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The first time she noticed anything, it was fairly inconsequential.
Robby had pulled Huckleberry after him to help on a critical trauma that had been brought in, on that had been very touch and go for a while. The whole thing had quickly turned into a mess.
A mess that despite her wanting to join in on, Trinity knew that with Robby, Mel, and Huckleberry all working on one patient, she would probably get in the way.
When they had eventually gotten the patient stable enough to go up to surgery, Huckleberry had walked out of the trauma room looking absolutely wrecked.
The scrubs he was wearing were ruined. Not that that was really out of the ordinary with him. There was blood all over his arms, even some on his face. His hair was tussled. And he looked absolutely exhausted.
From sitting at her computer across the floor of the ER bay, Trinity watched as Robby took off his gloves and walked up behind Huckleberry. He took hold of Dennis’s shoulders in a move that would usually make the young doctor jump out of his skin, but instead Dennis merely turned around and smiled at the attending.
Robby was saying something to Dennis then, something she couldn’t make out, but made Dennis smile even wider.
Then, with the arms still on Huckleberry’s shoulders, Robby turned him in the direction of the breakroom, giving him a small push.
And okay, it wasn’t that unoften that Robby pushed someone to take a break and get some food. In fact, it happened all of the time.
But something about the way he had pulled Dennis aside just now, his hand on Dennis’s shoulder, speaking in a low volume to Dennis. There was something up there.
Something that she was going to find out.
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Ever since Trinity saw Robby give Huckleberry that ‘extra’ sandwich, she started paying attention to them a little more.
Paying attention as in watching them when they interacted.
And one thing she noticed was that Robby put his hands on Huckleberry a lot.
Like a lot a lot.
Giving Huckleberry’s shoulder a pat when they walked past each other.
Grabbing Huckleberry’s shoulders and turning him when sending him off to a new patient.
Leaning over Huckleberry when the younger doctor was working on charting at one of the computers.
Always sitting next to Huckleberry in the breakroom, close enough that their legs were touching.
Their hands touching for just a little too long when passing something from one man to the other.
If it was just one or two things over the course of a shift, Trinity probably wouldn’t have noticed, just like everyone else seemed to not be noticing it.
But almost every time she saw them standing within five feet of each other, one of these things were happening.
And speaking of standing within five feet of each other, they were always either right next to each other, or in completely different rooms.
Even during their start of shift briefings, Huckleberry was always the one standing the furthest up front, closest to Robby.
She couldn’t be the only one that noticed this, right?
It was later that morning when Trinity had been typing some patient notes into a computer and had looked up, seeing Dennis standing at one of the counter by the nurses’ station, looking at something on a computer over there.
She watched as Robby walked up from behind Huckleberry, joining him at the counter and knocking his shoulder against Huckleberry’s. Almost like someone would do with a friend they wanted to distract from work instead of a boss and his very junior subordinate. That was weird?
Robby didn’t even act like that around Abbot, and she knew the two attendings were close friends. Closer than Robby and Huckleberry were certainly… at least she thought so.
Robby then tilted his head and said something into Dennis’s ear. Dennis ducked his head, and she couldn’t see his face from this angle, and then Robby walked away, chuckling.
There was definitely something going on between the two.
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Just as Trinity started to notice how Robby kept touching Huckleberry, the man started spending less and less time at their apartment.
At first, she noticed it, but didn’t really pay it any mind. Huckleberry was a full grown adult, he was allowed to have hobbies after work and on their days off. In fact, it was a good thing that he did, she thought.
Their first month living together, he had still been so concerned about needing to save money any way he could, he would decline going out for drinks and just about any other hobby of hers that she wanted to share with him.
So if he had found something to occupy his time and help him relax outside of their stressful jobs, that was a good thing. A great thing in fact.
She just wished he would have told her what it was, and where he was or who he was with.
Sue her for being concerned about the country boy in the big large city. Any number of things could happen to him.
Anyone would want to know the same things about their roommate, right?
