Chapter Text
“So,” Trinity said, as if that was a full sentence. Her eyebrows attempted to make great friends with her hairline as Dennis patently ignored her in the kitchenette. “Come on. You’re going to have to tell me about the sex at some point.” She let her head fall back against the couch with a sigh that Dennis had heard umpteen thousand times from the barn dogs they used to keep. That sort of deep-bodied sigh that was melodramatic and a way to express complete disdain for the situation without saying anything. Not that Dennis would ever think about telling Trinity that she sounded like a cattle dog. She’d probably maul him. Plus, when she finished the sigh by saying, “I’m not letting you leave this apartment until you tell me at least a little bit about what the fuck was going on between the two of you,” she had semi crawled her body over the back of the couch. Looking menacing and slightly ridiculous with her hair scraped back and some sort of jelly-like substance underneath her eyes. For the bags, she’d said, as if she had any that were noticeable.
“Do you want dinner?” Dennis said, not bothering to forthrightly acknowledge what she was snapping after. “I can throw it in the trash if you’d be happier with that.”
“You’re a fucking loser, dude,” Trinity laughed. “If it makes you feel like it’d be fair, I can tell you about the sex I’m having with a senior member of staff.”
“That’s not necessary,” Dennis said. “Like—at all.”
Trinity peeled off the jelly under her eyes and then slapped her hands onto her cheeks, which were oily and pink from taking an eye-wateringly hot and long bath, dragging her palms down so that she looked like some sort of undead creature. Except it wasn’t baying for blood or flesh, but for Dennis to relent and sit down and tell her all the sordid, minute details of what having sex with Robby was like. Which, if she’d just be normal about it, he actually wouldn’t mind. He’d never had a friend like her. The thought of spilling his guts on the couch as their feet touched was relatively alluring to somebody who, prior to med school, had never had a close friendship group.
“Please!” Trinity would start wailing if Dennis didn’t stop her. “Please, please, please, Dennis! Motherfucker, come on!” So, to placate her natural want to gossip until she turned blue in the face, he wobbled back into the living room area of the apartment, all but threw her dinner onto the coffee table, then muted the television.
The expression on Trinity’s face went from forlorn to something you’d see on the villain in a Tex Avery cartoon. If she had a moustache, she would have been twiddling it between her thumb and forefinger.
“See,” Trin started, “that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Dennis wilted into the couch, the bowl of sad-looking pasta in his lap almost spilling over the sides as he pressed the convex side of the spoon in his hand against his forehead. In the back of his mind, he could imagine the horrified look on Robby’s face if he were to find out what he was divulging. Then shoving that image aside was a new one of Trinity with a medieval flail in her hands that she swung recklessly, encroaching slowly for every second that Dennis wasn’t spilling the beans.
“It was nice. It was a nice evening that we shared together.” To limit Trinity’s ability to press for more information immediately, Dennis shoved a mouthful of food into himself and chewed so slowly that it made the bones of his jaw ache. When the food went down, it almost got stuck, too.
“And—?”
Trinity had pulled her feet up onto the couch, her knees bent and her chin almost resting on them as she ignored her food. The television continued to play on silent an episode of some horrible, gory show that Trinity had assured Dennis he would like, but it mostly just made his stomach turn. Despite the fact that he was sure it was some elaborate way of getting a romance between two men past the censors of the day. He just didn’t want to look at fish in cold jelly and human entrails. It wasn’t up his alley.
"And,” he murmured, “I didn’t have any complaints.” He shrugged, ignoring the way that he was clearly bright red and the pasta was turning into a gummy mess in his mouth. “Trin, I’m not sure what you want me to say. We had sex. It was cool.” The muscles above his top lip pulled up, like he smelt something bad. “Do you really want details other than that?”
Trinity looked at him as if he were stupid. “Uh—fucking—obviously!” She shovelled in two spoonfuls of pasta, waving the utensil around as she continued. “Is he a good kisser? Did it seem like his first time with another guy? Did it feel like a worthwhile loss of precious virginity? Did it hurt? Did you cry in the afterglow?”
“Why would I cry?”
“Was it a mistake? Was it the best thing you’ve ever done?”
“Trin—”
“Please, Dennis! Indulge me.”
Dennis mashed his lips together, feeling his mouth stretch out horizontally into a flat line of discontent. Which was the only way to express the feeling that wouldn’t make Trinity slap her hand onto the nearest bit of bare flesh she could, because once she realised you were mad at her, she’d pick at the scab until it bled. If Dennis had verbalised the thought, she would have nosed into his weakness like a shark to chum and bothered him until he was reluctantly smiling. She had an incredibly strange and specific brand of tough love and it worked almost every time.
