would have focused on the coffee or the fact that Shen had made an absolute fool out of himself. Most people would have gotten distracted by the visual alone. Coffee everywhere. Shen suffering. Jack threatening to physically remove caffeine from the emergency department. But Trinity had somehow skipped straight past the coffee accident and landed on the fact that Dennis had hinted at something completely different. Which either meant she was suspicious already or she was about to become suspicious, and neither option felt particularly encouraging.

His gaze drifted to the time in the corner of the screen before dropping back to the messages. Maybe he had gotten too comfortable with the excuse. It had started out innocently enough with Amy’s blessing and then somehow evolved into a convenient explanation for every mysterious absence in his life.

Worse, it usually worked. People heard “the farm” and stopped asking questions. Or started teasing him relentlessly. Most people accepted it immediately. Some people wanted details. Dana occasionally asked after Theo. McKay seemed convinced Dennis spent his weekends doing manual labor for fun. Nobody ever seemed particularly interested in looking any deeper than that.

Trinity, apparently, was developing immunity.

Dennis frowned at the screen, thumb tapping idly against the edge of his phone as he considered the problem from every angle he could think of. The excuse itself wasn’t the issue. The problem was that lately he had been using the explanation far more often than he’d actually been out there. Maybe he needed to actually spend a little more time out there again. Lately he had been relying on it a lot more than he’d been using it.

Dennis could already picture the look Amy would give him if he admitted that he was considering visiting purely for the sake of maintaining plausible deniability. She’d laugh at him for a week. 

She would probably find it hilarious. Theo definitely would too, if he could already understand. Dennis smiled despite himself at the thought. At the moment Theo’s strongest opinions seemed to revolve around naps, bottles, and whether somebody was holding him. Still, Dennis was fairly certain the kid would grow into the type of person who found this entire situation deeply entertaining. Which, unfortunately, meant Amy would absolutely encourage it.

Honestly, if Trinity ever figured it out, it probably wouldn’t be because of the farm. It would be because she noticed something stupid. A look. A comment. One of them standing too close to him for half a second longer than usual. The woman could build a conspiracy board out of three facial expressions and a poorly timed coffee run. Dennis had watched her do something alarmingly close to that before.

Which was exactly why Dennis wasn’t about to hand her additional evidence.

He shook his head and locked the phone before Trinity could send anything else alarming. Whatever theory she was currently building could stay hypothetical for a little while longer. The last thing he needed was to open another message and discover she’d somehow connected five unrelated events into a conclusion that was far too close to the truth.

Dennis dropped the phone onto the nightstand and finally pushed himself upright. Beside him, Jack remained buried beneath enough blankets and pillows to qualify as a geological formation. From this angle Dennis could only see a portion of his hair and one hand sticking out from under the blankets, which somehow made the entire thing even more ridiculous.

Yeah.

Maybe he should actually visit the farm this week.

And send a few pictures to the Pittlings group chat while he was at it.

Dennis stretched briefly before reaching for the first clothes he could find, already moving on autopilot. There wasn’t much time to waste anyway. Robby had never understood lingering in the mornings, especially on workdays. Once he was awake, he was awake. Breakfast might slow him down by a few minutes, but not much more than that. As far as Robby was concerned, standing around waiting to leave made about as much sense as standing in the ambulance bay after the ambulance had already arrived.

Dennis had learned that pretty quickly.

Which meant if he wanted breakfast, coffee, or even a chance to see Robby before he disappeared out the door, he needed to get moving. More importantly, Robby was his ride. Letting him leave without Dennis was a fantastic way to end up explaining a suspicious Lyft charge to Trinity later, which felt significantly more dangerous than simply getting out of bed.

He pulled on a hoodie that had definitely started its life in Robby’s closet. At some point the ownership had become questionable. Dennis couldn’t even remember taking it anymore. It had simply migrated into his side of the closet the same way several of Jack’s T-shirts had, and neither of them seemed particularly interested in correcting the situation.

The sleeves sat a little tighter on him than they did on Robby, the fabric fitting differently across his shoulders and chest than it probably had when Robby bought it. According to the pictures Jack had shown him, Robby had been a tall, scrawny thing in med school. Dennis paused for a second, tugging the hoodie into place before glancing down at himself.

A year ago the thing would have swallowed him.

The realization caught him slightly off guard. The change hadn’t happened suddenly. It had happened gradually enough that he rarely noticed it from one day to the next. Moving in with Trinity had helped. Sleeping somewhere that wasn’t a hospital bed helped even more. The constant exhaustion that had followed him through most of fourth year had eased enough that he actually had the energy to take care of himself occasionally.

Moving equipment around the farm helped too.

So did having two attendings who seemed personally invested in making sure he remembered to eat.

Dennis rolled his eyes fondly as he shoved his arms through the sleeves completely.

Somewhere along the way he’d stopped looking like somebody surviving on caffeine, vending machine pretzels, and bad decisions. His shoulders had broadened. There was actual muscle on him now. Not enough to make Jack stop calling him kid, but enough that some of Robby’s clothes fit differently than they used to.

Which was probably why Robby kept stealing them back.

Or pretending to.

Dennis was fairly certain half the arguments about stolen hoodies existed purely because Robby enjoyed having something harmless to complain about. The accusations never carried much actual conviction behind them. Robby would point at a sweatshirt Dennis was wearing, inform him that it was his, and then make absolutely no effort to reclaim it. Sometimes he would even hand Dennis one himself before immediately complaining about how all his clothes kept disappearing.

The system made no sense.

Dennis had stopped questioning it weeks ago.

A faint grin tugged at his mouth as he headed down the hallway. He stepped over Jack’s crutches automatically before stopping a few feet later and looking back at them. Jack was eventually going to need those…

Dennis looked toward the kitchen, where the promise of breakfast was waiting somewhere beyond the doorway, and immediately felt his priorities attempt to reorganize themselves. Food sounded incredible. He could already hear movement from that direction, cabinets opening and closing, the familiar sounds of somebody who had been awake long enough to become productive. On the other hand, Jack was currently buried beneath enough blankets to disappear entirely and would eventually have to navigate the apartment without his prosthetic.

Which normally wouldn’t have been a problem. Jack had his crutches. On particularly bad days, he had his chair. More often than not, the prosthetic came off within minutes of him walking through the front door and stayed off until he needed to leave again. Home was one of the few places where he could give his leg a break without thinking about it. And Jack took full advantage of that.

Dennis couldn’t really blame him for it.

The crutches made life easier. They also made it significantly harder for Jack to recruit other people into helping him, which was unfortunate because Jack seemed genuinely fond of that particular pastime. Dennis had lost count of how many times he’d walked into a room and found Jack comfortably settled somewhere while casually directing Robby toward whatever object had ended up out of reach. A glass of water. A phone charger. The remote.

The requests were rarely urgent. Jack just liked being taken care of. Or, more accurately, he liked pretending he was being terribly inconvenienced while Robby rolled his eyes and got whatever he wanted anyway. It was an annoyingly effective system, considering how often it worked. Even Dennis had fallen for it more than once. Not because Jack couldn’t manage perfectly well on his own, but because there was something oddly endearing about the whole performance.

The crutches, at least, gave him fewer opportunities to turn minor inconveniences into quality bonding time.

Dennis gave the kitchen one last longing look before doubling back for the crutches. He carried them into the bedroom and leaned them against the wall. Jack had surfaced enough to notice by then. One eye cracked open as he looked from Dennis to the crutches and then grinned.

Dennis rolled his eyes immediately. The grin only widened. Jack looked more awake than he had a minute ago, though not by much. He was still sprawled beneath the blankets, hair a mess, clearly unwilling to acknowledge the concept of morning after the amount of sleep he’d gotten. The grin lingered anyway, warm and pleased enough that Dennis felt something soften in his chest despite himself.

Dennis crossed the room before he could think too hard about it. One hand settled briefly against Jack’s shoulder as he leaned down and kissed him properly. Jack hummed quietly against his mouth and tilted into it without hesitation, one hand coming up to catch at Dennis’s side. The kiss lasted a second longer than Dennis had intended before he finally pulled back, remaining close enough to catch the satisfied look that immediately settled across Jack’s face.

Jack was smiling again, which seemed suspicious.

Dennis pointed at him immediately. “Don’t.”

The grin widened another fraction.

Dennis sighed through his nose, entirely unsurprised, then abandoned the situation before it could get worse and escaped back into the hallway. If he stayed any longer, there was a very real chance he would end up crawling right back into bed beside Jack, and that felt like a dangerous precedent to set when they both had somewhere to be.

Besides, mornings like this were rare.

Most days Jack was either heading home when Dennis and Robby were starting their shift or arriving just as they were getting ready to leave. Jack and Robby saw each other more during shift change than anywhere else, catching snippets of conversation in hallways, sharing coffee between handoffs, and stealing whatever time they could manage before one of them had to run back into the department.

Dennis got lucky sometimes. Every now and then he’d end up on nights with Jack, which usually meant spending twelve hours watching him terrorize the ER and then finding an excuse to linger a little longer afterward. Most of the time, though, Dennis worked days with Robby. He saw Robby constantly. Jack was harder to catch.

Days off together were even rarer. Usually one of them was working while the other two weren’t. If Jack had the day off, they’d get the evening together after Dennis and Robby got home. If Robby was off, he’d have the morning before Jack left for work. Actually getting all three of them in the same place with nowhere else to be felt surprisingly uncommon considering how much time they all spent in the same hospital.

Dennis was aware that turning around and getting back into bed remained a very real possibility.

Which was exactly why he kept walking before he could change his mind.

By the time he stepped through the kitchen doorway, Robby was already plating eggs, moving through the morning routine with the same efficiency he brought to everything else. Dennis’s attention immediately locked onto the food. The plate had barely touched the table before he pulled out a chair and dropped into it, reaching for his fork almost immediately.

The first bite disappeared so quickly it probably qualified as inhalation rather than eating. Dennis hadn’t realized quite how hungry he was until there was actual food in front of him. Left to his own devices, he could go half a shift surviving on caffeine and momentum without noticing. Presented with breakfast, however, his body suddenly remembered every meal he’d skipped recently and demanded compensation.

Across from him, Robby glanced up from his own breakfast and shook his head, something fond and entirely unsurprised passing briefly across his face before he looked back down again. Dennis caught it anyway. He grinned around a mouthful of eggs in response and immediately followed it by taking an aggressively large bite of avocado toast.

Robby sighed.

“One day you’re gonna choke.”

Dennis shrugged.

Under normal circumstances he probably would have said something inappropriate just to watch Robby regret speaking. Something crude about how Robby usually didn’t seem to mind his choking. Unfortunately, his mouth was currently too full to manage anything beyond chewing. Instead he settled for a slow wink over the edge of his coffee mug.

The reaction was immediate.

The tips of Robby’s ears turned pink.

Dennis felt absurdly pleased with himself.

It remained one of the most reliable phenomena in the known universe. Jack and Dennis had both discovered it independently and then, upon comparing notes, immediately started treating it like a challenge. The fact that Robby could handle virtually anything the emergency department threw at him and still get flustered by the two of them being annoying never really stopped being entertaining.

Across the table, Robby narrowed his eyes.

Dennis smiled innocently and took another bite of toast.

[everwhovian]

Okay, I had my first lesson today! 🎉

We're supposed to plan an entire teaching unit in one of my seminars and then actually teach it at a school. Luckily, my group and I are doing it at the primary school where I work, so I already know the kids and they know me at least a little bit...

It's a second-grade class, and I usually work with the third graders, so I only know a few of them from holiday care or after-school activities. But at least they've seen me around the schoolyard before 😂

Anyway...

Today was the first time I actually stood in front of 30 kids who genuinely wanted to learn something and OH MY GOD

I swear our university basically threw us into the deep end. The lecture was essentially: "Find a school. Plan a lesson. Teach it. Have fun!"

Like... okay???

But how do we plan a lesson? How do we know if we've prepared too much? Or not enough? How do we know when the kids need more input? How do we even teach?! 😭

The whole thing feels like everyone assumes we'll magically figure it out

But apparently we're doing a pretty good job! 🎉

There are some small things we can improve, but that's exactly the kind of stuff that comes with experience. So for now I'm taking the win and trying not to panic about the fact that one day I'll actually be responsible for an entire class 😂

[melancholygirls]

I passed a flower shop next to a tattoo shop and at first I laughed because I thought it was ironic and then i freaked because IMAGINE YOUR OTP IN A FLORIST/TATTOO ARTIST AU

[stillalittlekid]

OMG I COULD TOTALLY IMAGINE THEM LIKE THAT IT WOULD BE SO PERFECT

[christ-with-a-why]

[everwhovian]

You can probably tell that I'm bored 😂

Maybe I should go back to reading some fics... or continue listening to the Project Hail Mary audiobook?

I'm genuinely obsessed with Ray Porter's narration. I already loved the movie, but as usual the book is just... asdfghjkl 😭❤️

I've only listened to a little bit so far, but I already love it. The way he narrates is so good. I keep trying to keep a straight face and then catch myself grinning like an idiot

Why does every new hyperfixation have to hit me like a truck? 😂

[everwhovian]

Oh, did I mention my birthday? 😂

I'm officially 27 now! I already updated my pinned post after realizing I still had the wrong age on there 😭

Honestly, the most exhausting part of getting older is having to update your age across every social media account you own...

And the worst part? I've already been 27 for exactly two weeks and only just remembered to mention it 😂

[everwhovian]

Currently stuck in Luxembourg 🇱🇺😂

Our flight to London got delayed because of the weather, so we're apparently chilling at the airport until 11pm and then hopefully heading to London

Kind of time traveling, though, because we'll be landing at basically the same time we take off. Gotta love time zones 😂

I also feel like a giant child because I'm carrying around a massive tiger plushie everywhere 😂😂

What I won't do to keep the magic alive for my first graders

I've already taken pictures of our class mascot in front of the airport and on the train. Next stop: London tourist attractions 😂

The tiger is getting more vacation photos than I am at this point

[everwhovian]

Little life update, I guess. I seriously should start making random thought posts... it might be more fun for everyone to hear all the weird things going on in my brain 😂

The German weather is driving me insane and it's definitely not doing my circulation or my asthma any favors 😭

We had over 35°C temperatures for several days last week. One or two random hot days in May? Sure, that happens. But an entire week?? That's unusual

And of course our houses are built to keep heat in during winter, not to keep it out during summer. We don't even have AC. We do have ceiling fans though, so there's that 😂

Well, anyway...

Now the temperature has dropped to around 20°C with thunderstorms and rain. Normally I love this kind of weather, but the pressure changes and humidity are absolutely wrecking me. The humidity makes it harder to breathe because of my asthma, I have a headache, and I keep feeling dizzy

So that's great 🙃

Especially when you're crammed into a tiny room with 50 other people at uni because apparently some genius decided we had to vacate our lecture hall for FIFTEEN people who had booked it for certain dates. And that's the second time now that we've been thrown out of our lecture hall by the same group. Our lecturer has no idea why and never even received an email about a room change 😭

So now instead of sitting comfortably in a lecture hall, we're packed into a room that feels approximately the size of a shoebox while the weather is actively trying to kill me 😂

On the brighter side: I'm leaving for London tomorrow for a short vacation full of books and musicals! 🇬🇧📚✨

So excited to be back in London again!

And I might be able to post chapter 3 of Quiet as a Mouse soon 👀 I'm almost done, just waiting for my best friend to proofread it!

[willgrahamscock]

how are you gonna be 31 and posting fandom content bro leave it to the teenagers

People 10 and 20 years older than me are writing your favorite fanfics, and drawing your favorite characters. You'd have no fandom without the people you think are 'too old' to have hobbies.

[emachinescat]

This mentality is so insanely frustrating. Why do teenagers think that people have to give up their hobbies, give up fun, when they reach a certain age? Like??

When I was a teenager writing fic, I remember finding out that one of my favorite authors was in her 50s and that just was SUCH a revelation for me!! What do you mean, 50 year olds can write fanfic?!? Does that mean I can write fics when I'm her age?? That's AWESOME! I seriously looked up to her so much. And now I'm 35 with a husband and kid, and I'm still writing fanfic and posting fandom content - and I have no plans of stopping!

If you try to drive 30+ people out of fandom, you're going to lose the backbone of said fandom!

[evilwriter37]

The ageism in fandom is fucking insane. It’s strange that people seem to have the idea that fandom was created by and for teenagers… It was not. It was created by adults. How would we have ao3 if only teenagers were in fandom?

I don’t want to sound like I am hating on younger people in fandom, but god, y’all need to stop it with the ageism. You don’t have to give up what you love once you’re an adult. Honestly, the belief that you have to is pretty bad. It sounds like it would make people afraid of aging. Granted, modern society is so very afraid of aging.

Don’t give up what you love just because you’re an adult. You don’t have to. And don’t try to force others to do it either.

[osterby]

Fandom has to be multi-generational.

Teenagers don't have the resources and skills to build something like AO3, it has to be people with degrees and money doing that, and that translates to a 30+ crowd. But teenagers especially need the protection and legal advocacy that something like AO3 offers them.

Part of the reason the then 30- and 40-somethings who built AO3 did what they did was so that someone with as few resources and as little support as the average 15-year-old fic author can safely and comfortably share their fanfic and find fic to read.

When you attack and belittle older fans for daring to be fans, you're not just being cruel to people who share your hobby and write fic you enjoy, you're attacking the very same people who make your hobby possible for you in the first place.

