𓆱

Gloria.

Nine-thirty.

Resident compliance paperwork.

Robby closed his eyes again briefly, one hand dragging slowly over his face while he pictured the exact expression Gloria was going to wear when she realized half his residents still had documentation floating somewhere in administrative purgatory because none of them respected deadlines unless Dana personally threatened them with bodily harm.

From the kitchen came another muffled noise followed by Dennis swearing softly under his breath at something.

The apartment still sat in that strange gray stretch between night and morning where everything felt quieter and softer around the edges. Weak winter light filtered through the blinds in pale stripes across the bedroom wall, catching on discarded clothes, abandoned pens, and the patient notes Dennis had spread across the comforter sometime after midnight before promptly falling asleep face-first on top of them. One sock hung halfway off the edge of the mattress like it had simply given up at some point during the night.

Robby stayed where he was another minute just listening to the sounds drifting in from the kitchen.

The refrigerator door opened.

Closed.

Then opened again almost immediately.

“You own six different kinds of coffee,” Dennis called eventually, voice roughened by sleep, “and somehow none of them are normal.”

Robby smiled into the pillow before he could stop himself.

That had started happening more often lately, those small instinctive reactions that bypassed thought entirely whenever Dennis stayed around long enough. Somewhere over the last few weeks the sound of another person moving through his apartment had stopped feeling temporary. Dennis drifted through the space now with sleepy familiarity after overnight shifts, making coffee half awake while wearing stolen clothes and reading charts at the counter like he had been part of Robby’s mornings for years instead of weeks.

The first time Robby walked into the kitchen and found him barefoot in one of his old PTMC shirts while simultaneously making eggs and reviewing patient notes, the image had lodged itself somewhere beneath Robby’s ribs hard enough that he kept thinking about it through the entire next shift. Now Dennis stole hoodies directly from the dryer, left sweatshirts folded over the couch, and wandered through the apartment carrying coffee mugs like he belonged there naturally.

The dangerous part was how quickly Robby had started looking forward to it.

He finally pushed himself upright, exhaustion settling heavily through his shoulders as he reached automatically for his glasses. His gaze caught almost immediately on the sweatshirt lying crumpled near the edge of the bed.

Old university hoodie. Dark gray. Pitt Med logo cracked and faded from years of washing. The thing had survived residency, three apartments, two hospital systems, and at least one deeply unsuccessful attempt at convincing himself he was capable of throwing old clothes away like a functioning adult.

It was also older than Dennis.

That realization landed strangely every single time. Robby sat there staring at the faded lettering while his brain supplied the deeply unnecessary reminder that Dennis had been born while Robby was already dragging himself through overnight shifts in hoodies like this one, surviving almost entirely on caffeine, bad cafeteria food, and stubbornness.

Most days the age difference stayed distant enough to ignore. Then mornings like this happened, and the years between them became tangible again through old sweatshirts and faded concert shirts pulled from the backs of drawers Robby barely opened anymore.

Dennis carried responsibility with a steadiness that still surprised him sometimes. Patients trusted him quickly. Other residents listened when he spoke. He stayed late to finish things properly and apologized to furniture when he bumped into it half asleep after fifteen-hour shifts. Watching him move through the apartment wrapped in clothes older than he was pulled something complicated through Robby’s chest every single time, equal parts tenderness and guilt twisting together tightly enough that he still had not figured out where one ended and the other began.

Eventually he got out of bed and followed the smell of coffee toward the kitchen, stopping in the doorway the second he saw Dennis standing at the counter.

Apparently one stolen article of clothing had not been enough for this morning.

Dennis had also unearthed a pair of Robby’s old sweatpants sometime during the night. The navy fabric hung loose around his waist with the drawstring pulled unevenly tight, hems bunching around his socks whenever he shifted his weight against the counter. Robby remembered buying them during residency after hospital laundry machines destroyed half the clothes he owned.

Seeing them on Dennis did deeply unhelpful things to his nervous system.

The old Pitt Med sweatshirt stretched broader across Dennis’s shoulders than it ever had across Robby’s at that age, sleeves shoved carelessly toward his elbows while he waited for the coffee to finish brewing. Dennis stole Robby’s clothes constantly now. Hoodies vanished from drawers. Shirts disappeared directly out of the laundry before Robby even folded them. Things simply migrated gradually onto Dennis over time until Robby occasionally lost track of what had originally belonged to who.