“Fine, jeez.” Dennis drew his own legs up onto the couch and stretched them out on either side of Trinity’s thighs, which did the same, her heels settling onto the tops of his thighs, digging in as Dennis stuck a finger around the edges of his bowl and then licked off the sauce from it. “He’s probably a good kisser, but I don’t have a lot of reference. He led most of it.” Dennis winced softly. “I think I mostly just fumbled through it. He probably could tell that I wasn’t completely sure what I was doing, but he didn’t let on.”
“What’s the beard like?”
Dennis pulled a face. “Prickly. Some of the hair sticks straight out and it was going up my nose.”
Trinity’s toes scrunched up in her socks. She did that when she was excited. Almost a year of living together had made Dennis aware of a lot of her tells. “Do you think he had fucked a guy before? Like—did he look shocked when you got your dick out?”
While it was unpleasant, Trinity had a way of being blunt. But it worked, driving Dennis towards sincerity as he scraped his spoon around the bowl as it rested on his stomach and said, shyly, “He seemed pretty—you know—knowledgeable. He seemed to know pretty much exactly what he was doing and somehow, through whatever batshit Robby magic he exudes, I survived, too. No fuck-ups. I didn’t even say anything embarrassing.” His own feet knocked back and forth against the outside of Trinity’s thighs, the muted, soft sound of it a metronome in Dennis’ head as he used the beat to steady himself. Steeling his brain to the idea that this conversation was happening. There was no way to stop it. He could hear how delirious he sounded when he admitted, “Trin, it was—like—it was really good.”
“Life changing?” Trinity asked, grinning madly.
“Kind of fucking life changing,” Dennis said, exhaling the words and agreeing with a small nod and the depositing of his empty bowl onto the coffee table with a thump. He was done eating. He was ready to be disgustingly honest about his sex life. Which now existed. A crazy idea. “Then, right after we were done, he—he made me—you know—finish again.”
“That’s hot,” Trinity breathed. “Hand stuff or—?
“Hands, and—you know,” Dennis said, spreading out his own, wiggling his digits, “Fingers.”
A couch cushion collided with Dennis’ face and he squawked, shoving it away as Trinity screeched and laughed wildly. They’d already had a few noise complaints from neighbours in the apartment block. “You’re a complete slut, Huckleberry!” She barely gave him time to make a sound of complaint at the accusation before she said, way too loudly given how close she was to him, “You were getting finger blasted in your childhood bedroom at your brother’s wedding?”
“Why are you more shocked at the finger stuff than you are about the fact that I had penetrative sex with him?”
“Ew. Don’t call it that.” Trinity snatched back the cushion, readying it to hit Dennis again, but she relented at the last second. Thankfully.
“Trinity, what the fuck? We’re doctors. That’s the least gross way of putting it.” He sniffed. “I’m not calling it,” he lowered his voice, “anal.”
“Whatever,” Trinity muttered, rolling her eyes. Then, slowly, a smile spread back across her face as she held the cushion to her chest. “Is it big?”
Dennis scoffed.
Then, he smiled as well. “I’d assumed it’s kind of big. Again, not much reference.”
The cushion smashed into him again, but this time, it just made Dennis laugh and grab at it, tossing it right back at her. Both of their legs were wriggling about like they had grown up with each other. Like they had never spent any time apart from the second they were born.
When they’d caught their breath, with Trinity’s hand on Dennis’ ankle, she brushed her thumb over the ball of it, morphing into the Trinity whose walls were lowered completely. No snide jokes, just genuine interest as she squeezed Dennis’ foot and asked, “When are you going to see him again?”
“Oh,” Dennis said, “I don’t know.”
Her mouth popped open in annoyed shock. “You fucked him at a family wedding and you don’t even know when you’re going to see him next?”
Dennis’ shoulders rose up to his earlobes. “I mean—I’ll see him at work,” he said, lacing his fingers together nervously as Trinity laughed incredulously, clearly an expert in wrangling older members of staff and pursuing them sexually. Romantically? Maybe both. So Dennis rushed to defend himself further by blurting out, “I have his phone number.” He watched as Trinity’s eyes slid slowly to where his phone was on the other end of the coffee table. Screen up. Completely dark, but he was aware that it could have burst into life at any second. “Trinity,” he murmured, “Come on. Be reasonable.”
The coffee table almost upended when Trinity scrambled away from Dennis, snatching the phone off of it and then darting around the room before Dennis could even peel himself off of the couch. The rate of his heart went from semi-stable to thunderous as she tapped in his passcode. He should have never told her it in a state of drunken idiocy when the group were trying to book an Uber and Dennis, for once, was the only person with enough money in the bank to pay for it. With that knowledge, Trinity had his messages open and as she danced about, dodging Dennis’ wildly swinging arms, she read out loud as she typed a message to Robby. “Hey, Robby. Had so much fun at the wedding. I want to see you again ASAP. When can we next see each other? I need you. You are so sexy.”