She would ask him about it tomorrow, Trinity told herself when it was nearing 9 p.m. and Huckleberry still hadn’t come home yet. If Huckleberry hadn’t told her he was probably going to be out late, she would probably be making some calls right now. But it was nearing the time she usually went to bed before a shift, and she didn’t want to stay up to wait for him for it to turn out to be nothing. She was sarcastic on a good day at work, they didn’t need to see her on a bad day.
She sent him a quick text, asking if he would be home tonight, but fell asleep before he responded.
She forgot about the text the next morning.
When she woke up the next morning and had gotten all set to leave for work, but she hadn’t so much as heard a bump or groan come from the closed door of his room, which wasn’t an uncommon occurrence with Dennis rushing around in the morning, her interest was piqued.
“Huckleberry, I’m leaving in ten minutes!” Trinity called out in the apartment as she pulled the two slices of toast she ate every morning out of the toaster. It's what she usually had for a quick breakfast before going into the hospital. Two pieces of toast with peanut butter.
Getting the peanut butter spread across the toast and taking a bite, she still hadn’t heard a peep from Dennis’s bedroom. She shook her head as she walked over and banged on his door. “Wake up! I’m leaving in five!”
Still no noises. Dennis had overslept a handful of times in their three or so months living together, but usually by this point he would wake up and shout something out to tell her she was awake.
But he hadn’t.
She reached her hand to the doorknob and slowly turned it open.
Trinity had never really spent much time in the room since he had moved in, but he left the door open often enough for her to know that the clothes strewn over the floor and unmade bed weren’t that unusual. But there was no sign of the man in the room.
Had he even come home last night?
She walked in only far enough to look into the bathroom attached to the bedroom, it was in a similar mess as the bedroom, but still Dennis wasn’t in there.
Maybe he hadn’t come home…
Twenty minutes later as she walked into the locker room, Dennis was the first person she saw, standing in front of his locker getting changed.
“Huckleberry, where were you last night?” she asked.
“Huh? Oh, Santos! Sorry I didn’t respond to your text, I kind of lost track of time,” he said as he pulled his scrub top over his head.
Her text? Oh yeah, she had sent him a message right before she went to bed, and didn’t see any messages from anyone when she woke up this morning.
“Yeah, that’s… okay, but where were you?” she asked again.
Dennis opened his mouth and was about to say something when he closed it. She lifted an eyebrow. If he had just said with a friend or something, she probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but the way he responded to it now…
“I was… out,” Dennis said, his voice just above a whisper.
“I got that,” Trinity said. “But with who?”
“Oh, you know…” Dennis fidgeted with his hands. “I was… I was seeing someone.”
“Like a date?” Trinity asked. “You’re dating someone?”
“I… well… I-”
Dennis was stopped as Robby poked his head through the door to the locker room. “Hey, you two. Get a move on already, we’re starting soon.”
She watched as Dennis nearly jumped out of his skin upon hearing Robby.
And that, while in line for Huckleberry’s reactions, was weird. Robby had unexpectedly popped in on him an uncountable number of times, he had largely stopped responding to the man like that by now.
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Trinity sighed as she opened the door to the dryer and saw Dennis’s clothes still sitting in there. He had forgotten to take his stuff out… again.
The man forgot about it every freaking time he did his laundry.
Trinity shook her head. If he had left his stuff in the washer that was one thing, and his problem to deal with clothes that would be wet for hours, Trinity didn’t want her wet clothes sitting in the washer waiting until whenever Dennis decided to come back.
And wherever he kept going was a whole nother conversation.
She was reasonably certain that he was dating someone, and if she had to guess, someone who worked at the hospital, but she had no idea who that could be. And just why was he being so cagey about it?
She shook her head as she grabbed the laundry basket that had been sitting right outside of the laundry closet - Dennis’s laundry basket - and started pulling all of his clothes out and dumping them in the basket.
About halfway through she saw the familiar black fabric of the scrubs they wore at the hospital.
