Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

September 5th, 2025

Dear God, 

Sorry that you haven’t heard from me in a while. And I’m sorry that I’m not kneeling, or folding my hands like I used to. I can only bring myself to talk to you in ceilings. 

I wonder how many prayers start with sorry. I tried to figure it out, once, but I think I went about it the wrong way. Tried to dissect you in a thesis statement. No offense but the degree was a waste of time. Everything that needed to be said about you has been said before and by better people than me. There’s nothing else I can offer up or discover. All that’s left are these pathetic thoughts, cradled in my bed on my back, eyes closed, sweating. I read once that prayer is the final act of despair and I fear that’s the only thing that rings true these days. 

I saw you today. 

You’ll call it wrong, I know, but I’m sure I did. There in the pediatric wing on the linoleum floor. You were there too, weren’t you? I felt it. Somewhere in the blood. Conjured up in a grandmother’s prayer. 

I used to believe that when I saw you I would see a person. An illustration by L.J. Sattgat, humanized in watercolor and folded between Sunday school memories of what I grew up wanting you to be. A man. One of us. Now I’ve come to realize the thing I could never figure out in college: That you aren’t someone, but something unnameable existing between people. The ebb and flow of throat-clogged chaos. The paper apron and babyblue skintight gloves. I saw you there, I swear it. 

So I’m returning the call. Look out for Dr. Robby. I know you’re with him in your own way but I can’t sleep right now, thinking about him. If you were really there then you know how this is going to go, how it’ll affect me, how I’ll hate myself for it later. I already do. So look out for him. Let you both exist in the same room always and leave me out of it until I can manage talking without first closing my eyes. Give me strength. 

Why did you do that today? Show yourself? Why did you make me the way that I am, all dependent on such flimsy, unnamable things? Cure me. 

Look out for Trinity too. And all the occurrence codes we filed today. God, when I go, please don’t reduce me to some mindless paperwork. Remember me in personhood rather than something us exhausted interns have to sift through after twelve hours on our feet. 

Guide Bennett to you. Greet him happily. 

Thanks. Thank you. Amen. 

*

Dennis stepped into his first relationship when he was fifteen. 

Stepped into was an incredibly polite way of putting it: It was more like a trip, a yank, like when a sweater sleeve caught a doorknob or when a rock caught a wheel. It was a complete accident, all things considered. Wanted, but an accident. 

His name was Cooper. A friend and fellow teammate of Dennis’ older brother Bruce, Cooper was seventeen and the shining quarterback of their county, which meant he was over at the Whitaker farm nearly every day after school. When he wasn’t in season, or in church, or going to his NAYC meetings. Naturally. 

His parents adored Cooper. The house was already overrun with boys, so what was one more pimply chin and endless appetite? Besides, Cooper was incredibly easy to like. Strong, well-mannered, freckly and God fearing, he was a Norman Rockwell painting and knew it. He ended every conversation with ma’am or sir. He led family dinner prayers with a perfected televangelistic cadence. He took their cousin Jillian to her junior prom. 

But he was a very different boy at school. 

Dennis’ first impression of Cooper was a clang, his still-riddled-with-babyfat cheek banging against a locker. He looked toward the persecutor and found him, pretty face split open with a grin, with Bruce at his side, the bullying older brother trait seemingly passing through friendships. A shove was as good as any hello. 

“Coop’s giving us a ride home after practice,” Bruce explained, adjusting his backpack. “We’re leaving you if you’re not in the parking lot at five.” 

Dennis nodded, succumbing to the casualty of his now ruined afternoon. Bruce turned on his heel in farewell. 

But Cooper hesitated, grinning, still, eyes wandering over Dennis’ locker. “That Taylor Kitsch?” he asked. He had an incredibly low voice for his age. 

Dennis looked at the photo, that small crumpled cut-out from a magazine taped haphazardly besides a copy of his fall schedule. The actor was pictured sweating in his football jersey, gleaming proudly at the camera. Heartthrob. Superstar. The photo was masculine enough to hide behind the boyish fanatics of sport culture instead of the girlish appreciation of a strong jaw. 

Friday Night Lights. 

Dennis nodded again. Something subtle was happening between them that he couldn’t quite place--he would later come to name it as friend-of-Dorothy recognition, as a confirmation he never agreed to give but somehow gave off. 

That grin settled into something wonderfully cruel. 

“Coop!” Bruce called, steps away down the busy hall. “Coach is gonna make us run laps if we’re late again, man!”

Cooper pulled himself forward, stepping out of whatever the hell just happened between them. He shoved Dennis again as he went, though, a touch softer this time. Fingers strong. 

“Texas forever,” he joked over his shoulder. 

Dennis could feel the heat rise in his still stinging cheek. 

So that was how it started. Dennis learned to take note of the differences between when his parents were over and when they weren’t, when Cooper transformed from a bully to a saint. One second Dennis would be unloading groceries with his mother, the next pinned to the carpet, Bruce’s spit just barely gracing his face before being sucked back up in laughter as Cooper held his arms down. One second he’d listen to the throaty laughter of his father as Cooper told a pleasing story about his own family farm, the next he’d find him pissing with the door open, making eye contact through the morning light. It was all very normal, for Dennis. He knew how quickly dispositions shifted when the runt of the family was without adult supervision. He knew, from the very start, how boys acted.

Things changed after a random church service in October. Dennis’ mother had signed him up for community service, explaining to the pastor that he needed to fix that lazy streak and that he could always contribute more! She said it all in a very pacifying way, patting his curly head as she talked to the geriatric clergy who did nothing but smile at the two knowingly. 

Dennis didn’t know why that pissed him off so much, but it did. Maybe it was the punches to his character, or just the flippant way his family disregarded his work ethic, something he took rare pride in, but he found himself filled with rage. Pure, searing adolescent rage. 

So he did what he usually did. He snuck out to the back of the church, found a random wall, and started kicking. 

Hard. 

With his hands pressed to the scratchy brick, he kicked it over and over and over again until his hand-me-down loafers were all scuffed up and his toe was throbbing. Gritted teeth, pants of breath shooting out of his mouth, sweating despite the autumn chill. It was his outlet. His only moment of acting truthfully. 

“What’d that poor wall do?”

Dennis startled. Cooper appeared in the parking lot, well-dressed and smug, always smug. There was a hint of surprise raising his eyebrows at the whole display, replacing Dennis’ previous fury with red-hot shame.

He swallowed and straightened, hands still pressed to the brick. He didn’t know what to say. 

So, “Nothing,” he gasped. Cooper took a step towards him, hands in his pockets. 

“Don’t look like nothing.”

“I’m just…” Dennis’ palms were scuffed. He inched them off the brick like a kid getting caught doing something they shouldn’t have, hiding the vital evidence. “Angry.”

“Angry?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t know dormouse could get angry.” Cooper leaned against the same wall, eyeing those very scuffed up hands which instinctively curled into frustrated fists. The nickname was a Whitaker family favorite; Dennis hated it especially on Cooper’s tongue. “Not at me though, right?”

Dennis shook his head, mouth dry. “My family.”

Cooper nodded back like it was all so understandable. “I get angry sometimes, too. Guess we got that same fucked up meanstreak, huh?”

It was the curse that did it. Muttered just inches away from holy architecture, it offered the two a sliver of something real, something outside of the whittled reality of their circumstances. One time Dennis said the word crap and got sent to bed without supper, his father insisting that he’d have none of that “city talk” at his table. 

City talk. Blasphemy. Cooper was an olive branch. 

And Dennis could always contribute more. “You’re like me,” he whispered, just to hear it spoken. The fact tasted ashy between his teeth. 

Cooper’s smile dimmed into a serious frown, then, but his eyes stayed dancing. Seeking. “I’m like you,” he confirmed.

And that was all it took. 

They kissed sloppily and fast, crashing together like separated magnets before a nearby door opened and a pack of choir boys filed out. Cooper pushed him away as hard as Dennis had been kicking, his buzzing body knocking against the wall and his blue eyes blown wide with new experience. Cooper didn’t even hesitate, hushing loudly against the sound of their heartbeats.

“Don’t you dare tell.”

“I won’t.”

And he never did. In the middle of the night when Cooper slept over, in school bathrooms when no one else was around, behind the hidden debris of the farm: Their relationship consisted of half-blind fumblings of fingers and tongues, the trysts so fleeting Dennis often wondered if he was making it all up. Like a daydream that got carried away. 

He no longer kicked walls. Instead he gave as good as he got, practically fighting against Cooper and letting Cooper fight back. Anger became a generous gift given through scratched up forearms, scratched up napes, lines of pink skin Dennis would trace fondly long after he left. 

It ended when the landline rang in the middle of the night. Dennis answered, his bedroom closest to the kitchen, and listened as Bruce drunkenly begged him to come to the fairgrounds and pick them up. Cooper could be heard in the background, asking, softly, Is he coming?

Illegally, because he hadn’t technically received his permit yet, Dennis snuck out of the house and took his father’s truck all the way to the Broken Bow fairgrounds. He watched patiently through the windshield as Bruce dragged Cooper to the truckbed, legs all wobbly with wasted potential. In about five months both of them would get jobs killing cattle. 

Sometime during the twenty minute drive home, Bruce told Dennis to pull over so he could take a leak. In the following silence, he heard a light tap tap tap, turning around to see Cooper smiling through the back window. They were alone.

He undid the latch. “Are you--?”

Cooper kissed him. Really, kissed him, patient and soft to the sound of early spring crickets. Dennis wanted to leave his brother on the side of the road with his pants around his ankles and take the quarterback away. Anywhere. Lincoln, maybe. Turning Friday night lights into weekend sunshine.

“You really love me, don’t you,” Cooper hummed against his lips, breath coated with cheap beer and chewing tobacco. “It’s okay if you do. I do too. So much.”

Dennis didn’t say anything. Just kissed him back in the piercing darkness. 

“But I’m sorry, y’know,” Cooper continued through every drunken gasp, a sober reality found in the swallowed down syllables. “I am. ‘Cus you’re so fuckin’ painful to love.”

Bruce stumbled back to the truck and Dennis whipped around, ears flushing, eyes stinging despite himself. He started the truck up again and carried on home, his emotions burning a man-sized hole in his body. He couldn’t help it. 

His knuckles went white across the wheel. 

Bruce looked over and started to cackle his brotherly cackle, slumped up in the passenger seat. “What’s your problem?” he howled, delighted. “Are you crying? Seriously? Coop look, look!”

Dennis wiped at his face and weakly pleaded for him to stop. He could feel Cooper watching him from the truck bed; he could feel every inch of his skin in his memory and he wanted to throw it all up, crash the car and let it be a front page tragedy. At least then the situation could be properly articulated. 

He wasn’t sure if it was his own decision or not, but they never kissed again. All it took was one inebriated admission of love and a choked down sob for it to stop. Too real.

Years later, under the Facebook post celebrating his acceptance into medical school, Cooper commented a polite congratulations. Dennis remembered getting the notification and stopping dead in his tracks, suspended in the granola isle of the supermarket. 