“Trinity, don’t you fucking dare—”
Her thumb moved. “And, sent!”
The contents of the couch ended up tossed at her, first the throw cushions and then the actual cushions, which she dodged while laughing like nothing would ever be funnier. The phone was still in her hands, held aloft as Dennis rushed at her, which had Trinity scampering into the kitchenette, and as Trinity continued giggling, with Dennis trapping her behind the breakfast bar, the phone vibrated. A short buzz had Trinity staring down at the device in her palm and when she looked back up, Dennis could only let his elbows knock against the countertop in defeat.
Robby had texted back.
“Ah, shit,” he murmured. “Read it out.”
For a moment, when Trinity opened the text, she seemed genuinely confused. “He—he just said, ‘Sounds good. I miss you.’” Her eyes moved to the text she had sent posing as Dennis, then right back to the text from Robby, before she said, “Wow. He doesn’t give a shit that I made you sound like a freak. He must actually like you.”
With a few steps around the breakfast bar, with Trinity momentarily lapsing into a state of minor shock from Robby’s lack of confusion, Dennis managed to snatch the phone out of her hands and he sent a thumbs up emoji quickly and then locked the phone, shoving it into the pocket of his jeans as he said, “Yeah, thanks for that.” Then, suddenly, with a fervour that had eluded him when he used to playfight with his brothers, mostly because he’d never be the one who came out winning, he started to rummage around in Trinity’s pockets, attempting to dig out her phone as he said, loud and teasing, “It’s only fair if I get to send something to Garcia now. Give me your—Trinity! Give me your fucking phone. Now!”
Trinity screamed.
They were absolutely getting another noise complaint warning.
~*~
Every single fibrous inch of Whitaker’s shirt clung to any patch of wet skin that it could. The heat between the two things wasn’t even being allowed to fester. The heat just was. Inherent and bound, and from it there was only slick, sliding damp that made Dennis feel like he’d slithered from somewhere low and miasmic. He’d never been down south, but he could imagine that he had more in common with the creeping alligators than he ever would with a human in the week that the A/C was on the fritz in the ER during a heatwave. A disaster that had been bumped up to critical by the building managers, being heartily stoked by Robby’s fiery, in all ways, voice pleading down the work cellphone for somebody to come and fix it before somebody died of heatstroke. Patient or employee.
They weren’t sure when it was going to be fixed. ‘Soon’ was a mantra that everyone passed around between them, nodding and wiping away salt from their eyes before it crystallised. What was sure was that Dennis could have flooded into a puddle on the central desk. Bursting into a spray of sweat with one single pop from the nib of Dana’s pen in his shoulder. The thought of it was strangely cooling as he tried not to drip and stink onto the desk, firmly aware that he was someone who would sweat all the way through his deodorant and out the other side. He used to get wayward glances in high school when it was hot or they’d been outside for PE, then piled back into the classroom. He kept a spare can of deodorant in his locker just for that very issue and it was on its last legs after constant use due to the cataclysmic heat that fanned the hospital like huge smacks of a hand. First it had been the rain, now the sun. It all settled in between the buildings, rising up to the tops of the high-rises and spreading across the city, anaerobic and tight. Latex heat. Slippery and breathless. Nothing like the open warmth of the farm and Dennis was just about fit to pass out.
A body moved behind him as he pinched the front of his scrubs and sniffed, trying to decipher if it was him that smelt like sweltering roadkill or everybody else around him. Given the usual state of the ER, it was most likely the latter, but Trinity would soon inform him if it wasn’t if that was her lurking behind him.
“How are you holding up?” Robby didn’t step any further forward. He just lingered at Dennis’ back, his arms probably crossed at his chest and his glasses on top of his head. He’d gotten new ones at the weekend and sent a slightly blurry photo of them to Dennis via text, just to show him, like he was excited to be able to share the classically mundane with him. It had made Dennis feel giddy and embarrassed all in one go.
In response, Dennis grunted and held up his notebook to show Robby the smears of perspiration he’d been wiping across the pages inadvertently all day. His fingers were so slick that the pen had almost flown out of them a couple of times. Once, almost into a patient’s eye, which would have been a whole new problem to contend with.
“That bad, huh?” Robby asked, mildly amused at Dennis’ suffering apparently. Then his voice lowered in volume and Dennis could feel the way his breath buffered against the hairs at the nape of his neck, moving the curls that had wound even tighter around themselves with the added salty nutrients from his constant perspiring. “Are you drinking enough? Do you need to take a step away or—”
“I’m fine,” Dennis said, just as quietly, “thank you.” It sounded terse, but it wasn’t meant to be. So he cushioned it by turning so that his body was at a ninety-degree angle to the desk, his profile drawing Robby’s eyeline so much that he greedily followed the line of Dennis’ nose and lips down and then back up again. Utterly shameless. With blatant disregard for the fact that Dana had pitched up to watch them from the corner of Dennis’ eye, her glasses tilted down on her nose and her mouth tilted up. Hopefully she wouldn’t hear when Dennis smiled and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this sweaty for this long for a good while. I feel wet through.”