Robby crossed the kitchen slowly, eyes catching on the faded black Pearl Jam shirt visible beneath the unzipped hoodie.

That shirt dated back to pre med school, fabric worn soft and thin after decades of washing, the old tour print cracked badly enough that half of it barely existed anymore. Dennis had found it shoved into the back of Robby’s dresser two weeks ago and quietly claimed it without discussion.

Robby remembered wearing it through overnight study sessions in freezing Pittsburgh apartments while Jack smuggled terrible food into the library after midnight.

Third year of med school. Forty hours awake. Jack throwing french fries at him across the table because Robby had started muttering differential diagnoses out loud while half asleep over anatomy notes.

The memory arrived sharply enough that for a second it layered itself over the present, young Jack laughing somewhere behind him while Dennis stood barefoot in his kitchen wrapped in clothes from a version of Robby’s life that already felt impossibly far away.

And somehow Dennis fit there perfectly.

That was the part Robby still had not adjusted to. The ease of it. Dennis moving through soft morning light and old clothes like he had quietly slipped himself into spaces Robby stopped expecting anyone else to occupy years ago.

Dennis turned toward the refrigerator again and squinted suspiciously inside.

“You seriously don’t have normal creamer.”

“I have milk.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“You’re twenty-eight years old. Drink coffee like an adult.”

Dennis snorted softly while reaching for the mugs, and the sound folded easily into the quiet rhythm of the apartment. Robby still had not adjusted to how natural all of this felt now, another person standing half awake in his kitchen before sunrise arguing about coffee like it had always been part of his mornings.

Dennis held out a mug without looking. Robby reached automatically to take it, fingers brushing briefly against the sleeve shoved over Dennis’s wrist. The contact barely lasted a second before Dennis shifted past him for his own coffee, shoulder bumping lightly against Robby’s chest with the same absent familiarity he brought to everything lately.

Robby felt the contact linger long after Dennis moved past him, brief enough to mean nothing and somehow impossible for his brain to ignore anyway.

That had become its own separate problem.

Dennis checked his watch a second later and immediately swore under his breath.

“Oh, shit.”

Then he drained the rest of his coffee in two quick gulps and disappeared back toward the bedroom in socks, already dragging the hoodie over his head as he went. Robby watched him go with slow amusement pulling briefly at the corner of his mouth. Dennis could run a code without blinking, catch medication interactions half the department missed, and calm terrified family members with steady effortless confidence, yet somehow remained physically incapable of arriving anywhere on time unless another person actively intervened beforehand.

A drawer slammed somewhere in the bedroom.

Then another.

“You alive in there?” Robby called while crossing toward the refrigerator.

“Debatable.”

Robby snorted quietly and pulled out the meal prep containers he had thrown together two nights earlier during a rare burst of optimism about becoming organized. Past Robby deserved recognition for that one. He slid both containers into his bag, then reached automatically for the travel mugs sitting beside the coffee maker and filled them both before snapping the lids into place. Behind him Dennis continued ricocheting around the apartment, drawers opening and shutting in increasingly frantic rhythms followed by muffled swearing and the unmistakable sound of somebody hopping on one foot while trying to pull pants on too quickly.

By the time Robby grabbed his keys from the counter, the rain outside had settled into a cold steady drizzle against the windows. He paused near the door long enough to consider the motorcycle before glancing back toward the weather again.

Probably not worth it.

Dennis had a habit of falling asleep against his back at red lights after overnight shifts, and while Robby found the whole thing dangerously endearing, he also preferred they both survived the commute.

He tossed the bike keys back into the bowl and grabbed the car keys instead just as Dennis reappeared from the bedroom with his backpack hanging crookedly off one shoulder and the edges of his curls damp from where he had apparently splashed water on his face in a last attempt to wake himself up properly. The Pearl Jam shirt had disappeared beneath navy scrubs and the soft dark green hoodie again, sleeves shoved carelessly toward his elbows while he adjusted the strap of the bag.

Dennis looked at him sheepishly. “Okay. Ready now.”

Robby looked him over once, taking in the damp curls, the rumpled hoodie, and the faint coffee stain near the cuff that Dennis clearly had not noticed yet. Something warm settled low in his chest before he stepped forward, pressed a quick kiss against Dennis’s temple, and opened the apartment door.

