Chapter Text
He’d been staring at himself in the mirror for at least 40 minutes. The shower was running and he was sure that the hot water had run out but he hadn’t even taken off his scrubs yet. How was he supposed to tell Robby? What was he supposed to tell Robby? Should he even tell him anything or just quietly take care of it. This was too big to process on his own. This was too much to tell anyone about.
“Oh.” Dennis murmured as he realized he was having a panic attack.
Now that he had a bit of himself back he realized that the pounding of the shower had blended in with the pounding on the bathroom door. Trin was threatening to break down the door if he didn’t get out of the shower and let her have a turn. Shit, now neither of them would have hot water. ‘Yeah, that’s clearly the most important thing right now. Focus!’ Dennis thought.
His legs were absolutely not working right now but luckily they basically lived in a shoebox so all he had to do was lean over and turn the knob to pop the lock and let Trinity into the bathroom. The door swung in and the anger on Trin’s face cleared as she registered the panic and desperation on his own. Her eyes fell as she took in his scrubs and then widened as she saw the pregnancy test he still held in his hand.
“Huckleberry, what the actual fuck is going on in here?”
Dennis couldn’t answer, he wasn’t sure he knew himself what was going on here.
“Whitaker, I need words. Are you knocked up right now? Are we celebrating or exercising our right to choose?”
He must have made some sort of noise because Trin’s face registered panic and she sprang into action and thank fucking god someone was taking control of this situation. Trinity reached past him and into the shower to turn the water off, she pulled the pregnancy test out of his hand and spun him around to set him down on the floor. She stood back up and left the bathroom but she was back before he really registered that he didn’t want her to leave. In her hands was a bottle of water, a bottle of tequila and an orange.
“I can’t drink, I’m pregnant.” Dennis finally managed some actual words.
“Obviously it’s for me. So, we’re keeping it? Huckleberry spawn confirmed? You wouldn’t care if we were getting rid of it.” Trinity pushed the bottle of water into his hands and started to peel the orange.
“Orange and tequila is a weird combination.”
“The orange is for you, you need sustenance and I know all you’ve eaten today is half my breakfast burrito from the breakroom fridge, which I was saving for myself, by the way. Can you please talk to me about anything other than the tequila?”
“I really want the tequila but I shouldn’t have it, right? Right, babies and alcohol is a famously bad combination. Worse than tequila and orange even.” Dennis took the peeled orange from Trin and started pulling the sections apart. He wasn’t sure he could stomach anything right now.
“You’re doing this on purpose right? To piss me off? This is payback for using the last of your deodorant last week?”
“The burrito was payback for the deodorant. This is just me losing my fucking mind. Is this real? Trin, I need you to look at the test again because maybe I read it wrong. I checked it like a thousand times but I’m dumb. I’m just some guy, what do I know about pregnancy tests?” Seems like the dam had burst and now he couldn’t shut up so he shoved an orange slice into his mouth to stop the panicked babbling he had started.
The orange was helping. Actually it all was helping. He could taste the tartness of the orange and feel the coolness of the water in his other hand. He could smell the antiseptic from their scrubs and the sandalwood from Trin’s candle on the back of the toilet and it was all working to ground him in a way he hadn’t been able to by himself.
Trin was standing up to check the test and the box and double check it was really positive because for all the shit she gave him, she was actually his best friend and the best person he’d ever known and if he wasn’t gay as fuck and she wasn’t such a mean lesbian, Dennis thinks that she could be his soulmate. She probably also thought he was a fucking idiot and didn’t trust that he’d read it right. Which, fair. If nothing else he was an idiot because what self-respecting doctor of medicine lets themselves get pregnant by accident?
“What kind of doctor gets pregnant by accident? We have access to like a million free condoms at work.” Trinity asked him. Guess that meant he’d read it right.
“I was literally just thinking the same thing, get out of my brain.” Dennis picked up the bottle of tequila and passed it to Trin, who unscrewed the cap and took a swig from the bottle. She screwed up her face at the taste and Dennis handed her an orange slice.
“It’s not as weird of a combination as you’d think. Kinda good actually.” She grabbed half the orange from him and took another slice.