Robby was silent for a moment, then he lowered the volume of his voice even further, quiet enough that Dennis had to strain to hear him over the sounds of the ER, and said, “I don’t see a problem.” If he could have, Dennis was sure that Robby’s hands would be plastered to his body as tightly as his damp clothing was. Especially with the way he seemed to be almost caught off guard by his own voraciousness as he muttered, “It’s—uh—you smell good.” Then immediately crushed the space between his thumb and forefinger against his chin, trying to trap whatever it was he might have admitted next from worming its way out of his mouth.
“What?” Dennis thought he might have misheard.
“Nothing,” Robby said. “Don’t worry.”
Finally, Robby left his bastion behind Dennis and perched an elbow onto the desk. The sleeve of his undershirt was pulled up into the crook of it, piled up in a mass of fabric that would serve perfectly for a fingerhold for Dennis to hook his into and hang off of Robby, even in the smallest way. His mother would call him a ‘little limpet’ when he was small and he’d cling onto her, his arms around her neck, until she peeled him off of her. He’d always needed someone to lean on.
“So,” Robby began, and despite the fact he had no idea where the conversation was going to lead, Dennis wilted even further into the desk. “I received a pretty interesting text last night.” Dana had turned away from them. A dark patch on the small of her back, turning her dark blue scrubs an even deeper colour. Like a black lake. Dennis watched her carefully as Robby continued, “You know, I might even warrant a guess that it didn’t come from you and instead, it came from a certain roommate.”
Tearing his eyes away from Dana, cautious around her for barely any reason, especially given that the worst gossips in the building were Princess, Perlah and Trinity, Dennis felt his mouth open to respond. Then it closed again, his facial features pulling up tightly as he tried not to laugh or, the worse option, let the embarrassment take too hard of a hold.
“Sorry,” he said, not sure what else to say.
“Don’t apologise,” Robby said, trying to treat the conversation like a normal, workplace one. Nothing untoward. His face was completely neutral as he peered down at Dennis and added, “What she lacks in tact she makes up for in persuasion.” Dennis could have pushed his cheeks into his palms, sheltering it from the miniscule, almost smug smile that Robby had let sneak onto his face as he said, “I’ll respond later. Do you need a lift home?”
“No,” Dennis groaned, acutely conscious that, while Dana had wandered off with Emma in tow, Trinity was watching them from where she should have been charting. “I’ll walk.”
“It’ll be ho-ot.” Robby drummed his fingers onto the desk as he dragged out the last word. He was giddy. That was the only word for the performance he was giving Dennis. A grown-up facsimile of childish glee around the person you ‘like liked’ when all that kept you apart was a seating plan and the swift glare of a teacher when they caught you chatting quietly under your breath during lessons.
“It’s hot right now,” Dennis said, commending himself internally for his self-restraint. “I’ll walk, Robby. It’s fine.”
“Fine, suit yourself.” When Robby smiled a certain way, Dennis could feel his better judgement leaking out the side of his head, so he shook his head, trying to unclog his ears of it as he, rather boldly, waved Robby away with a flick of his hand. Dismissing him in a move that should have gotten him written up with a disciplinary but in reality made Robby bark a laugh and then wander off, his hands wrapped around either end of his stethoscope. As he left, Dennis let his slick hands slide along the desktop, and he wheeled away from it, stomping over with mounting annoyance to where Trinity was sitting with her arms crossed. Her chin was raised, ready to say something but Dennis cut in immediately.
“No more texting you-know-who from my phone,” he said, grabbing onto his hips and turning his body into what he hoped was a strikingly assertive pillar above her, which obviously didn’t work, as it was Trinity he was attempting it with. So, in a fit of unprofessionalism, he leant down and started pressing random buttons on the keyboard of the computer, watching as Trinity’s hands went from immobile to scrambling to shove him away. Luckily, she found it so funny that she laughed one huge laugh and then, realising where she was, ducked her head and forcibly shoved Dennis away from her. Just about averting a scene being made.
“Jesus Christ! Okay!” She said, shielding the computer with her arms before sniffing hard through her nose. “Dude, you smell like a high school boys’ locker room. Go have a birdbath in the staff bathroom or something. You stink.”
“You do too!” Dennis squawked. “Everybody does right now!”
“You especially,” Trinity muttered, but her smile suggested she was being hyperbolic. Dennis still had trouble discerning that bit, despite them almost being together for a whole year. “You need a PTB bath.”