He clicked on the profile. Saw a beautiful blonde woman with blue eyes cradled next to a now-adult Cooper, their pliant hands resting over the bump on her belly. God’s little miracle standing in a nondescript wheat field. 

Thank you so fucking much, Dennis replied, uncaring that the comment was public, uncaring that his religious family members could see. They’d assume malice in the comment. They’d assume Dennis was angry. 

And he was, but not like that. It was the sweetest thing he could think to say.  

Cooper hearted the message and fathered a baby girl two weeks later. 

Dennis told the story to Trinity, once. It started with them sharing memories of their first respective kisses, stupid sleepover-esque questions permitted by months of living together. Thus Dennis found himself honest, voice hoarse by the end of such a sad yet cliché tale. 

Trinity, high on the couch with her head in her hand, soaked it all in, face growing tighter and tighter the more she thought about it. Randomized drug tests never scared her. 

“Damn,” she finally said. Her first kiss was with a boy on the playground, and then a girl on her gymnastic team during the bus ride home from championships, which she preferred to count. She didn’t talk about her own dark slivers of truths, so again, Dennis wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to. “I really had no idea. Frankly. I mean I had a clue, sure, but…”

Dennis lolled his own heavy head around. “Which part?”

“Everything. Abuse. You, gay.”

“Mm.” 

“But it’s more surprising that you, like, were that angry. As a kid. I’ve always pictured you as this scrawny little sad angel listening to Brad Paisley and squeaking through youth camp. No spine.” 

How Trinity knew about Brad Paisley, Dennis had no idea. He smiled though, the lyrics of Mud on the Tires light on his mind. “I was.”

“Sure.” Trinity picked her head up, tugging back the loose strands of her hair in thought. “Wow. Huckleberry the vengeful.”

Dennis huffed out a laugh. “I don’t like it. Being this angry.”

An accusing glare. “You still are?”

Dennis thought back to his childhood. He remembered how scared he’d get when filled with his father’s rage, his mother’s pettiness, of how many times he kicked a wall or punched a pillow or threw a library book across the mess of his room just to hear something clatter. He remembered the stillness after every outburst, the calm process of cleaning himself up and returning to the squeaky little dormouse of everyone’s assumptions. 

But then he remembered Cooper, and how sweet anger tasted when undercut with honesty. A chaser for the burn. 

“I’m trying not to be.”

Trinity continued to stare at him, careful. The purple Roku city flooded the room with a perpetually neon light, their shitty movie paused hours ago on account of neither one of them paying it any attention. The air smelled like fresh takeout and stale weed. The washing machine circulated in the quiet. 

“Well,” she sighed. Humorous again. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well.”

“Maybe,” Dennis agreed. 

“It’s certainly not your taste in music. Anyway.” She inched closer, mischievous. Her own attempt at making light. “When did you lose your virginity?”

Dennis blinked. “Fifteen.”

“No, not--jeez, not that depressing groomer shit. Like, truly did. Like.” She made a gesture with her hands, a little explosion permitted by the stick-n-poke smiley face on her forefinger. Bliss. 

Dennis considered it. “Junior year of college. He was in my anatomy class.”

Trinity laughed. 

*

December 31st, 2025

“Can I ask you something?”

There was a cut on his bottom lip. Robby had been watching him work on it all day, catching the seasonally-chapped skin between his teeth at random intervals, mindlessly gnashing through every diagnosis. Turning a ruddy frown slick. That soon-to-be doctor should know better by now than to neglect Vaseline or Carmex, especially in these chilly winter months, but Robby supposed he was nitpicking. He always was. 

Now, the cut was vodka-soaked, stinging through an imposition. 

“We work at a teaching hospital,” Robby replied, raising his voice, just slightly, over the chatter of the bar. “You’re supposed to.” 

“Ha.” Dennis smirked, splitting that cut further across his mouth; Jesus, he was surprised it wasn’t bleeding yet. “I mean, can I ask you something personal?”

That careless feeling currently swimming through Robby’s body dissipated, hardened by the knee-jerk tension he received whenever there was a line soon-to-be crossed. He should’ve just said no, tonight. He should’ve ignored the New Years invitation and waved a hand over his shoulder, bracing cruel weather instead of warm blurred lines. 

He took that very hand and reached for his I.C Light. “Shoot.” 

Dennis smiled again, shifting against the booth. They were crammed into the leather together, seated side-by-side on account of having to squish in the rest of their scrub-adorned colleagues, who were all currently refilling their glasses or striking up wandering conversations around the crowded establishment. It left Dennis and Robby painfully alone, in that silence. 

Up until Dennis opened that split-lip, obviously. “How often do you pray?”

That instinctive tension hardened further, rolling Robby’s shoulders back. He swallowed hard around his beer, trying to artfully dodge the personal aspects of such a personal question. He didn’t like the implication--the only time he had been caught praying was in the throes of what most would call a pathetic panic attack. Shema. If that was what Dennis was really asking about, then there should be a serious conversation about boundaries. 

But Robby played stupid, cowering behind the blunt surface of the question. “Not as much as my grandmother would’ve liked,” he gave. Slap a joke on it. Call it a day. 

Dennis nodded quickly. Sure, yeah. “Me neither.” 

Turn the conversation around. “You still a believer?” 

“Well--no, but. Well.” Dennis did that thing he usually did when a difficult situation presented itself: Twitching his head, twitching his smile, fluttering. He didn’t do it so much anymore, shedding the last ounce of newbie weakness to accommodate E.R. brutality. In all honesty, Robby never believed Dennis was a shy or meek person, and he thought the other doctors ignorant when they commented such. Dennis was just overly polite. Overly aware of himself. That pleasant midwestern sunshine left burn scars on confidence.  

“Yes,” was what Dennis eventually settled on, “I am. But it’s complicated.” 

Robby wasn’t shocked at all, and yet he took a mental wager on when faith would fail Dennis. How much time it would take before that bug-eyed kid was buckling at the hands of cynicism. 

He guessed two months. “What isn't?” 

Dennis shrugged. “Medicine?”

“You don’t think medicine is complicated?” 

“Not really, no.”

Robby chuckled. Good for him. 

He finished off the rest of his beer as Dennis fiddled with his glass, the half-empty vodka tonic rattling around the ice. His thin fingers curled around condensation, his pale wrist rested against the table. Mindless. Thinking. 

Perhaps he really was asking about the panic attack, making Robby’s answer painfully inadequate and turning the atmosphere awkward; still, Robby refused to bite. Refused to acknowledge the troubled line forming between Dennis’ brows that accentuated his giant, weary eyes.  

Across the bar Dana said her goodbyes, hugging the rest of the Pitt crew farewell through her zipped-up parka. Her hair was down, brushed back behind her ears, and her smile was large, propped up on McKay’s shoulder in dimpled familiarity. Robby always appreciated seeing her like that, seeing all of The Pitt like that. Like people. It was always a secret pleasure watching them shed their work personalities like those very winter coats at the door, letting themselves become who they truly were. Parents. Lovers. 

People. Robby, despite the motorcycle and vinyl collection, didn’t have the grace of another title. He was just Dr. Robinavitch, always taking his work home, always living inside that hospital brutality. 

Or maybe he just took his true self to work. Maybe that was worse. 

Dennis had the same problem, evidently, still acting like they were beneath those harsh fluorescent lights instead of the bar’s golden ones. Quietly stressed. The clothes didn’t help: He was wearing his street team hoodie, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. “It’s the warmest thing I have,” he mumbled just hours earlier, back when Robby overheard Trinity poke her usual fun at Dennis’ easy-target expense. The admission was only slightly heartbreaking. 

Robby tore his eyes away from the folds of Dennis’ jacket as Dana returned to the table. “Headin’ out?” 

“Yup,” Dana nodded, extending an arm. She leaned down in a half-hug, just a quick slip of reasonable contact between two hardened middle-aged friends. Robby returned it. “Gotta get home before the ball drops. Benji’s waiting.”

“Just you two?”

“Daughter’s visiting with her kid. Family celebration.” Dana straightened and smiled down at Dennis, keeping a hand on Robby’s shoulder. “So you’ll think about my offer?” 

Dennis nodded, returning that smile tenfold. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Anytime babe.” She patted Robby’s arm in farewell, calling back towards the table as her sneakers proceeded against the sticky floor. “Get another beer in him and cue up Tom Petty!”

“Offer?” Robby questioned, addressing Dennis and ignoring the slight jab at his music taste. Dana liked R.E.M’s later stuff, for fucks sake. 

Dennis returned to swirling his glass around. “She offered to take me to church with her this Sunday.” 

Ah. So he really was religious. “Gotta be honest here, I didn’t paint you catholic.” 

“Baptist,” Dennis countered, smirking through the pleasant concept of being challenged. Robby smirked back. “But catholicism has always interested me. Plus it’ll be nice, going to church with people again. It’s my resolution. Well, one of them” 

Robby considered it, settling his arms back behind the booth and stretching out the crick in his neck. “Seems like religion is on your mind.”

Dennis hummed. Almost on instinct, he eased back into the booth as well, dropping his condensation-licked hands to his lap. Relaxing. Becoming a person. “I think it always will be, in one way or another.” 

“Comforting habit,” Robby leveled, though finding comfort in such a flippant thing was mostly useless and generally terrifying. At least in Robby’s experience. He was never good without control. 

Dennis gave another easy, thought-provoking hum. “Yeah, I mean. I found myself praying again after Pittfest. I hadn’t prayed since college, and even that wasn’t really prayer, y’know? I just don’t want the only time I turn to God to be in moments of weakness.” 

Something cool settled in Robby’s stomach at that, dousing whatever easy-going albeit short-lived atmosphere they’d been cultivating. Immediately he was on the offense, mentally kicking away that line of conversation because damnit, Dennis, he wasn’t going to use that supposedly weak moment as an opportunity to cast judgement. He wasn’t going to use it to his advantage.  

“Right,” Robby cut. He hated himself for the tone, but it was a line of thought he wasn’t exactly keen on revisiting, especially now. Especially for this bug-eyed late-twenties-something with the rolled up sleeves and shaggy hair and endless belief. It was bad enough. 

As if picking up on that, Dennis grew pale. “I didn’t mean--”

“Didn’t mean what, Whitaker?”

Silence. Robby rolled the crick in his neck one more time in conversation's absence, glancing away. Javadi was with Mel on the rickety stools by the bar, entranced by whatever Mel was showing her on her phone. Her black and gold 2026 glasses skewing her face. She sipped idly on a cold Coke. The bartender carded. 

Ice-clinked; Dennis threw back the rest of his drink, presumably. 

“Sorry.” 

Robby found himself closing his eyes. Because he knew exactly what Dennis was talking about. Exactly. Yet he was always quick to be the emotionally constipated dickhead. What did Jack always say? He never knew when to turn it off? 

Turn it off. “Sure you are,” Robby mumbled, allowing himself two seconds of fickle composure. One--

Dennis gaped, lips parted in confusion as Robby abruptly slid out of the booth. “You’re leaving?”

Robby nodded with one quick twitch and grabbed his leather jacket from the table, slinging his arms through the threadbare holes. “Need a smoke." Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off. “Want one?”

