Chapter Text
On Monday, a young woman comes into the Pitt covered in partial-thickness burns from a kitchen grease fire. She’s wheeled in screaming, and she keeps at it with impressive volume, not letting up - even with a morphine drip - until she’s unconscious. By then the sound has been going on for so long that Dennis hears it inside his skull for the rest of the shift. After that, everyone’s on edge all day. A real tone-setter for the week from hell.
It doesn’t help that he has his final medical licensing exam in two weeks. He’s studying every spare minute, but spare minutes are harder to come by than usual even before what happens on Tuesday.
So, Tuesday: a massive train derailment brings scores of commuters into the ED with everything from fractures and concussions to an abdomen impaled on a subway pole. The casualties are low, but enough folks are transferred to the ICU that Dennis will be surprised if they all make it through the week. Around 2pm, he quite literally runs into Dr. Robby in the hall.
“Oh, shit, sorry.” He bends down to pick up the clipboard he’s knocked out of Robby’s hands. Robby blinks like he’s hardly noticed. The man’s already looking like a husk, a bewildered expression on his face as Dennis places the clipboard back in his hands. Dennis cocks his head to one side, brow furrowed with concern. “You okay?”
Robby nods, clearly distracted. His face is pallid, forehead coated with a light sheen of sweat.
Dennis narrows his eyes. “Are you sure?”
Robby opens his mouth, closes it. He gives Dennis’ shoulder a squeeze, ruffles his hair. He does not answer the question. “Guy in South 2 needs a CT. D’you mind?”
He’s halfway down the hall before Dennis can respond.
By Thursday, they’ve lost three of the patients from the derailment. Two of them were more or less stable the day before. Even Dennis - usually so steady - has to duck into the restroom to vomit after calling TOD on a 20-year-old with purple hair whose subdural hematoma escalated faster than anyone could catch. They’d been cracking jokes an hour before: when Princess asked them about their head, they told her they “haven't had any complaints” without missing a beat. In less time than it takes to perform a chest MRI, they’re cold in the morgue.
Robby’s in a nasty mood that day. Rumour has it the latest casualty of PTMC’s budget cuts is a switch to a new brand of sterile gloves - a few cents cheaper per unit makes a difference when you go through thousands every day, Dennis supposes. “A buddy of mine works at the PLC in Calgary,” Donnie mutters, huddled with Dennis, Perlah, and McKay by the nurse’s station while Robby and Gloria bicker behind the flimsy curtain of an adjacent exam room. “Apparently somebody’s glove had a microscopic lesion. Contaminated the surgical field, nearly killed a patient. And it’s happened in other places, too.”
They all nod knowingly - they’ve heard the stories. So has Robby. Hell, so has Gloria, but based on the snippets of conversation that Dennis can overhear, it’s still “too anecdotal” for her to justify not making the switch.
“So, what, you want to wait until enough people have died to make it statistically significant?” Robby whips the curtain open. The group around the nurse’s station scatters. Dennis and Donnie stare at the board intently.
“PLC was a manufacturing error,” Gloria cajoles, trailing behind Robby.
“And Portland? New Haven VC?” Dennis tries to keep up the performance of reading the board, but he can tell just from the tone of Robby’s voice that his irritation is seconds from bubbling over.
Gloria hesitates. “...So we’ll look at the batch codes.”
“On every box?”
“Yes, on every -”
At Robby’s sharp inhale, a surefire predecessor to the kind of outburst he really shouldn’t be having in front of a packed ED, Dennis whips around. “Dr. Robby, got a sec?”
“For you, Dr. Whitaker? I got two.” He’s following Dennis down the hall and away from Gloria before she can say another word. When they’re in the clear, Robby slumps against the wall, scrubs a hand across his face. “Thanks for that.”
“When’s the last time you had some water?” Dennis asks.
Robby scrapes his knuckles across the opposite palm, fidgety. “I’ll get to it.” He’s been distracted all week, but for a moment he actually looks at Dennis. He reaches out and lightly touches a curl at the nape of Dennis' neck, speaking gently. “What about you? I heard about your hematoma kid. Need a breather?”