“What?”
“Pits, tits and bits,” Trinity said, making herself laugh so hard that she had to clutch onto the edge of the desk to stabilise herself.
“Oh my god, shut up,” Dennis murmured, trying not to smile. “Robby said I smelt good, so—”
“That’s disgusting. I don’t need to hear that. I’d rather hear about someone’s prolapsing rectum.”
"W–what?” Victoria had passed by at the wrong time. “Don’t tell me we’ve got—”
“No, Crash,” Trinity said, “I was talking about Huckleberry.”
Javadi’s eyes widened in her patented look of worry, her top lip pulling up as her teeth were exposed with the force of her disgust and Dennis was forced to watch her gaze drift down and then back up again before she asked in a hushed voice, “Have you—?”
“Don’t you love your job, Whitaker?” Trinity interjected. “Don’t you love this?”
“She’s being a jackass. As usual,” Dennis said tightly. “I’m perfectly healthy, thank you, Dr Santos.”
“Aye aye, Dr Whitaker,” Trinity said, saluting him with a hand to her temple. “Be careful out there, though.” She turned the hand, faux-whispering into the side of it as she jabbed an accusatory thumb at Dennis, “Size queen.”
Javadi gasped, then laughed, then cleared her throat and scrambled to find something else to do, but it all was lost as Dennis had already marched away.
~*~
Much like the unending pelt of the rain, the beat of the sun outside of the hospital after his shift was just as diabolical, and it was only amplified through the windows of buildings it cut through like a concentrated beam and Dennis felt like bits of him were being left on the pavement as he sloped along. Being stuck to the sweltering ground, despite the fact it was the evening. He slid the back of his wrist across his forehead and could almost see the speckles of his life force being extracted. He’d never been that hot before and the wobbling waves of heat rose visibly around him with every step, reminding him that he could have been sitting in the passenger seat of Robby’s air-conditioned car. With his hand on his knee and a fridge full of icy cold soda on the other end, if he was lucky enough to be invited back to his home. Although that invitation would inevitably lead to the chance of sex, and Dennis was so nervous of the fact that it had all been a fluke and that he’d underperform after the magic of the wedding that he’d been avoiding the subject. Tamping it down as he stuck his hands under his ass in bed and tried to stop himself from touching his dick from the force of the memory alone of Robby’s fingers fisted into the back of his hair.
Horribly, he’d had the thought that he’d rather sleep with someone else in the meantime, just to try and hone his abilities with someone he wouldn’t ever have to see again, rather than pitifully crawl back to Robby without a single new skill to be shown. Which did mean he was living under the implication that any of it mattered, but his proclivity to push himself and prove himself had reared itself from where he usually tried to keep it under wraps. It was a problem that he knew he shared with Trinity. If you couldn’t be good at things the first time around, then why even bother?
With a creak of the material, his fists tightened around straps of his backpack and with the knowledge that Trinity would be at Yolanda’s apartment for two nights, he thought about the possibility that he could send out some sort of pathetic beacon into the city, pleading for someone to come and teach him how to not flounder in the bedroom when he inevitably found himself back in the company of Robby. But then the thought twisted and all he could think about, wandering through the city in a daze, was the soft sound of Robby’s teaching voice. The warmth of his praise and how he had spent the better part of his career perfecting the way to nudge people towards their own betterment with their work. By the time he’d imagined Robby wheeling out a whiteboard and pointing to various parts on a diagram of his own body that Dennis studiously gazed at, lapping up the information of where Robby would want to be touched, the sun was a glob of golden egg yolk in the sky. Melting away behind the row of cars that lined the street outside of the apartment, losing its power as the city gobbled it up. Although the key was still warm from his pocket as he jabbed it into the lock and twisted. Then, with a sigh, he piled into the apartment, flung open a selection of windows, and barrelled straight towards the shower.
There was no need to shut and lock the door with Trinity at Yolanda’s, so Dennis left it ajar, the breeze from the open windows wafting around his shoulders as he peeled off his shirt and let it puddle onto the bathroom tiles. Even they felt warm beneath his feet as he scraped off his socks, one at a time, having to stretch out his toes like he always did after being on his feet all day. He’d have to sleep with all the windows open tonight as well as a fan on and no doubt would wake tomorrow, dry-mouthed and aching, to find that even by the early morning the heat would be relentless again. It was forecast for at least another four or five days, but the respite was that Dennis was off for the next two days, and the mass of human liquid he would become in the ferocity of the sun would be contained to the apartment, rather than the corridors of the hospital.
He’d just started poking at the strip of mild sunburn on his forehead, which he’d got from walking home, when his phone buzzed on the sink, and it almost ended up in the open toilet bowl as Dennis jumped at the sound of it vibrating against the porcelain. He scooped it up, suddenly and strangely self-conscious of his shirtlessness as he pressed the button to answer the call he wasn’t aware he was going to need to have, pressing it to his sweaty temple as he closed his eyes and murmured, “You made me jump.”