But wait, he didn’t really bring one of those home, did he?
She pulled it separate from the other clothes it was mixed in. Sure enough, it was a scrub top.
Why did he bring a scrub shirt home to wash?
Dennis almost always had some sort of body fluids on his scrubs at the end of shift. He sure as hell knew how to put them into the hospital’s laundry system after his first shift. So why did he bring this one home?
And now that she thought about it, he was washing them in their shared laundry machine? That’s… just gross.
But besides that, this shirt was definitely not in Dennis’s size. She looked at the collar of it - extra large. There was no way he fit into that. He wore the same scrub sizes that she did, a medium, and some days even those looked a little too big on him. There was no way he was wearing an extra large, not without looking like he was a middle school kid playing doctor, and he already looked like that most days.
Five minutes later, right as she powered on the dryer to start with her clothes, Trinity heard the sound of the apartment door opening and Dennis walking in.
“Hey, you forgot to take out your laundry before you left,” Trinity said, pointing at the basket along the side of the wall waiting for him.
“I did?” he asked as he looked at where she was pointing. “Oh, shit. Sorry, I completely forgot about it.”
“Yeah,” Trinity said as she grabbed the iced coffee on the kitchen counter she made before going to move her laundry. “You also have a scrub top in there? Why’d you bring it home?”
“Oh? I did?” Dennis asked. Ah, he was trying to play innocent. It wouldn’t work on her.
“Yeah,” Trinity said. “I thought you always put them through the hospital’s laundry system, why’d you bring it home?”
“It’s a… a long story,” Dennis said as he rubbed his hands on his legs, a nervous tick of his.
“I’m always down for a long story,” Trinity said as she took a sip of her coffee.
“It’s not an interesting story,” Dennis said as he picked up the laundry basket.
“Well, I’m already interested in it,” Trinity said. “And I will be until you convince me otherwise.”
Dennis looked over at her, and was that a blush she saw on his face? A blush?
“Really,” he sighed. “It’s not that interesting.”
Sure, whatever he said.
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Another two weeks had passed, and Trinity hadn’t gotten any answers to the mysteries that had surrounded her roommate, when they both were moved to the nightshift of the ER.
“This is going to be my first shift without Robby,” Dennis said as they walked from her car into the hospital.
“Really?” Trinity asked, she knew that the vast majority of both of their shifts were day shifts, which Robby was usually scheduled for, and this was Dennis’s first night shift, but she hadn’t realized that this was his first shift working without Robby.
“Yeah, it feels kind of weird,” he said.
She thought about that for a second, and guessed that it kind of made sense. Sort of like getting a substitute teacher in school for the first time.
“Well it won’t be all that different, trust me,” Trinity said as they walked into the hospital building.
“Right,” he huffed. “I hope so.”
She had to laugh to herself, trust Huckleberry to be worried for himself just because he would be working under a different boss for one shift.
Three hours later, as Trinity looked across the floor to see Dennis standing at a computer, trying to input some notes into a computer with his shoulders hunched up around his ears, she had to ask herself whether he might have had a point by being nervous earlier.
She walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped, humped like she had never seen him jump before.
Jumping and turning around, he looked at her with wide eyes. “Oh, Santos, it’s just you. You shouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t sneaking up on you?” she said.
He blew out a breath that turned into somewhat of a laugh. “Y- yeah, right. You didn’t.”
“Are you doing okay?” she asked.
He looked up at her again. “I- I’m fine!”
“You sure?” she asked. “You look like you need a break.”
“Really, I’m fine,” he insisted.
“Nothing’s wrong with taking a five minute break, You know that right?” she asked, making a point to look him up and down. “We’re not even halfway through this shift.”
He ducked his head after hearing that. “Yeah, I know,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear it over the chaos of the emergency room. “It’s just… different tonight is all.”
“Which is why you should really take a breather,” she said.
The shift ended up being just as hectic as the days shifts usually were, only with about twice as many semi-drunk people. Overall, from the patients she had worked on, she would have to say it was one of the better shifts she had worked in a while.