Dennis raises an eyebrow. “You gonna take one with me?”
Robby huffs out a small, humourless laugh, shaking his head. “Go get a snack, Den,” he mutters, and again, he’s fucked off around the corner before Dennis can even open his mouth to call out the hypocrisy.
End-of-shift on Saturday can’t come soon enough. Dennis feels like his limbs are made of lead, like he’ll sink straight into the floor if he’s still for too long. As he slings his backpack over one shoulder and turns to shut his locker, he’s too drained to even be startled when Dr. Abbot appears behind his locker door like a horror movie jumpscare.
“You look like hell, kid,” Dr. Abbot astutely observes.
Dennis sighs, leans against the lockers. “Yeah, well.”
Abbot digs in his own backpack for a second, producing a shiny red apple and placing it in Dennis’ hand before he can refuse. Dennis stares at it a second, dazed, before the corner of his mouth twitches into a barely-perceptible smirk. “Thought I was supposed to be teacher’s pet.”
Abbot doesn’t seem in the mood for flirting today - unusual. “Eat,” he orders, and Dennis does.
“Listen, I just finished handover with Robby.” He watches Dennis chew and swallow massive chunks of apple. “He’s in a bad way.”
Dennis feels a spike of irritability shoot up between his shoulders, tensing them. “Yeah, no shit,” he says through a mouthful of fruit. What, like he didn't notice?
Abbot frowns. “I’m serious. I think he headed home already, but you should probably get over there.”
God dammit. Dennis hands a picked-clean apple core back to Abbot, waving over his shoulder as he walks away. “Have a good shift, Jack.”
Robby’d had the good sense to take his truck instead of the motorcycle that day. After dropping Dennis off at the hospital at 5 am, he’d spent the morning driving to a medical supply warehouse two counties over to buy, out of his own pocket, as many boxes of good exam gloves as he could fit in the truck bed.
Dennis finds his parking space empty.
Public transit is still fucked from Tuesday’s disaster, operating at half its usual capacity, so it’s completely dark out when Dennis finally makes it to Robby’s front door. He lets himself in - he’s got his own key - and finds it dark inside, too. “Hello?” he calls into the seemingly empty home. When he drops his backpack by the door, he sees Robby’s shoes there.
“Robby? Where are you?”
He flicks on the light, and hears a sniffle. A shadow moves on the kitchen floor.
Michael Robinavitch is hunched on the floor between the kitchen island and the fridge. He’s got his head between his knees, arms over his cervical spine like he’s bracing for an explosion. Dennis has seen this before. What he witnessed at Pittfest was in its own category entirely, but Dennis knows the way that Robby’s nervous system collapses in on itself sometimes when it all gets to be too much. It doesn’t scare him.
This time, though, he’d be lying if he said it didn’t kind of piss him off. Between the steady thrum of anger that’s been moving inside him all week, kindled by his colleagues’ expectant looks - as if, now that everyone knows they’re together, suddenly it’s his job to handle Robby - and the utter helplessness of the fact that he can only do so much when Robby won’t let him… This moment feels inevitable.
“What did you think was going to happen?” he asks, squatting down to Robby’s eye level. “Huh?” Robby doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look up at him. He surprises himself further when he hears his voice go firm, sharp. “I asked you a question.”
Robby meets his eyes at that. It’s a tone and words that he’s used on Dennis, both at work and in private. Different contexts, always authoritative. Always the one with the power. It’s not like Dennis to be harsh like this. “I’m - I’m sorry,” Robby sputters.
Dennis huffs out an exasperated sigh. “Dammit, Robby. I don't get it. You’re always telling people how important it is for them to talk about their feelings, and lean on their loved ones, and ask for what they need, but God fucking forbid you’d take your own advice.” Now that the words are spilling out of his mouth, he feels like he can’t stop, even as Robby shrinks in front of him. “You don’t know how to take care of yourself. Or maybe you do, but you just won’t, is that it? What the hell is it going to take?”