The drive to the hospital settled them back into familiar rhythm almost immediately. Dennis curled toward the passenger window with one foot tucked beneath him despite Robby repeatedly informing him he was eventually going to destroy his knees doing that. At least the dashboard habit had died after Robby gave him a particularly graphic explanation about femurs during high-speed collisions. Dennis had listened in visible horror before slowly lowering his feet back to the floorboard with the expression of somebody reconsidering several life choices at once.

His coffee balanced precariously between his legs while he scrolled through overnight charts on his phone with complete disregard for self-preservation.

Outside, Pittsburgh dragged itself awake beneath a low gray sky while traffic crawled sluggishly toward downtown. Rain streaked softly across the windshield. Some old soft rock song played quietly through the speakers, blending into the hum of tires against wet pavement and the occasional hiss of passing cars through standing water.

Robby barely paid attention to it until movement beside him caught his eye.

Dennis was mouthing along absently to the lyrics while reading through charts, brows furrowing deeper every few seconds at whatever disaster the night shift had documented this time. The contrast between the quiet music and the increasingly offended expressions crossing his face pulled another reluctant smile out of Robby before he could stop it.

At one point Dennis snorted under his breath without looking up from the screen, thumb pausing mid-scroll while he silently mouthed the next line of the chorus anyway.

The kid knew all the words. Of course he did.

A second later Dennis tilted the phone closer to himself like maybe the chart would somehow improve from a different angle.

“Oh, come on.”

Robby already knew Ellis Parker had probably gotten involved somehow. Jack too, depending on how badly the night shift spiraled before sunrise.

Dennis huffed another incredulous laugh under his breath. “Apparently the patient tried to pull out his IV because ‘the vibes were hostile.’”

Robby barked out a laugh before he could stop himself.

“Yeah,” he said, still grinning faintly. “That sounds like Parker.”

Dennis kept scrolling, growing visibly more horrified with every line. “And somebody wrote ‘IV reinserted after therapeutic Sprite.’ What does that even mean?”

“That probably means night shift got bored.”

Dennis let his head thunk lightly back against the seat. “You people should lose charting privileges after midnight.”

“Probably fair.”

Night shift had evolved into its own ecosystem years ago. Somewhere between Shen replacing his bloodstream with caffeine and Jack deciding professionalism became optional after two in the morning, the entire shift had developed the energy of sleep-deprived raccoons with medical licenses.

Traffic slowed again while rain drifted softly across the windshield. Beside him Dennis kept scrolling through the charts, mouthing pieces of the song automatically whenever the chorus returned. One sleeve of his hoodie had slipped halfway down his forearm again, exposing the faded remains of pen ink near his wrist from some earlier shift he had probably forgotten about entirely.

Robby caught himself watching him for a second too long before dragging his attention back toward the road.

“I still don’t understand how the whole ‘weirdest and the wildest’ thing became real,” Dennis muttered eventually.

Robby smiled despite himself. “Jack made a joke one night and Shen thought it was funny. After that the situation got completely out of control.”

Dennis turned to stare at him. “That’s genuinely the least surprising explanation possible.”

Robby snorted softly while traffic crawled forward another car length. Somewhere beside him Dennis laughed quietly under his breath and went back to the charts, still mouthing along absently whenever he recognized the lyrics coming through the speakers.

Robby became aware of him again the second they pulled into the employee parking lot and Dennis reached over automatically for both travel mugs before climbing out of the car, immediately hunching his shoulders against the cold drizzle still falling steadily across the lot. He hurried around the hood with the coffees balanced awkwardly against one arm while trying unsuccessfully to keep rain from dripping straight down the back of his neck, backpack sliding lower on his shoulder with every step.

Robby watched him through the windshield for a moment while Dennis adjusted the drinks again and ducked his head against the weather, damp curls tightening immediately near his temples beneath the hood hanging loose under his jacket. Then he headed toward the employee entrance without even bothering to check whether Robby followed.

Apparently that had become assumed now.

Robby grabbed his own bag a second later and headed after him, deeply unimpressed by the fact that something as stupid as Dennis carrying his coffee through the rain could still affect him this much.

This was ridiculous. Genuinely embarrassing behavior for a grown man with decades of clinical experience and a fully developed frontal lobe.