Dennis took a moment to collect himself, contemplating temptation. “I quit, actually,” he mumbled.

Comforting habit.

So Robby breezed away without another word, flashing his Camels across the golden crowd in explanation--easing the question forming inside McKay’s careful gaze. She threw a thumbs up in his direction after the fact, tilting her party hat, but it didn’t help the sickly feeling churning through Robby’s gut. 

Everyone knew how much of a headcase he was. Everyone knew he needed a goddamn wellness check every twenty minutes. 

Fuck. 

The night air was refreshingly freezing. Secluded by the bricked off alleyways and crowded lines of parallel-parked cars, the bar was in the same neighborhood as the hospital, a quick stride down the littered streets of Pittsburgh; hence why everyone in the day shift piled inside, taking it upon themselves to celebrate the holiday with the only people who truly knew what their stress looked like. It was camaraderie more than anything else. A chance to shake off the day and welcome in the approaching year with joy, instead of the typical nuance brought on by a long shift. 

Holidays had a tendency to do that, at the Pitt. Fall into the mundane. 

Robby reminded himself that avoiding such tendencies was the reason he showed up tonight. The logical reason, at least. He needed to prove to people that he could be a person capable of getting tipsy and counting down the seconds until new opportunity presented itself in glitter and confetti. That he could, by all measures, make a resolution to be better and actually uphold it. Or at least convince others that he had the ability.   

He settled against the brick wall and lit up. The first inhale felt heavenly bitter. 

A few feet away, he watched as a young drunk couple wobbled down the sidewalk and realized, quite plainly, that he should’ve been left alone during Pittfest. It crossed his mind before, obviously, but the realization was eased by the notion of Dennis acting as divine intervention--he was a hand reaching out for him in the storm, pulling him back to shore. To stability. The invasion of privacy was soothed by the lack of judgment in those big bug eyes.  

But that was childish reasoning. A stupid slice of something normal that Robby could never properly cling to. Because now that hand felt cheated. Pitying. 

He should’ve drowned in that moment of weakness. 

Robby was nearly half-way done with the cigarette by the time the door opened again, rushing in the sounds of the bar and its wall-mounted television that announced the approaching turn of the year. He closed his eyes to the chaos, knowing, deep down, who had followed him out. 

It was the same feeling he got when running up linoleum hills with a strong body trailing behind, a shoulder to steer or a scruff to grab. Hope shadowed in his stride. 

Gravel crunched beneath bloody tennis shoes as that very body stopped by the wall. 

Robby opened his eyes. “I thought you quit.” 

Dennis crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged, eyeing the drunk couple as they disappeared down the pavement. He had zipped up his hoodie. Pulled down the sleeves. 

“I have about fifteen minutes left of bad behavior in me,” he mumbled. 

So Robby dug out his Camels from his jacket and passed them over. Dennis enveloped his palm in a small flame with the borrowed lighter, that freshly plucked cigarette bouncing between his teeth. His first inhale was a grand, physical thing, fingers delicate against his lips. His exhale even more so. 

He seemed content in the weather. Relaxed shoulders, no obvious shivering. The funny thing about hometown states, Robby had noticed, was the fact that its temperature was permanently embedded into someone’s blood. He once dated a girl from Arizona who walked with her head a little higher in the summer. He slept with a guy from Maine who had a box-fan by his bedside so he could always be cool. 

Robby, playing the license plate game with fuck buddies aside, thought it was a worthy hypothesis. Dennis was letting his Nebraska winters show on the etches of his frame, as well as its assumed delinquency: He was still fairly young, for someone to have sworn off a habit. He must’ve picked it up in high school. College, maybe. 

How many years ago was that? “Thanks,” Dennis gave after the last of his smoke shot out of his nose. He passed the crumpled pack and old Zippo back into Robby’s city-slick grip. 

They proceeded to just stand out there and breathe, for a while. Soaking up the last of December’s silence.

Dennis was the first to break it. “I should say that I don’t think you’re weak,” he started, voice thin. “But that’s not fair to you. So I won’t.”

Robby sucked his teeth and turned his head away, staring down a particularly interesting streetlamp. Anger moved his tongue before he knew what was happening, “Most people have the courtesy to say this shit behind my back.” 

“Can you drop it for one second?” Dennis begged. It took Robby by surprise, the tone of his voice, the suddenness of it all. The streetlamp flickered. “I’m trying to be honest with you because no one else will. So drop it, and let me explain myself. Please.” 

Robby slowly looked over his shoulder to find Dennis glaring back, that vulnerable expression striking his features. Only now it looked much deeper in the lowlight; he swallowed, closing his mouth, compressing his chapped lips together.  

They stared. Robby lifted his cigarette and finished it off, flicking the glowing butt after the fact. It tumbled to the ground like ember confetti. “Okay,” he said, shoving his now-empty hands into his pockets. “Go on. Continue laying into your chief attending.” 

Dennis flinched. Not because of the reprimand, but because he had been letting his own cigarette burn down, the flame catching his fingertips. He muttered a curse and placed the cigarette back between his lips, sucking, sighing. Frustrated. 

“I’m sorry,” he continued. “I am, Dr. Robby. But it’s one thing to feel regret over what happened, it’s another to deny yourself the right completely. The reason I started praying again was because of you.”

“I don’t need your prayers, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid.”

“And I never asked for you to be fair, either, while we’re on the subject.” Robby recognized the tilt in his voice he got whenever he argued with someone, that swinging cadence that did its best to mask the fear lurking beneath the rage. He was in a corner. Deflect, deflect, deflect. “So you can go back to lighting your candles and whining to your haystack God, but I’ll tell you something right now, I only pray when I feel abandoned by faith. Alright? So maybe take a line from my book and take me off your precious divinity list.”

“Fuck you.”

Robby laughed. “Excuse me?”

“Fuck you,” Dennis repeated, exasperated. “You’re not even listening--”

“To what, Whitaker? What am I supposed to be taking away from this?” 

“You. You were the reason I found my faith again. That moment on the floor, seeing such a brilliant man acting like the rest of us? Scared? Covered in blood, weeping? You had the strength to do what none of us could that day. You were weak. You gave in. And yeah, I felt my haystack God with us in that room. I felt Him, okay? You made me feel God, Robby, and I’m not going to let you make me feel like an idiot for it when it’s the only fucking thing I have left.” 

Down the street, a car horn blared. Another pair of New Years lovers stumbled their way home, laughing. 

And just barely out of earshot, all the way in the city’s center, an ambulance crooned its way towards the hospital. 

Robby and Dennis did not meet that siren. Instead they stood coiled, heartbeats hammering from that sprint past one another’s boundaries. It took Robby a pathetically slow second to realize that Dennis never even raised his voice. Not once. 

Instead his anger was quiet and simmering, articulated through nothing but a murmur. Brought on not by malice, but by misunderstanding--he was like a charging bull. Robby himself was a walking red flag, taunting people closer, begging for them to give in and sink to their lowest instincts. Dennis answered that taunt eagerly. 

The car horn blared, again. The two continued to stare. 

Until Dennis let that anger finally strangle him back to circumstance. He pressed his free hand to his forehead, nervously rubbing the skin beneath his bangs. His eyes flew to the ground. 

“Sorry,” he said. It was almost like he was talking to himself, swallowed up in that extremely articulate throat of his. “I got carried away. I’m.” He sighed. Ragged. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

And Robby should walk away. Should go home, letting the argument play over and over in the back of his mind until he fell asleep and allowed for it to finally disappear down that long list of regrets he accumulated over the past fifty years. But Dennis always had such strange ways of surprising him. 

The biggest surprise being the fact that Dennis was like him. Clinging to whatever semblance of hope he could find and becoming frustrated whenever his hands repeatedly came up empty.  

They were alike, despite first-glance differences. Robby just wasn’t sure how far their similarities went before they inevitably split. 

He wanted to know, though. “This was a cat fight in comparison to what me and Jack get into.”  

Dennis dropped his hand, seemingly relieved that the argument was over. “Dr. Abbot?” 

“Mm.”

If Robby was a better person, he would say it was because Dennis had sincerely apologized. But he was a literal son-of-a-bitch and hardened by all that he had lost, so it was, naturally, because it was exciting to see such a man like Dennis pissed off and bold about it. It was that once-fabled confidence Robby decided to stay for. That sliver of Dennis Whitaker the person, not the doctor. Not the role he took out thousands of student loans to receive. 

And if he had to admit it, then yes, what Dennis said knocked Robby off his pedestal. People rarely ever did that. Successfully. 

It excited him. “So,” Robby carried on, adjusting against the wall. Dennis leaned against it, too, angling his head back. “Are you done explaining yourself, or is it finally my turn to ask a personal question?” 

Blue eyes glanced over, a bit of bite behind the blink. “I’m done.” 

“Is God really the only thing you have left?” 

Dennis hesitated before slowly lifting up a hand to finish off his cigarette, words squished together through the inhale. “No.” He held the smoke in his lungs, letting it burn, letting it fester, before shooting it out of his nose once more. Bull. “I still have family, I guess. And Trin. But God’s the only outlet. The only way I can…” 

He flicked his cigarette to the ground. It tumbled next to Robby’s dead one. 

“Express myself. That’s why I asked you about it earlier. I was wondering if prayer was your only outlet, too.”

Robby considered it. He settled on honesty--the situation called for honesty. “I have other outlets.” 

The air shifted too late for Robby to prevent it. One second it was gentle, the next impossibly charged, crackling as if the abandoned cigarettes fell into a puddle of lighter fluid and set the whole street aflame. Too warm for December. Far too warm for company. 

Dennis noticed the heat but didn’t shy away from it; Nebraska must’ve had brilliant summers, too. “Like what?”

Suddenly, Robby was removed from his body and therefore removed from responsibility, watching the scene play out in the audience of his mind. He was up in the air, counting down the seconds to January while flirting with self-sabotage. He was miles away. He was not himself. 

Or maybe he was. Maybe that was worse. 

“You know what, Whitaker,” he mumbled, and Dennis was off the wall before he could even hear the syllables of his name.  

*

January 1st, 2026

He tasted like beer and smoke. Like wet, soft vices and all things outlawed by his childhood church. 

Dr. Michael Robinavitch tasted like anger and something sadder lurking beneath the heat, and for the second time in his life Dennis allowed himself to become susceptible to somebody else’s rage. 

His hands were on either side of Robby’s face, clutching the wiry planes of his beard as Robby’s own hands tugged at his hair. He moved in such a desperate, aggravated way that Dennis concluded he must’ve thought about this before--Robby was scratching an itch in the folds of Dennis’ mouth and Dennis himself was scratching back. Mutual. 

He gasped. Robby took that beg for what it was; he slipped his tongue inside, still gripping the back of his hair to keep him close. Keep him hard. He exhaled through his nose as small grunts escaped his throat and Dennis curled his tongue to the sounds. He felt the vibrations of those grunts begin to pool in the fiery pit of his stomach. 

God was there. In the red-hot nerves, in the hunger for one another, in the want. Dennis felt Him everywhere. 