Robby’s crying softly. The part of Dennis that’s a healer, gentle and patient, who once sat up all night with a dying sheepdog mauled by a coyote, even as it snapped its teeth at him, terrified and in pain - the part that loves Robby so, so much - wants to reach out and hold him, to let the other man collapse in his arms and fall apart, at last. He’s done it before. He’ll do it as many times as it takes for Robby to realize that he’s worthy of care. But that’s exactly why the other part of him - the part that loves Robby so much that it kills him every time Robby pushes through the pain until it spills over and razes him to the ground - is so pissed. That part is steering the ship right now. Dennis rises to his feet.
“Get up, Robby. Now. I’m not letting you stay on the kitchen floor all night.”
“I can’t,” Robby whimpers, shaking his head.
Dennis takes in a deep breath, lets it out just as slowly. He sets his jaw and straightens his posture. “That’s fine,” he responds after a moment, his tone suddenly unreadable. The heat of his anger is gone, but he’s not finished yet. Not even close. “If you can’t walk to your room, you can crawl.”
Robby stares up at Dennis with wet eyes, and for a second, Dennis is afraid he's gone too far. Robby shifts slightly, his bare foot touching Dennis’ still-shoed one. A bid for assurance. So he softens his gaze a bit, just enough to let Robby see that he’s safe. Somehow his eyes say trust me, and somehow Robby does. Dennis reaches a hand out to brush Robby’s greying temple, just for a second, and watches him lean into the touch. Then he takes a small step back, breaking contact, and asks - gentle but undeniably authoritative - “Walk or crawl?”
It’s tough on his knees and his wrists, but Robby actually starts to slowly crawl toward the bedroom.
Holy shit.
If he’s being honest, he half expected Robby to snap out of it purely out of a need to put his boy back in his place. In another universe, Robby would hear Dennis say Walk or crawl? and start laughing. He’d be ripped from this state in an instant, rising to his feet and shaking his head condescendingly at Dennis, at this dumb pup who really thought he was in charge for a second. Either way, panic attack averted - another means to the same end.
Besides, they’ve never talked about switching roles like this. Dennis isn’t even quite sure that’s what’s happening now; it’s not like he could have planned it beforehand. After checking in with Robby so many fucking times, all week long, just to be rebuffed and shrugged off every time with a Really, I’m fine or an Are you eating enough, Whitaker?, he doesn’t know what else he can do. But now Robby is on his hands and knees, making his way down the hall, and Dennis can see that he’s trembling.
It makes him want to scoop him up and protect him from the world like he’s a sick barn cat.
It makes him want to shake his head and pinch himself, because obviously this is only a weird dream brought about by extreme stress.
It makes his dick jump a bit in his scrubs.
“Good - that’s good,” he says awkwardly, inexperienced as he is at saying anything remotely dominant to Robby. “I’ll be right there,” he adds, not wanting to leave him alone for even a second. He takes two glasses out of the cupboard and fills them with water. Then he pads slowly down the hall.
He stops for a second when he’s right beside Robby, who wraps a hand weakly around his ankle and looks up at him blearily. He gives him another wordless look - Is this still okay? - and Robby blinks up at him slowly - Yes. Keep going.
There’s a cozy armchair with a reading lamp in the corner of Robby’s bedroom, visible from the doorway. Dennis has woken up countless times after an exhausting shift, bundled in layers of blankets he doesn’t remember getting for himself, to find Robby seated in that chair with a book and a cup of coffee, waiting for him. He’ll sit up, rubbing at his eyes sleepily, and watch Robby’s crow’s feet deepen as he smiles at his boy, welcoming him back to the land of the living from an impossibly long and much-needed rest.
Now, Dennis sets down the glasses of water on the small table next to the chair, flicks on the lamp, and makes himself comfortable as he watches Robby crawling toward him.
Once Robby is right in front of him, Dennis leans down, holding his bearded chin in his hand to keep it still, the way he likes for Robby to do to him when he’s so far gone he can’t make eye contact anymore. The way Robby looks up at him then, kneeling on the floor at Dennis’ feet, reminds him of a Renaissance painting of a martyred saint in ecstatic agony: a halo of soft light around him, tears streaking his cheeks, damp eyes lifted upward.