[asynca]

Write that one-shot. Those 3 chapters will be the best 10 chapters you ever wrote

[everwhovian]

“Oh. That’s Jack.” (via Grindr) -> read on ao3

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6

Jack Abbot/Michael "Robby" Robinavitch/Dennis Whitaker

After an ill-advised night involving alcohol and Trinity Santos, Dennis Whitaker shows up to his shift with a Grindr profile he fully intends to delete. He forgets. Eight hours later, he makes the even worse decision to show Dr. Robby something on his phone. (or: Dennis panics, Robby knows, and Jack is very, very confused)

✦••──────────•• ✧ ••──────────••✦

The kid was working on fumes again.

Robby watched him from across the station as Dennis dropped into his chair, already pulling up a chart like it was second nature by now. His fingers moved without hesitation, even as the rest of him lagged half a step behind, like his body hadn’t quite caught up to the fact that it was still going. That had started a while ago, the quiet habit of taking Robby’s spot without asking, never long enough to settle, just enough to get something done before moving again, like he didn’t quite trust himself to stay in one place too long.

If it were anybody else leaving crumbs all over his workspace, Robby would have chewed them out for it without a second thought.

But it was Dennis.

Who still hovered, still kept that careful distance like he wasn’t entirely sure he was allowed to take up space, and yet somehow always ended up exactly there anyway, close enough to reach without ever making it obvious that he was trying to be. It was subtle, practiced in a way that suggested he wasn’t aware he was doing it, and Robby found himself tracking it without meaning to, adjusting around it before he could stop himself.

Robby told himself that made it easier to keep an eye on him.

He shook his head, something quiet and familiar settling in his chest as he watched Dennis roll his shoulder. The movement was small but tight, the kind of stretch that didn’t actually fix anything but probably felt better than nothing. There was a faint grimace there too, gone almost as soon as it appeared, like the kid thought no one would notice if he didn’t draw attention to it.

Robby noticed. He always did.

Whitaker had a habit of running himself into the ground before admitting he needed a break. He pushed through shifts on stubborn momentum alone, like stopping counted as failure instead of basic self-preservation. Robby had seen it enough times by now to recognize the pattern, the way the kid’s focus narrowed, the way he stopped checking in with himself entirely and just kept moving, like as long as he didn’t pause he wouldn’t have to feel how bad it had gotten.

He let it go for longer than he should have, telling himself the same thing he always did, that the kid would catch it himself, that he’d step off before it actually mattered. He knew better.

Then Dennis stepped backward without looking.

Robby was already moving before he said anything, his hand coming up to catch him by the shoulder and pull him just out of the path of a passing wheelchair. “You’re about to get run over.”

Dennis blinked, slow to catch up, his body following a second later as the moment settled in, like he needed the extra beat to process what had just happened.

Robby kept his hand there a fraction longer than necessary, steadying him. He felt the tension under his palm before easing his grip, the tightness sitting deeper than it should have. He gave his shoulder a brief squeeze before letting go, his gaze flicking over him automatically, taking in the flushed skin, the slight delay in his reactions, the way he still hadn’t quite caught up.

That confirmed it.

“When was the last time you ate?” Robby asked.

Dennis opened his mouth, paused, and then shut it again.

Robby didn’t bother hiding the look he gave him. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

He didn’t wait for anything else. He placed his hand back on Dennis’s shoulder and turned him slightly, guiding him out of the main traffic flow with the same ease he used when moving patients through a crowded trauma bay. He adjusted his path without breaking stride, already factoring in where they needed to go.

Dennis followed immediately. He always did. He adjusted without thinking about it, falling into step like this was expected, like it made sense that Robby would intervene and redirect him without explanation, like the correction didn’t need to be questioned to work.

Robby tried not to think too hard about that, about how easy it had become, how little resistance there ever was.

“Go grab something before Donnie finds it,” he said over his shoulder. “You’ll lose that fight.”

Dennis let himself be steered the last few steps, lingering just long enough to look like he might say something before disappearing into the staff lounge.

Robby’s gaze stayed on the door for a second longer than necessary before he forced himself to look away, the department already pulling his attention back into place, the moment folding back into everything else like it hadn’t just happened.

Michael Robinavitch liked to think he took care of his people.

Not in a way anyone would call soft, probably. He wasn’t good at that and never had been. He didn’t sit people down and talk things through or offer reassurance in neat, careful words, and more often than not he came off sharper than he intended. He knew that about himself. Short-tempered, blunt, difficult when he was tired, which was most of the time. It wasn’t something he liked, but it was consistent, and consistency counted for something in a place like this.

What he did do was pay attention, and that counted too. Maybe more than the rest of it.

It showed in the way he moved through the department without thinking about it, in habits that had settled too deep to question. He noticed when someone was off before they said anything, caught the shift in posture, the hesitation, the small delays that meant something wasn’t lining up the way it should. He stepped in early when he could, redirected, adjusted, kept things moving before they had the chance to spiral, and he kept track, quietly, of who was holding it together and who was one bad moment away from dropping something they wouldn’t be able to recover from. It wasn’t conscious most of the time. It was just there, running in the background, something he trusted himself to get right.

He didn’t say he cared. He wasn’t sure he would even know how to phrase it without it coming out wrong. He just made sure it showed up in ways that mattered.

Most of the time, that was enough. Sometimes it wasn’t.

There were days where he got it wrong, usually when he was already stretched thin and someone caught him at exactly the wrong moment. He would see it, recognize that they weren’t themselves, and instead of steadying it, he’d push. Say something sharper than he meant to, watch it land, and realize too late that he’d made it worse instead of better.

Those were the shifts that stayed with him. They followed him up to the roof afterward, where the city spread out below him and the noise of the ER dropped away just enough to think, and he’d go over it all again, picking apart every decision, every missed chance to handle it differently. He told himself that was part of the job too, the part no one talked about, the part where you carried it home whether you meant to or not.

He never let it sit without trying to fix it. A hand on a shoulder the next time he passed, a quiet acknowledgment slipped in when no one else would think to say it, a brief “good job” that didn’t draw attention but still landed where it needed to. Small things, easy to miss unless you knew what to look for, and he told himself that was enough to balance it out.

It had started with Jack.

Back in med school, before any of this had turned into something complicated, they had been impossible together. Constantly arguing, pushing at each other just to see who would give first, turning everything into a challenge neither of them was willing to lose. Robby hadn’t known how to take care of someone then, hadn’t even really understood that he wanted to, but Jack had made it unavoidable. Somewhere between the fights and the long nights and the shared exhaustion, something shifted without either of them naming it.

They learned how to lean on each other without admitting that’s what they were doing, learned that the other one would stay no matter how hard they pushed, and Robby had found himself wanting to take care of him without quite knowing when that instinct had settled in.

That part had come easier than he expected. Everything else hadn’t.

Because it didn’t stay contained. It didn’t stay in arguments and late nights and that familiar, manageable tension. It shifted into something heavier, something that blurred into territory Robby had never been comfortable examining too closely. Jack never seemed to hesitate with it, moved forward like there was nothing to question, nothing to hold back. Robby had never found it that simple.

He still didn’t.

Whether he meant for it to or not, that instinct carried over into everything else. It spread outward, settled into the way he handled the department, the nurses, the residents, the students rotating through the Pitt, until it became part of how he functioned. Thinking about it as part of the job made it easier to manage, gave it structure, something he could point to instead of picking it apart too closely.

Still, he knew exactly where it got him.

He put people on pedestals. Built them into something steady in his head, something reliable, something he could trust to hold under pressure, and when they didn’t, when they cracked in ways he hadn’t accounted for, it hit harder than it should have.

Langdon had been the worst of it.

Robby had looked at him and seen a future he could step into, someone who could take over when he finally burned out, someone who understood the weight of the job well enough to carry it without letting it fall apart. He hadn’t questioned it, hadn’t looked too closely, just trusted his instinct and let himself believe in it.

And Langdon had still managed to fuck it up.

Stolen from the department, from the patients, from himself, feeding something that had been there the entire time while Robby stood right there and missed it.

That part stayed with him. It settled in and didn’t leave, a quiet certainty under everything else that he should have seen it sooner. The signs had been there, even if they were small, even if they were easy to miss, and he was supposed to catch things like that. That was the job.

He should have asked the right questions, pushed in the right places, done something before it got that far. Instead, he had been buried under everything else. His own mess, his own losses, the constant pull of the department, the steady stream of new students who needed guidance and structure and someone to keep them from making mistakes they couldn’t come back from.

All while Frank slipped further and further under.

Frank had always been high-energy, constantly moving, always talking, which made it easy to overlook the edges that didn’t quite fit. The mood swings. The sharper reactions. The moments that should have stood out but didn’t. Robby had written it off as exhaustion, as stress, as the job wearing someone down the way it always did, because that explanation fit, because it was easier to accept. Sometimes Frank was just Frank, and that had been enough at the time.

What did he always say? “We all have ADHD. Other clinics were too boring for us.”

He would laugh, brush it off, disappear down the hall before anyone could tell him to slow down, and Robby had let that be enough. He had taken it at face value, let it pass like everything else that didn’t immediately demand attention.

It shouldn’t have been.

Knowing that didn’t make it easier to carry. If anything, it made it heavier, because it meant that even when he thought he was doing his job right, even when he believed he was taking care of the people who relied on him, something still slipped through.

Something always did.

So maybe that was part of it… Maybe that was why Robby found himself paying a little more attention to Dennis than strictly necessary, why the kid kept ending up on his radar even when there were a dozen other things demanding it.

He could justify it easily enough if he wanted to. Professional interest. The kid had potential, and Robby had seen it from the start.

That first shift had been a disaster by every possible metric, the kind that chewed people up and spit them out before they even had time to figure out where they were standing, and Whitaker had taken it head-on. Robby had heard about the bodily fluid incidents, seen enough of it himself to know it hadn’t been exaggerated, and still the kid hadn’t folded. He’d kept going, kept showing up, kept trying even when it would have been easier to walk away and never come back.

Most of them did.

Whitaker hadn’t.

That alone would have been enough to mark him as someone worth watching.

And then–

Robby’s jaw tightened slightly as the memory pushed forward before he could stop it, uninvited and far too clear.

The makeshift morgue in peds had been too cold, too still, the kind of silence that didn’t actually feel quiet but pressed in from all sides until breathing itself felt like an effort. The air had clung to the back of his throat, metallic and wrong, and he hadn’t meant to end up there in the first place. He must have walked in to grab something, or to get away from the floor for a second, but the sequence blurred together now, one step turning into another until he was suddenly alone with it, with all of it, and there was nowhere left to redirect his attention.

His knees had hit the floor before he fully registered the movement.

Sh’ma Yisra’eil–

The words came out uneven, catching on breaths that refused to settle, his fingers curling tight around the chain at his throat like it was the only solid thing left anchoring him. His chest felt locked, something tight around his ribs that wouldn’t loosen no matter how hard he tried to pull in air. Every inhale came shallow, incomplete, like his body had forgotten how to finish the motion.

Adonai–

He couldn’t slow it down. Couldn’t get ahead of it.

The room shifted around him in a way that didn’t make sense, edges blurring and sharpening in quick succession, his vision narrowing and expanding without warning as his focus slipped out of his control. He knew what was happening, recognized it in the abstract, but that knowledge sat somewhere distant and useless while his body continued to spiral anyway.

Eloheinu–

His hand shook where it pressed against his sternum, like he could force his heart to steady if he just held it there hard enough, like pressure alone could fix it. It didn’t. Nothing did. The panic built regardless, sharp and relentless, familiar enough to make it worse because he should have had control over it by now.

Adonai echad–

He didn’t hear the door open. He didn’t register the shift in the room until a voice cut through it, too sudden, too alive for a space that had been holding still just seconds before.

“Whoa. Jeez.”

Robby flinched.

A sound broke through the pressure in a way that felt almost violent, his breath catching harder as something in him tried to reorient and failed, his focus stuttering as the world snapped back into place in pieces that didn’t quite fit together yet.

“Dr. Robby?”

No. Not now.

Adonai–

“Dr. Robby, you okay?”

The words didn’t land properly at first. They hovered just out of reach, like his brain couldn’t quite process them over everything else happening inside his chest, couldn’t prioritize them over the sheer, overwhelming need to get his breathing under control.

Barukh sheim k’vod malhkuto–

There was movement beside him, too close, too immediate, and Robby recoiled on instinct, his body pulling back before he could stop it, breath hitching into something tighter as awareness started to push its way back in. He recognized the kid a second too late, the realization cutting through the haze without actually fixing anything.

Of all people.

“You have to go,” Robby managed, the words rough and uneven as he forced them out, barely holding together. “You have to go. They need you out there.”

He needed him out there.

He needed–

“We need you out there.”

That caught.

Not enough to steady him, not enough to stop the spiral completely, but enough to shift something small and stubborn at the center of it, enough to register as something real outside of himself.

Robby shook his head, the motion uneven, his hand coming up to the back of his neck like he could hold himself in place, keep himself from slipping any further. His breathing still wouldn’t settle, still too fast, too shallow, each inhale catching halfway like his body had lost track of the rhythm.

“I can’t,” he said, quieter this time, because that was the truth of it in that moment. “I can’t.”

There was a brief pause, and then–

“Okay, come on, give me your hand.”

For a second, Robby almost laughed, or maybe choked on it, the reaction catching somewhere between disbelief and frustration because the suggestion didn’t make sense, because nothing about this made sense.

“I can’t.”

“You have to… because if you don’t, we’re fucked.”

The words landed differently that time. Not because of what he said, but how he said it.

Robby’s head lifted before he consciously decided to move, his gaze dragging up to meet Whitaker’s, and the world narrowed just enough for him to focus on something outside of himself. The kid looked terrified, not composed or steady or in control, but still there, still standing too close, still reaching out like leaving hadn’t even occurred to him.

Like Robby getting up mattered more than anything else happening outside that room.

That didn’t line up. That wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

The thought came slower than it should have, pushing through the panic instead of cutting cleanly through it.

He’s trying to help.

Robby stared at his hand like it belonged to someone else, like lifting it required a level of coordination he wasn’t entirely sure he had. His breathing still wouldn’t settle, his chest tight, each inhale catching halfway like his body had forgotten how to follow through, and for a moment everything in him resisted the motion, held in place by something instinctive and stubborn even as something quieter pushed back.

Then, slowly, he moved.

Whitaker’s grip closed around his hand without hesitation, firm and steady in a way that didn’t leave room for doubt, and Robby let himself be pulled forward. He let the movement carry him up, even when his balance lagged behind, even when his breathing hadn’t caught up yet.

The contact grounded him more than it should have, something solid cutting through the noise just enough to give him something to hold onto, and for a brief moment it worked, the panic loosening in uneven increments as he found his footing again.

It didn’t last.

The instinct to pull away came sharp and immediate, and Robby broke the contact before it could settle into anything else, his hand coming up with more force than necessary as he pushed Whitaker back. The movement was quick, decisive, creating distance in a way that felt safer, more controlled, even as his chest stayed tight and his breathing refused to fully even out.

Whitaker staggered slightly from the shove, catching himself quickly, and for a split second his gaze flicked up to Robby, something quiet and unmistakable in it, his eyes a little too open, a little too unguarded before he could pull it back. The expression didn’t fully settle, caught somewhere in between, like his face hadn’t decided yet what it was supposed to be, and there was a brief tightening at the edges that didn’t belong there, something that flickered through and was gone almost immediately, smoothed over so quickly it would have been easy to miss.

Robby didn’t miss it.

He looked away anyway.

Whitaker lingered there for a beat longer than necessary, like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the moment, his hand hovering before he reached for the blankets. There was a brief hesitation in the movement, small but there, before he committed to it, folding everything that had just happened into something practical, something that made it look like that had been the point all along.

“Okay… see you out there, Captain.”

And then he was gone.

Robby stayed where he was for a moment longer, the echo of the contact still lingering in his hand, his pulse loud and uneven in his ears as the panic slowly, reluctantly loosened its grip. Once the room fell quiet again, something in him gave way, a sharp, quiet sob slipping out before he could stop it, his eyes squeezing shut as he tried to force his breathing back into something steady, something controlled.

He’d been pulled out of worse before.

Robby knew what it felt like to have someone refuse to leave, to stay longer than they should have, to step in when he hadn’t asked for it. He also knew what it looked like from the other side, what it meant to be the one who stayed anyway, who ignored every warning sign and every attempt to push him out just to keep someone upright.

He’d done that for Jack.

After everything fell apart, after his loss hollowed Jack out in a way that made him mean and reckless and impossible to be around, Robby had stayed through all of it. Through the sharp words that were meant to land, through the silence that followed when that didn’t work, through every version of Jack that tried to make it easier to walk away. He had taken it and stayed anyway, because leaving hadn’t been an option, not really, not for him.

He knew exactly how much it took to stand there and not move, how much it cost to keep choosing it when it would have been easier to step back.

Which was probably why it stuck.

Because Whitaker hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t second-guessed it, hadn’t backed off when Robby pulled away, hadn’t taken the easy way out when it would have made more sense to just leave him there and get back to the floor.

He’d stayed.

He tried to help Robby out of his own head, out of the panic poisoning his mind, and for some reason that landed harder than it should have. It settled somewhere deeper than it had any right to, sharper for the fact that it had come from someone who didn’t know him well enough to understand what he was stepping into.

It shouldn’t have meant anything beyond that. A student stepping in when an attending slipped, pulling him back together because the floor needed him functional and upright. That was all it was supposed to be. But somewhere along the way, that had shifted into something else, something Robby hadn’t been paying attention to until it was already there.

