Work Text:
The ED, more than anything, is about trust. This is what Dennis Whitaker is learning, through baptism by fire, blood and innumerable other substances. The trust placed in you by patients is delicate, a living thing that needs to be nurtured with the right balance of assertiveness and compassion, guiding them to the choices that are best for them. The trust placed in you by your colleagues is a different ball game altogether.
Dennis thinks he's a pretty trustworthy person. He was raised to be reliable - youngest child of a working household - responsibilities made clear and instructions easy to follow through on. Denny gets the calves fed before he goes to class. Denny puts the loaves on to prove when his brothers forget. Denny keeps his mouth shut, doesn't snitch to his parents about the cow tipping or the tailgate parties, Chris watering down his dad's whiskey or Matt busting the pickup racing after school.
Dennis does everything that's expected of him. Take a picture of the board, he does. Listen to the nurses. Follow the clear steps of a primary exam. Change a diaper, heat up leftovers for Amy. Don't tell anyone about last September. Sit down, be quiet. Stay in your room when Trinity's in the kitchen. Ask her what's wrong - when she tells you to back off, back off. Make the tea, and watch it go cold as Amy cries for hours on the couch. Muck out the stalls. Teach the students, fix their mistakes. Irrigate. Don't ask questions. Come find me at the end of the shift, I'll give you my keys and the security code.
It's a sign of something, when Robby calls on him in a crowded room. When his eyes slide over everyone else to find him. It's weighty, like when Amy crumples into him and he has to hold her up, like tugging him up from that blood-smeared floor. Dennis thinks he's gotten stronger, in the last year. It's good, surely, the bond that's twisted tight between them. Robby tugs on the end of his string, and Dennis comes running. It comes in lots of different forms, but he thinks this must be the shape of Robby's trust.
So he does his best to keep it intact. Keep the rope from fraying, unloop it when it gets tangled, when he feels the pull, answer it. Give the right answers to the right questions, keep the fibres strong, holding fast.
When Robby pulls him for a private word, eyes looking everywhere but at him, go with. When he shuts the door behind him, pulls the curtain across, say nothing.
“I need you to know how much I respect you,” he says, and something in Dennis' stomach leaps with the praise and swoops at the inevitable but.
“Thank you, I–”
“Shh.”
He shuts his mouth. Robby stares at the floor, his face tight.
“On your knees,” he says. And Dennis half-wishes he didn't know how this goes.
It's never in the middle of a shift like this. It's been once or twice: end of a brutal day - in the bathroom, mainly, the cleaning cupboard out by triage. The closet is better than a room. This is dangerous, if someone were to walk in, realise the room is unoccupied… Then again, Dennis thinks he's probably banking on the chaos outside meaning curtains and lights out = patient resting. It's still reckless, not to mention selfish, with the amount of patients waiting outside. It makes his palms sweat as he sinks to his knees. They'll be quick, he tells himself. He just can't bring himself to say no.
Dennis knows better than to get his hands involved. Robby takes himself out of his pants, Robby slips a hand round the back of his head, tangles in his curls. One time, a few months ago, he'd made some comment about his hair. Now, he says nothing.
He just tips his head back as Dennis takes him in his mouth. He exhales what sounds like his entire lung capacity as Dennis bobs around the head of his cock, the taste he wishes wasn't familiar, or wishes it were, in a different context. Because he likes this. He wants this, has wanted it every time, but wanted it somewhere else, maybe, some other time than when Robby is torn at the edges and harsh with his words. He wants it in a way where he doesn't have to keep it a secret, but even as he thinks that he knows it's a lie, too. He likes having secrets with Robby. Denny doesn't snitch.
He blows him, and the soft sounds that fall from his mouth make him feel good and useful, reliable and like he's doing something for everyone's benefit, not just Robby's. If he needs to let off a little steam, Dennis can be trusted to help. He'd be happy to.
Robby tugs just a little on his hair, pulls him down a little further until he chokes. He lets him up, and Dennis realises he's laughing. It's hollow, and humourless.
He makes a noise that he hopes can equate to What?
“Boundaries, Whitaker,” he says, and he sounds dangerous, manic as he does, “You’re supposed to say no to shit like this.”
It's mean, and Dennis feels sick somewhere deep in his belly. Robby pulls him back onto his cock.
He fucks into his mouth a little more, doesn't press into the tight muscle of his throat again. He might, were they at the end of the day, when Dennis doesn't have to go out of this room and talk to fucking patients. As it stands, he's still going to need to find some fucking chapstick.
He shouldn't do this. Should have stopped after the first time (in the stairwell, was it?), should tell him no, should pull away, like he should with everyone who's leaning on him, apparently. But then what happens? Everyone just falls apart, all at once?
So he breathes through his nose and swallows Robby's load as he paints the back of his throat.
Robby tucks his dick away, wipes his hands on his pants and looks down at him. He holds out a hand.
“Up, come on. Day's not over yet.”
He helps him to his feet, gives him a cursory glance over, and it might just be the darkness but a deluded part of Dennis thinks there's a tenderness in his eyes.
“You gonna be okay with that?” he has the courtesy to ask, eyes flicking down to Dennis’ crotch. He manages a wan smile.
“Yeah, I'll– I'll sort it out.”
And Robby leaves first, because he always does. Dennis wipes his chin, can't tell if the bitter taste at the back of his mouth is come or bile. He draws up images of anything from today that will effectively kill his hard-on. His brain supplies Louie, laid out in the viewing room, and for a moment it feels like he might actually be sick. It works.
If he goes too deep into it, there's a knot in his chest, pulling tighter with every half-hearted joke Robby makes about not coming back, cutting off the blood supply around his heart. Dennis can't help it though. No matter the efforts to sever it, the strong thread still unspools back across the ED to his retreating figure. The measure and span of Robby's trust.