God, is that what he looks like when he’s in this state? If so, he gets it now. Robby is so beautiful like this, so vulnerable and trusting. He wants to take him apart.
“If you’re not going to take care of yourself,” Dennis says gently, “I’m going to do it for you. You’re going to let me. If you want to curl up in a ball and hide, that’s fine, you can do that. But I’m going to be in charge. Okay?”
Robby can’t do anything but nod.
Dennis stands. “Stay right there. I’ll be back in a second.”
He heads back to the kitchen to retrieve his backpack from where he dropped it when he first noticed Robby there. Then he returns to the bedroom just as the other man is curling in on himself, almost in child’s pose on the floor in front of the armchair. His heart skips a beat - it’s as though Robby is reading his mind. This is exactly what he was going to tell him to do. His satisfaction at being right wells up in him like it does when he makes a tricky diagnosis.
He takes a pillow from the bed, drops it to the floor beside Robby. “For your knees,” he explains, and Robby obliges, sliding the pillow under his knees on the floor. He crouches down closer to Robby’s level for a moment while he rummages through his backpack for a pen, a few highlighters, and a thick blue binder labeled USMLE-3.
“You can stay there. I have a lot of studying to do, and I don’t have time to save you from yourself again right now,” he says, not unkindly. “I’m going to sit here,” he returns to the armchair, “And I’m going to put my feet up. Because I worked really hard today, and all week, and I deserve to let myself relax.” He hopes Robby picks up on the pointedness of his words.
Dennis is reaching down to remove his boots when he feels Robby’s hand around his ankle again. He pauses. Robby says something unintelligible, his forehead pressed to the floor.
“What was that, Robby?” Dennis leans down to hear him better, a hand gently on his shoulder.
“Leave them on,” he hears Robby say. “Please.”
He feels a familiar twinge of arousal at that. “Okay,” he murmurs, rubbing Robby’s shoulders for a moment like he’s calming a spooked horse. Then he sits back in the chair and carefully lifts his legs, one at a time, to rest the backs of his heels against Robby’s back.
They stay like this for a while, both of them silent. For Dennis’ part, he can’t focus much on studying. He tests himself on a few pages of case simulations, but he doesn’t retain the information - probably because he’s glancing down at the man on the floor every few moments. Robby doesn’t move at all. Eventually his breathing becomes slow and deep, and he’s so still it’s like he’s become one with the rug, like the gravity of the earth is cradling him there.
Dennis doesn’t even have his full weight on his back. His thighs are tense from the way he hovers slightly, not wanting to apply too much pressure and risk hurting him. He shuts the binder and sets it aside. “Hey, Robby? I’m going to move now.” Robby nods slowly after a moment.
The muscles in Dennis’ legs are relieved when he finally rests his feet on the ground again. He leans over to place a hand gently on Robby’s lower back, gently stroking in soothing circles. “Can you sit up on your knees for me?”
With effort, Robby peels himself off the floor, shifting on the pillow still under his knees so that he can face Dennis. His arms lay limply at his sides, eyelids heavy, lips slightly parted. Dennis recognizes the same pliant, dazed state he finds himself in when Robby yanks him by the scruff of the neck, or stuffs thick fingers in his mouth, or pushes him to his knees and keeps him there. God, he’s so far gone already. Dennis’ heart swells with the need to take care of him, to protect and guide him in this vulnerable subspace the way Robby does for him.
He takes Robby’s face in both hands, looks him in the eyes. His pupils are blown wide. “Still with me?”
“Yeah,” Robby says, breathlessly. Dennis glances down and sees that Robby is rock hard, tenting his trousers. Robby notices his noticing; he reaches out a hand to brush Dennis’ calf. “Please -”
“You haven’t had any water today.” It’s not a question. He reaches for one of the glasses of water on the end table, holds it to Robby’s mouth. “Drink.”
To his credit, Robby does - kind of. He takes a small sip, letting Dennis hold the glass up for him. Then he takes the glass himself and sets it on the ground beside him before scooting closer to Dennis, sitting between his legs. He rests a cheek on his thigh, and it’s clear to both of them, now, that Dennis is getting hard, too. “Dennis,” Robby breathes.