Robby hadn’t planned it. He didn’t plan attachments, especially not to students, and he had made that rule for a reason. It kept things clean, kept lines where they were supposed to be, kept him from repeating mistakes he already knew the outcome of. But Dennis had slipped past that without much effort, settling into his awareness in a way that felt gradual right up until it didn’t, until there wasn’t a clean point he could trace it back to anymore.

One shift he was just another MS4 passing through the department, and then, somewhere along the way, that stopped being entirely true. Robby couldn’t have said when it changed, only that it had.

He started noticing him without meaning to, not because of anything obvious he could have pointed to if someone asked, but through a collection of small things that settled into place over time. The way the kid flinched at first, all sharp edges and uncertainty, like he expected to be corrected before he even spoke, and the way that shifted under the smallest amount of attention, how quickly he steadied when someone gave him something to hold onto.

It didn’t take much. Just a word, a nod, a quiet confirmation that he was on the right track, and Dennis would straighten up like he’d been waiting for it.

Robby had given it without thinking, the kind of thing he did automatically on a floor like this, and only later realized how easily the kid responded to it, how quickly he adjusted around it.

It wasn’t obvious unless you were looking for it, but it was there, consistent enough that Robby started picking up on the pattern. The way Dennis looked to him before committing to something, the way he hovered just close enough to catch direction without asking for it outright, the way he settled when Robby stepped in, like that alone was enough to steady him.

It was… easy.

Too easy.

Dennis was earnest, soft-spoken in a way that didn’t get in the way of doing the job, willing to be guided and quick to adjust when he was. There was a steadiness there under the nerves, something that had grown since that first shift, something sharper tucked under the surface that showed itself in small flashes when he stopped second-guessing every move.

Robby had watched that happen in real time. Watched the kid go from barely holding it together to finding his footing, bit by bit, confidence building in ways that didn’t always show unless you knew what you were looking for.

And Robby did.  He always did.

Which meant it was easy to justify keeping an eye on him.

Dennis nearly got taken out by a gurney and Robby was already there before the kid even realized what had happened, hand closing around his arm, pulling him back into place like it was instinct instead of a decision. Dennis hesitated over a diagnosis, doubt creeping in just enough to slow him down, and Robby stepped in without thinking, steadying it with a brief squeeze to the shoulder, a quiet “you’re right, go with it,” watching the tension ease out of him almost immediately as he adjusted and moved forward again.

Small things. Routine things. Things Robby did for everyone.

That was what he told himself.

It didn’t explain why he noticed it more with Whitaker. It didn’t explain why the kid kept ending up exactly where Robby could reach him, like proximity itself had settled into something predictable, something Robby had started to rely on without meaning to.

If the last hours of the shift hadn’t already blurred together, that alone would have been enough to tip it further off balance.

The sharp click of heels cut through the noise before Robby even looked up, and something in him tightened on instinct as Gloria stepped directly into his path, cutting off whatever space he had left to breathe between patients. He didn’t bother pretending surprise. He just shifted his weight, already bracing for it as she launched straight into numbers, percentages, expectations delivered in that same clipped tone that never left room for interruption.

“Thirty-six percent, Robby. That’s the target. We are at eight. Eight. And only eleven percent of patients say they would recommend this department.”

Robby let her talk, his expression settling into something neutral out of habit while irritation built underneath, slow and familiar, the kind that didn’t burn hot enough to explode but didn’t go anywhere either. The floor kept moving behind her, voices overlapping, stretchers rolling past, the constant rhythm of the ER carrying on without them, and all he could think was how disconnected her numbers felt from the reality he was standing in.

“We are implementing new communication protocols. Patients need to feel seen.”

“They’d probably feel better if they weren’t waiting six hours,” he said, already knowing it wouldn’t matter.

“That’s not what we’re discussing.”

Of course it wasn’t.

He gave her something noncommittal eventually, something that sounded like agreement without actually solving anything, and the second she stepped out of his space, the pressure eased just enough for him to feel the shift in his shoulders, the faint release of tension he hadn’t consciously registered building.

And then Dennis was there.

Robby didn’t see him approach. He just… was, slipping into his orbit like he always did, close enough to register, close enough to interrupt, holding out his phone with that same tentative certainty, like he wasn’t entirely sure he was allowed to take up that space but had decided to do it anyway.

“Dr. Robby, I wanted to show you something.”

Robby’s attention shifted immediately, the interruption landing like relief, something clean and uncomplicated cutting through the leftover irritation. He leaned in just slightly, letting his focus settle on the screen without resistance.

The video was already playing, the rider leaning into a long, sweeping turn. The bike angled low in a way that only worked if you trusted it, if you understood exactly how far you could push before it pushed back. The throttle control was clean, no hesitation mid-turn, no correction that suggested uncertainty. Good posture, too. Relaxed where it mattered, tension only where it was needed to hold the line. The engine note dipped just slightly as they adjusted, then picked back up, clean and controlled, no wasted movement. Whoever it was knew what they were doing. You didn’t get that kind of line by accident.

“That’s a clean line,” Robby said, already tracking it. “Good control on the turn. You can tell they know what they’re doing.” He glanced at Dennis briefly, a small hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before he looked back at the screen for a moment longer, as if actually considering it. “Thinking about getting one?”

He could picture it too easily.

The weight of it under him, the way the world narrowed when you rode, everything else falling away until it was just the road, the machine, the control of it. It had always made sense to him in a way most things didn’t. Simple. Direct. You either handled it or you didn’t.

Dennis behind him, closer than he probably had any right to be, arms wrapped around Robby’s middle in that instinctive way people did when they weren’t used to riding, holding on just a little tighter every time Robby pushed the speed, every shift in weight translating directly through him. He could almost feel it, the press of it, the way the kid would tense at first and then settle as the rhythm of it took over, the way his grip would adjust without thinking, learning as he went. Robby wondered, briefly and far too clearly, if Dennis would try talking over the engine or go quiet, if he’d laugh or just hold on and trust him to handle it.

The thought lingered a second longer than it should have before Robby let it go.

Dennis had remembered.

That thought landed a beat later, softer, threading through everything else.

It hadn’t been important when Robby mentioned it to Jack. They’d been out in the ambulance bay, leaning against the wall between calls. Robby had said it casually, like it didn’t matter, like it was just something he’d been thinking about.

It had gotten exactly the reaction he was aiming for.

Jack’s eyes had narrowed almost immediately, his attention sharpening in that way it always did when he caught onto something, and he’d stepped in closer without hesitation, crowding into Robby’s space like he had every intention of turning a passing comment into something else entirely. Close enough that Robby had felt it, that familiar shift in the air, the edge of something that would have crossed at least three lines if he’d let it. There had been something else under it too, something quieter but just as clear, a disapproval Jack didn’t bother to hide, the idea of Robby getting back on a bike clearly not something he was willing to entertain without a fight.

Robby had stopped him before it got that far, a hand braced between them, half warning, half habit.

And Jack had the audacity to smirk at him before peeling away, all of that tension snapping cleanly back into place as soon as the ambulance doors burst open. He was already moving like nothing had happened, already calling out orders as they rolled the patient in, slipping into it like nothing had happened.

“Don’t even think about parking a motorcycle at my place,” Jack threw over his shoulder without looking back, voice easy and almost casual, like it wasn’t threaded with anything sharper underneath.

At the time, Robby hadn’t even registered that Dennis had stepped outside to help with the patient. But the kid would have heard that, must have, because somehow he’d held onto it, carrying that one offhand comment with him long enough to make the connection later, to see the clip and decide it was worth showing Robby.

It was such a small thing.

There was something quietly disarming about the way Dennis did that, the way he picked up on things that weren’t meant to matter and treated them like they did anyway, like they were worth remembering, worth returning to.

It was… endearing.

Robby let himself settle into it for a second, the tension from earlier bleeding out of him without resistance. His attention stayed on the screen, on Dennis, on the simple fact that this was easier than anything he’d been dealing with five minutes ago, something clean and contained that didn’t ask anything complicated of him.

Dennis shook his head quickly, stuttering out a few words as his eyes flickered from Robby to his phone and back again, like he couldn’t decide where to land. He was standing just a little too close, a little too flushed, a little too focused on something that clearly wasn’t just the video anymore. “No– I mean– I just– I just saw it.”

Robby’s gaze flicked up briefly, catching the stumble in his words, the way his focus had shifted somewhere else entirely, and then–

The sound cut through it.

Sharp. Distinct. Familiar in a way that bypassed thought entirely.

Robby’s brain recognized it before he consciously placed it, something immediate and instinctive snapping into place because he’d heard it too many times not to. He’d heard it from across rooms, from Jack’s phone lighting up at the worst possible moments, the same tone cutting through whatever space they were in like it belonged there.

For a fraction of a second neither of them moved.

Robby felt it, that brief suspension where everything held, the awareness sharpening without fully catching up yet, and then his gaze dropped back to the phone on instinct, following the source of the noise before he could stop himself.

Dennis froze. “I– I can– I mean–”

The notification lit up across the display, bright and impossible to ignore, the familiar app icon sitting there in clear, undeniable view, and Robby felt his focus narrow in the same instant. Everything else slipped out of reach like it had been cut away.

He didn’t need to read it.

He already knew.

Still, his eyes tracked it anyway, pulled there by habit, by recognition, by something automatic that didn’t give him the chance to look away in time. The message. The profile name.

For a moment Robby’s brain stalled, though it wasn’t from confusion. Quite the opposite, really. He understood what he was looking at too quickly. He had seen Jack’s profile picture too many times over the last months, had caught glimpses of the notifications lighting up his phone often enough to recognize it without effort, tied now to that stupid little hellhole of hookups Jack had dragged himself into, one Robby had never touched himself but knew well enough through proximity alone.

Jack.

And before anything else could catch up, before the implications had time to line up properly, before he could stop himself–

“Oh,” Robby said, calm, automatic, like he was identifying something obvious. “That’s Jack.”

The words landed, and Dennis went completely still.

And just like that, Robby’s brain caught up with what he had just done, the realization hitting a fraction too late to stop it, settling in with a clarity that made everything else fall into place whether he wanted it to or not. He felt the shift as clearly as if he’d caused it with his hands, the atmosphere between them tightening in a way that had nothing to do with the noise of the ER and everything to do with what he’d just said, with the way Dennis was looking at him now, wide-eyed and silent, like the ground had just dropped out from under him.

That was when the rest of it hit.

The notification, Dennis’s reaction, the timing, all of it aligning at once into something that made far too much sense in hindsight and absolutely none in the moment. Robby went very still, his thoughts catching half a step behind reality as the implications lined up in quick succession, each one worse than the last, and for a second all he could think was that he should not have said that out loud.

He knew what that notification was.

He knew who it was from.

And now Dennis knew that he knew.

There was no clean way out of that.

His gaze flicked back to the phone, then to Dennis, then away again, like looking at either of them directly might make it worse. His brain tried and failed to assemble a response that didn’t immediately dig him deeper into whatever this had just become. The instinct to fix it was there, automatic and familiar, but there was nothing to grab onto, no version of this that could be redirected into something normal.

Robby very briefly considered the possibility of simply deleting the last twenty seconds from his life.

The kid moved first.

Dennis jabbed at the screen harder than necessary, the motion abrupt, almost clumsy as he dismissed the notification and locked his phone like that might undo it, like that might somehow rewind the last few seconds into something survivable. The flush in his face only got worse as he took a step back, already putting distance between himself and Robby like proximity itself had become the problem and not Robby’s inability to keep his mouth shut.

Robby caught movement in his periphery.

Santos.

He saw her approaching the nurses’ station a second too late, the timing lining up in the worst possible way, and his hand twitched at his side on instinct, the urge to reach out and stop Dennis from walking straight into her almost immediate.

He didn’t.

Dennis did exactly that.

The collision was quick, awkward, and entirely avoidable if Robby had moved when he should have. Santos steadied him without thinking, one hand coming up automatically, and Robby watched the realization settle in across her face in real time.

Her eyes moved over Dennis first, quick and sharp, taking in everything at once, the flushed skin, the phone clutched too tight, the general look of someone who had just walked out of something he had no idea how to recover from.

Then her gaze shifted.

To Robby.

Back to Whitaker.

And then, inevitably, to the phone.

Something in her expression sharpened, curiosity settling in with that familiar edge that meant she had already picked up more than she should have, one eyebrow lifting slightly as the pieces started lining up behind her eyes.

Oh God. She was entirely too similar to Jack sometimes. No wonder he’d been warned, repeatedly, never to put the two of them on the same shift together. And now she was looking at him like that.

Dennis made a small, strangled sound.

And then he bolted.

Actually bolted, slipping past her in one quick movement, already turning, already moving, already putting distance between himself and the situation like it might fix something. His pace picked up immediately, uneven and too fast, and within seconds he disappeared down the hallway, swallowed by the noise of the ER.

Santos turned slightly, watching him go. Then she looked back at Robby.

Robby cleared his throat, the sound quieter than he intended, and reached for a chart off the counter like it had suddenly become the most important thing in the room. His focus dropped to it with deliberate intent, posture shifting just enough to signal busy, occupied, not engaging, even as he was still half a step behind everything that had just happened.

“Dr. Robby,” Santos said, her tone light, which somehow made it worse. “What the hell was that?”

Robby winced, small and quick, gone almost as soon as it registered.

He didn’t look at her.

He flipped the chart open instead, eyes scanning lines that didn’t settle into anything coherent right away, his attention catching and slipping before he forced it back into place. “Nothing,” he said, too easily, already leaning into it, into something that sounded neutral enough to end the conversation without actually answering it. “He’s fine.”

Santos made a noise.

Then she muttered something in Tagalog that Robby absolutely did not want to unpack, and he cleared his throat again, adjusting his grip on the chart as if that might anchor him back into something resembling control.

He didn’t get the chance to say anything else.

An incoming emergency cut through the moment, voices rising, movement shifting, the floor snapping back into focus around them, and for once, Robby was grateful for the interruption. It gave him something to do, something to focus on that wasn’t the last few minutes replaying themselves in increasingly unhelpful detail.

It didn’t fix anything.

What followed settled into something that would have been almost ridiculous if he’d been in the right headspace to appreciate it, something just shy of absurd if it hadn’t been so obviously tied to what had just happened.

Every time Robby caught sight of Dennis somewhere on the floor, the kid vanished just as quickly, slipping out of his line of sight with a kind of frantic precision that would have been impressive under different circumstances. He turned corners too sharply, redirected mid-step, nearly walked straight into a supply cart at one point before veering off like it had always been intentional, or disappeared into an open hallway like he’d just remembered something urgent that couldn’t possibly wait.

Robby saw all of it.

And he understood exactly why it was happening.

That was the problem.

Because one glimpse of Dennis and he was reminded of it… the look on Dennis’s face, the timing, the way everything had lined up in the worst possible way, and the embarrassment sat heavy under everything else, sharp enough that even thinking about calling him on it felt like a bad idea.

There were too many ways this could go wrong. Too many ways it already had.

The whole thing had the faint outline of an HR issue, and Robby had absolutely no interest in finding himself dragged into another seminar, because he couldn’t keep his personal life from bleeding into his work. That line had already blurred more than he liked, and he wasn’t interested in seeing how far it could be pushed before someone else decided it was a problem.

He still hadn’t quite recovered from the last ones.

Back in the 90s, when Jack had made a habit out of leaning in just a little too close, throwing out comments in that offhand way that was never actually casual, just to see Robby flush and lose his footing, pushing at boundaries like it was something to test rather than respect. It had taken exactly one complaint from a nurse who’d had enough of watching it happen for them both to get a slap on the wrist and three hours of sitting in a room listening to someone talk about appropriate workplace behavior while Jack looked entirely too entertained by the whole thing. Jack still did it, of course, but at least now he had the decency to keep it out of earshot.

There had been other ones too.

The time someone thought it was appropriate to run a betting pool at the nurses’ station, numbers scribbled on a whiteboard until Dana made it disappear without a word and everyone still somehow knew who owed who money, which should have been the end of it. It wasn’t. Someone reported it anyway, and suddenly it became a “professional conduct concern.” The whole thing dissolved and reformed like it had never really been shut down in the first place, and somehow that had only made it worse, because now the whole thing was being run by the security guards in broad daylight, completely out in the open, like that made it legitimate. Robby still had no idea how they weren’t getting caught.

The time a resident tried to prove a point by arm wrestling in the break room and took half a supply shelf down with him. Loud enough that patients heard it, which meant it turned into a safety issue instead of just stupidity, and that was apparently enough to justify another seminar.

The time Jack climbed onto the roof railing in full view of a patient’s family, and Robby ended up in a conversation about “modeling appropriate behavior,” like he’d been the one up there. Like he hadn’t been the one trying to get Jack back on the right side of the barrier before someone called it in. That one had come with a written warning and a follow-up training that Robby still suspected had been scheduled out of spite.

The time Princess and Perlah translated something just loudly enough in Tagalog that it turned into a department-wide rumor within ten minutes and somehow circled back to Gloria by the end of the shift. Half the story already twisted into something else by the time it reached her, which meant it got framed as “creating a hostile work environment,” whether that had been the intention or not.

The time a group of med students decided it was a good idea to practice suturing on each other in an empty room, and Robby walked in halfway through like he’d stepped into a malpractice case waiting to happen. One of them still holding a needle like that made it defensible, which, unsurprisingly, led to an immediate report and a mandatory session on patient safety that somehow included everyone.

Each time it ended the same way.

Someone reported it, or it got too visible to ignore, and suddenly Robby was sitting in another room that smelled faintly of disinfectant and burnt coffee, listening to someone explain policies he already knew, watching a slideshow that somehow managed to feel longer than an entire shift. It always came with sign-in sheets, forced participation, and those quiet glances around the room where everyone tried to figure out who had been the reason this time.