But it was finally over.
“Hey, do you mind if we stop at that bakery on third on the way home?” Trinity asked Dennis when she found him in the locker room at the end of their shift.
“Huh? Oh, um… I don’t need a ride home,” Dennis said as he turned to face her.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t?” she asked, then huffed a laugh. “It’s 7 a.m. You saying that you have plans right now?”
Dennis smiled that small derpy smile of his as she saw a blush overtake his face. “Yeah, I do actually.”
She knew what that smile of his usually meant. “Is it that date you’ve been seeing?”
She saw him freeze for just a split second. “Um, yeah… you can say that.”
She leant against a locker, crossing her arms. “So when are you going to introduce me to them?” she asked. When Dennis’s head popped up to look at her with surprise written all over his face, she held up her arms. “If there’s a reason you don’t want me to meet them yet, that’s fine,” she said. “It’s just that… we’ve been roommates for about six months, and you’ve been dating them for a while. Figured I’d just… like to meet whoever you were seeing.”
Dennis was silent for a moment, then he nodded. “Yeah, I get it. It’s just… kind of complicated right now.”
Kind of complicated…
She knew those types of relationships, and had been in a couple herself.
“Sure, just… whenever you want to talk about it, I’m here for you,” she said.
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When Trinity eventually figured it out, the realization didn’t happen at the hospital or at their apartment. It happened at a bar.
T wasn’t all that unusual for a group of people from the pitt to get together and grab drinks somewhere downtown. She had gone out with people more times than she could count.
It wasn’t even all that unusual for the attendings to be out with them.
What was unusual?
For damn near everyone to be out at the same bar on the same night. Well, maybe not everyone. Javadi, Mel, and a few others weren’t there, but Trinity had even convinced Huckleberry to come out. Something he hadn’t joined her on since the second week after he moved in.
Speaking of Huckleberry, where had the man gone?
The bar was slightly crowded tonight, a little more so than she remembered the Fox Lab to usually be. She stood up on her toes, trying to gaze around the place to find her wayward roommate.
“Are you looking for someone?” Mateo asked her from where he stood at a table nearby.
“You haven’t seen Huckleberry anywhere, have you?” she asked, needing to raise her voice slightly for him to hear her.
“You mean Whitaker?” Mateo asked. She nodded her head. “I think I saw him over with Robby a little while ago,” he said as he pointed a hand at the far side of the bar.
He was with Robby?
While it wasn’t weird per se for him to be hanging around Robby, she had to ask herself why out of everyone here he would be with Robby? Robby had to be like twenty years older than him. And she was pretty sure they didn’t have the same types of tastes in drinks. From what she knew about living with Dennis for the past five months and working under Robby for two years, she didn’t think they had any similar interests really.
She walked to the other side of the bar, and couldn’t find any sign of her wayward roommate. She looked left and right, and then in a booth right in the back corner, she saw them.
Huckleberry was sitting on Robby’s lap, Robby’s arms wrapped around the front of his chest.
She had to do a double, and a triple take to confirm what she was seeing. Sure enough, it was the same sight each time.
Huckleberry was sitting on Robby’s lap. Robby leant in and whispered something into his ear, making Dennis blush and laugh. One of his full belly laughs.
Suddenly everything in her mind connected.
Robby passing him snacks and forcing him to take breaks.
Robby almost always constantly touching the younger man.
Huckleberry spending less time at their place.
Finding the large scrub top in the laundry.
Huckleberry acting weird whenever he worked a shift without Robby.
And Huckleberry acting weird when she asked him about meeting whoever he was dating.
Of course he would feel weird about her meeting his boyfriend.
His boyfriend was both of their bosses!
She slowly backed away before either of them caught sight of her.
She would ask him what was up about this the next time they were both home.
Everything suddenly made sense now.
But seriously… Huckleberry and Robby! She would have never guessed that.
And then… why did it look like she was the last to find out about this?