Dennis manages to sneak 5 minutes around 3:30AM. He slinks out and gets far enough from the ambulance bay that he can lean against a darkened wall and light his guilty cigarette, taking a single quiet moment to himself on a rare night shift. The lighter sparks and a flame blossoms in the dark, temporarily blinding him to anything but the tip of his cig, which is why he doesn't notice the man stumbling into his periphery.
From one moment to the next, a heavy body smelling of leather and blood and gasoline has him pressed up against the bricks behind him, and the unmistakable shape of the nozzle of a gun is pressed up under his chin.
"Sshh," comes the immediate command, on a heavy, strained breath. "Easy. Don't make noise, and nothin' bad'll happen. Okay?"
Dennis tries to breathe around his hammering fucking heart and the cigarette still clamped between his lips. He manages a single nod.
"Good," the man grunts, low and pained, clearly fucking exhausted. "I just need- I need to speak to-"
The man trails off, and in the dim light Dennis can make out curls and frankly lethal cheekbones, and blood. And as terrified as he is, Dennis is still a doctor.
"Sir, you're clearly hurt-" he tries around the cigarette, not daring to do anything with his hands but keep them raised, pressed back against the wall as well. But the man grunts, shakes his head a little. Something about his backlit profile is making bells go off loudly in the back of Dennis mind but he doesn't have time to listen right now.
"Shut up," the man grunts. "I need- Fuck."
He sighs heavily and plucks the cigarette from between Dennis lips and takes a deep drag. The tip of it flares in the darkness, and for just a moment Dennis can make out his face. The cognitive dissonance almost makes him dizzy.
"Does Jack Abbot still work here?" the man says, sullenly, like he doesn't actually want to know.
Dennis can feel how wide his own eyes are, but he can't stop staring for the life of him. A man is threatening him at gunpoint and asking for information about one of his colleagues and Dennis probably definitely shouldn't fucking answer him, but the man is swaying a little. He looks like he hasn't slept for days, and he looks like he needs urgent medical care, and he looks almost exactly like-
"Yeah. Yeah, Dr Abbot works here. He's- uh, he's working tonight. He's inside."
The man pulls back. He sticks his gun down the back of his ruined jeans and leans - collapses a little, with a grunt - against the wall next to Dennis.
"Go. Tell him Pope's outside."