And then there had been Garcia and her ridiculous nicknames. Robby could still remember the exact moment Gloria caught wind of the nicknames, the way she shut it down immediately and then informed them they would all be attending another seminar

Which hadn’t actually stopped anything.

Garcia still called Whitaker “white chocolate” across the floor like she was announcing it to the entire department, still threw “Rabbit-bitch” at Robby whenever he got on her nerves, still referred to Langdon as “ER Ken” like it was his legal name.

And every time it happened Robby half expected Gloria to materialize out of nowhere and drag them all back into another mandatory training, the other shoe dropping the second anything slipped just a little too far past acceptable, like the Pitt existed in a constant state of being one bad comment away from another three-hour lecture no one had time for.

Hell, Robby was probably already on thin ice, just by the way he kept touching the kid.

It had started small, easy to justify. A hand on Dennis’s shoulder to steer him out of the way, guiding him through the chaos of the floor without breaking stride, something practical, something efficient. Then it turned into brief squeezes when he got something right, grounding him just enough to keep him moving forward without second-guessing himself. And sometimes it lingered longer than it needed to. A hand settling at the back of his neck instead of dropping away immediately, fingers brushing through the soft curls there without thinking about it, contact stretching just enough to cross into something that wasn’t strictly necessary anymore.

Robby noticed that. He noticed it every time and let it happen anyway.

He knew better.

Every other med student or resident would have reported that behavior by now. If it had been anyone else, it probably would have been a problem already, something that would have been flagged before it had the chance to turn into a pattern.

And that should have been enough to shut it down. It should have been simple. A line drawn and held, a correction made before it turned into something else, because Robby knew exactly how this worked. He had spent years telling other people where those lines were, stepping in when they got blurred, calling it out when it crossed into something it shouldn’t.

He knew what this looked like from the outside. He knew exactly how it would read to anyone who bothered to pay attention.

It didn’t stop him.

Because the truth of it was, Robby still couldn’t even properly make sense of what he felt for Jack, and that had been there for so long it had stopped feeling like something separate from him.

It had never settled into anything clean. Never something he could point to and define without qualifiers, something that stayed in one place long enough to understand. It shifted depending on what they needed from each other, changed shape without ever really disappearing, stretching and pulling until it fit whatever version of them existed at the time.

It had always been easier not to name it.

Easier to let it sit in that space between things, where it didn’t have to hold still long enough to be examined too closely, where it didn’t demand anything concrete from him.

Because the moment you tried to pin it down, it stopped making sense. It contradicted itself. It asked for things Robby didn’t know how to give without breaking something else in the process, without shifting something he’d spent years keeping contained.

It had also never gone away.

Not when they fought over things that didn’t matter until they did, arguments that spiralled into something sharper because neither of them knew how to stop once they started. Not when they kept ending up fucking each other because that was easier than saying anything out loud, easier than dealing with what it actually meant. Not when Jack found someone else and built a life that Robby didn’t quite fit into, even when he stayed close enough to orbit it, close enough that leaving would have meant cutting something out of himself he didn’t know how to live without.

And not when that life fell apart again.

Not when loss hollowed Jack out in ways Robby recognized too well, leaving something jagged behind that pushed back against everything, everyone. Robby had stayed through that too, through the sharp edges and the silence and the versions of Jack that made it very clear he was not easy to keep. He had stayed anyway, because leaving had never really been an option, not for him, not where Jack was concerned.

That had been constant. Complicated, frustrating, sometimes infuriating, but constant in a way Robby had learned to live around, to build himself around, until it stopped feeling like something separate from the rest of his life and more like a fixed point everything else moved around.

Which was exactly why this didn’t make sense.

Because Dennis wasn’t supposed to register like that, wasn’t supposed to slip into Robby’s awareness beyond what the job required, wasn’t supposed to become something he looked for without thinking, something that pulled his attention even when there were ten other things demanding it.

And yet, at some point, that line had shifted.

Robby couldn’t even say when it had happened.

One shift the kid had just been another med student trying to keep up, hovering at the edges, careful and unsure, and the next Robby was tracking him across the floor without meaning to. He noticed when he disappeared into a room, when he lingered too long over something, when his focus slipped just enough to matter. He found himself reaching out more often than necessary, adjusting, correcting, steadying, like Dennis had quietly become part of how he oriented himself in the middle of everything else.

It was subtle, and it was constant, and it didn’t feel accidental anymore.

He could try to explain it if he wanted to.

There were similarities between Jack and Whitaker if he looked for them.

The curls, softer on Dennis, less controlled but just as distracting when the light caught them right, that same underlying sharpness that only showed when he stopped second-guessing himself, when instinct took over and he trusted it. And something else, something Jack had mentioned once, that the kid was more mischievous than he looked, quieter, less practiced than Jack’s but there all the same if you knew what you were looking for.

It would have been easy to leave it at that.

It didn’t explain enough.

Because that didn’t account for the way Robby’s attention kept circling back, or the way his hand stayed a second too long, or the fact that he had started noticing things he had no business noticing at all. The way Dennis’s voice changed when he was uncertain. The way he looked to him before committing to a decision. The way he steadied under the smallest bit of praise like he’d been waiting for it.

And that was where it stopped being something he could ignore.

Because it wasn’t just professional anymore, wasn’t just mentorship or habit or instinct, it was something else, something that sat under all of it, persistent and uncomfortable and impossible to neatly file away. Something that didn’t belong here, not in this context, not with this kind of imbalance, not with everything else already tangled up in it.

Robby didn’t have a clean way to deal with that.

He also didn’t have the luxury of pretending it wouldn’t matter.

Because if this went wrong, it wouldn’t land on him the way it would on Dennis. Robby would get a warning, a conversation, maybe another seminar he’d sit through and forget the moment he stepped back onto the floor. Dennis would be the one dealing with the fallout, the kind that stuck, that followed him through evaluations and attendings’ opinions, that made everything just a little harder in ways that didn’t show up on paper but still mattered.

And Robby wasn’t going to be the reason for that. That part, at least, was clear.

What wasn’t clear was why that certainty didn’t immediately fix the rest of it.

Because Dennis looked at him like he mattered. Not in any way that was overt or demanding, nothing that would draw attention if you weren’t paying for it, but there in the way he hovered, the way he listened, the way he adjusted himself around whatever Robby needed without being told. It was quiet, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, and impossible to ignore once you were.

Robby had seen it.

He knew exactly what it was.

A crush, misguided, inconvenient, obvious if you knew where to look, and he had done nothing to stop it, because it was easy, because the kid was sweet, because it felt good in a way Robby didn’t want to examine too closely or unpack into something that required action.

And Jack – of course Jack knew. He always did.

Robby didn’t know if that made it better or worse, because Jack didn’t just notice it and leave it alone. He let it sit just long enough for Robby to become aware of it, and then he pushed, in that way he always did, a comment that landed too close to the truth, a look that said he’d already put the pieces together.

And then he’d go a step further, encouraging it in his own way, subtle enough that it could be denied if it needed to be, but deliberate all the same, like he saw the same things Robby did in Whitaker and had already decided it was worth watching, worth seeing what Robby would do with it.

Before closing the distance like it didn’t matter, like none of it mattered, like Robby wasn’t standing there trying to keep his footing while everything else shifted just slightly out of place, like it was all a game Jack had already figured out how to win.

And then he’d kiss him stupid.

Jack knew exactly which buttons he had to press to get Robby worked up and right where he wanted him, and it should have scared him more than it did. It should have set off something sharper than the quiet acceptance that settled in instead, because Jack had always been the one relationship Robby hadn’t managed to walk away from.

Everything else came with an exit built into it, something temporary, something that could be let go before it had the chance to matter too much, something that stayed contained as long as he kept it that way.

Jack didn’t.

Robby still had the occasional girlfriend, something that fit into the gaps, something easy to step into and out of without too much fallout, even if Jack rolled his eyes about it and called it the “seven-week itch,” like it was a pattern Robby had consciously chosen instead of something he kept falling back into because it was easier than dealing with anything that lasted longer.

Robby hated that name, mostly because it wasn’t wrong. Because without it, without something that kept things contained and manageable, he was left with the part he didn’t quite know how to deal with, the part that made commitment feel heavier than it should have been, whether it was with women or with Jack.

Because what if he fucked it up.

What if he pushed too far, or not far enough, or said the wrong thing at the wrong time and watched something that had held for years finally break in a way that didn’t come back together.

What if he lost Jack.

That thought sat there longer than it should have, heavier than it had any right to be, settling somewhere in his chest and refusing to move. Underneath it, quieter but just as persistent, was the rest of it, the hesitation he had never quite managed to shake, the instinct to pull back before anything settled into something he couldn’t walk away from, tangled up in things he didn’t like looking at too closely.

Fear, judgment, the possibility of disappointing Jack in ways he couldn’t take back, or worse, finding out that whatever this was didn’t hold up once they actually tried to call it something real, something that required more than what they’d been doing all these years.

He wouldn’t have minded being in love with Jack, not really, and if Jack weren’t – no.

That had never been the actual problem, not in any way that held up under scrutiny, and Robby knew that well enough not to pretend otherwise, even if it would have been easier to blame it on that instead of everything else sitting underneath.

It had been a while since the last girlfriend, long enough that the pattern had started to thin out at the edges, long enough that the absence of it felt more intentional than accidental. Robby found himself thinking, more often than he liked to admit, that maybe he was ready for something that lasted longer than seven weeks, something that didn’t come with an exit already built into it.

With Jack.

He could have left it there, left it unspoken and untouched the way he always did, and maybe it would have stayed manageable. And then Dennis had gone and complicated it, slipping in somewhere along the way without asking, without meaning to, and settling just deep enough under Robby’s skin to make everything else feel less straightforward than it had a few weeks ago.

Which brought Robby right back to the situation he was currently stuck in, one that had already been complicated enough on its own and had somehow managed to get worse the second Jack chose exactly the wrong day to show up early for his shift.

Robby had tried to play it off, falling into the same routine they always did, something familiar enough to hide behind, but he knew the moment he couldn’t quite bring himself to meet Jack’s eyes when he greeted him that it hadn’t worked. Whatever this was had already tipped just far enough out of place to be noticeable, and that was all it took..

Jack caught things like that. He always had.

And of course he lit up for it.

Robby saw it in the way Jack’s attention sharpened, in the way his mouth pulled into something just shy of a grin, something that meant he had already picked up on it and was now just waiting to figure out the rest. It had the same energy as a kid on its birthday, like he’d just been handed something interesting to unwrap, and if the way his gaze kept flicking between Robby and Dennis was anything to go by, it wasn’t going to take him long to get there.

He would corner one of them.

Probably both.

Robby had been counting on time, on the shift getting busy enough to bury it, on enough distance and distraction to make it through without Jack deciding to poke at it directly, to pull at the thread until the whole thing unraveled.

That had been optimistic at best.

They didn’t even make it to the end of the shift.

The universe, apparently, had decided this was funny.

Because the second Robby thought he might get away with it, might make it through without Jack pulling the thread, Dennis stepped back into his line of sight like he’d been placed there on purpose, and everything tightened all at once, his focus snapping to him before he could stop it.

The timing was bad enough on its own.

The phone going off made it worse.

Dennis froze mid-step, the movement cutting short in a way that was almost abrupt, like his body had stalled out before his brain could catch up, and Robby felt the reaction hit a second later, sharp and immediate, something in his chest tightening in a way that had nothing to do with the noise itself and everything to do with what it meant.

Not again.

Not here.

He didn’t need to look at Jack to know he’d noticed.

He did anyway.

And then, because there didn’t seem to be a better option, because standing there and waiting for Jack to connect the dots felt worse, Robby did the only rational thing he could do and tried avoiding Jack the same way Dennis had been avoiding him, which might have worked if it had been anyone else.

But Jack had spent years learning exactly how Robby moved, how he thought, how he reacted when something was off, and he adjusted accordingly without ever making it obvious he was doing it. It wasn’t something Robby could track in the moment. It only registered after the fact, in the way Jack kept ending up exactly where he shouldn’t have been able to.

He didn’t chase him down or call him out across the floor. He didn’t force the issue where anyone else could see it. He just shifted his timing, altered his path, and showed up exactly where Robby didn’t want him to be, with an ease that made it clear this wasn’t guesswork.

Which was how Robby ended up walking straight into it anyway, barely registering what had happened until Jack had him cornered in an empty trauma bay.

Robby realized too late that he’d boxed himself in. There was no clean way past him without making it obvious, and Jack knew it.

For a second, neither of them said anything, the noise of the ER bleeding faintly through the walls, close enough to remind him this was a terrible place for this, not private enough, not far enough removed, and still Jack looked at him like none of that mattered, like he had all the time in the world. Like Robby wasn’t already running out of it.

Jack tilted his head slightly, watching him with that same open curiosity he never bothered to hide, and Robby could feel himself bracing for it before a word was even said, his shoulders tightening in anticipation of something he couldn’t quite name but knew was coming anyway.

“You’re making this worse, you know that, right?” Jack said, tone easy, almost conversational. “If you’d just told me to mind my business, I might have considered it.”

Robby exhaled slowly, keeping his gaze somewhere past Jack’s shoulder instead of meeting it, like not engaging might buy him something, even though it never had, not with Jack, not when he already had his attention locked in like this.

Silence stretched, heavy as it settled into him. It pressed behind his ribs with a weight that made it harder to pull in a full breath, something tight and uncomfortable that refused to shift. The expectation sat there, the certainty that it wouldn’t break on its own, and he dragged a hand down his face just to have something to do, something physical to anchor himself with while his thoughts lagged a step behind everything else.

But Jack’s mouth pulled slightly at the corner like he’d seen enough already.

“There’s no point pretending, Mikey,” Jack said quietly. “So just tell me.”

A beat.

“I’ll figure it out anyway.”

Of course he would. Robby’s jaw tightened before he could stop it, and he forced it to ease, dropping his hand and finally looking at him because avoiding it wasn’t helping anymore, wasn’t buying him anything except more time for Jack to fill in the gaps himself.

“You’re reading into it,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

Even as he said it, he knew it didn’t land right.

Jack didn’t answer, just looked at him, and that was worse, because Robby could feel himself being read, the tension in his shoulders, the way his focus kept slipping, the fact that he was already halfway out of this conversation in his head.

“Right,” Jack said at last.

And then he moved like he was done, pushing off the doorway, shifting his weight like he’d lost interest, like Robby had managed to shut it down. Robby didn’t believe it for a second. He felt it instead, the way the pressure didn’t disappear, just changed shape, settled differently without actually going anywhere.

“So it’s not Whitaker.”

Robby’s head turned before he could stop himself, the reaction immediate and unthinking.

Fuck.

“Got it,” Jack said, almost pleasantly.

Robby exhaled sharply, gaze dropping as he tried to pull it back, to undo it, to–

“It’s not–” he started, then cut himself off, because there was no version of that sentence that didn’t make it worse.

“C’mon,” Jack said, stepping closer, his voice dropping just enough to make it feel more private than it was. “You can do better than that, Michael.”

Robby felt it, the immediate tightening in his shoulders, the way his body reacted before his brain caught up, the response already there before he could control it, already giving something away whether he wanted it to or not.

“Don’t make me work for it,” Jack added, softer. “Be a good boy and just tell me.”

Robby’s head snapped up.

The reaction hit harder than it should have, something that bypassed thought entirely and landed somewhere lower, deeper, familiar in a way that had nothing to do with this conversation and everything to do with contexts they did not touch at work. It wasn’t even the words themselves, not really, but the way Jack said it, easy and measured, like he knew exactly what he was doing, like he knew exactly which line he was brushing up against and chose not to stop.

That was new. Or not new, exactly, but misplaced, dragged out of somewhere private and dropped here, in the middle of a trauma bay with the ER still breathing just beyond the curtain.  Jack didn’t do that here. They didn’t do that here.

And the worst part was that Robby felt it anyway, the instinctive pull of it, the way his body reacted before his brain could catch up and shut it down, irritation flaring fast to cover it, to push it back into something safer, something he could actually control.

“Absolutely not.”

Jack laughed, low and satisfied, like that had been the point, like he’d been waiting for that exact reaction.

“Yeah,” he said lightly. “That’s about the reaction I expected.”

Robby set his jaw, irritation pushing up sharper now, easier to hold onto than anything else sitting underneath it, something solid to brace against, something that didn’t leave room for the way that word had landed or the fact that Jack knew it would.

“You’re bad at this today,” Jack went on. “Usually you at least pretend better.”

Robby let out a breath that almost passed for a laugh, dragging a hand over the back of his neck, buying himself a second.

“I don’t know what you think you saw–”

“Oh, I know exactly what I saw,” Jack cut in. “You heard that notification and damn near stopped breathing. Whitaker looked like he was about to pass out. And now both of you are acting like you’ve signed some kind of mutual restraining order.”

Robby didn’t answer, because there wasn’t anything he could say that wouldn’t make it worse, nothing that wouldn’t confirm exactly what Jack was already circling.

“Which would almost be funny,” Jack added, “if I wasn’t suddenly involved in it.”

His gaze snapped back to Jack before he could stop it, pulled there on instinct, like his body had already decided before his brain caught up. He felt it a second too late, the way he’d just handed something over without meaning to, something he couldn’t take back once it was out there.

“Yeah,” Jack said quietly. “Thought so.”

Robby felt his shoulders pull tighter, the tension settling deeper. “You’re making assumptions.”