Robby suddenly stuttered back, unceremoniously ripping away from the kiss. Dennis opened his eyes through a bleary squint and continued panting into his parted mouth, watching as Robby stared back, wide-eyed and hungry and horrified. 

Robby never wavered. He just swallowed, rasping, “You’re bleeding.” 

Dennis licked his bottom lip instinctively, tasting the coppery blood mix into the cocktail that was Robby’s spit. He nodded, still chasing air. Still scratching. 

“Take it,” he whispered, and Robby’s hand traveled around his flushed face, experimenting with the request by smearing said blood across Dennis’ chapped cut. His fingers were wonderfully coarse, weathered by age and the constant use of antiseptics. Dennis wanted them everywhere; he wanted to taste them, too. “Please.”

Robby switched their positions and Dennis let himself be tossed around, pinned, his head hitting the brick wall as he arched through yet another searing kiss. Hips then acted on their own accord just as much as mouths were, wildly clashing through the thin fabric of their clothes. 

Dennis let out a sound he did not recognize. Robby replied by slamming at his hips again, harder, lingering in the terrific aftermath. It was so terrific that Dennis dissolved completely, sinking into the soothing pressure. His hands slid around Robby’s chest and gripped the lapels of his jacket to keep himself upright. The buttery, cool black leather flooded his senses. 

Take it, he thought. Anything you need I have. Let me give it to you. 

As if Robby heard--he probably did, just based on the artful way Dennis could communicate through writhing--Robby began mouthing at his jaw, his ear, shooting ticklish breath into the sensitive crooks of cold skin. Dennis tilted his head to the side and allowed him to devour, bucking up involuntarily when sharp teeth nipped at his neck. 

Robby slammed his hips back down, almost in reprimand, practically dragging him across the wall. He was communicating, too. “Fuck,” he choked out, his pace unrelenting, his insistent suckling on the soft skin of Dennis’ throat turning every whisper a brand. “Fuck.” 

Dennis’ legs finally gave out. Robby slid a securing knee between his thighs to keep him pinned, an opportunity to which Dennis’ eagerly seized: He grinded down on the weight, mouth slack, body buzzing. 

“More,” he managed, cracking on the upkeep. Their mouths found their way back to one another as coarse and already familiar fingers fondled the bottom of Dennis’ jacket. They slipped inside. 

Robby’s icy hand traveled up his warm, shuddering navel, and the sensation begged for Dennis to speak again. Out of shock or demand, he couldn’t tell. 

“Robby.” 

Two syllables. Two syllables, and that was all it took for God to abandon them outside of that shitty bar. 

He’d abandon them for less. 

Robby ripped himself away almost violently, leaving Dennis to suddenly scramble for support. He caught himself, palms scratching brick, and stood there all bow-legged and without as Robby just glared. His face was burning beneath his beard. With pleasure or with shame, Dennis couldn’t tell.  

Because that earlier, horrified expression had permanently settled on the weathered lines of Robby’s face. He seemed disgusted at what he had done, chest heaving, frown licked scarlet with evidence. The streetlamps painted him harsh. 

“No,” he muttered, hands coming up to his face. His eyes were shut, palms pressed to either side of his nose. “Jesus fucking Christ, no...” 

Dennis straightened, still somewhat starry-eyed. His lungs weren’t working but he wasn’t sure if it was all the breath Robby had stolen or just the gut-wrenching realization that nothing ever changes. 

“I’m--”

“Don’t,” Robby cut, dropping his hands. He stared at Dennis for a moment like how a trapped animal would stare down a snare before letting out a cruel, low chuckle. “Just, don’t.”

Dennis wasn’t sure what his face looked like, but he let it challenge whatever war Robby had unknowingly drafted him into. He was sure he was going to ask him not to tell anybody. To shut up and keep quiet and hold the secret close like a knife, tucked under his pillow for a lonely night’s protection. But he wasn’t stupid. 

Keeping it secret was already a given. 

So Robby walked away, stumbling down the sidewalk like one of those drunk lovers, back into the cavity of the night as if nothing had happened. He wiped at the blood on his lips as he went. 

Dennis watched him go. “Happy New Year,” he called, tongue dry against his chattering teeth.  

Robby kept walking, matching the tone of his scorn. “You too.” 

Dennis stood there until he could no longer see him, until his pants loosened with dead possibility, until the feeling of his face came back in burning embarrassment. He stared at a spot in the sidewalk and slowly, very slowly, settled into a crouch. 

He chewed on his bottom lip as a decades-old déjà vu nearly wracked him immovable. 

You’re so fuckin’ painful to love. 

*

January 7th, 2026

Dear God,

I’m sorry. But you already know that. 

You gave me the opportunity to better myself and instead I backslid into instinct, the one I used to cry about back in Broken Bow. I feel like a failure. To you and to him, but mostly myself. I can never be as you truly want me to be. 

I’m asking you why. Why show up? Why make me enjoy something so dangerous? I know it’s why I do so well at the hospital but in my daily life it’s considered cruelty. You've been cruel to me. Because now what? What do I do with this?

I can’t stop thinking about it. Feeling it. Remembering him.

Even now I’m looking down at myself and feeling the effects of memory wash into the shower drain: I’m thinking about him and what we did together and chasing that sick pleasure you granted us, catching a rare thing in a private palm. I feel even worse now. But that’s normal. So here I am. 

Here I am. I know you know that I regret this but I don’t have any more unexplored outlets, so listen for once and take it upon yourself to relieve me. 

I guess I should thank you for not making things awkward at work. I was afraid of that. But there’s been no considerable change in the way he looks at me. He just stopped the casual touches. Manhandling. Praise. I want it. I’m dirty and I want it. 

Look after the patient we lost today, at least. The old woman who slipped on ice. I know I wasn’t supposed to see it, but Robby looked like he was back at Pittfest, scared and shaking as he delivered the TOD before running away from all of us. It shook him, I know. He disappeared for twenty minutes after and I have to believe you were with him, in your own way. 

Can I blame you? Can I put this weight on you for a second and give up control as I’d so easily given it to him? 

Continue watching over him, even if you’ve never been, even if he gave in to his own instinct that night. I’m sure he’s reflecting upon the whole thing with regret. I wonder if he hates me as much as he hates himself. Maybe if he hated me a little less none of this would’ve happened. That’s the worst part about it. 

I don’t know. Just make me better. 

Give me a sign. 

Trinity banged on the door. 

Dennis startled, unsure how long his eyes had been closed. His vision was blurry in the harsh light of the bathroom, though, that flickering fluorescent giving him some semblance of time.  

The water was cold. His fingers wrinkled. “What?”

“I’m out of deodorant!” Trinity called back, still tapping her knuckles on the door. “I need your boy one!”

She dragged out the last vowel in a mock-groan as Dennis shut off the water, the sound barely easing her impatience. “Alright, alright.”

He gingerly stepped out of the tub, wrapped a ratty towel around his hips, and opened the door. 

Trinity made a bee-line for the medicine cabinet. “Dude, jerk off in your room like a normal person.” She flickered through the scarce options of Dennis’ toiletries as Dennis stood there, whiplashed, shame rising up his ears and speckling his goosebump-riddled shoulders pink. 

Trinity caught his expression in the mirror and gawked. “I wasn’t--oh, what the fuck. Ew. I was kidding.” 

“Just get what you need, Trin,” Dennis grumbled, rubbing a hand over his bleary eyes. Water trickled down his hair and onto his wrist. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“God forbid the girl who pays your rent interrupts your dirty little shower.” Trinity grabbed his Old Spice and applied it generously beneath her arms, flooding the bathroom with the scent of sharp pine needles and mahogany. Her hair was shiny, recently flat-ironed, and her makeup heavier than usual, eyeshadow and lipstick burgundy to match her dress. 

“Garcia?”

Trinity smirked, capping the deodorant and placing it back besides his dollar store shaving cream. “Going over to her place after drinks.”

Dennis nodded. For the hundredth time since New Years, a flash of want electrified his body: He wanted to tell Trinity. Wanted to get her opinion about the entire terrible affair. Maybe she’d have some insights about interpersonal workplace relationships, or simply something enlightening to add about his turmoil. Maybe she’d be quick to call Robby crazy and thus allow Dennis to shift some sense of responsibility off himself. 

But that was a stupid want. He’d be struck down just for saying it all out loud, at least by the HR department. 

So he didn’t say anything at all. 

Trinity lingered in the mirror in the meantime, assessing herself. She rolled her shoulders back, tossed her hair in one quick flip, fixed her necklace. Dennis, despite not having sisters, knew what he should say. 

The truth. “You look nice.”

“Thanks.” Trinity tugged at the hem of her dress from where it rested against her thighs. “Can’t remember the last time I wore something like this.”

“The last time I wore a suit was my second baptism. It probably still fits me,” Dennis returned, but there was something lacking in his usual banter. An exhaustion he couldn’t quite quench. 

Trinity picked up on it with a knitted brow but didn’t address anything. Especially the concept of a second baptism--why didn’t the first one work? So she focused on the lighter issue at hand. “Have an exciting night of Netflix and masturbation planned?”

“Just sleep.”

“Different strokes.” And with that, Trinity turned on her heel and pivoted out the door, correctly guessing Dennis wanted to be left alone. She’d never say it, but she easily understood people. She knew what buttons to press and more importantly when. She just played arrogance a little too well, in Dennis’ opinion. “Thanks for the deodorant. And remember to use the curl cream! Scrunch, don’t--”

“Smear,” Dennis muttered, “got it. Have fun.”

He shut the door. A few seconds went by before he heard the front door open and close shut, too, the jangle of keys and proceeding footsteps accompanying the sound. He waited until nothing but silence ran through the walls before sighing, hard, catching himself in the mirror.

He glanced away. 

Amen. 

Loose boxers. A faded red University of Nebraska sweatshirt with the collar stretched and strings missing. A small clementine from the fruit basket. His dented water bottle, clinking with fresh ice. Two Advil. 

His afterwork routine wasn’t nearly as exciting as a typical late-twenties adult in their physical prime, but it was more than enough just to tend to the day-long pain still rippling up his spine. As he stood there in the dimly lit kitchen, he tried, in vain, to let his earlier prayer wash away down the drain. He wasn’t going to give it any more attention. At least tonight. 

He was barely successful.

His phone rattled from its place upon the kitchen counter, startling him out of such mindless tending. His thumbnail was still skirting off clementine peels; he wiped the juice onto his sweatshirt and reached for the phone, figuring that Trinity forgot something and needed him to drop it to her from the living room window. It happened before. 

His stomach dropped instead. 

Robinavitch Pitt Trauma Medical (10:31): we need to talk

Dennis stared at the text until the screen went black. Then another one slipped through before he could even react. 

Robinavitch Pitt Trauma Medical (10:31): tonight 

Maybe it was the lack of proper punctuation--Dennis expected him to at least keep his autocaps on--or the lengthy official title, the one Dennis had given to every coworker when he inevitably got their numbers just to keep some ounce of respect between them, but he nearly laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. It felt like an email. Something normal, were it not for the fact Dennis could still feel the scratches of an unkempt beard on chin. 