“I did?” Robby sounded relaxed. He probably was splayed on his couch. “Sorry. I forget that people of your age are frightened by phone calls. I can hang up and text you, if you’d prefer.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dennis said, tucking the phone into his shoulder as he fiddled with the button on the jeans he’d changed into after his shift, finding that his fingers slipped over the metal of it a few times before he could gain any real purchase on it. “I like phone calls. I’m traditional. I didn’t have a smartphone until pretty recently in the grand scheme of things.” Finally the button popped open and he unzipped himself incrementally, worried that Robby could hear. “Trinity’s out, so I’m home alone tonight. I guess I’m still not entirely used to empty houses just yet.” With his jeans around his ankles and a thumb in the waistband of his underwear, he said, “I used to pray for whole weekends with an empty house when all my brothers still lived at home, but now it just feels kind of lonely.”
“You could come over to mine?” Robby suggested it so easily. Easy breezy.
“Uh—”
“No pressure,” Robby said. “Or, I could send you some money for you to get some takeout and have a nice quiet evening to yourself.”
The heat and shock of the remembrance that this was something that they did had Dennis bumping the curve of his lower belly into the sink and he sucked in air through his teeth as he righted himself and then said, “You absolutely don’t need to do that, Robby.”
“That argument is moot after you admitted to my face that it turns you on,” Robby said, with a bounce to the words that was both smug and, unfortunately, incredibly sexy. Making Dennis push the phone even further up against his face, shielding Robby’s words to him, just in case someone in an apartment three floors below could hear him talking to Dennis like he’d always wanted someone to talk to him. A little bit dirty. But also nice, too. Even his following laugh at Dennis’ silence made his lower pelvis clench and when he met his own eyes in the mirror, he had a dark pink, shameful flush that went all the way from his lower cheeks to just below his eyelashes.
“Dennis?”
He exhaled. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m listening.”
“And not arguing, may I add.”
Dennis laughed, wiping his palm down his face before he murmured, “Maybe a little bit of money would be nice. There’s a new Vietnamese place just down the block from our apartment that I wanted to try.” The light from the settled sun was still lingering well enough that Dennis forewent turning on the top light of the bathroom, instead pressing a finger to the light up mirror that Trinity had, beaming a square of white, bright light onto him. Showing off that strip of sunburn even further, like a land strip of colour that Trinity would zero in on when she arrived back from Yolanda’s apartment. He rubbed a fingertip over it and said into his phone, “Trinity often orders for me. Not in a weird way. She just gets excited because there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t tried. We didn’t really have a lot of choice for takeout living out where we were at home compared to Pittsburgh.” He smiled. “I mean, you did the drive. You know.”
“So,” Robby said, “what you’re saying is that you could do with having a palate-expanding experience?”
“I’m saying that’s what Trinity assumes,” Dennis said, shrugging to himself, as if Robby could see the movement.
“Well, I’ve got a curated list of places we could order from. If you wanted something a little different.”
Every moment since the wedding, Dennis had been waiting for Robby to add the caveat of ‘it’s a date’ to his sentences. He had yet to. Maybe he never would. But Dennis was stubborn, too.
“I guess I need to come over and you can take charge.” Dennis closed his eyes. Too afraid to look at himself in the mirror as he spoke, just in case he would find that he had morphed into a huge, slathering beast. Panting and presenting itself.
God. How embarrassing.
“Jesus, Den,” Robby laughed, muffling the sound with what presumably was his hand. Dennis liked to imagine that if he were to continue, Robby would have to hide his face in the neckline of his t-shirt, obscuring his juvenile excitement beneath the material when his hands become not enough to contain it all. Sometimes, at work, he could see the way that it brimmed at the surface of their interactions. The wedding had knocked the lid loose and now there was nothing but both of their wills keeping Robby’s fondness at a professional level. That didn’t seemingly stop him from smelling Dennis like fatty meat, though. Practically dribbling down the front of his scrubs. And the predatory evolution that Robby was undergoing was evident as he groaned and asked, “So, what are you doing right now?”
“Really, Robby?”
Another laugh. Harder this time and slightly more relaxed, despite Robby’s clear arousal. “What? It was a genuine question. I’m not—it’s not that kind of question.”
“Uh-huh,” Dennis grunted.
“Although,” Robby began, then, lowering his voice, he murmured, “Dennis, what are you doing right now?”