“Am I?” Jack shifted slightly, just enough to stay in the way without making it obvious. “Because from where I’m standing, either Whitaker started talking to someone he shouldn’t have–”

Robby’s expression tightened before he could stop it, something in him giving just enough to be seen, too quick to catch and already gone by the time he tried to pull it back.

“–or,” Jack continued, not pausing, “you did.”

Silence dropped between them, heavy as it settled, and Robby didn’t move, didn’t speak, could feel the exact second it landed, the moment Jack stopped guessing and started knowing.

“Wow,” Jack said quietly. “Okay.”

Robby closed his eyes briefly, then shook his head. “Drop it.”

Jack didn’t.

“You really want me to?” he asked, quieter now. “Because right now I’m working with very little information and still getting pretty close.”

Robby stayed silent, but he knew it showed anyway, knew he wasn’t hiding it nearly as well as he thought.

“Let me help you out,” Jack said. “You can keep dodging me, which is fun for a bit, or you can just tell me what the hell is going on so I stop guessing out loud.”

A beat, brief but pointed.

“Your call, Michael.”

Robby held his gaze for a second longer, then dragged a hand over his face again, trying to reset, trying to push it down into something manageable, something–

It didn’t work.

Jack’s hand closed around his arm, firm and grounding, and for a second Robby’s brain didn’t catch up to it at all, the contact registering somewhere lower, somewhere faster, before anything else had the chance to interfere. The spiral didn’t stop, thoughts still stacking too quickly to sort through, but something in him caught on the pressure of it anyway, the steadiness, the fact that Jack was right there, solid and unmovable in a way nothing else in the last twenty minutes had been.

It should have made it worse. It should have pushed him further off balance, another variable in something already slipping, but instead it pulled him in just enough to hold him there, the edge of it dulling as his focus snagged on something real, something he could actually feel instead of everything running ahead of him. His chest still felt tight, his thoughts still loud, but there was something under it now, something that kept it from tipping any further, and he hated how easily his body responded to that, how quickly it settled around the contact like it had been waiting for it.

He stayed where he was, not pulling away, not leaning into it either, just caught in the middle of it, aware of his own breathing in a way he hadn’t been a second ago, aware of the way Jack’s grip held him there without forcing it. For a moment, that was enough to keep him upright, enough to keep everything from sliding any further out of his control.

“Brother,” Jack said, softer now, “just talk to me.”

“This is exactly why I don’t want to tell you,” Robby muttered.

Jack smiled. “Oh, you’re definitely telling me.”

Robby shot him a look that would have shut anyone else up, sharp and warning, and entirely ineffective, and he knew it even as he did it, felt it in the way nothing shifted, nothing gave. It didn’t work. It never worked.

He exhaled again, sharper this time, but it didn’t come with the same resistance. Something in him already tipping, already giving way whether he wanted it to or not, the words sitting right there, too close to hold onto much longer.

“I know your profile.”

Jack tilted his head slightly, like he was considering it, like the question was still open, and Robby knew immediately that he wasn’t taking the bait, that whatever Jack had already put together wasn’t going to be handed back that easily. The look sat too carefully on his face, too controlled to be anything but intentional, and Robby felt the shift of it settle under his skin, the quiet certainty that Jack was already ahead of him and just choosing how to play it.

“Do you.”

He didn’t rise to it. Just held Jack’s gaze, steady and a little too deliberate, letting his expression settle into something that felt flat from the outside and a lot less controlled underneath, the words already there before he could second-guess them.

“I saw it on his phone.”

And there it was.

Robby watched it click, fast and precise, the shift so clean it was almost invisible if you didn’t know what to look for. Jack’s focus sharpening as the pieces lined up all at once, everything falling into place with a kind of certainty that left no room for anything else.

“…huh.”

Jack’s gaze dipped for a fraction of a second, following the thought through, and Robby could practically see the pieces line up – Whitaker, the notification, him, the timing, everything.

“Oh,” Jack said, quieter now.

A pause that stretched just long enough to settle.

Then–

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Robby just shrugged, like that might take some of the weight out of it, his hand coming up to scratch at his beard in a gesture that felt easier than saying anything else, easier than engaging with the way Jack had lit up in front of him, something sharp and bright settling into his expression like he’d just been handed something he was very much looking forward to.

Robby caught the look, the way it turned just a little too mischievous, a little too interested, and felt the immediate drop in his patience. Whatever came next was going to be unbearable. Worse, Jack was clearly already enjoying himself.

“Just leave it,” Robby said, leveling him with a look that would have shut most people down.

Jack just smiled at him, wide and open, all innocence on the surface, and none of it reaching where it mattered. It didn’t hide anything. It never did. If anything, it made it worse, the contrast of it, the way Robby could still see the calculation underneath, the interest, the fact that Jack had already decided this was something worth poking at.

Jack had always been like that. He thrived on it, on the chaos, on the way things unraveled when you pushed them just a little too far, and Robby had been drawn to that once, pulled in by it in a way that had made sense at the time, that had felt inevitable.

Now, standing there with Jack looking at him like that, Robby seriously reconsidered every decision that had led him here.

“Mikey,” Jack started, his grin slipping into something sharper that made Robby’s skin prickle, “you’re telling me our Whitaker is embarrassed because of me? And you, cause you couldn’t keep your mouth shut?”

Robby ignored the bait, jaw tightening instead. “Jack…”

“Don’t ‘Jack’ me, this is the most interesting shit since that guy tried to walk into triage with a nail gun still embedded in his thigh and argued about wait times.”

“The kid is mortified…”

Jack just smirked at him, tapping his chin thoughtfully like he was considering something amusing instead of anything remotely serious. Robby felt the shift of it immediately, the way Jack settled into it, already a step ahead, already enjoying himself in a way that meant this was about to get worse before it got better.

Robby should have known Jack would be the reason he went down earlier than expected. It felt obvious in hindsight, like something he should have accounted for from the start, because the second Jack had enough of torturing him in the trauma bay, he shifted focus like it was the most natural thing in the world and set his sights on Whitaker instead.

Robby barely had time to register it before Jack was gone, slipping back into the department with that deliberately casual stride that only ever meant he was about to do something he shouldn’t. There was nothing hurried about it, nothing that would draw attention if you didn’t already know what to look for, and that was what made it worse.

While Robby was still trying to maintain some version of distance, still working around the edges of Dennis’s avoidance like that might be enough to keep things contained, Jack cut straight through it. Without hesitation or adjustment, he just broke the pattern cleanly as he planted himself directly in Whitaker’s path like he’d been aiming for it all along.

Robby saw it happen in real time.

Dennis didn’t.

He walked straight into Jack’s chest.

Robby had to actively resist the urge to say something he wouldn’t be able to take back as Jack glanced up and winked at him, quick and cheeky, like a private acknowledgment of exactly what he was doing. Then his attention dropped back down to Dennis, a smile settling into something just a little too sharp to be called friendly. His hand came up automatically, steadying Dennis at the waist before sliding to his shoulder, holding him there a fraction longer than necessary, like he was making a point of it.

“Careful there, Whit,” Jack said easily. “You alright?”

Dennis froze.

The flush came back fast, climbing up his neck and settling high across his face, and his eyes flickered between Jack and Robby like he didn’t know where to land, like both options were equally bad and neither offered a way out. His attention caught on Jack’s hands for a second too long before he ducked his head, words tangling over themselves as he tried to recover, trying and failing to find something that sounded normal.

“Y-yeah… I mean– I should– Santos needs–”

Jack hummed, entirely amused, like that had been exactly the reaction he was hoping for, like he’d been waiting for the kid to trip over himself like that.

Robby felt his grip tighten around the stethoscope at his neck, the movement small but intentional, something to ground himself with before he did something worse. There was a very brief, very real moment where wrapping it around his own neck and letting Myrna yank would have felt justified. Or letting Myrna pinch his ass again. Probably less painful than watching this unfold in real time, less frustrating than standing here and letting Jack get away with it while looking so unbearable pleased with himself.

He caught Dana’s eyes across the nurses’ station. She had one hand on the phone, her attention split between whatever call she was on and the situation unfolding in front of her, and the look she gave him was sharp enough to land even from across the room, cutting straight through the noise of the ER like it was nothing. Robby already knew that look. Dana didn’t care what kind of disaster people got up on their own time, but the second it spilled onto her floor and started disrupting traffic patterns, she took it personally.

“For Christ’s sake,” she said, not even bothering to lower her voice, “whatever that is, stop doing it in my ER.”

Jack turned his head, smiling at her with wide, practiced innocence that didn’t fool anyone, his hand squeezing Dennis’s shoulder again just enough to throw him off balance before letting go entirely. The kid immediately tripped over his own feet, catching himself awkwardly as he tried to recover some kind of dignity on the way out.

“I have no idea what you’re implying.”

Bullshit.

Dana hummed at that, unimpressed, rolling her eyes before pointing two fingers at her own eyes, then at Jack, and finally extending the gesture toward Robby like a warning she didn’t feel the need to repeat out loud. Like she already knew that neither of them were going to listen and wanted it on the record that she at least tried.

Jack just shrugged it off, watching Dennis scramble away with open amusement before sauntering back toward Robby’s corner and leaning against the wall like he hadn’t just caused the entire situation in the first place.

Robby glared at him.

Jack looked entirely too satisfied with himself for someone who had just blown up what little stability Robby had managed to scrape together. He didn’t even attempt to hide it. If anything, Jack looked proud of himself, like watching everything spiral counted as a successful use of his afternoon. Which, honestly, it probably did.

For a brief second, Robby seriously considered pulling rank on him. Technically, he could. Robby was still the attending on shift, which meant Jack answered to him until handoff, at least officially… on paper. He could tell him to knock it off, tell him to stop screwing with residents and med students in the middle of the department, tell him to act like a normal human being for once, and Jack would probably comply.

For maybe thirty seconds.

The problem was that Jack treated authority like a puzzle designed for him personally. The second someone tried to box him in, he started looking for seams to slip through, loopholes to exploit, ways to push right up against the line without technically crossing it. Half the reason Jack survived in emergency medicine at all was because he had somehow turned antagonizing authority figures into an art form. And judging by the smug way he was lounging against the wall now, he already knew what Robby was thinking anyway.

“Don’t,” Robby said finally, voice flat with warning.

Jack’s smile sharpened immediately, which really just proved Robby’s point. “Aw, c’mon, Michael. I barely did anything.”

Robby almost laughed at that. Barely anything… Jack had practically hunted Dennis down for sports the second he realized the kid was avoiding both of them.

“You nearly short-circuited the kid in the middle of the ER,” Robby hissed, trying to keep his voice low enough to not envoke the wrath of Dana. The last thing he needed was her deciding this had officially become disruptive enough to intervene personally.

“You really should appreciate the artistry a little more.”

“Artistry,” Robby repeated, deadpan.

“You saw him. Whitaker practically forgot how to breathe.”

Robby had seen him. That was part of the problem. Dennis had looked so genuinely overwhelmed by the interaction that the guilt had landed almost immediately underneath the irritation, because none of this would have happened if Robby had just kept his mouth shut in the first place.

“That’s because you’re being a menace.”

“Mm.” Jack tilted his head slightly, entirely unbothered by the accusation. “Counterpoint. It’s funny.”

Robby stared at him for a second, briefly wondering if homicide would still count as premeditated if the entire department agreed the victim had it coming, or whether strangling him in the middle of the ER would actually be worth the paperwork.

“You’re making it worse,” he muttered.

Jack looked almost offended by that. “Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“I’m not the one who identified my Grindr profile out loud in front of the poor kid.”

Robby closed his eyes briefly. Fuck. Hearing it repeated somehow made it worse. Saying it out loud again cemented the reality of it in a way he deeply resented.

Of course Jack wasn’t mortified. If anything, he looked delighted by the entire situation, already storing every reaction away for future use. Robby could practically see it happening in real time and immediately regretted every decision that had led here. Jack was going to hold this over him for the next decade minimum.

“You should’ve seen your face,” Jack said, laughing quietly to himself.

“I lived it.”

“Oh, don’t sound so miserable.” Jack tilted his head slightly, studying him now with open curiosity. “I didn’t realize Whitaker getting flustered around you was this bad.”

“It’s… not.”

Jack raised an eyebrow.

Robby immediately regretted answering at all.

“You know,” Jack continued, voice taking on that thoughtful tone that usually meant trouble, “I actually think Whitaker’s avoiding me more than he’s avoiding you right now, which is kinda impressive considering you’re his direct supervisor and also the reason he wants to dissolve into the floor.”

Robby scrubbed a hand down his face again, already exhausted by the conversation and by the fact that Jack clearly planned on stretching it out as long as possible. The worst part was that Jack wasn’t entirely wrong. Dennis had looked at him earlier like eye contact itself might kill him.

“The kid’s embarrassed enough already,” he muttered. “Can you stop making it worse and just leave him alone for five minutes?”

Jack looked genuinely thoughtful for a moment, like he was honestly considering the request. Which meant absolutely nothing.

“No,” he decided. “I don’t think I can..”

“Jack.”

“What?” He spread his hands slightly, innocence settling over his expression in a way that would have been more convincing if Robby hadn’t known him for half his life. “One of us has to get this moving, because at this rate Whitaker’s gonna spend the next three months fleeing every hallway you walk down.”

Robby stared at him, his brain catching slightly on the phrasing.

One of us.

Jack said it so casually, like this had already become a shared problem, a shared interest, something they were both involved in whether Robby liked it or not. Maybe that should have bothered him more than it did. Maybe he should have shut it down immediately instead of standing there letting the implication settle under his skin. Instead, he just felt the slow, sinking certainty that Jack had fully latched onto this now, and that there was absolutely no chance he was going to let it go anytime soon.

Which was a problem, because Jack got like this whenever something genuinely interested him. Curious in a way that always turned invasive eventually, all sharp observation and relentless nudging until he’d pulled every reaction he wanted out of the people around him. And right now he looked downright fascinated. Worse, he looked welcoming.

Jack, apparently deciding he hadn’t done enough damage yet, just kept going.

“You’re both doing the same thing,” he said, almost conversationally now, like he wasn’t talking about something that made Robby want to walk directly into traffic. “He panics and runs every time you look at him, and you keep pretending this is gonna magically resolve itself if you ignore it hard enough.”

“It’s not a thing,” Robby said automatically, even though the words felt weak the second they left his mouth.

Jack’s expression turned deeply unimpressed. “Michael…. He looked ready to burst into flames because you recognized a Grindr notification.” A beat. “That’s a thing.”

Robby groaned quietly under his breath. He hated that Jack could reduce the entire situation down to one humiliatingly accurate sentence and somehow make it impossible to argue with.

“Relax,” Jack added, completely unhelpful. “I’m not gonna eat him alive.”

Another beat.

“Probably.”

Robby shot him another sharp look, and Jack just grinned straight through it, completely immune after all these years. That was the problem with him. The second Jack got genuinely invested in something, there was no redirecting him anymore, no convincing him to back off once he’d decided something was worth his attention.

And judging by the look on his face right now, Jack was very, very invested.

Jack’s grin lingered for another second before he pushed off the wall again, stopping close enough that Robby could feel the heat of him at his side before he leaned in slightly, casual as anything, like he wasn’t about to make the situation infinitely worse.

“Maybe we should just take him home,” Jack murmured, voice low and threaded through with amusement. “Poor kid looks overwhelmed enough already. Think we’re both exactly his type, too, which really doesn’t seem fair on him. He might actually die if either of us flirts with him again.”

Robby nearly choked on air.

“What–” he started, the word catching badly enough that Jack’s smirk widened immediately. “Jack, are you–”

Jack just looked delighted by the reaction, all sharp amusement and effortless confidence as he straightened again. “See? That right there.” He gestured vaguely toward Robby’s face like he’d just proven something important. “You’re making this way too easy.”

“Jesus Christ,” Robby muttered, already feeling heat climb up the back of his neck, which only made the whole thing worse.

Jack laughed softly under his breath, clearly pleased with himself, and then, before Robby could recover enough to threaten him properly, he was already moving again, peeling back into the chaos of the ER like he hadn’t just deliberately detonated another problem in Robby’s lap.

✦••──────────•• ✧ ••──────────••✦

I didn’t plan for this chapter to be that long. I just kept adding more lore and, well, now we’re here 😂

I thought about splitting the chapter into two parts, but I couldn’t find a good place to cut it, so now you all have to deal with one massive update.

BTW, I went back and changed a few lines about the app in previous chapters. Nothing major, just making things a little more accurate. And I might have added some more CSS screenshots from ao3 too, like a Grindr notification in chapter 2 and Dennis’s lock screen in chapter 4 👀

I downloaded Grindr to get the layout right for future CSS use for ao3 👀 Turns out I’m way too ace for dating apps 😂

And yes, I will absolutely make it a thing to include my best friend’s reactions at the end of chapters now:

“Uhm. Excuse me… did you kiss the brick before you threw it at me?! GURL. Robby imagining Dennis on a motorcycle with him???? Didn’t know I needed that. I want more (I have more but still).”

Taglist: @poets-and-bards-beloved @bubblegumworldsthings @watsonsenigma @mazzyreads @parasuchus

[journalbye]

i have loved you since we were eighteen /rabbot fanvid x 18

[shakedownstreet73]

Love this

[everwhovian]

Did I say that I was getting the hang of HTML and CSS? Yeah, that was a lie 😭

Currently fighting for my life because I cannot get it to work the way I want it to

Could I just start writing the fic without it? Definitely

Am I too committed now to stop? Also yes 😂

Someone please tell me to stop obsessing over code and get back to writing...