“Citrus is citrus I guess. What am I going to do? We can’t have a baby. We work like all the time and we have no money. You’re having tequila for dinner. We can’t give a baby tequila. And an orange would choke them. This is a terrible idea.”
“The tequila is a result of the baby, you make me sound like an alcoholic. I was planning on eating half a handful of various things for dinner before you derailed that with your panic attack. And you would breast feed the baby at first anyway, so that’s like totally cost effective. If you’re keeping it, that is. Are you keeping it?”
Dennis didn’t know how to answer that but had the overwhelming urge to lay down so he leaned to the side to do just that. Trin was not impressed and let out a groan as she reached over to grab him by the arms and pulled him upright and to his feet.
“We’re not camping out in the bathroom. You can lay on the couch.” Dennis didn’t think the couch conveyed the same level of drama that the bathroom floor did but it was cleaner so he didn’t put up a fight. Once she had him settled with his remaining orange slices and his water with his head in her lap she tried again.
“Denny, please tell me something real right now. I don’t know how to react because you aren’t and I can’t do this alone.”
Dennis sucked in a breath and closed his eyes to brace himself and then he resolved to try and have a real conversation. “It’s Dr. Robby’s. We’ve been sneaking around and seeing each other for months. I think Dr. Abbot knows because Robby tells him everything and I think Dana saw Robby grab my ass last week because she’s been watching me but I don’t know if it’s because she thinks I’m a sexual harassment case or because she suspects us.”
“If Dana thought Robby was sexually harassing you she would run him down with her car, not watch you. He’s not harassing you right? This whole thing was consensual? Because if he pressured you into anything I’ll cut his brakes or tell Dana or buy a gun or buy Dana a gun.”
“I pursued him. He tried to put me off with all the very real reasons this could blow up in our faces but I didn’t care. I wanted him, I still want him. Funnily enough an unplanned pregnancy was not one of the reasons.” Trinity looks relieved and it hits him that she really had been prepared to fuck up their boss on his behalf. God he’s lucky to have her. He squeezes his eyes tight to stop the pricking he starts to feel at the corners because he feels pathetic enough, he really doesn’t want to ugly cry right now.
“So are we baby trapping him then?” And then she says some shit like that and he questions why he likes her. He opens his eyes to glare at her but she’s already grinning so he knows she was trying to make him laugh. That’s why he likes her. “For real though, what’s the vibe with you guys? Just fucking? Secret boyfriends? Angsty and pining because you’re in love but too idiotic to realize it?”
“Angsty, pining and knocked up on my end. Not sure where he’s at. We’ve not really talked about it explicitly but we moved past just fucking months ago. He cooks for me and folds my scrubs and lets me wear his favorite hoodie. Last week I woke up in his bed and he was just like, looking at me and running his fingers through my hair.”
“Oh my god, the day I made fun of you for looking like a poodle because your curls were all messed up?!” She looks personally offended that the reason for her insult turned out to be something so sweet. “Where was I when all this was going on? How have you managed to fall in love without me noticing?”
“I don’t know, probably tongue deep in Garcia?”
“Ew don’t be gross.”
“She’s your whatever!”
“We’re talking about your whatever, not mine. Because you’ve managed to create a mini whatever and we need to figure out what to do about it and how you’re going to tell our fucking boss that you failed sex ed.”
Dennis rolls over and whines, burying his head in her thigh in a desperate attempt to avoid this for a bit longer. He hadn’t even thought about having to tell Robby. He will have to though, he can’t make this decision alone. He didn’t make the baby alone and now they both had to deal with it. He’d fallen in love with his boss and now he was pregnant, what a mess.
He knows one decision he can make tonight. He rolls back over and sits up. “Right, I think I need to sleep on it. I’m certainly not telling him tonight so I should sleep on it and then tomorrow I’ll decide how to tell him.”
He leans over and gives Trin a kiss on her temple. She grabs him by the arm as he stands up and pulls him back down and into a short hug. Then she pushes him away and stands to go to her own room. She stops at the threshold and looks back at him.
“Whatever you decide, you’ve got me.”
Dennis makes a getaway to his room before the tears can start in ernest and she switches to mocking him again. As he’s laying down and drifting off he hears Trinity in the next room, “He’s our fucking Huckleberry. God, I’m an idiot!” So at least he falls asleep with a smile.