Unmoved by a large percentage of Robby’s humour now that he wasn’t afraid that not laughing would end in his dismissal from medical school, Dennis found himself actually giggling at that, more out of the ridiculousness of it than the genuine quality of the joke, and he rubbed his hand over his belly and said quietly, “I’m going to take a shower because I’m still completely drenched after work. Afterwards, you’re going to send me some money for takeout that I’m then going to eat on the couch while watching one of the many films Trinity refuses to watch with me.”
“Passion of the Christ?”
“Get a grip,” Dennis said. “No.” He debated elaborating, then relented almost immediately and said, “Moulin Rouge.”
“She doesn’t want to watch Moulin Rouge?”
“Trinity says that jukebox musicals are a secret ring of Hell, so—”
“Are you in the bathroom right now?”
“Yes. Robby, come on, the restaurant is going to be shut by the time you let me end this phone call—”
There was a strangled quality to Robby’s voice. The implication being that he wasn’t particularly used to suggesting what he was about to, as he ground out into the phone, “Not that this is tit for tat. I’ll happily send you the money or anything else you want but,” Dennis could hear him swallow before he continued, “fuck, Dennis, I’d really like to see you right now.”
Acutely aware of the bags under his eyes, the sunburn, the way he didn’t know how to take selfies regardless of the situation and the way the light was waning to a point where the shadows that cupped all the soft puppy fat of his body were thick and dark, Dennis croaked, “I could Facetime you?”
“You could,” Robby agreed. “Or, you could text me a photograph.”
Disturbingly, even the stupid, middle-aged phrasing made Dennis’ spine jolt into a completely straight line. If he were to glance down, he would inevitably have to make eye contact with his dick, which was halfway to being hard beneath his boxers. Just from Robby’s voice in his ear and the attention that bolstered the concept of Robby paying for things. Anything. Now that Dennis had moved past the idea that it was a sour-tasting sympathy and instead was a dirty kind of lust that propelled Robby towards financially supporting him, it more than turned him on. It made his blood feel supercharged in his veins. He’d never done drugs before but he was sure they wouldn’t ever match up to the feeling he got when Robby smiled and took care of the problem.
“Yeah?” Sometimes, the type of arousal he felt from Robby was itchy. Like a disease that he was sure wasn’t going to be so easily cured. Dennis felt like he was gouged open from it, digging into the troughs even though he shouldn’t. Repeating the cycle. “If you’d like me to, I could do that.” Without thinking, he raised an arm and flexed, watching the muscles bunch and shape his bicep into a peak of thick, tense power. “What would you do with the photo?”
“One of your employable traits is your intelligence, Dennis. Your powers of deduction.”
“I think you just don’t want to admit that you’re being lecherous,” Dennis said.
“Lecherous. That’s a good word,” Robby said, laughing again. “Alright. Let me be direct, if that’ll sweeten the deal. I want to look at how gorgeous you are, all that naked skin, and I want to think about how you’ve got an empty apartment, and I have an empty house, but you’re not hanging out with me.” Dennis tutted, tapping the mirror a second time to turn the light onto an even brighter intensity of luminosity. Almost dazzling himself as Robby seemed to take on board the noise as he said, “Which, I completely understand; personal time is important. I just thought it might be nice to see you in some regard tonight. And if you happen to be bereft of clothing, hey, who am I to complain?”
“I guess so,” Dennis said slowly, not opposed to the idea, but he did feel the need to add, “Wouldn’t you prefer the photo post-shower? I’m—uh—pretty nasty.” He flicked a finger up through his greasy bangs. “Grubby.”
Robby groaned like he was either in pain or rubbing himself against the flat of his hand. “No. That’s fine. That’s good.” There was a wet sound, like he had licked his lips. “I’ve almost got to a point where I’m not above begging for them to fix the A/C at work. I’m old. My heart can’t handle another few days with you walking around like you have been.” There was another sound, like the first, and Dennis might have asked Robby if he was touching himself if he wasn’t so thoroughly and intensely obsessed with hearing him praise whatever it was he saw in a hot, dripping Dennis on the ER floor. “God, and you smell good.”
“Right,” Dennis murmured, “like a sweaty mess.”
“Not to me.”
“Do you want a photo or not?”
Robby’s voice went tight. “Yeah. Please.”
Keeping the phone call connected, Dennis swiped away, opening up his camera and in the glowing rectangle of his phone, he looked at himself. The slope of his shoulders and the twist of his belly button as it punched a hole in his middle, right above where the sink cut a line through him and it just about shielded his crotch from view. All that was visible through the phone’s aperture were the soft curls of his pubic hair as they spiralled up towards his belly, up towards where the mound of fat sat, the one that Robby had cupped in his sleep when they’d shared his bed after the wedding. He had been indifferent to the parts of him that were a little bit fat, benign bits of flesh that meant nothing to him, but when Robby pulled at them with his fingers, suddenly they were at the forefront of his mind.