[everwhovian]

Okay so now that I kinda figured out work skins and coding CSS + matching HTML… I’m obsessed!!

Spent the last weeks trying to learn everything I can and it’s confusing as hell but also SO fun 😂

I still understand maybe half of what I’m doing, and my brother has to fix the dumbest mistakes imaginable, but somehow it WORKS??

Genuinely feels like witchcraft 😂

Now I’m debating if I should go back into “Oh. That’s Jack.” (via Grindr) and add cool formatting to the older chapters too 👀

[inkwhelp]

people who are gay: yeah i’m gay

people who are straight: yeah i’m straight

people who are aroace: have you seen project hail mary

[everwhovian]

Quiet as a Mouse -> read on ao3

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

Jack Abbot/Michael "Robby" Robinavitch/Dennis Whitaker

Trinity Santos is the go-to person for gossip. If you want to know something, you ask her. No one knows how she gets her information. She’s never at the scene of the crime. And somehow, she’s always the first to know. They don’t figure it out until one day. Or: nobody notices Dennis Whitaker. He's as quiet as a mouse, accidentally overhears everything, and supplies Trinity with a steady stream of workplace gossip. He does have standards, though. Some secrets are worth keeping.

✦••──────────•• ✧ ••──────────••✦

Nobody noticed Dennis Whitaker.

That wasn’t entirely true, obviously.

People knew he existed. He was on the schedule, his name was on the board, and he was on the receiving end of at least three different nicknames before noon on any given shift, which felt like more than enough recognition for one person to handle. He got assigned patients, got handed charts, got pulled into cases whether he was ready or not, and got yelled at when he hovered too much and then again when he didn’t hover enough, though that part had gotten better over time once he stopped second-guessing every step and started trusting that he actually knew what he was doing.

So no, people noticed him, but they didn’t seem to hold onto him.

And there was a difference in that.

Dennis had figured it out sometime during his rotations, back when he still thought it might be something he could fix if he just tried hard enough, before realizing that noticing someone and actually registering them were two very different things.

And for reasons nobody could quite explain, Dennis had a habit of slipping straight through that second category.

It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t even something he was particularly aware of most of the time. It just… happened.

Conversations moved around him without adjusting for his presence, people talked over him or around him or through him like he was part of the background noise of the department, something constant enough not to question and quiet enough not to interrupt.

He had learned to work with it.

Learned where to stand so he wouldn’t be in the way but would still hear what he needed to hear, how to move without drawing attention, how to hover just enough to stay useful without getting snapped at, how to step in at exactly the right moment when someone needed an extra pair of hands and then step back out again before anyone thought too hard about it.

It made things easier.

It also meant he heard everything.

Never on purpose and definitely not because he was trying to listen in, but because it was simply there. Conversations that weren’t meant for him but didn’t stop when he was nearby, voices dropping just low enough to feel private without actually being private, details slipping out in passing because no one thought to check who was standing close enough to catch them.

Dennis had tried, at first, to change it. He had made an effort to speak up more, to insert himself into conversations before they could pass him by, to take up space in a way that felt unnatural but necessary.

It hadn’t really changed anything.

People would look at him when he spoke, would respond, would even include him in the moment, but the second their attention shifted elsewhere, it was like he slipped right out of their awareness again, not in any dramatic or noticeable way, just quietly enough that no one ever thought to question it. Conversations continued, decisions were made, things moved forward, and Dennis remained exactly where he had been, only now slightly to the side of it all, like he had never quite been part of the center to begin with.

It had been frustrating, at first, in the way things always were when he couldn’t quite figure out where he was going wrong.

Eventually, it had just… become useful.

Because the thing about not being fully accounted for was that people didn’t adjust themselves around you. They didn’t lower their voices or change the subject or pause to consider who else might be standing close enough to hear. Conversations just happened, unfolding naturally in the space around him, sometimes directly in front of him while he stood there with a chart in his hands like a perfectly acceptable piece of background equipment.

Things stuck, whether he meant for them to or not. It wasn’t everything, and it wasn’t organized or deliberate, just enough that patterns started forming without him consciously putting them together, small details settling into place over time until they began to make sense alongside each other. Who avoided which consults, who got competitive over procedures, who pretended not to care and very obviously did, the kind of information that didn’t seem important on its own until it suddenly was.

Dennis never really questioned it.

It was just part of how things worked.

The only people who didn’t seem to have that problem were Trinity and his attendings.

Trinity had noticed him from the beginning, which in hindsight probably should have been a warning sign, because she noticed everything. And in a way that was both impressive and slightly exhausting to be on the receiving end of. Within the first few hours of their shift, she had already assigned him a nickname, something mildly insulting and entirely undeserved that had somehow stuck, mutating over time into a handful of equally questionable variations that she used far more often than his actual name. Dennis wasn’t even sure when she had decided on it, only that it had appeared out of nowhere and then refused to leave, cemented into place by her sheer insistence.

And it hadn’t stopped there.

She had paid enough attention to notice him slipping back into the hospital after their first shift, long after everyone else had left, too wired and too exhausted to go anywhere else, and had followed him up to the abandoned eigth floor like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Dennis still wasn’t entirely sure what had possessed him to let her follow him up there that night. The eighth floor had already become routine by that point, a quiet, forgotten stretch of the hospital where no one asked questions and no one paid attention, where he could shower, change, and get a few hours of rest before the next shift without anyone noticing he had never really left. He had been halfway out of the bathroom when she found him, barefoot, hair still damp, trying to shake the day out of his system in the same way he always did, something familiar enough that he didn’t even think about how it might look from the outside. Trinity had taken one look at him, taken in the situation in its entirety, and understood it for exactly what it was without him having to say a word.

She had offered him a room in her apartment like it was nothing.

She didn’t hesitate and didn’t really give him room to argue or even question it, just made the decision with that same certainty she used for everything else and moved on before he had fully processed what she was saying. And somehow, despite knowing her for less than a day, despite the fact that this should have felt like a terrible idea on principle alone, he had said yes.

Which, in retrospect, meant there had never really been a chance of him slipping off her radar.

Not that he would have wanted to.

Once Trinity decided something was worth paying attention to, she didn’t let it go easily, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, between the nickname and the apartment and the way she seemed to clock every shift in his mood before he fully registered it himself, they had settled into something solid and easy, something that didn’t require effort to maintain. Dennis had learned very quickly that there was no point trying to slip past her attention, because it simply wasn’t going to happen, and at some point he had stopped wanting it to.

Dr. Robby and Dr. Abbot were different.

It was unlike the way Trinity paid attention to him. She tracked everything, picked it apart, held onto it until it made sense. With them, it was quieter. Their focus wasn’t constant, but it was deliberate, something that cut through the noise of the department instead of getting lost in it. Dennis could be halfway across the floor, already moving toward something else, already focused on the next task, and one of them would still find him like it was nothing, like they had already known where he was going to be.

Sometimes it was practical.

A hand at his shoulder to stop him from walking straight past something he should have noticed, or to pull him back just in time when he got too distracted and nearly walked straight into a moving gurney. Fingers closing briefly around his arm to redirect him before he could head in the wrong direction. A quiet correction, low enough that it didn’t carry, precise and to the point, meant for him and no one else.

And sometimes it lingered.

A look held a second longer than necessary. Attention settling on him in a way that didn’t quite match the rest of the room. A hand resting at the back of his neck just a little too long, fingers shifting like they hadn’t quite decided whether to move away or stay, brushing close enough to his curls to feel deliberate. An arm thrown loosely over his shoulder in passing that didn’t need to be there, the weight of it familiar before it disappeared again like it hadn’t happened.

Dennis had noticed that too, even before he knew what to do with it, because he was always looking, always tracking, and they weren’t nearly as subtle as they seemed to think.

Or maybe they just didn’t care.

It was hard to tell.

What he did know was that it threw him off more than it should have.

It showed in small, stupid ways he couldn’t quite control, like the time he had nearly walked straight into a gurney because Robby had said his name from across the room in that low, steady tone that always cut through everything else, or the way his grip slipped just slightly when Jack’s hand landed at the back of his neck mid-explanation, like his brain had just… stalled for a second before catching up again. He had tripped over his own feet more than once just from realizing they were looking at him, attention settling in a way that made it impossible to ignore, and every single time it happened he told himself he would get used to it, that eventually it would stop being a whole thing.

It didn’t.

If anything, it kept getting worse.

And Dennis wasn’t subtle either, which definitely didn’t help.

He caught himself more than once in reflective surfaces or at the edge of someone else’s gaze, looking just a second too long before forcing himself to look away again like that might undo it somehow. It slipped through anyway, in the way he lingered when they were talking even after there was no real reason to stay, in how his focus shifted the second they stepped into a room like his brain had already decided that was important before he had time to argue with it.

And somehow, they noticed that too.

Of course they did.

They never said anything about it, never called him out on it, which somehow made it worse, because it was there anyway, in the way their attention settled back on him just enough to feel intentional, like a response instead of coincidence, something quiet and unspoken that kept building without either of them ever acknowledging it out loud.

It happened often enough that Dennis stopped trying to make sense of it, mostly because every time he did, it just made him more aware of it, which was the opposite of helpful. So he adjusted without thinking, let himself be redirected when it happened, let Trinity drag him into conversations when she felt like it, and otherwise kept moving the way he always had, slipping between people, picking up what got left behind, carrying it with him until it stopped feeling like something separate and just… became normal.

He’d stopped questioning how Robby and Jack kept finding him in the middle of everything, too, because at this point, trying to figure that out felt like it would only make it worse.

That was how Dennis ended up sitting near the nurses’ station, tucked into one of the workstations with a desktop, trying to get through his charting before someone found a reason to pull him away again.

It wasn’t technically his spot. It was Robby’s. Dennis knew that, and so did everyone else, but it was one of those quiet understandings that didn’t need to be enforced out loud. Robby didn’t seem to care who used it as long as it wasn’t left in a state that would make him regret that decision, and with Dennis, he seemed to care even less. Dennis had taken that as more than enough permission to settle in for a few minutes.

Which was also how he ended up eating Robby’s lunch.

It hadn’t actually been a conscious decision. The container had been sitting just close enough to blend into everything else on the desk, and Dennis had reached for it without thinking, attention still half on the chart in front of him as he scrolled, fork already in his hand before his brain caught up to what he was doing. He paused mid-bite, looking down at it for a second as the realization caught up, and then, very slowly, lifted his gaze.

Robby was already watching him.

There was a brief moment where Dennis considered putting it back, more out of principle than necessity, because this wasn’t really about whether he was allowed to, just whether he wanted to deal with the consequences right now. That hesitation didn’t last long. Instead, he shifted slightly in his chair, straightening up like he had every intention of being exactly where he was, and took another bite with a calm that required just a little too much effort to be convincing. He met Robby’s gaze and smiled, something that was clearly meant to read as innocent and landed somewhere closer to mischievous.

Robby didn’t say anything. His expression didn’t shift much at all, but there was something in the way he held Dennis’s gaze that suggested this had been noted and would be addressed later, at a time of his choosing and very likely not Dennis’s.

Dennis held his gaze for a second longer than necessary, long enough to make it clear that he knew exactly what he was doing, before letting his attention drop back to the screen like he had something far more important to focus on. Whatever consequences came from this could wait. For now, he shifted a little more comfortably into the chair, setting the container beside the keyboard as he continued typing, letting the rest of the department blur at the edges in the way it always did when he focused on something small and contained.

The moment broke when someone leaned past him at the counter, their head making contact with a dull thud that made Dennis flinch just slightly, the spoon still between his teeth. Another voice followed, quieter, amused, and when Dennis glanced up he found Mateo slumped against the counter, clearly suffering, while McKay stood opposite him with her hand already outstretched.

“Pay up,” she said, grinning.

Mateo lifted his head just enough to glare at her. “You cheated. There’s no way you knew Dr. Walsh would call a ‘possible trauma’ consult on a guy who tripped over his own dog and scraped his elbow,” he said, voice rising slightly with outrage. “That shouldn’t count. That’s barely even an injury.”

McKay didn’t even blink. “It got called in as trauma. I don’t make the rules.”

“You absolutely do,” Mateo shot back immediately, pointing at her. “You invented half of them.”

“And you agreed to them,” she said, tone sweet enough to make it worse. “That sounds like a you problem.”

Mateo groaned, pushing himself up just enough to rest his weight on his elbows, his forehead dropping back onto his hands in defeat. Dennis leaned back slightly to give him more space, nudging his chair a few inches to the side without drawing attention to it, his gaze flicking between them with mild interest.

McKay didn’t budge. She just looked at him, entirely unimpressed, and after a moment she shook her head, already turning away as she told him to have the money by tomorrow. As she passed, she flicked his forehead with two fingers, quick and casual, before grabbing a chart and heading back toward triage like the conversation had already been settled.

Mateo groaned again, louder this time, then pushed himself off the counter and followed her, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

Dennis watched him go for a second, then glanced down at the container beside his keyboard, closing the lid with a small, absent motion. He saved his chart, brushed a few stray crumbs from the desk with the side of his hand, and got to his feet, rolling his shoulders slightly as he turned–

– and caught Robby standing near the door of Trauma 3.

There was a brief pause where neither of them moved, the distance between them just long enough for Dennis to consider pretending he hadn’t been seen at all, which was objectively a terrible idea and one he abandoned almost immediately. Instead, he crossed the space between them, the container held loosely in one hand, his steps easy in a way that suggested he had already accepted whatever was coming.

He stopped in front of Robby and held it out.

Empty.

Dennis offered him a small, sheepish smile that didn’t quite bother pretending to be innocent this time.

Robby didn’t take it right away. He just looked at him, gaze steady over the rim of his glasses, taking in the container, the crumbs that hadn’t quite been entirely brushed away, and then Dennis himself, like he was putting together a picture he had already seen from the beginning.

Dennis shifted his weight slightly under the scrutiny, then lifted the container a fraction higher in silent offering.

“I can get you another one,” he said, after a beat, voice quieter than usual but not uncertain. “There’s more in the fridge.”

Robby’s expression didn’t change, but something in it softened just slightly, the edge of whatever he had been holding onto easing without fully disappearing. He reached out then, not for the container, but for Dennis, his hand settling briefly at the back of his neck before sliding down to hook loosely around his shoulder.

“Uh-huh,” Robby said, tone even, like he wasn’t entirely convinced.

Dennis let himself be pulled in without resistance, falling easily into step as Robby turned them both toward the next incoming trauma, the familiar shift happening almost instantly as the rest of the department sharpened back into focus around them.

The container stayed in Dennis’s hand, and Robby didn’t seem particularly interested in taking it.

“Next time,” Robby added after a second, his voice low enough not to carry, “you ask.”

Dennis glanced at him briefly, something like a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Next time,” he echoed, like that was a promise he had every intention of keeping.

It probably wasn’t. Dennis knew that about himself, and he also knew, from experience at this point, that neither Robby nor Jack were particularly interested in enforcing boundaries when it came to things like that. He had tested it more than once, small things at first and then less small things, and the worst he had gotten was a look, a comment, something that sounded like a warning and never quite followed through, which made it very easy to keep doing it.

He caught Trinity’s eye as he stepped into the trauma bay, Robby’s arm falling away from his shoulder as if it had never been there in the first place, the shift from something personal into something professional happening so smoothly it barely registered unless you were looking for it.

Trinity was.

Her gaze lingered just a fraction too long, catching the timing of it rather than the full picture, the way Dennis stepped in a little closer than necessary before the distance between them reset again. Her attention flicked briefly to the container still in his hand, then returned to his face, one eyebrow lifting in a slow, deliberate motion that made it very clear she had noticed something, even if she didn’t quite know what.

Dennis felt it immediately, the awareness settling somewhere uncomfortable as he pressed his lips together and glanced away, which only made it worse, because Trinity didn’t need much to work with and he had just given her enough to start building something out of it.

From where she stood, it fit neatly into everything she already thought she knew. Dennis hovering, reacting, getting caught, then trying very obviously to smooth it over by pretending nothing had happened, all of it lining up perfectly with the crush she had clocked months ago and never quite let go of. The details might have been off, but the pattern felt familiar enough that she didn’t question it, just filed it away with quiet satisfaction.

There was a small shift at the corner of her mouth, something like a suppressed comment she was already saving for later.

Dennis saw it.

And this time, instead of looking away too quickly, something in his expression shifted, a small, private curve at the edge of his mouth that he didn’t quite manage to hide, because the assumption she was working with wasn’t wrong, exactly, just… incomplete in a way that would probably be very entertaining if she ever figured it out.

She thought she knew.

She really didn’t.

Dennis almost laughed, but instead he smirked to himself, small and fleeting, something he kept tucked away as he dipped his head like he was just refocusing on the patient, the expression fading before it could become anything she could question. Trinity knew about the crush, had known about it for a while now, but she didn’t know that he had already acted on it, didn’t know that he had somehow managed to bag not one but two attendings, and the thought of her eventually figuring that out was just entertaining enough to make it very hard not to react.

He kept his face carefully neutral by the time he looked up again.

As if on cue, Mateo rushed past them a second later, still looking like he had been personally wronged by the concept of losing, and Dennis took the distraction without hesitation, letting out a quiet breath as he shook his head and turned his attention toward the patient being wheeled in, the moment slipping out of reach before Trinity could do anything more with it.

He didn’t miss the look she sent after him.

He just chose not to acknowledge it.

Dennis shook his head slightly, the moment slipping away as easily as it had appeared, and turned his attention to the patient as they were wheeled in, the controlled chaos of the trauma bay folding around them without hesitation.

