Chapter Text
The metal of the tiny house key bore hard into Dennis’ finger and thumb, digging painful indentations into his skin with another attempt to force the thing into turning.
“Come on,” he huffed, sweat gathering on his upper lip from the July heat. Bent nearly in half to glare at the stubborn lock, he stopped only to turn his head and smile at the elderly woman walking past. In return, he received only a pursed-lip sneer and quickened steps down the sidewalk.
As if awkward fumbling had suddenly become contagious.
Dennis exhaled hard through his nose and turned back around, jingling the key hopelessly again and trying his best not to whine at the injustices of the world.
Maybe that lady wouldn’t judge him so harshly if she was juggling a heavy backpack, a rapidly cooling dinner, the exhaustion of a fourteen hour shift and an hour’s walk back home, and this damned door that hated his guts.
“What’s the point of having a nice house if it doesn’t even-”
The hissed words of Dennis’ frustration cut off at the exact moment the key, inexplicably, slid perfectly in the lock and allowed the door to jerk open. Dennis nearly fell in behind it, stumbling red-faced into Dr. Robby’s foyer. Too familiar with his own track record of humiliation, he just shook his head and shuffled into the quiet house, thankful to at least be alone with his embarrassment.
Closing the door behind him came far easier than opening it, shutting out the entire world and allowing Dennis to finally sigh into the fall of his tense shoulders. It still felt surreal—leaving the chaos of the hospital behind for landscaped lawns, hardwood floors, the constant hum of powerful air-conditioning.
In just the span of a year, stained old gurneys had somehow turned into a king mattress that still smelled of mouthwash and Irish Spring shampoo.
Not like Dennis was smelling Robby’s sheets on purpose.
In retrospect, maybe he should have washed them before sleeping in the house’s only bed, but that holiday shift had been a nightmare. All the day’s paperwork, confusion, and terror had left him practically undead as he’d slumped behind Robby’s cursory tour of the house. After he’d left, the clock had been nearing eleven and Dennis had barely even had the energy to wave him goodbye, let alone worry about cleaning the bed he soon fell into.
Since then, he’d just been too busy. Work, nodding through another one of Trinity’s rants about Garcia, moving his stuff from one place to the next, work, work, work. The nice scent drifting into his nose at night hadn’t really bothered him enough to be important, but…
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he had his first day off since the fourth, and it would be spent doing laundry. Tonight, he decided as he trudged into the kitchen and flicked on the fancy overhead light with his elbow, he would just try to relax. Easier said than done.
Shuffling further into the kitchen, he tilted his shoulder to let his heavy backpack fall onto one of the tall stools perched at the island counter, dropping his McDonald’s bag onto the white marble. Terrible for him, he knew, and far too expensive these days, but worrying too much about money could be left in the past, for now.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he would be responsible, and healthy, and he committed himself to the promise with a chest-shaking sigh. The ugly bags under his eyes felt heavier than ever, and he avoided looking at the yellow arches that symbolized the weakness of his willpower. His gaze skirted over them, landing instead on the constant occupant of the kitchen. A note—black ink on canary yellow legal paper.
Dr. Whitaker,
No pets, no parties, no smoking, no babies. Make good choices, and make yourself at home. If you have any problems with the place down the line, Abbot will help you.
I know you’ll make me proud,
Robby
412-555-0276
The note hadn’t been touched in four days, either. Something about disturbing this last relic of Robby’s presence felt a bit like doodling in the church bibles, or tracking mud into the sanctuary. Dennis refused to tamper with it. He could easily ‘make himself at home’ without impressing too much of himself onto the place.
He’d done it all his life.
No posters on the walls of his childhood bedroom. The eighth floor room stocked with a packed bag, just in case. Lips kept zipped and feet kept quiet on the clean carpet of Trinity’s spare bedroom.
If Dennis had his way, the watered plants and dusted furniture would be the only indication of him being there at all when Robby got back in three months. There was no better way to make someone proud than doing what you were supposed to, and not causing a fuss in the process.
He read the note again, eyes lingering on any problems down the line. He didn’t plan on causing any problems, not after Dr. Robby had placed so much trust in him by choosing him to housesit.
Down the line.
The words shouldn’t have bothered him, but they did, catching in the brambles of his brain. The confusion they raised in his mind reminded him, nonsensically, of their conversation in the hospital break room. Boundaries, and favors, and if I don’t come back.
Both statements strange enough to throw up a flag and make him wonder just what Robby meant.
Probably nothing.
Robby had jotted down the note quickly on the night of the fourth, exhausted and bothered by the shadow of his looming intern, before practically running out the door to the escape of his sabbatical. Every word didn’t need to be stared at and examined by Dennis’ overactive imagination.
Hell, he’d probably only written down anything to quell the fear that Dennis would accidentally burn the place down, or something.
But still, the note chewed at something within him. An instinctual awareness—far in the reaches of his subconscious, like that feeling of impending doom a patient voiced right before Dennis needed to act very quickly and carefully lest he lose another life.
Dennis rubbed his palms along the back of his neck.
His instincts had never done him wrong.