“You still there?” Robby asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Dennis muttered, “I don’t—I’m not a big selfie guy. I'm not super practiced at it. Sorry.”
“If you don’t feel comfortable—”
“Robby. Just give me a second, okay? Stop talking for five minutes.”
There was a swish of air against the receiver. Maybe Robby had zipped his lips.
As he hovered his thumb over the shutter button, Dennis watched it shudder. Juddering with a force that smeared the image of himself on the screen, the pixels blurring before he took a small breath, trying to stay still as he pushed his face into a smile and then clicked the button. Finding that the image it created looked strange and uncanny.
He sighed. “I’m bad at this.”
“You’re overthinking it, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” Dennis grumbled. Attempting another photo and at least managing the second time to keep his hand still. But his face still looked tight. “Do you have any requests? I’m sort of just standing here. Looking a bit limp.”
“Is it a big mirror?”
“No. Regular sized for above a sink in the bathroom.”
“Lean forward,” Robby said, and Dennis did. “Put a hand above the mirror. Push your chest together.”
“What chest?” Dennis looked at the phone screen, not mentioning the fact that if he did squeeze his shoulders, it would in fact crush his chest into looking soft and plush. “If you want breasts, I’m not the way to go.” Which was a lie anyway, as Robby had sucked on his chest at the house, his tongue swivelling around Dennis’ flushed, puffy nipples until he had to squeeze his thighs together. “Okay, now what?”
“Just—think about me looking at the photo. Think about how happy you make me.”
“Right,” Dennis mumbled. Instead, he thought about Robby’s eyes being glued to the tiny sliver of dick that was visible at the angle now that he’d slid his boxers down to pool with his jeans. Just a peek of shaft. It was quite tasteful, actually. Finally, his face relaxed and he pressed the shutter, blinking through his eyelashes and attempting something that was more towards simplicity than seduction. A small smile. A little quirk of his lips. The expression he directed towards Robby across the ER. A shared understanding that they knew each other far more than everyone who milled around them might have expected them to.
He didn’t think when he went to send it. Completely mindless as he opened up their text conversation, being presented with the last text he’d sent Robby which said, ‘breakfast tea with sugar, please!’ In his photo gallery, the photo looked out of place. A lurid display of sexuality amongst the photos of sunsets and Trinity pulling faces. He tapped on it, highlighting it and watching it zoom into the text bubble as Robby breathed heavily down the line, awaiting his prize with such patience that Dennis was driven by it to reopen the camera. Turning himself around, still just as brainless and driven by a natural need to reward Robby for good behaviour, he perched his ass onto the sink. Making sure to get the curvature of his spine and the bulge of his ass cheeks as he, somewhat awkwardly, took a second photo to accompany the first, so it wouldn’t be so lonely. The second was as shaky as the practice one had been, the colours turning into strips of fizzy light, but Dennis had somehow gotten his ass to look the best it ever had. Save the two dots of red acne he had on the left cheek. Hopefully, Robby wouldn’t look too hard.
Then, he sent the text. That was it. Listening to Robby inhale sharply and then almost moan, “Jesus Christ.”
“Is that okay?” He didn’t mean to sound so needy and unsure.
“Baby,” Robby barely spoke the word; he just breathed it out in a rush of crackling electricity against his phone. “That’s perfect.”
“You know, you don’t need to send me any money,” Dennis said, zooming in on the tiny spots on his ass cheek, suddenly feeling strange. “It’s alright.”
“No, come on,” Robby whined. “The money was a treat. Nothing to do with this. Don’t draw conclusions because I’m being—you know—lecherous.”
“Okay. Yeah. Alright.” Dennis closed the text conversation. He was hard now. Shivering gently. Itching. Completely pent up and regretting his refusal of Robby’s offer to be personally chauffeured to his home. He probably had a king-sized bed. He probably would wake him up with breakfast in bed.
God.
Well. There were worse things to do on a Friday night.
“Not to be presumptuous,” Dennis began, “but maybe I could grab the food for two and then you could come pick me up after?”
Robby sounded so charmingly happy that it made Dennis want to twirl his hair around his finger. “Yeah?”
“You have a dining table. We haven’t bought one yet.” Dennis swivelled round, peering down at his ass again, trying to determine if he should pilfer some of Trinity’s sugar scrub. “It’d be easier to eat at yours.”
“Absolutely,” Robby said. Almost giddy. Dennis was fucked. “I love Vietnamese.”
“Uh-huh.” Dennis was barely listening. “Let me just shower and then I’ll go get the food afterwards—”
“Don’t,” Robby groaned.
“What?”
Shame made Robby’s voice pitch up higher. Made it go nasally and shy. “Don’t shower. I’ll be there in an hour, baby.”
Then, he hung up, and Dennis had to simply stare down at his dark phone and say, “Oh. Okay.”