“Okay, what do we have?” Robby asked, already moving into position.

“Male, mid-thirties,” EMS started as they transferred the patient over, voice steady despite the pace. “MVA, restrained driver, front-end collision. Airbags deployed. Complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath on scene, vitals borderline en route.”

Dennis moved automatically, setting the container aside on a nearby surface without really thinking about it as he stepped in to help position the patient, his focus narrowing as his hands found their place.

“BP?” Robby asked.

“90 systolic, trending down.”

“Alright,” Robby said, sharper now, the last trace of earlier ease gone. “Get him on the monitor, two large-bore Ivs, trauma labs, and I want a FAST as soon as we can.”

Dennis nodded, already reaching for the IV kit, the earlier conversation slipping into the background as the familiar rhythm took over, steady and practiced and grounding in a way that didn’t leave space for anything else.

By the time things eased, it didn’t feel like much time had passed at all, even though the shift outside the room had continued without them.

Dennis stepped out with the rest, the noise of the department rushing back in all at once, louder after the contained focus of the bay. He rolled his shoulders once as he moved, the tension bleeding off in small, quiet ways as he slipped back into the flow of everything else.

It didn’t take him long to find Trinity again.

The staff room door was half open, and Dennis slowed just enough to glance inside before slipping through, his gaze flicking around out of habit.

Trinity had her back to him, fully engaged in a one-sided fight with the coffee machine like it had personally offended her. One hand was braced against the counter while the other stabbed at the buttons with increasing irritation, her voice low and sharp as she muttered under her breath.

“Don’t start with me,” she warned it, like that might actually help. “I am not in the mood–”

Dennis didn’t interrupt. He just stepped up beside her like it was the most natural thing in the world, quiet enough that she didn’t register him immediately, and reached past her to grab the cup she had already set under the spout. He leaned in slightly, just enough that his voice wouldn’t carry.

“Mateo owes McKay ten dollars,” he murmured.

It took a second for it to land.

Trinity stilled mid-motion, her hand hovering over the machine as her head turned toward him, eyes already sharpening with interest. “What,” she said, slower now, like she was making sure she had heard that correctly.

Dennis didn’t answer right away. Instead, he gave her a small, quick smirk, the kind that said he knew exactly what he had just set in motion, before straightening again and lifting the cup from the machine with easy familiarity. He slipped past her with the coffee already in his hand, expression settling back into something neutral even as that flicker of satisfaction lingered underneath, leaving her with the half-finished thought and absolutely no follow-up.

“Oh my god,” Trinity snapped, her voice jumping back to full volume as the coffee machine was immediately forgotten, her attention shifting entirely as she turned to hunt down her next victim.

Dennis was already gone, back out into the noise of the department before she could stop him, not even bothering to look back.

He took a slow sip of the coffee as he stepped outside. The air hit him differently out here, cooler, easier, like he could actually breathe for a second. It wasn’t that quiet, not really, there was still movement, voices, the distant sound of something being wheeled past, but it didn’t press in the same way. No one was calling his name, no one was handing him something mid-step, no one expecting him to already be moving before he’d caught up.

That alone made it worth it.

He leaned back against the wall, one shoulder resting there, cup balanced loosely in his hand as he let himself have the minute. He had overheard Dana mentioning an incoming ambulance earlier, something about a possible trauma, and it sat in the back of his mind in that steady, familiar way. Enough time to breathe, not enough to disappear.

He could work with that.

He took another sip, letting his gaze drift out toward the ambulance bay, not really focusing on anything in particular, just letting his brain slow down for a second.

He didn’t register when Victoria and Ellis joined him at first.

They slipped into the space beside him like they’d always been there, conversation already going, voices low but quick, talking over each other in that easy way that didn’t leave space for interruptions. Dennis caught the movement at the edge of his vision, shifted slightly to give them room without thinking about it, and stayed where he was.

He wasn’t trying to listen.

He just… did.

Fragments of conversation slipped through anyway, caught between sips of coffee and the steady quiet of the moment. Dennis let them pass through without really holding onto them, his attention drifting in that familiar, half-aware way that never quite switched off.

“…I’m telling you, you’d love nights,” Ellis was saying, leaning against the railing, her tone persuasive in a way that suggested this wasn’t the first time she had tried this angle. “Less admin, more actual medicine, and the chaos is–”

“Managed?” Victoria offered, clearly unconvinced.

“–fun,” Ellis corrected, ignoring that entirely. “It’s fun. You just haven’t committed yet.”

Victoria huffed out a quiet laugh, shaking her head. “I have enough chaos during the day.”

Dennis’s gaze dropped briefly to his cup, the conversation settling into the background the way things always did when people didn’t account for him being there. His attention drifted for a second, then settled again, catching the next shift in tone more than the exact words as Ellis leaned a little closer, her voice dropping just enough to signal that whatever came next wasn’t meant to carry.

“Okay, but actually,” she said, quieter now, “your Doctor J account? That TikTok you posted yesterday? It’s everywhere.”

Victoria made a small, disbelieving sound, somewhere between protest and reluctant amusement. “That’s exaggerated.”

“It’s not,” Ellis said, clearly entertained. “People love it. The comments alone–”

Victoria groaned softly, dragging a hand over her face. “You’re not helping.”

Ellis laughed under her breath, then paused for a moment like she was deciding whether to say something else, her head tilting slightly before she leaned in again, just a fraction closer.

“Also,” she added, voice dropping further, “speaking of online things…”

Dennis went very still.

“I have a Twitter,” Ellis said, casual enough that it might have passed if the timing hadn’t been so deliberate.

Victoria turned toward her immediately. “You what?”

Ellis’s grin sharpened, just enough to give away that she was enjoying this. “It’s not exactly a secret,” she said, then amended it a second later, “just… not something people connect back to me.”

“…Parker,” Victoria said, slower now, suspicion creeping in.

“I post stuff,” Ellis continued, like that explained anything. “Work things. Observations.”

“…about us?” Victoria asked, narrowing her eyes.

Ellis didn’t answer that directly, which was answer enough.

Dennis blinked, the realization settling in without his permission. He took another slow sip of his coffee, more to give himself something to do than anything else, his gaze fixed somewhere out toward the ambulance bay as if that might make him less noticeable.

It didn’t.

Behind him, Ellis kept talking, clearly pleased with herself, while Victoria’s questions grew quieter, more careful, and Dennis let the information settle where it always did, another detail finding its place alongside everything else. The corner of his mouth twitched before he caught it, the thoughts already turning over once, twice in his head before settling into something solid.

Trinity was going to love this.

Dennis finished the last of the coffee and pushed himself off the wall just as the distant wail of sirens cut through the air. He straightened automatically, already shifting back into motion, but his attention snagged hard on the thought instead of the incoming ambulance.

He glanced once toward the bay, saw Ellis and Victoria already moving, already stepping into place like they had it handled, and that was enough.

Dennis turned on his heel and headed back inside, pace a little quicker than it needed to be, already reaching for his phone before he was fully through the doors. His thumb unlocked it on instinct, the screen lighting up as he moved down the hallway, his focus splitting just enough to avoid walking into anything while the rest of it locked onto the problem.

He replayed the conversation as he walked, pieces clicking into place faster the more he turned it over, until it stopped being a vague idea and started feeling like something solid enough to find.

It didn’t take long.

It never did, once he had something to go on.

Dennis slowed just enough to glance toward the hallway, then veered off without really thinking about it, slipping into the on-call room and nudging the door shut behind him with his shoulder.

He leaned back against the wall, attention dropping fully to his phone as he scrolled, the first few tweets enough to confirm it immediately.

He huffed out a quiet, disbelieving laugh under his breath, shoulders tightening for a second like he was physically holding it in.

Oh, Trinity was absolutely going to lose her mind over this.

He huffed out a quiet laugh under his breath, something disbelieving and a little impressed at the same time.

The tone alone gave it away, sharp and observant in a way that felt familiar now that he knew where to place it.

Dennis snorted softly, his shoulders relaxing a fraction as he kept scrolling, thumb moving almost automatically.

That was definitely Ellis.

“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath, the corner of his mouth pulling up as he shook his head slightly, already picturing exactly who that had been about.

And then–

Dennis let out a quiet laugh at that, something warmer this time, the kind that settled easily as he leaned back against the wall for a second longer than he probably should have, eyes flicking over the rest of the account.

For a second, he could picture it.

That specific shift. The kind that pushed Ellis to actually tweet about it. Night shift had always been different, heavier somehow, everything stacking faster than it could be cleared. Dennis had only spent a handful of shifts on the dark side, but it had been enough to know the pattern.

Jack, sleeves rolled up, moving through the department like it was something he owned, calm in a way that only made everything around him look more chaotic by comparison. The kind of chaos that stacked up instead of settling, people cutting corners, decisions made faster, messier, louder. Jack right in the middle of it, completely at ease, probably making it worse on purpose just to see how far it would go.

Dennis huffed out another quiet breath, something like a laugh following it as he shook his head slightly.

Yeah.

That checked out.

His attention dropped back to the screen.

This wasn’t just funny.

This was useful.

His brain was already making the connection without asking permission, slotting this into the same place everything else went, the same quiet collection of details he never quite meant to gather but always ended up with anyway.

Yeah he wasn’t keeping that to himself. He needed to tell Trinity.

The thought came with a flicker of anticipation that was almost immediate, and Dennis pushed himself off the wall again, already moving before he fully registered the decision. He crossed the hallway in a few quick steps, slipping into the staff room and pushing the door open just enough to peek out, eyes scanning automatically for movement.

Nothing.

He lingered for half a second, then pulled the door open a little wider, leaning out into the hallway just in time to spot Trinity rounding the corner at the far end, clearly on her way somewhere with purpose.

Perfect.

Dennis didn’t hesitate.

He stepped out and caught her just as she passed, shoving his phone into her line of sight with a grin he didn’t even bother hiding.

“Ellis has a Twitter,” he said, lowering his voice just slightly, though the excitement in it didn’t quite fade. “Just – look at it.”

Trinity blinked once, thrown off just long enough for him to scroll, her attention snapping to the screen as the next tweet came into view.

There was a brief pause.

Then her entire expression shifted.

“…no,” she said, already leaning in closer.

Dennis’s grin widened, impossible to hide now. “It’s a gold mine.”

Trinity made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a threat, already scrolling on her own, her expression shifting with every line she read.

“Oh, this is bad,” she said under her breath, which in Trinity’s vocabulary meant excellent.

Dennis lingered for a second, watching the realization settle in, the way she was already connecting dots faster than he had, filing things away for later use. It was almost impressive. Slightly terrifying. Definitely not his problem anymore.

“You’re welcome,” he added, already stepping back.

He didn’t take his phone back. Just let it stay in her hands like that had always been the plan, the screen catching the light along the cracked edges where the glass had splintered just enough to show its age.

He knew it was safe with her. If anything, it was probably safer than it ever was in his own pocket.

“Don’t lose that,” he added over his shoulder.

Trinity waved him off without even looking up, still scrolling. “Go away,” she said absently. “I need a minute.”

Dennis huffed out a quiet laugh and left her to it, slipping back into the flow of the department before she could drag him into whatever she was already planning.

Triage took him after that.

It always did, swallowing time in a way that made it hard to track where one hour ended and the next began. The pace was different there, less sharp, more constant, a steady stream instead of spikes, but it didn’t let up. Vitals, reassessments, quick decisions that stacked on top of each other until they blurred together.

He moved through it without thinking too much about it, from one patient to the next, checking, adjusting, circling back when something needed a second look. It was familiar enough that his hands kept up even when his attention drifted, the rhythm of it carrying him along.

Something bigger pulled him out of it at one point, the shift tightening without warning, voices sharpening, movement picking up just long enough to remind him how quickly things could tip. He fell into it easily, adjusted, followed through, and just as quickly as it had escalated, it eased again, settling back into something manageable.

After that, it stretched.

The in-between spaces got longer, the kind of quiet that wasn’t really quiet, just less immediate, less demanding. The hours blurred, the edge taken off them until it all started to feel a little distant, a little removed.

He didn’t so much notice the shift winding down as feel it happen around him.

The energy changed first. Conversations softened, voices dropping as people started handing things over, tying up loose ends. The night shift filtered in gradually, familiar faces slipping into place like they had always been there, picking up where everything else left off without breaking the rhythm.

By the time Dennis stepped into the locker room, the noise of the department had dulled just enough to feel like a break. He tugged at the edge of his scrub top, already halfway through pulling it off when a voice cut through the quiet behind him.

“Leaving already?”

Dennis startled just enough to be noticeable, his head snapping up as he caught sight of Jack leaning back against the lockers, one shoulder braced casually like he had been there the whole time.

“Jesus,” Dennis exhaled, a hand coming up briefly before dropping again. “Do you ever not do that?”

Jack’s mouth curved, just slightly. “Where’s the fun in that.”

Dennis rolled his eyes, turning back to what he had been doing, though the faint heat from the surprise hadn’t quite settled yet. “You’re insufferable.”

“And yet,” Jack said easily as he pushed himself away from the lockers and stepped closer, closing the distance with that quiet confidence that always felt intentional, like he had already decided how this was going to play out, “you keep coming back.”

Dennis huffed out a quiet sound that might have been a laugh, dragging his hoodie over his head, the fabric catching briefly before he tugged it down properly. It gave him something to do, something to focus on, which helped, because Jack moving into his space like that still did something to his brain that he hadn’t quite figured out how to handle.

“Try not to have too much fun without me,” Jack added, his tone light, almost teasing. There was something underneath it, though, something sharper that Dennis had learned to recognize even if he didn’t always know what to do with it.

Dennis glanced at him, unimpressed. “I’m too tired to have fun,” he said, voice flat in a way that didn’t quite hide how worn down he felt. “You should probably schedule some time off before you drop.”

Jack’s mouth twitched, something amused flickering through his expression as he took another step closer instead of backing off.

“I’ll manage.”

“Mhm,” Dennis hummed, unconvinced, shifting his bag onto his shoulder. “I’ll just use Michael as a pillow. He’s more reliable.”

That earned him a look, something that lingered just long enough to be noticeable before Jack’s expression shifted again, amusement settling back in.

“Reliable,” Jack echoed softly.

Dennis ignored that, mostly because he didn’t trust himself to respond to it properly. “I… might have eaten his lunch,” he added instead, a little more reluctantly.

Jack’s reaction was immediate, his head tilting slightly as he looked at him, something almost expectant in the way he took that in. “Of course you did.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” Dennis said, already knowing that wasn’t going to hold up. He paused, then exhaled. “Okay, it was a little intentional.”

“Robby packs extra,” Jack said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He knows you get hungry, Whit.”

Dennis blinked at him.

The words took a second to land, to settle into something real instead of just passing through, and for a moment he just stood there, staring at Jack like he had said something entirely unreasonable.

“…he does?”

Jack huffed out a quiet laugh at that, softer this time, like he was enjoying the reaction more than the information itself.

“Give him a kiss from me,” he added, almost casually.

Dennis opened his mouth, already halfway into a response–

–and then Jack stepped in.

He closed the last bit of distance slowly this time like he was giving Dennis just enough time to realize what was about to happen without actually letting him stop it. His hand came up, fingers warm as they settled along Dennis’s jaw, thumb brushing lightly along the edge of it before he tipped his head just enough to guide him into place.

Dennis’s breath caught.

It always did, that split second where everything stalled, where his brain lagged just behind the moment, and Jack clearly knew it, because he didn’t rush it, didn’t hesitate, just held him there for that fraction longer before leaning in.

The kiss landed soft and certain, familiar in a way that still felt unreal, Jack’s mouth warm against his, steady and deliberate, the kind of contact that lingered just enough to settle somewhere deeper than it should have.

Dennis froze.

Then he melted.

It was immediate, instinctive, his shoulders dropping as the tension slipped out of him, his hand tightening slightly where it still held the strap of his bag, like that was the only thing keeping him anchored as he leaned in just a fraction without meaning to, following something that was already there.

Jack’s thumb shifted slightly against his jaw, barely there, just enough to keep him exactly where he wanted him, like he was holding him in place for the sake of it.

Then he pulled back.

Slowly.

Like he knew exactly what he was doing.

Dennis blinked, the space between them returning too quickly, his brain scrambling to catch up as heat flooded up his neck, fast and impossible to ignore.

“Are you insane,” he hissed, voice low but sharp, shoving at Jack’s arm, enough to create distance, his gaze flicking toward the door on instinct.

They were at work.

Jack let himself be pushed back half a step, his hand dropping from Dennis’s jaw, his expression settling into something openly entertained, like this had gone exactly the way he expected.

“Relax,” he said, completely unbothered.

Dennis shot him a look, the flush still burning under his skin, his mouth opening like he was going to argue before he stopped himself, dragging a hand down his face instead.

This was ridiculous.

Jack’s smile widened just slightly at that, like he could see the exact moment Dennis gave up on forming a coherent response and was enjoying it far too much.

“Go,” Dennis muttered finally, turning away to grab his things, more to give himself something to do than anything else.

Jack laughed under his breath, quieter this time, something pleased threading through it as he pushed himself away from the lockers.

“Try not to miss me,” he added, already halfway to the door.

Dennis didn’t turn around.

“Leave,” he said, which only made Jack laugh again.

The door closed a second later, soft, final, and the silence that followed felt louder than it should have.

Dennis stayed where he was for a second longer, staring at the inside of his locker, his fingers still tingling faintly where Jack had held his jaw, the echo of it lingering in a way that refused to fade.

Even now.

Even after weeks of this.

Kissing Jack still felt unreal.