He wanted to laugh. He should laugh. Instead he just continued staring at his phone until it went black again and he could see a familiar, stupidly tired man staring back at him. Give me a sign.

Okay. 

Dennis could mention a bar, or a diner, or some place reasonably crowded so there would be no doubt that talking would be all that they’d do. If he wanted to look at it that way, he could say that God was giving him another out, another reasonable opportunity to stop indulging and set himself upon the correct path. He was answering his prayers.

But Dennis was still angry. And his feet hurt. And the memory of Robby walking away from him on that wall, leaving him half-hard and pathetic in the fresh January cold, pissed him off more than anything else. 

He could always ignore it, but that would only make things worse in the long run. He was never good at playing stupid. 

He unlocked his phone. 

If he asked for Robby’s address, he would need to put on his shoes, his coat, his cowardice, and walk halfway across the city to who knows where. Some expensive bachelor pad. Robby was such a fan of walking, too, so why should Dennis deny him the pleasure?

He switched messages. 

Dennis (10:35): When will you be back?

Trinity Santos (10:36): Early tomorrow. Why

Dennis (10:36): Just curious

Trinity Santos (10:37): Dont watch porn on the tv my mom pays for streaming

Dennis disliked a message.

Dennis (10:37): Someone might come over

Dennis (10:37): Not for long dw

Trinity Santos (10:38): ?

Dennis closed the texts, figuring that the less he said right now, the better. He could face Trinity’s questions later and besides, now she knew not to randomly barge back home before she was expected. Dennis wasn’t a particularly good liar, plight of the dormouse farmboy, but he figured he could depend on the fact that his roommate always hid behind her teasing; she wouldn’t want to know the explicit details of his sex life, no matter how much she joked about it. The jokes only worked because such a life was nonexistent. 

So he took a breath, held it, and answered Robby’s messages. No sure, no about what?, no room for further exchanges. He simply typed out the apartment address and heaved out a sigh. Robby was smart enough to read between the lines. 

He hit send, slammed his phone down, and popped a clementine into his mouth. The juice exploded against his tongue and grounded him to reality--out of his thoughts and thus his endless stream of justification. The apartment was eerily still, in the earth-shattering quiet. Eerily dark.

What on earth did he just do?

He waited for his phone to buzz again, but it never did. Maybe Robby chickened out. Maybe his conscience was a bit less prone to indulgence than Dennis’ own. A trait of age.  

So Dennis ate two more slices and threw the peels away and padded around, suddenly wired. He fluffed the couch cushions and folded blankets and straightened what he could just to give his hands something to do; resorting back to childhood habits, a polite tidying up for unexpected company. It took him about twenty minutes to realize he was still in his boxers. 

It was as he settled his sweatpants low against his hips that a distant rumble shattered the silence. A loud, echoing rumble. 

A motorcycle pulsed through the neighborhood.  

*

Robby didn’t kiss anybody until college. 

It came as a surprise, because people always pictured him as a ladykiller, a player, flirting between the halls where such philanthropy was permitted under the heavy cloak of puberty. But in all honesty, Robby had been a terribly withdrawn teenager. Tending to his grandmother and working under-the-counter odd jobs to pay for her treatment took a toll on his social skills. Plus, he was smart, and kids followed the rules of a cliché more closely in those days. The quiet bookworm with holes in his sneakers was not turning any heads, despite his conventionally pretty features.  

Once, Robby got home from school to find his grandmother at the kitchen table, two pamphlets splayed out before her: One for the University of Pittsburgh, the other for a retirement home Robby recognized for providing shuttles to Rodef Shalom. He’d see that van parked outside, sometimes, clumps of elderly people staggering into the crowd and muttering between themselves. 

His grandmother explained, in that very matter of fact way of hers, that Robby would apply to college. Because they noticed his SAT scores and requested him and who was he to ignore that call? He would go to college, and she would go to the retirement home. Simple. 

So Robby applied, got a full-ride, and didn’t attend his own graduation because of his grandmother’s atrial fibrillation. She made him walk around the hospital in his cap and gown instead, telling any nurse who would listen in her gravely, hardened accent: “This is my grandson, Michael. Remember him. He will be like you.” 

He moved her into the retirement home shortly after. Double checked everything with the on-staff doctors--making sure they knew what pastel pill to give and when, and all the other knit-picky instructions he spent a lifetime constructing. She was well-taken care of, despite his childish reluctance to leave her behind. 

But he did. And one month into college he had his first kiss with a nice girl from New Jersey who sat next to him at orientation and was, by all means, acceptable to bring home to his grandmother. She had a few years of casual dating already under her belt, though, and could not provide Robby the patience he needed in order to grow comfortable. When he stalled one of their usual makeout sessions, freezing at the intimate placement of her hand, she grew bored and never called him back. 

That didn’t bother Robby. In fact he was just fine, because look at him, he did it. He did the thing every pop song crooned about and could now get on with his life.  

Which brought him Will. 

Robby always liked how his name was a verb, a promise: I will do this, I will go, I will. He also liked his smile and his sense of humor and the chipped tooth he got from taking a ball to the face in little league, and the broken nose he got in a fist fight that never  healed right. He was a fighter. An outcast. Where Robby had grown up timid, Will had grown up violent, their low-class beginnings casting them down different yet inexplicably similar roads. 

Robby also liked how easily Will first approached him. Like he knew a secret he just had to share. 

Robby was always aware that he liked men. Again, despite assumptions, he was never particularly righteous about his sexuality, accepting it with a turned cheek as he had so many other uncontrollable things. Will was someone he could not take home to his grandmother, but perhaps that was the allure. Will was a personified break from his fucked up adolescence and a real opportunity for Robby to cultivate something that was completely his own. A promise. 

Will was also patient. He was the closest friend Robby ever had, blowjobs and packs of soiled condoms aside. They were never exclusive, and while Will wracked up a collection of various partners throughout their four years of undergrad, Robby focused on school. Again, it didn’t bother him. He stopped expecting commitment from anybody a long time ago. 

One morning, after a 9AM class and a restless night at Will’s off-campus apartment, the resident advisor caught Robby at the stairwell. “Hey.” His worried voice betrayed his bored, somewhat awkward expression. “You got a call. It, uh, sounded pretty serious.” 

Robby returned the call through the dorm payphone, pressing the cheap plastic up to his face as a nurse, in a tinny, crackling cadence, explained that his grandmother had slipped on some ice. That she was in the hospital. 

Robby was seconds late, sprinting through the emergency room doors with snow in his hair as his grandmother flatlined upstairs. She was dead. Gone. 

Something in Robby died alongside her. 

He made arrangements within that twenty-four hour period with help from the retirement home, who had serviced enough funerals to know that his jittery disposition and aggravated tone was not a reflection of himself nor his faith. It was mourning, pure and simple. They even asked if Robby needed someone to come help collect his grandmother’s things, to which he denied, whittling down her belongings into one sad box he’d carry all the way to New Orleans and eventually back to Pittsburgh. He kept her childhood photographs, her siddur, her silver Shabbat candlesticks and delicate immigration papers. Irreplaceable things.  

He did not keep his mother’s baby clothes, or her drawings his grandmother pressed between her cookbook, or her knitted lavender blanket. Robby didn’t even know his grandmother still held onto such mementos; she always cursed his mother, calling her irresponsible and bitter for leaving little Robby behind the way she did. But that was the reality of love. You could say one thing while your actions said another.  

Will knew what grief looked like. He lost a beloved friend to that wretched disease politicians were constantly belittling, hence his interest in the medical field. But Robby couldn’t stomach the look in his eyes. Couldn’t handle the underlying notion of being cared for--Will tended to the ugliest parts of him and never once recoiled, but Robby needed punishment. To hurt. 

Will, despite the chipped tooth and broken nose, could never give him that. 

So Robby broke it off, moved states, took out thousands of federal aid to pay for it all, and turned the page of yet another chapter. The only difference being the fact that for the first time in his life, he was utterly alone.  

He started sleeping around. He gave in to all the implications his good looks sacked him with and cultivated a long list of casual mishaps; Robby best liked the version of himself that was gone before the morning. It wasn’t because solitude was particularly comforting, rather it was because solitude was something he deserved. He finally made himself punishable. He didn’t know where else he could put his grief, besides a stranger's bed. He could fuck it all out and leave it there to rot. 

Outlet. 

He loved some of them, crossing that thin casual line, but never enough to keep a firm grasp. If he made a concrete list then he would come to the conclusion that they were all like Will, in one way or another: Strong, good, attractive, patient, and unable to be cruel when it mattered most. 

“It doesn’t have to hurt all of the time, Michael,” was what Heather said at the end of her very well-rehearsed break up speech, standing helpless in the parking lot after a particularly tense shift. The summer air beat down on them like a scolding parent. “And I’ve finally accepted that I can’t help you realize that.”

But Robby didn’t want to stop hurting. It was all he knew. 

“‘M wife was obsessed with those personality quizzes,” Jack had offered after the fact, mouth full of a complimentary hoagie that had been growing stale in the break room. The night shift treated the restaurant's owner for heart failure about a week prior. The irony was not lost on anybody. “Enneagrams and shit. Attachment styles.”

Robby chewed softly on his own fatty sandwich. Neither of them cared for the fact they were indulging in what would be considered inappropriate food for anybody else before sunrise. But time was like a vacuum, there. 

“She was anxious attachment.” Jack swallowed and crumpled up his napkin, wiping the crumbs off the table. “Never understood why, though. She was just like anybody else. Taking a risk and scared shitless for it.”

“Hm,” Robby muttered, not really finding the point. All he’d said was that things with Heather were over. “You think I’m anxious.”

“I think you’re avoidant, my friend. Textbook.”

Robby shrugged back, taking another bite. 

Jack continued glaring at him until he realized nothing he was saying was getting through, an expression he’d worn countless times throughout their friendship. So then he sat up, bones weary, and proceeded out the room to finish charting. 

“Not my circus,” he sighed.  

And yeah, maybe that conversation stuck with Robby a little bit more than he would’ve liked. It didn’t help anything in the long run, but it did provide him with a diagnosis. Robby built a life around diagnosis. 

Now there was Dennis. 

Dennis, who had seen him at his weakest and still decided to kiss him. Dennis, who played the part of the dutiful doctor so pleasantly up until he was thrown against a wall and hammering with anger. Dennis, who jeered at his back as Robby walked away. Dennis, the twenty-six year old.  

And Dennis, who never looked at him any differently in the following shifts. Post-Pittfest as well as post-New Years. 

That was what freaked Robby out the most. The fact that, for the first time since Will, leaving didn’t work. It was like he could do anything he wanted and Dennis would continue carrying around a sense of respect--where most would grow bitter and change their perceptions, Dennis just kept on caring, stubbornly recognizing something ugly in Robby that reflected his own brokenness. 

They were alike, but that didn’t make it right. So Robby pushed him away, cowering behind the shame of betraying the one unspoken rule amongst attendings: Don’t fuck around with the med students. Don’t risk an awkward meeting with human resources just because you were horny and bored and they were convenient and willing. Dennis was, above all else, willing. 