“No,” says Dennis, in spite of every perverted cell in his body that suddenly wants Robby to take his cock into that sweet, sad mouth right fucking now. He reaches out and uses his grip on Robby’s chin to push him back, bending down to pick up the water glass in his other hand. “Open your mouth,” he says as he tilts Robby’s head up.
Dennis gets an idea. He sips some water into his own mouth without swallowing; then he leans over, letting the liquid trickle from his lips into Robby’s waiting mouth. He laps it up like he’s been thirsty for days (which, Dennis suspects, might actually be the case).
“Good boy,” he whispers, testing the words out to see if Robby needs to hear that as much as he does. Robby’s whimper answers that question. “I’m going to give you more. Open.”
He gives Robby the rest of the glass this way. Halfway through he starts getting messy on purpose: giving Robby a particularly large mouthful he struggles to swallow, letting it dribble past the corners of his mouth, or aiming for his chin so the water trickles through his beard, down his neck, and soaks into his shirt. His entire front is wet by the time the first glass is empty.
Dennis sets the glass aside, returns his hands to either side of Robby’s face to lean in and kiss him softly. “That’s very good. You’ll have the other glass in a little bit.”
When Dennis moves to stand, Robby noses into his crotch, getting it visibly damp with the water droplets still in his beard.
He winds his fingers into Robby’s hair, indulging him for a moment. “I know. I know. But I’m taking care of you tonight, okay? Tell me how I can make you feel good.”
Robby doesn’t stop what he’s doing. His voice is muffled by the tightening fabric at Dennis’ pelvis. “Let me suck you off.”
“Hm. I should’ve been more specific.” He pulls Robby off of him - not too harshly - with the hand that’s in his hair. “I want you to tell me how you’d like me to make you come.”
Robby whines, an undignified sound. A delicious one. He looks up at Dennis with pleading eyes, mouth opening and closing as he struggles to get any words out. “Let me –” he starts.
Dennis tsks, shakes his head. “Later." He sinks back into the chair again, leaning down so he’s at Robby’s eye level as he takes his chin in his hand again and kisses him sweetly. “Tell me.”
Robby lets out an exasperated sigh, lets his forehead fall against Dennis’ knee. “I’m trying to,” he grumbles.
Dennis pets the back of his head. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “Go on.”
The silence stretches for far too long - it’s as though there’s something physically keeping Robby from finding the words. His face is bright red. “I want to -” he starts, and stops again. It’s so unlike him, Dennis thinks. Robby has never once been shy about telling his boy exactly how he’s going to ruin him, exactly how fucking good he feels. The man’s in a whole other league of dirty talk, and most times, Dennis can hardly keep up. But right now, laid low as he is, Robby’s downright bashful. It’s adorable. Dennis’ brain buzzes with the thrill of it.
“I’m - fuck, please, Dennis, I -” he stutters. “I can’t.”
“I know you can.”
Robby takes a shuddering breath. Then he sits up on his knees and scoots all the way forward, until he’s sat with his legs spread over Dennis’ foot, clinging to his calf. His chin resting on Dennis’ thigh, he gazes up at him with wet, pleading eyes as he bucks his hips forward.
“Fuck,” Dennis hisses. “That’s so good, Robby. Very good.” He reaches down to stroke Robby’s cheek, but as he’s doing so, he moves his leg out of his grip, eliciting a frustrated noise. “But I said I want you to tell me, not show me. Use your words.”
Robby gives him that same exasperated, embarrassed look before opening his mouth to speak again, strained, as if he’s choosing every word carefully. “I want... I want you... to let me... grind on your leg.”
Dennis beams down at him like he’s just said the most romantic thing in the world. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Robby’s eyes are lowered, not able to meet Dennis’ gaze. “...Please,” he adds, for good measure.
“Oh, my love.” Dennis puts his leg back where it was, shoving the toe of his boot under Robby’s balls. He pulls the man forward by his shoulders so that Robby can clutch his lower body desperately. “That's it. You tell me what you need all nice and pretty like that, you’ll fucking get it.”