And worse, he still reacted to it every single time.

Unbelievable.

Dennis let out a slow breath, dragging a hand through his hair as he forced himself to move again, like that might clear his head enough to function normally. It didn’t really help, but it was something. He stepped out into the hallway, the noise of the department settling back around him, familiar and grounding in a way that made it easier to keep moving–

and then the thought hit him mid-step.

His phone.

Dennis slowed, blinking once as he backtracked through the last hours just enough to place it, the image of Trinity with it snapping back into focus.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, a quiet huff of a laugh following it as he shook his head slightly. He would have walked straight out without it. Probably wouldn’t have noticed until he was already halfway across the parking lot.

He adjusted the strap of his bag and turned without hesitation, already heading back the way he came.

Trinity still had his phone.

Dennis spotted her near the nurses’ station, mid-conversation with Perlah and Princess, his phone lying on the counter in front of her while she talked with her hands like always. He started toward it, already reaching, but before he could get there she turned, her hand coming down without thinking as she grabbed it and slid it into her pocket in one easy motion.

Then she looked up and saw him.

“What,” Trinity said immediately, eyes narrowing just slightly.

Dennis just looked at her for a second before nodding toward her pocket. “My phone?”

She glanced down at it like she had forgotten it existed, then back at him, already half smirking. “You’re really just going to leave me with this and walk away?”

“Yes,” Dennis said, holding out his hand.

Trinity took her time with it, dragging it out just enough to be annoying before finally handing it back with a small, reluctant huff. “This is criminal. I need more time.”

“You’ve had enough,” he said, slipping it back into his pocket before she could change her mind.

“Rude,” she shot back, though her attention was already drifting again, clearly still running through everything she had read.

Dennis shifted his bag higher on his shoulder, already halfway turned toward the exit. “I’m heading out,” he added, jerking his thumb vaguely behind him. “Going to the farm. Probably staying the night.”

Trinity’s face did exactly what he expected, her mouth pulling into a slight grimace, nose wrinkling like he had just suggested something deeply unpleasant.

“Wow,” she said flatly. “Have fun testing out farming equipment or whatever it is you people do out there.”

Dennis made a face right back at her, exaggerated enough to sell it, a quiet gagging sound slipping out before he could stop it. “Please don’t,” he said flatly. “I refuse to be associated with whatever you just imagined.”

“Traitor,” she shot back, already half turning away again. “I’m staying behind anyway, I’ve got charting to finish.”

He huffed out a small laugh, something tired but genuine, and stepped back properly this time. “You’ll survive.”

“I always do,” Trinity said, waving him off without even looking at him anymore, already back in the conversation like he had never interrupted it.

Dennis didn’t linger after that.

He headed out through the ambulance bay, the cooler air hitting him properly this time, the last of the shift finally catching up now that there was nothing immediate demanding his attention. The walk across the parking lot felt slower than it should have, his body heavy in that familiar way that came after long hours and too much adrenaline.

Robby’s car stood out before he even really looked for it.

It always did, something about it settling into his awareness automatically, the same way certain patterns in the ER did, something he didn’t have to think about anymore. He adjusted his grip on his bag as he crossed the lot, already angling toward it without breaking stride.

He told himself it was easier this way.

The farm was a good excuse. A solid one. Far enough away, quiet enough, believable in a way that didn’t invite too many questions, especially when paired with his background. It gave him a reason to disappear for a night, sometimes two, without Trinity asking too many follow-ups, without anyone really thinking twice about it.

He slowed slightly as he reached the car, fingers tightening just a fraction on the strap of his bag before he let it go again.

Amy had figured it out almost immediately.

The first time she’d picked him up, he had still been standing just outside the ambulance bay, halfway through a conversation he hadn’t quite managed to leave yet. Robby had been there, close enough that Dennis hadn’t noticed how it might look from the outside, the two of them talking in that low, easy way that had already started to feel normal.

Amy definitely noticed.

Dennis hadn’t realized she had pulled up until she honked once, sharp and pointed, and when he glanced over, she was already watching him through the windshield, one eyebrow raised just slightly like she had already put something together.

He had climbed into the passenger seat a second later, trying very hard to act like everything was completely normal, like nothing about that interaction had been worth noticing.

It didn’t work.

“Hi, kiddo,” he had said instead, leaning forward immediately, all of his attention shifting as he reached back toward the car seat. “Hey, Theo – hi, sweetheart.”

Theo had made a small, pleased sound, hands grabbing at Dennis’s sleeve, and Dennis had melted instantly, his voice dropping into something softer as he cooed at him, completely distracted.

Which was exactly when Amy had looked over at him with a full-on shit-eating grin.

Dennis had felt it before he even saw it.

“What,” he had said, still half turned toward the backseat.

“Nothing,” Amy had replied, way too innocent to be believable.

Dennis had glanced at her properly then and immediately regretted it.

She was thriving.

“Oh,” she had added, like the thought had just occurred to her. “So that’s what we’re doing now.”

“…what are we doing,” Dennis had asked, already feeling the heat creeping up his neck.

Amy had just hummed, starting the car like she had all the time in the world. “You’re really going to make me say it?”

Dennis had opened his mouth to argue, to deny it on principle alone, and then stopped because he didn’t actually know where to start.

Amy hadn’t even waited.

“Relax,” she had said easily, waving him off. “You’re not subtle.”

Dennis had stared at her.

She had glanced back at him, still smiling. “Like, at all.”

“…that’s not–”

“Mhmm,” Amy had cut in, completely unconvinced.

He had turned back toward Theo instead, because that felt safer, letting the kid grab onto his fingers while he very deliberately avoided looking at her again.

Amy had just laughed under her breath.

“Just use me,” she had added a minute later, like she was offering him a favor instead of calling him out. “Seriously. If you need an excuse, I’m your girl.”

“…that’s not–” Dennis had started, already feeling the heat creeping up his neck.

Amy had just raised an eyebrow at him, entirely unimpressed. “Please. You think you’re the first person to hide a relationship behind ‘I’m going out of town’?”

Dennis had blinked at her.

She had smiled, sharp and knowing. “If you need a cover story to get laid or avoid questions, you can blame me. I’ll even make it sound believable if anyone asks.”

He had nearly choked on his own breath.

Dennis pulled the car door open and slid into the passenger seat, dropping his bag at his feet as he leaned back, the seat familiar beneath him in a way that made something in his chest loosen almost immediately. He let his head fall back for a second, eyes closing as the last of the tension bled out of him in slow, quiet waves.

It felt easy.

Too easy, maybe.

He shifted slightly, reaching forward to adjust the vents out of habit, settling in without really thinking about it, the motion automatic in a way that said this wasn’t new anymore.

He let out a quiet breath, the faintest hint of a smile pulling at his mouth as he opened his eyes again.

Yeah.

It was fine.

The quiet didn’t last long. The driver’s side door opened, and Dennis straightened a little as Robby slid in beside him.

“Hey,” Robby said, softer than usual, like he was adjusting without thinking.

Dennis glanced over at him, a little more present than he had been a second ago, something like a smile tugging faintly at his mouth. “Hey.”

“You good?” Robby asked, already reaching over to nudge his knee lightly.

“Yeah,” Dennis said, rolling one shoulder as if to shake the last bit of the shift out of it. He hesitated for half a second, then added, “your husband ambushed me in the locker room.”

Robby paused.

Then he huffed out a quiet laugh, shaking his head as he started the car, something fond settling into his expression like he had expected exactly that.

Dennis narrowed his eyes at him immediately. “You’re not even going to ask what that means?”

“I can guess,” Robby said, glancing over at him briefly before looking back at the road, still smiling.

“That’s not reassuring,” Dennis muttered, shifting slightly in his seat. “He just–” he gestured vaguely, like the motion might somehow explain it better, “–decided that was a good idea. At work.”

Robby’s shoulders shook slightly with another quiet laugh, like he was enjoying this far more than he should have.

Dennis watched him for a second, unimpressed. “You’re both insane.”

“Mhm,” Robby hummed, not even pretending to argue.

Dennis huffed out a breath, turning his head to look out the window for a second before something else caught up with him.

“And apparently you pack extra lunch,” he added, tone shifting just slightly, more pointed now as he looked back at him.

Robby stilled for a fraction of a second.

It was small, easy to miss if Dennis hadn’t been watching for it, the way his grip on the steering wheel adjusted, the way his attention fixed just a little too deliberately on the road ahead.

Dennis’s eyes narrowed further.

“Oh my god,” he said, quieter now, like he had just confirmed something. “You do.”

Robby didn’t look at him. “You get hungry.”

“That’s not–” Dennis stopped, then huffed, leaning back slightly as something warm crept up his neck despite himself. “That’s not the point.”

Robby just shrugged one shoulder, still not looking at him, but the faint flush creeping up the back of his ears was impossible to miss now.

Dennis caught it immediately.

His mouth twitched.

Robby finally glanced at him, expression flat in a way that didn’t quite hide the amusement underneath. “Eat your own lunch next time.”

Dennis grinned, entirely unrepentant. “No.”

Robby shook his head again, quieter this time, something fond settling back into place as he pulled out of the lot, the rest of the drive slipping into something easier after that, the kind of quiet that didn’t feel empty.

Dennis leaned back again, more relaxed now, his thoughts drifting with the steady rhythm of the road and the quiet familiarity of it all as he watched the city pass by.

When they got to the house, Dennis made it inside ahead of Robby, pushing the door open with his shoulder, bag slipping slightly as he stepped in, already halfway focused on getting out of his shoes–

–and immediately caught his foot on something.

Dennis stumbled forward with a startled sound, barely catching himself on the wall before looking down.

Jack’s crutches.

“Jesus–” he muttered, nudging them aside with his foot as he stepped over them more carefully this time. “He’s going to kill someone with these.”

He didn’t wait for a response.

The living room opened up in front of him, the couch right there, and Dennis didn’t bother with anything else, just let himself drop forward into it, face-first at first, the impact soft enough to knock a quiet, satisfied sound out of him as he stretched out across the cushions like he had been aiming for it all along.

It was comfortable.

That was the problem.

“Don’t even think about it,” Robby said from behind him, the door closing with a quiet thud somewhere down the hallway. “Shoes.”

Dennis groaned into the cushion, not moving.

“You’re the worst,” he mumbled.

“Mhm,” Robby said, entirely unimpressed. “Shoes.”

Dennis dragged himself just enough upright to kick his shoes off, one, then the other, not really aiming as they landed somewhere near the hallway entrance before he dropped back against the couch again. He shifted after a second, turning so he was sitting up properly, one arm slung over the backrest.

Robby moved past him into the kitchen, already pulling containers out of the fridge with the kind of efficiency that came from routine, while Dennis reached for the remote, flipping the TV on more out of habit than anything else.

The screen flickered to life.

Dennis leaned back slightly as the interface loaded, eyes dragging over it for a second longer than necessary, something vaguely amused settling in as he took it in. It still felt a little ridiculous, seeing something this polished in their living room, all smooth menus and recommendations like it belonged somewhere else entirely.

He snorted softly under his breath.

Jack had definitely had fun with this.

He could still remember the messages Robby had sent him that day, each one somehow more dramatic than the last, like Jack had personally ruined his life instead of just replacing a TV.

Dennis huffed out a quiet laugh at the memory, thumb already moving as he clicked through a few options, not really paying attention, just scrolling until something stuck long enough to be worth stopping on.

“Still getting used to it?” he called toward the kitchen, flipping through another menu without really looking.

Robby didn’t answer right away, the quiet sounds of containers and the microwave carrying through before he finally said, “It’s… fine.”

Dennis smiled a little at that, glancing at the screen before settling back. “That sounded convincing.”

A faint huff came from the kitchen. “It works,” Robby added, like that was enough.

Dennis let out a quiet laugh, softer this time. “High praise.”

Robby didn’t argue, just kept moving around in the kitchen, and Dennis let the moment settle, the low hum of the TV filling the space between them. He hovered on a movie for a second, considered it, then moved on. Nothing felt like it required that much attention.

After another minute, he landed on a documentary, something about deep-sea exploration or ancient ruins, he wasn’t entirely sure, and let it play, the steady narration filling the room just enough to take the edge off the quiet.

That was better. Background noise.

He leaned back slightly, one leg pulling up onto the couch as he settled in, attention drifting between the TV and the sounds from the kitchen, the familiar rhythm grounding in a way that didn’t take any effort.

Robby came back in a few minutes later with two plates, something reheated and simple, the kind of food that didn’t need thinking about, and handed one over without comment.

“Leftovers.”

Dennis took it easily, shifting a little closer without really noticing when he did it, the movement automatic as he balanced the plate on his knee.

They didn’t bother with the table.

They never really did.

The documentary kept running in the background, the narrator’s voice low and steady, filling the space between the quiet clink of cutlery and the occasional shift on the couch.

Dennis ate slowly, more out of habit than anything else, his attention drifting in and out, catching fragments of what was playing without really following it.

At some point, he set his plate aside, leaning back again as he stretched slightly, something in him settling now that the day had properly faded into the background.

Then–

“Oh shit,” he said suddenly.

Robby glanced at him, mid-movement as he set his own plate down. “What.”

Dennis didn’t answer.

He just shifted forward, quick and deliberate in a way that didn’t match the rest of the evening, moving across the couch and into Robby’s space in one smooth motion before settling himself right in his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Robby blinked.

Dennis didn’t give him time to process it.

He leaned in and kissed him, easy and direct, one hand coming up to brace lightly against Robby’s shoulder as he closed the distance, the contact warm and familiar in a way that felt entirely different from the chaos of earlier.

Robby went still for half a second, clearly caught off guard, before he relaxed into it, one hand coming up instinctively at Dennis’s side to steady him.

When Dennis pulled back, it was just far enough to look at him properly, a grin already pulling at his mouth.

“Jack told me to give you a kiss,” he said, like that explained everything.

Robby stared at him for a second longer.

Then he huffed out a quiet laugh, shaking his head slightly, something fond settling into his expression as his hand stayed where it was at Dennis’s waist.

“Sounds like him,” he muttered.

Dennis just grinned wider, entirely unapologetic, and leaned in again before Robby could say anything else, kissing him a second time, slower this time, less impulsive, something he let linger just a fraction longer like he was making a point of it.

Robby let him, his hand shifting slightly at Dennis’s side, steadying him without pulling him any closer, like he was waiting to see what he would do next.

Dennis pulled back eventually, just enough to catch his breath before shifting his weight again. He slid off Robby’s lap without much fuss, settling back onto the couch beside him, close enough that their sides still brushed. One shoulder pressed lightly into Robby’s as he angled himself toward the TV like that had been the plan all along.

The documentary was still playing, the narrator’s voice steady in the background, something about pressure levels or ocean depth or ruins that Dennis hadn’t really been paying attention to in the first place. He tried now, eyes fixed on the screen, letting the words wash over him like they might stick this time.

They didn’t.

He shifted.

Just a little at first, adjusting his weight, then again a second later, trying to find a position that felt right, something that would let him focus, but it never quite settled, something about the way he was sitting pulling his attention back to itself instead of letting it drift.

Robby noticed.

He always did.

“You’re as restless as Jack sometimes,” Robby said after a second, glancing over at him.

Dennis shot him a look. “That’s actually insulting.”

“Maybe you should try yoga,” Robby went on, a faint smirk pulling at his mouth. “Work it out.”

Dennis rolled his eyes immediately, shifting again just to prove a point. “You just want to see me naked.”

Robby’s ears flushed, quick and noticeable before he could hide it, and his hand came up without thinking, pinching lightly at Dennis’s side.

“Watch the documentary,” he said, like that settled it.

Dennis laughed, the sound easy as he jerked away slightly, batting his hand off. “That’s not a denial.”

Robby didn’t answer, just shook his head and leaned back again, though the faint color at the tips of his ears didn’t quite fade.

Dennis settled again after that, still smiling a little as he leaned back into Robby’s side, the earlier restlessness easing now that he had something else to focus on.

The documentary kept going, the narrator’s voice steady and calm, something about pressure thresholds and structural collapse at ocean depth, but it blurred quickly into background noise again, more rhythm than information.

Dennis didn’t try to follow it this time.

His attention drifted, slow and inevitable, circling back to Trinity and the amount of ammunition he had handed her over the course of the day.

He huffed quietly under his breath, the corner of his mouth twitching.

That was going to be a problem.

A small smile tugged at his mouth despite himself as he leaned his head back against the couch, gaze unfocused now. She was absolutely going to run with it. Not immediately and not in any obvious way, but knowing her, soon enough she would start placing comments, questions that sounded casual if you didn’t know her, just enough to see what stuck and what didn’t.

And somehow, he was going to get dragged into it.

He always did.

It wouldn’t even be direct. She’d just mention something in passing, loop him into a conversation, let people connect the dots themselves while he stood there pretending he had nothing to do with it.

Dennis let out another quiet breath, something caught between resignation and amusement.

He should probably feel worse about it.

He didn’t.

Robby shifted slightly beside him, drawing his attention back, and Dennis leaned into it again without thinking, the earlier warmth settling back into place just as easily.

He really didn’t want to imagine Trinity’s face once she figured out where he had actually been disappearing to every time he mentioned the farm. He was pretty sure she was about one step away from staging an intervention if he pulled that again.

The thought made him snort softly under his breath.

Still.

He liked getting away with it.

Trinity could deal with her chaos.

For now, this was better.

[everwhovian]

If you saw chapter 2 of Quiet as a Mouse go up… no you didn’t

That was NOT real 😂

Accidentally hit post instead of save draft because I just wanted to test the css 😭💀