The zipper of his backpack caught and snagged as he fumbled to pull his phone out, threatening to irritate him all over again. Eyes jumping back and forth between the note and the cracked screen, he typed in the numbers written hastily beneath Robby’s name. The call button had been pressed before he could think any better of it.
Hang up! his brain demanded before he’d even gotten the phone halfway to his ear. Robby had probably left the number solely for emergencies, he didn’t need to be bothered by his resident calling him for no good reason before he’d even put enough miles down to properly forget about his problems at home.
The third dial tone trilled into Dennis’ ear.
How could he even be sure that the number belonged to Dr. Robby? Maybe it would direct him to the Pittsburgh police department, or Dr. Abbot’s cell, or the chief attending physician office at PTMC that Robby had never actually seemed to use.
Dennis had just convinced himself to hang up when the dial tone cut off, replaced with the ambient sound of breeze and a gruff voice.
“This is—” a sigh— “Michael Robinavitch. What can I do for you?”
A thready exhale eased out of Whitaker’s chest, taking with it the weird frisson of energy that had been stopping up his airway. Like he’d just entered the room right before an emergency tracheotomy, something about hearing Dr. Robby relaxed his nerves. Even when he sounded as unhappy to be bothered as he did now.
Dennis hesitated, right up until the point he wondered why he hadn’t been hung up on yet.
“Dr. Robby?”
A beat, occupied by only the sound of a truck’s horn speeding by in the distance. “Whitaker? What’s up, did something happen?”
“No! No, everything’s alright here. I’m not interrupting your, your ride or anything, am I?”
Robby scoffed, the sound tinny and canned over the phone. “No, I’m, uh…stopped at a fuel station on the side of the road in Montana. On the side of civilization, really. The place is practically falling off the side of a mountain. Anyways, you need something?”
“Yeah, um,” Dennis stuttered as his mind worked. With his free arm crossing over his ribs, he paced out into the living room. He looked to the big television, then to the glass backdoor overlooking green summer grass of a tidy backyard. Briefly, he considered asking Dr. Robby if he cut it himself or hired a service for it, if this would be something Dennis had to worry about.
He blinked hard to clear his mind. Mountains. Montana.
“Uh, yeah,” he continued. “It’s nothing. I’m sure you’re too busy to worry about what’s going on back here, I’ll just let you go-”
“Whitaker.” Robby sounded the same as always, and Dennis wondered why in the hell he expected him to sound any different after only being gone for half a week. “I’ve got nothing but time, if you think about it, alright? What do you need?”
Dennis sighed, and nodded to no one in the quiet of Robby’s dimming living room. He thought about what in God’s name he could say to possibly legitimize this useless call.
“I. The door,” he settled on, with all the confidence and grace of a bleating calf. “It’s stupid, but I’ve been having some trouble with the front door? I’m using the gold key, not the silver one, like you said, but it only works like half the time?”
“The door? You’re calling about the door and I’m on the edge of-” Robby’s voice cut off into a strange laugh, high-pitched and nearly silenced by wind. “Jesus,” he swore, and Dennis could envision him rubbing his fingertips into his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry, the door’s old. It’s got a trick to it, though.”
“A trick,” Dennis repeated. That made sense, he supposed. All older things seemed to work that way: yielding only to the most gentle hands.
“Yep,” Robby said. “You’ve gotta turn the key a little to the left first, and then turn it to the right real quick. Should open up real easy that way.”
Dennis nodded again. “Left, then right. Okay, thank you.”
“No problem.”
The line fell dead for a long moment after that, their shared silence broken only by the occasional thrum of tires going by. Dennis’ eyes darted around the living room that had gone entirely dark with the sun’s departure. Knowing he had already far overstayed his welcome in Robby’s life, he opened his mouth to stutter out some lame goodbye, only to be interrupted again.
“You should see it out here,” Robby said, gravel in his soft voice. “It’s something else. The road drops right off into this cliff overlooking the valley, all green with trees. Compared to Pittsburgh it’s practically fucking paradise. Fresh air, clean water. Life. Step off the edge of the mountain and you could just slip right into it all…”
Dennis’ chest ached, mind conjuring images of a lush overpass. Robby stood right on the cusp of untouched nature, so near to being swallowed by it. He didn’t like the thought of it, for some odd reason, and swallowed hard around the lump in his throat.
“Sounds beautiful,” he said, a beat too late. “Are you heading to your hotel? Has to be getting dark there soon.”
“Hm? Oh. Uh, yeah.” He heard nothing for a long beat, and then a muffled grunt, like Robby had just exerted himself with a step over something. “Suppose I’ll reach one in a couple hours, if the roads are good to me. Don’t let the door give you any more trouble, alright?”
“It won’t,” he promised. “I’ve got a trick.”
Robby huffed on the other side of the line, close enough to a laugh that Dennis smiled. “Right. Thanks again for watching the place for me, and,” he trailed off for a second, “thanks for the call.”
“Thank you,” Dennis said, and felt lighter than he had all day even as Robby ended the call without another word.
By the time he finally threw his phone down onto the sofa and got to eating, his McDonald’s had gone completely cold, but chewing through the rubber of soggy fries was worth it. For his peace of mind, safe in the knowledge that he’d been worrying over nothing.
With the door, of course.