But Robby had a bad day. He watched a woman who shared an achingly similar resemblance to his grandmother die on his table; she had slipped on some ice, too, and Robby was wracked immovable with the memory of being nineteen years old again. He found himself on the roof long after his shift, watching the city skyline blink back up at him as the wind cut through his bones. Grief frozen over. 

He needed something. Someone. But there was still an elephant in the room that needed to be addressed, so Robby, feigning responsibility, found himself knocking on an unknown door in a neighborhood he’d never been to before fifty-three years a city native. Give or take.

He replayed the cowardly script he’d been writing over the past week around his head as said door peeled open. 

Dennis stood there in a sweatshirt and sweatpants. His expression was rigid despite the comfortable clothes--he just got out of the shower, given his damp hair which was even more curly in the drying aftermath.

He didn’t say anything. Just stepped aside, letting Robby in. 

Robby did so with heavy steps, taking note of the space: An open-concept kitchen with a flush fruit basket and alphabet fridge magnets, Trinity’s presence felt in the crooked FUCK U. A living room with a grey couch and fluffy green rug and television. A bookshelf. A pile of tennis shoes and coats at the foyer. Plants. 

It was nice, for a rotation’s pension. Robby indulged in the memory of his New Orleans apartment--a small shitty studio that reeked of cigarettes and grease from the diner downstairs--as Dennis locked the door. The sound snapped Robby back to his original purpose. 

Dennis trailed toward the kitchen. “Do you want anything to drink?” He sounded tired, that midwestern twang expectantly grim. “We have water, or…”

“No. I’ll be quick.”

Dennis nodded, pulling his sweatshirt sleeves up his forearms just to give his hands something to do. He hesitated, for a second, before giving up on all of his well-rehearsed pleasantries; he sat astride one of the kitchen island stools and settled himself down like it hurt. Preparing. Toned arms crossed and guarded.

“So,” he started. Robby stood before him and tried to put on that careful display of authority. His chief attending temperament. 

“So,” he parroted. His voice sounded wrong around the walls of the young adult apartment. “We made a mistake.” 

Dennis leveled him, as he so often did. “Right.” 

“I’m your boss,” Robby carried on, and even that felt disingenuous. The script he’d been writing was clearly falling apart and making him sound so terribly out of touch. Still, “It can’t happen again. I’m here to make sure you know that.” 

Dennis twisted his expression, a do you think I’m dumb? downward tilt of his eyebrows and mouth. The cut on his lower lip was gone, now, and Robby tried very hard not to think about its metallic taste. 

“Is that all you came here to say?” Dennis asked slowly.

Sure. “Yes.” 

Dennis huffed, a twinge of shock making his breath fast. He turned his eyes to the floor, staring at the same spot Robby was now achingly interested in. A crack in the faux wood floorboard. 

“Would you be saying all of this if we didn’t work together?”

The question took Robby by surprise. His script, already proven useless, was now completely ignored; he knew he could lie. Should lie. But who was he kidding when he said he was a moral person? Besides, Dennis called bullshit just as easily as he could breathe. He was already scoffing at Robby’s audacity and skirting around his limp excuses like it was nothing. 

By all considerable means, Dennis was his type. So, yeah, if Robby caught him at a bar, or on the street, or on one of those hellscape apps he only used in the deepest of hungers, he would’ve pursued. He supposed he was, still. Pursuing despite the deceit. 

He wanted to strangle himself. “No.” 

Dennis lifted his eyes, attraction palpable in the blink. God, Robby could practically taste it, and in the following seconds he watched as Dennis replayed those same exact fantasies in his mind. The what-could’ve-been’s, if they met under literally any other circumstance. 

He seemed to settle on something. He straightened against the chair. “Then this isn’t really about work. Stop deciding what I can and can’t take. I’ve had worse, believe it or not.” 

The very concept sent Robby flying, and he moved his mouth before he could stop it. “That’s not exactly something to be fucking proud of.” 

“No,” Dennis agreed. “But you’re not as scary as you think you are. I can handle whatever this is.” 

“You don’t know me at all, Whitaker. And I don’t exactly appreciate you acting like you do.” 

“I know what you want.” 

“Yeah,” Robby laughed, lying. “And it's not you.”

Dennis froze. 

For the first time since they began these strange, passionate exchanges, it looked like Robby had finally hit his desired mark. They stared at one another in the dim light of the apartment, letting the seconds go by as the air grew taut to accustom verbal collateral. There, Robby thought, I did it. He did what he did best and successfully kicked something kind until it didn’t feel the need to come back anymore. 

But Dennis surprised him. As always. “I don’t believe you,” he murmured, and Robby nearly collapsed to the ground. Out of frustration or relief, he wasn’t quite sure. “You didn’t,” Dennis stammered, getting a footing back on confidence. “You kissed me like you wanted me. That’s exactly what that was. I’m not stupid.” 

So Robby could kick him pretty hard and it wouldn’t change anything. He didn’t know how he felt about that, whether or not he was excited or horrified or genuinely disgusted with himself. A mix of all three. It was also the first time either one of them addressed the explicit details of what happened, leaving Robby humbled in the shadow of the facts. 

Though, his plan was working. He was going to be responsible and set himself up like a saint until Dennis pushed back, as Robby knew he would. He was passing the test. 

“I picked you up off the floor,” Dennis carried on, and there it was again. That moment of weakness. “And I kept that secret to myself. I keep a lot of them. I’m good at it. So don’t deny me this because you think it’s wrong, or it’s what you think you should do. I don’t care.” 

Now it was Robby’s turn to deflect. “I don’t believe you.” 

Because Dennis did care. A lot. About righteousness and savior complexes; Robby knew that, or figured as much. He could tell based on the guarded way Dennis sat there in the dark, all hunched up with his own lie. Based on the way he sought out comfort through the brutal act of giving himself up to someone. Based on his dire interest in Robby’s fucked up personality and prayers. 

He was already infected with years of self-destructive behavior, so Robby never needed to worry about ruining him. He was just another stranger with a crush. An outlet. 

So Robby moved on to the second act of his plan. “Have you prayed since New Years?”

Dennis straightened, watching carefully as Robby took a physical step forward and a million mental steps back. There was a hint of surprise in his voice, implying he rarely ever got what he wanted so easily--it overshadowed his admission of guilt. “Yes.”   

Robby proceeded across the floor in his leather jacket and jeans and, for the millionth time within these past five minutes, contemplated defeat. His clothes smelled like bike exhaust. Hair like winter. Dennis probably smelled like the earth, no beginning and no end just a timeless, primal certainty. Dirt. 

“For me?” 

Dennis began to nod but stalled, blinking, big eyes even bigger when fanned upwards--he angled his head back as Robby stopped before him. He could feel the heat of his knees against his thighs. 

“For myself,” Dennis corrected. His legs fell apart almost magnetically, a subtle beg that betrayed his next words, “I don’t really like who I am when I think about you.”

Robby’s heard worse. “And what does your God have to say about that?

Dennis’ lips lifted despite himself. “He doesn’t really answer my calls.” 

“Must be lonely.” Robby wanted to touch him. 

So he did, feeling the skin jump to meet his hand. Every petty excuse died in the brush of course fingers on Dennis’ smooth cheek--honesty reached in the contact. He found it surprising how easy it was to give in. How perfectly that pretty face slotted into the crook of his palm. 

“You never planned on ending things tonight,” Dennis realized. Smart man. “You just can’t admit it.”

Caught. “Can you?”

The situatin was complicated, clearly. It was a betrayal of such well-constructed integrity, the one they prided themselves in establishing throughout their profession. It was a mistake. Careless destruction. 

“No.” 

But it was a relief to be known, if only for a moment. To share a catharsis with somebody who was also hurting. And wasn’t that all Robby wanted? To leave his grievances in the body of some soiled stranger?

Dennis wasn’t exactly a stranger, but that didn’t change anything about the principle. And they tended to white-knuckle what little of said principles they had left. 

He slipped his hand down to better grip Dennis’ face, fingers clutching at his bony jaw. He tilted his head back further, finding purchase in his complete submission. God, what was he doing.

Beginning to breathe hard, Dennis glared up at him, smelling like earth and Irish Spring. Like floral conditioner and oranges. Robby soothed his thumb over his once-bitten lip, muscle memory tracing the lines of healed carnage as he wondered what flavor of chapstick he used. 

Robby followed that line of thought with a slow push. Dennis accepted it. 

He closed his eyes as Robby explored the hot, wet palette of his mouth, sliding his thumb against the soft surface of his cheeks and tongue and letting that nameless pleasure between them build. Robby pushed deeper, up and down that enticing throat--it was a chance for Dennis to prove himself, to really sink himself into the darkest corners of Robby’s want. He did so beautifully.

Until he fluttered. Choked, shoulders twitching to bite back a gag.  

Robby immediately pulled his thumb away, smearing the spit-covered evidence against Dennis’ cheekbone; he cradled his face in the come down, letting him breathe. Dennis barely managed to speak. 

“You’re thinking too much,” he croaked. Already torn apart. “Just take what you want.” 

The demand flipped Robby’s stomach. Because, yes, the situation was complicated. But it didn’t have to be. Dennis could handle it. Robby could permit it. 

They could keep a secret close. “And you’re talking too much.” 

Dennis understood the implication--don’t speak, don’t pretend--with a flushing face, accepting the new established rule with a swallow. He stared up at him for a few more seconds, gears whirring, before coming to a decision. 

He eased Robby’s hand away, stood up with a slight stagger, and padded across the apartment. Robby watched him move. 

When Dennis reached the end of the hallway and realized he wasn’t being followed, he lingered, that do you think I’m dumb? expression striking his features again. He motioned his head from over his shoulder with a slight twitch, urging Robby to follow. 

Right. Okay. 

Robby stepped forward. 

If the lights were on, and if he wasn’t so strung up on his want, then Robby would’ve looked around. He would've treated Dennis’ bedroom like a museum, collecting the details of his’ personal life and letting it paint a pretty picture of who he was. The posters and the mementos and whatever lay on the bedside table: They were all precious artifacts. Clues. 

But Robby could do none of that, because as soon as he stepped inside, Dennis resumed where they’d left off on New Year’s.

Robby melted into the kiss, letting his sex-laced urgency root itself in Dennis’ mouth. Dennis knew what he was doing, kissing with that same intoxicating juxtaposition Robby fantasized about ever since he first stole a glimpse of it--confidence meeting submission. Malleable, yet unshakable. Warm. Wet.

Dennis made a pleased sound as he pulled them both back, guiding Robby toward the bed, bare feet stuttering against the floor while his tongue writhed. His fingers found the zipper of Robby’s jacket. He pulled that back, too. 

The sound of the metal teeth was loud, too loud, forcing Robby to take control of the situation with a shove. Dennis hit the bed, immediately understanding what he was being asked to do; he settled himself down across the wrinkled comforter and leaned up on his elbows, his attention never wavering. 

Robby shuffled out of his shoes as gracefully as he could. He slipped his now-unzipped jacket off his shoulders, too, letting them all unceremoniously fall to the floor. Even in the dark, Dennis’ eyes glimmered, hunger making them even bigger. Brighter. 

Robby pulled his shirt over his head. “Where?”

Dennis took a moment to respond, lips growing slack at the bare sight before him. As Robby fiddled with his belt, Dennis came back to himself, sitting up to take his own clothes off. “Bedside table,” he mumbled. His sweatshirt slipped off his head, ruffling his hair. “Second, uh. Second drawer.”

Robby dropped his jeans and walked over, pulling at the drawer with an embarrassing amount of force. He couldn’t exactly remember the last time he was so eager, for a fuck no less. What a week’s worth of denial could do to a person. 

He grabbed a stray condom and a half-used bottle of lube, I’ve had worse than you, and slammed the drawer back shut. Dennis was now shirtless and trying to untangle the strings of his sweatpants, his own eagerness making his fingers shake. Robby threw the items to the bed and helped. 

There was a lot you could learn about a person when they were physically vulnerable. What Robby learned about Dennis, then, was that he was strong. 

Well, stronger than Robby had anticipated: His biceps were rippling in the dark, muscles well-toned from a life revolving around hard labor. Every doctor was strong in one way or another, having to carry both the burden of their profession and various bodies off the stretcher, but Dennis wore his strength quietly. Masked beneath his scrubs and pleasant demeanor. 

Now, shirtless in the lowlight, Robby discovered the truth about his brawn. Just another thing to pretend not to remember in the daytime. 

He undid the knot in Dennis’ sweatpants and pulled them off his legs, leaving them both in nothing but their boxers and nearly-naked need. Dennis lay flush on his back, letting himself be manhandled. Used. 

He looked like he wanted to say something, but the opportunity rid itself as Robby reached down and palmed at him through his boxers. He angled his hips into the touch, a soft, surprised ah replacing all words. Robby tightened his grip just to hear it again. 

He should kiss him. He should ask if Dennis needed prep--he should give it to him anyway, taker’s courtesy and all that. He should wrap his lips around the heady weight between his legs and suck him off just to keep him excited, keep him comfortable, drawing it out in a way he knew was fucking fantastic. He should put his clothes back on and walk out that door and slam his motorcycle into a wall.  

He didn’t do any of that. Clearly. He lost the ability to hold himself to any respectable standards long ago. 

So instead, he flipped Dennis onto his stomach, pulled the rest of his clothes off, took himself out through the slit of his boxers and reached for the condom. He pinched the side of the packet and offered it up, nestling it beside Dennis’ panting mouth. 

“Bite,” he murmured. Dennis obliged, teeth coming together around the wrapper; Robby pulled, freeing the condom of its packaging. A trick he’d learned throughout his years of hasty unemotional intimacy. 

He rolled the condom onto himself, ears burning, breath coming unsteady with anticipation. He watched Dennis lay before him, his fists bunched up in the sheets, big eyes closed to keep his own anticipation at bay. His shoulder blades caught the shadows of the room. There was an artful way to which the knobs of his spine protruded through the darkness. 

Robby didn’t know why he found that far more sexual than his bare ass, but he did. So he reached forward to fondle those shadows while his other hand uncapped the lube, slicking up his cock in muscle memory. Steadying himself. Steadying Dennis. He could taste the desire in the back of his throat. 

It tasted a lot like grief. 

And it was there, in that bedroom, hours after a too-long shift and with his body all feverish despite the winter chill, that Robby fucked Dennis into his queen-sized mattress. It was there that they finally crossed the last bridge of professional decorum, a single act turning them both into the people they tried their very best not to be. 

Dennis cried out when Robby first entered him, the sound muffled and torn between discomfort and pleasure. It pierced a sense of reality back into Robby, who was currently boiling with exhilaration--he leaned down as he finished pushing himself inside, lips falling against the sweaty curve of Dennis’ neck. 

“Breathe,” he managed. 

Another command Dennis willingly followed: He let out a gasp, moving his head into the sheets, soaking in the scent of laundry detergent and stale air. 

“Good. Good.”

Dennis strangled out a whine. Robby burned up inside of him. 

He let himself, as he so often did while cock-deep in a hook up, go blind. He let the pleasure he spent a lifetime chasing tune out his thoughts, letting it take control of his hips and slick up his movements. He started off slowly, allowing Dennis to accommodate until no ounce of discomfort wavered in his throat--he was noisy, as Robby was delighted to discover. He liked it best when his partners were. It made him feel like he was doing something right, those torn up moans pulled from a place of ecstatic honesty and piercing through his blindness. 

He settled his elbows on either side of Dennis’ head, gripped the side of the bed for leverage, and picked up the pace. 

He could hear his name shattered in the creaky sounds of the cheap mattress springs. Could feel the wet-hot beating of their bodies coming together over and over again but that was all he could really focus on. That and the brilliant, sick desire Dennis personified beneath him. 

Everything. His exhaustion, his loathing, his self-destructive streak, Robby let it all dissipate inside of the eager body wrapping around his cock. 

That was what it was all for. Those scant stretches of peace. 

Robby ran his teeth along Dennis’ blushing earlobe. One hand came up from the bed to run through his still-damp curls, a pointed fixation. All the while his body continued ramming out his grievances. 

God, it was good. 

He had half a mind to wonder if Dennis believed God was there with them, then, and he’d call him fucked up for believing in something so useless. But who was he to deny the rapturous relief of their slapping skin, the divinity of rotten fruit? 

His thrusts became sporadic. Hard.

He needed it harder. Robby leaned away and moved his hands to Dennis’ hips. Dennis molded himself to the change of position and settled up on his knees, supporting himself on shaking arms, heavy head bowed. Prayer. 

Robby took the new angle in a quickening stride, staring at those strong shoulders as they jostled from force. They were moving in tandem. They knew what they were doing. 

Soon, far too soon, though, it ended. Robby, with a strangled grunt, shuddered as he came, leaving ten small bruises on Dennis’ firm waist to keep that good feeling still. He might’ve said his name, a half-formed Whitaker breaking at the fray. He might’ve said a million things, vision white, tongue dry. 

He hadn’t come that quickly in a long time. 

He felt himself settle as his breath came back to him in a punch. His chest heaved before he remembered his place--one hand wriggled its way around. Dennis, blind himself, allowed Robby to take him into his knowing fingers and finish him off. 

And he did so, with one or two good twists of his wrist. Dennis was surprisingly quiet when he followed Robby off that ledge, coming with nothing but a soundless flutter before melting back into the sheets. Boneless. A single gasp was his give away. 

No matter if he’d regret it as soon as he cooled down, no matter if this was all just another bitter mistake, Robby could feel that gasp nestling into the corners of his memory. It melted something ugly inside of him, if only for a moment, before congealing back into apathy. 

He needed it to hurt. 

*

Dennis stared at the ceiling. 

There was a crack in the plaster, a sign of carelessness brought on by the landlord--they wanted to get it fixed, but Dennis was technically living there illegally on account of his name never being added to the lease. Trinity kept meaning to bring it up but could never find the time. So for now, there’d be a crack in the apartment’s infrastructure and a secret harbored in her lack of renter’s insurance. 

It was all Dennis could look at as the sweat cooled off his back. As an ache settled across his body and pooled in his lower half. He just stared at the crack in the ceiling as Robby came back from the bathroom, condom disposed of and clothes plucked from the floor. 

It was the sound of a belt being buckled back on that finally forced him to move; Dennis lifted his head, easing up from his melted position against the bed. There were lines across his stomach from where he’d been pressed into the sheets. There was a warm, wonderful feeling swirling in his blood, a numbness he wished would last for days instead of seconds. It was really, really good. 

A hand obstructed his view. He turned towards it, catching sight of Robby handing him his sweatpants. 

He barely managed a thanks before Robby carried on dressing, sitting down on the side of the bed to put his shoes on. With his back now facing him, Dennis allowed himself to soak in the reality of what happened and the way Robby wore it: Messy, wild hair, shiny skin, his own numbness unwinding the tension he usually carried in his shoulders. 

He came to understand why Robby fucked his feelings out, then. Because he looked a lot lighter. Less burdened. Dennis figured he looked the same.

He pulled his legs through his sweatpants and revelled in the pain the motion caused. 

“You should change my name in your phone.” 

Dennis, expecting nothing but silence in the aftermath, practically flinched toward the rasp. 

He nodded back, but Robby couldn’t see him--brown eyes glanced over through the dark, an expectant seriousness swirling around the hue. Dennis never really noticed how handsome those eyes were before. They’d been too haunted to be properly appreciated, like the rundown Victorian house near his childhood farm. 

He did not recognize the sound of his voice when he answered, “I will.” 

Because he could read between the lines of that request: Tonight was going to happen again the next time Robby needed it, and Dennis wanted their indulgences to go both ways. He wanted Robby to answer his beck and call, too. 

“Change mine.” 

Robby blinked, considering, before turning back around with a slow nod of his own. He sat there in the dark for a minute, letting it all wash over him in one hazy, gentle wave, before sighing. Hard. 

Then he stood up, reached for his discarded jacket, and zipped it back on. Again, Dennis was expecting him to leave without a goodbye. He did what he came there to do and that was that. 

But before Robby left the room, he strode back over to the bed, put one knee across the mattress, and leaned forward. 

He took Dennis’ face into his hands and kissed him. 

Considering the face-down fuck he just so eagerly accepted, it was a surprise to say that the kiss was what nearly doubled Dennis over. He didn’t know what else to do, besides kiss him back. Delicately. Maybe Robby was apologizing for being so careless--with his job title or with his anger, he wasn’t sure. Maybe he just wanted to kiss him goodnight, which was even worse. Maybe he just liked kissing him. 

Dennis didn’t really care about the reason, in the end. Because he would be lying if he said he didn’t like the press of his mouth on his own. 

Quietly, as if nothing intrusive had happened, Robby pulled away and walked out the door. Dennis sat there, shirtless and lax, and listened as the apartment door opened and clicked back shut. Minutes went by before a motorcycle engine crackled down the street, taking with it a man who sought purchase in Dennis’ darkest impulses. 

Dennis looked back towards the crack in the ceiling. 

He had work in six hours. 

*

January 16th, 2026

Michael (01:31): are you awake

Dennis (01:31): Yes

Dennis (01:32): Trinity’s home

Michael shared his location. 

February 4th, 2026

Michael (5:45): where are you

Dennis (5:46): Ambulance bay

Dennis (5:46): Don’t follow me out

Michael (5:46): wasn’t 

Michael (6:01): we need you back in here

Dennis (6:01): Are you free tonight

Michael (6:03) yes. pull it together

 February 10th, 2026

Dennis (9:44): I’m outside

Dennis (1:04): I left my badge 

Michael (1:05): i’ll leave it in your locker tomorrow

Dennis liked a message

February 12th, 2026

Dennis (9:20): Omw 

Michael (9:20): front door’s unlocked

Michael (9:22): did anybody notice 

Dennis (9:22): Princess and Perlah made jokes

Michael (9:22): what did you say

Dennis (9:23): Nothing

Michael (9:24): santos?

Dennis (9:24): She doesn’t want details 

Dennis (9:30): Do you do that often

Michael (9:30): what

Dennis (9:31): Mark your dates up  

Michael (9:48): i’ll be more careful

Dennis (9:48): I don’t care 

February 20th, 2026

Michael (11:46) i think we should stop 

Dennis (11:46): Okay 

Dennis (11:50): That’s it?

Michael (11:50): what do you want me to say

February 20th, 2026

Michael (2:34): are you awake

Dennis (2:35): I thought you said we needed to stop

Michael (2:35): are you coming or not

Dennis (2:55): Here

*

Their trysts fell under three categories.  

The first being the most expectant and reocurring: A wordless fuck without pleasentries, no hello’s or goodbye’s or how are you’s exchanged. Just a hasty tussle around cold sheets to chase that much needed peak before sighing out its relief and leaving. No room for anything else, besides instinct and certainty. 

The second was slower. Deeper. It only happened once, with Robby coming over to Dennis’ apartment with a soul-crushing weight dragging his actions down--there was something contemplative in the way he gripped his waist. The way he traced his ribcage with his tongue just to feel the bony ridges shiver. The way he looked into his eyes as he came, the way he said his name. 

He broke a rule by thinking too much. 

Afterwards, Robby texted that they needed to stop. Dennis figured the eruptive end had something to do with what happened, a strange, complicated boundary neither one of them remembered making. Turning a fuck into something deeper. So he didn’t fight him on it. Just fell asleep without showering to allow Robby’s sweat to seep itself into his pores for the very last time. Soiled. 

That wasn’t the last time, though. Clearly. 

Because the third type of tryst was the one happening now. With Dennis on his bruised knees and Robby’s cock buried in his throat, calloused, strong hands gripping the back of his mousy hair as Robby repeatedly rammed into him. Over and over and over again. Spit dribbled down his chin. Obscene, soggy sounds filled the quiet. 

It was angry. Rough. 

Perfect. 

Dennis just barely stepped through the door before Robby had him pinned up against yet another wall, Robby’s hands finding their way into his jeans. He jerked him off in the foyer of his too nice apartment--a single doctor’s paycheck could splurge on such domestic extravagancies--and Dennis could barely linger in the climax before being shoved to the floor. 

He found it funny, if that was even the word for it, that even in his most desperate of passions Robby had to cover his bases. Like he’d check off a mental chore list before he could begin to properly indulge. 

And he was indulging. Whispered, mindless demands fell from his lips as he writhed himself against Dennis’ tongue, taking what he wanted so furiously and ecstatic because of it. Dennis scraped together shaky breaths and half-bitten gags as he stared up at him, trying to make the disheveled image of a once fabled man pin itself to his memory. 

He could feel every beat of blood through his sizzling veins. There was nothing horrible, no worry or fear or heartache.

It was bliss. 

“Take it, baby, c’mon,” Robby gritted out, and Dennis closed his eyes toward the nickname, moaning back and overwhelmed. You’re talking too much. “No, look at me. That’s it.” 

Squinting up through the darkness and heat, chest and throat tight, Dennis obeyed. Ever since he was a kid he’d been told how disarming his eyes were--it was his only physical trait he completely trusted as attractive, despite the fact that they were also his biggest giveaway. People could tell when he was lying just by looking into him. He wore every emotion through a blink. 

Robby seemed to know that the best of all. He developed a thing with eye contact when he was close. 

Proving the theory correct, a second later the hands through Dennis’ hair tightened, pushing him down, and Dennis swallowed Robby completely as warm, sour come pulsed down his throat. 

He inhaled the smell. Robby practically shivered into the fall. 

Usually, they rid themselves of the last of their anger through one another. Sex healed whatever passionate frustrations were coursing through their body just minutes prior, hence the entire fuck-buddy dynamic. 

But not this time--Robby took a moment to collect himself before ripping Dennis off of him, the movement so brutal Dennis’ head knocked back against the wall. He gasped, his overworked throat aching as spurts of much needed air rushed back into his lungs. He panted, coughed, palms pressed to the floor to keep himself steady. 

Robby pulled his pants back up and walked away. Dennis didn’t really care where he was going. 

He also didn’t know how long he sat there on the floor, shadowed by the lowlight of the foyer. Though eventually he settled back into himself, wiping at his slick lips and picking up the pieces that had been lost in the heedless haze of fucking. His mouth was stretched and aching. His heartbeat thrashed in his ears. Tears clung to his lashes.

He hated how much he enjoyed that. Hated how he could only get it from Robby. 

In the distance, a sink turned on, the hush of the pipes creaking through the walls. Dennis decided to follow that sound, one palm pressed to the wall for support as he stood back up. His knees cracked. His back rippled. 

Robby was in the kitchen filling up a large glass of water. The muscles of his back were visible through the thin fabric of his sleep shirt, illuminated by nothing but the gold hallway light. There was a bottle of ibuprofen on the counter. 

Dennis knew nothing there was for him. 

Robby’s anger was still palpable, tainting the environment and infecting the room like an airborne fever. Despite his line of work and all the careful precautions he took, Dennis was never exactly immune to catching illnesses. That wasn’t how it worked. 

“I’m leaving,” he croaked. His voice was so fucking pathetic, raspy and low and very clearly torn. 

Robby didn’t say anything. Just shut the water off, reaching for his ibuprofen.  

Dennis didn’t know why he didn’t move. Why he lingered, there in that kitchen.

But he did. He was sick.  

Robby felt him standing there with a grumble. “Do you need an invitation?” He popped three pills in his mouth and muttered around the swallow, “A kiss goodnight?”

Holy shit. “I was going to ask if you were okay,” Dennis fired back, regretting the words as soon as they left his swollen mouth. That was one thing that was certain throughout this dynamic: Dennis was always going to give as good as he got. “But I guess we don’t do that.”

“No, we don’t.” Robby placed the cup back down, clearly livid at the fact Dennis wasn’t immediately fucking off back home and leaving him alone. He’d been in a horrible mood for hours; even at work, he was snapping at everyone left and right. Dennis especially. 

Dennis knew why he faced the brunt of his scorn, today, just based on the fact he was closer to Robby than anyone else and therefore an easy target for his scorn, but it left the rest of the Pitt confused. Curious. They were worried that yet another one of Robby’s golden boys had done something very wrong and caused the already short-tempered boss to spin out. 

Which was why Dennis justified lingering there, because clearly something was bothering him. Something deeper was happening that he couldn’t ignore; his head still thumped with how hard it hit the wall. But now he was too wrapped up in himself to get out. They were both extremely stubborn, that way. 

“What,” Robby carried on, shooting Dennis with a bored, mocking expression. There was nothing behind his once-handsome eyes. “You think this gives you some special kind of privileges on how I feel?”

He gestured vaguely at the this, alluding to the sex, the fact that his come was currently coating the inside of Dennis’ churning gut. He couldn’t even say it out right. 

Dennis scoffed. “I’m staining your shirt, so yeah, a little bit.”

Robby shook his head and glanced away. After he’d finished Dennis off in the foyer, he mindlessly wiped his hand across his shirt, smearing the evidence against the too-thin fabric before carrying on. It lay there now, drying in the tension, and Dennis caught something in the way Robby hadn’t changed out of it.

He caught it the last time they fucked each other, slow and accidentally meaningful. He caught it in the backsliding; taking the public bus all the way to Robby’s swanky apartment without thinking twice. 

Dennis, as always, could easily read people. That was why he was a good doctor. 

But he was also determined, which was why he forced himself into this mess in the first place. Why he wouldn’t leave that kitchen. Why he made it out of Broken Bow. And clairvoyant determination wasn’t exactly the best trait to have when it came to keeping things casually vague. 

“You can’t even look at me.”

“I’m not--Jesus.” Robby groaned, barked, practically, his voice rising and his body growing tense with that snowballing frustration. He wiped his stained hands over his weathered face. “Jesus fucking Christ, Whitaker. I’m not in the mood.” 

“Which is why I’m asking,” Dennis shot back, hating how the rasp in his voice made his words even more shallow. “You think people can’t tell? That I can’t tell? You’re getting--” 

“What?” Robby cut. He dropped his hands, seething. He practically dared Dennis to cross that line. 

And Dennis did. “You’re getting worse.”

Robby laughed at that, tilting his head back like it was all so funny for him. Maybe it was. “I knew this was a mistake. Look at yourself. I’m not one of your little evangelical projects you get to tend to in order to make yourself feel good about something.”

“Fuck you, Robby.” 

“Oh, was that too much? Was that too real, kid? Listen, you really, really don’t know a single goddamn thing about me besides the feel of my fucking cock, so I’d rather not stand here listening to you whine about my lack of communication.”

“I know enough. I know you won’t let anybody stay.”

“I don’t want anybody--”

“Bullshit!”

Silence, besides the distant whirring of the radiators. Besides the sporadic drips of the faucet, stray water droplets ringing out into the polished steel like a ticking clock, marking time. Besides the occasional whir of 3AM traffic slipping up through the frosted windows. 

Silence. It was the first time Dennis had ever raised his voice to him, and Robby, through the heavy fog of his anger, saw how much that meant.

Because he glared, silent himself, unable to properly give the last word for once in his life. He seemed stunned at finally managing to bring Dennis down to his level. Dennis hated how easily he was brought there. 

He swallowed around his shame so hard that it hurt, all in an attempt to lower his voice. Whispering, practically. 

“Bullshit,” he repeated. “You don’t spend every other night with me because you don’t want anybody.”

Robby still didn’t say anything. He just continued to glare, wracked immovable by the eerie, unusual sensation of being so boldly called out. Dennis had put them into a stalemate: If Robby protested, he would unknowingly admit to caring too much, and Dennis would do the same if he carried on down that raised-voice road. He was helpless and shooting off at the mouth just to be proven right. 

It was like he was a child again, standing in the middle of his torn apart room. He didn’t want to pick up his books and his toys and hang up a poster to hide the new hole in the wall, because then he’d have to admit to himself that he caused such a mess. That his anger ripped everything apart. If he just continued standing there, he could pretend he walked into it. That he played no hand in destruction. 

There was nothing left to do, then. Dennis had said his peace and Robby said his. 

They cared far too much and not at all. “You’re right,” Dennis settled, and Robby looked away as if the words finally broke the stony spell he was under. He stared at a kitchen cabinet instead, perhaps jealous of its brainless, sturdy function. “This was a mistake.”

“Mhm.” 

So Dennis finally willed himself to walk away, leaving Robby to clean up his mess; but he knew he never would. He’d just rot in it, building up a life around such volatile collateral. He hated how he felt bad about that. But he couldn’t stand there looking at it anymore. 

He waited at the door for one last word. Waited at the bus stop, shivering in his zip-up, for one last text. Waited. 

Nothing ever came. Dennis was partially relieved, partially embarrassed at how easily he’d fucked things up. They’d have to see one another again in less than four hours, and Dennis would have to cower behind the excuse of a seasonal cold in order to hide the way his shoulders sagged and voice croaked throughout the day. Robby would just play it off as his usual temperament. 

Dennis rested his head on the rattling bus window, willing it to take two wrong turns and end up on a highway leading him back to all things familiar. 

Homesick for a place that left him furious.