Inside the department the morning swallowed both of them almost immediately. Shift change rolled through the Pitt in overlapping motion and noise, nurses weaving stretchers around each other while phones rang somewhere near triage and overhead pages crackled briefly through the speakers before dissolving back into static. The familiar chaos settled around Robby’s shoulders like muscle memory the second he stepped through the ambulance bay doors, his attention already splitting automatically between monitor alarms, movement in the hallway, and the half-dozen conversations happening around him at once.

Dennis stayed close beside him while they walked, half reading charts, half tracking movement around him with growing instinct now that the department had finally started making sense to him instead of feeling like one giant uncontrolled disaster. Robby kept catching flashes of the dark green hoodie moving through the hallway beside him between staff and patients, coffee balanced carelessly in one hand while Dennis scrolled through another chart with his thumb. At some point Dennis had handed the coffee back without looking up, their fingers brushing briefly during the exchange before Dennis immediately went back to his phone.

The touch barely lasted a second, but Robby still felt it afterward while Dennis kept walking beside him completely oblivious.

He tightened his grip slightly around the cup and forced his attention back toward the department before his own brain embarrassed him further. Somewhere down the hall somebody was already yelling about wait times before seven-thirty in the morning, which honestly felt reassuring in its consistency. The Pitt functioning normally usually sounded at least a little bit like impending litigation.

Luckily for Robby’s sanity, they got slammed almost immediately.

He lost track of time somewhere between relieving Jack from shift and the first incoming ambulance.

“Morning, brother.”

Jack looked exhausted enough to qualify as a workplace safety concern as he handed Robby a tablet without slowing down. Trauma shears hung crookedly from the front of his scrub pants, one glove shoved halfway into a pocket, and there was a dark stain near the cuff of his jacket that Robby sincerely hoped was coffee. Judging by the dead look in Jack’s eyes, the night shift had probably started unraveling around three in the morning and simply never recovered.

“You’re late.”

“It’s seven-oh-two.”

“Exactly.”

Robby snorted softly while skimming through the chart. “Bad night?”

Jack dragged a hand over his face hard enough to flush the skin beneath his eyes pink before exhaling slowly through his nose.

“Guy came in naked and covered in axle grease because apparently tasers are government mind control now. Shen fed him crackers.”

“That feels… medically questionable.”

“It worked though.”

Nearby, Dennis was halfway through pulling gloves from a wall dispenser while listening with obvious interest.

“Honestly,” he said, “crackers fix a lot of situations.”

Jack nodded toward him immediately without looking up from the chart in his hands. “See? Whitaker gets it.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Robby said automatically.

“Too late,” Jack muttered, already walking backward toward the exit doors. “Good luck, by the way. Shen had three coffees and started reorganizing triage.”

“Oy vey.”

“Exactly.”

Then another ambulance rolled in and the department swallowed all of them whole again.

That part still settled around Robby effortlessly after all these years. The noise. The pace. The constant shifting movement of an emergency department waking fully for the day. Phones rang somewhere near triage while monitors beeped in uneven overlapping rhythms and somebody shouted for respiratory from down the hall. A patient demanded apple juice with the righteous fury of a man negotiating international hostage terms while transport pushed another stretcher past him toward imaging.

One patient rolled directly into the next before the previous chart was even finished. Respiratory distress became a construction worker with crushed fingers, which became a college kid with alcohol poisoning while his friends repeatedly insisted he was “usually way smarter than this.”

Santos, helping shove the stretcher into a room, informed them loudly that she doubted that very much.

Somewhere in the middle of the chaos Shen reappeared carrying a coffee large enough to qualify as structural support. His scrub top was wrinkled, his badge hung sideways against his chest, and there was a crease pressed into one cheek that suggested he had spent at least ten minutes asleep against a desk before somebody dragged him back into circulation.

“Morning,” Shen said cheerfully while passing by.

Robby looked up from the chart in his hands. “Why are you still here?”

“Mel called in sick.”

Robby paused briefly. “And they stuck you with a double?”

Shen shrugged and lifted the coffee slightly, like that explained everything. “I was apparently the only one functioning enough to cover.”

Dennis glanced over from the supply cart nearby, narrowing his eyes at the drink.

“That’s not coffee anymore,” he said. “That’s basically life support.”

Shen pointed approvingly at him while continuing down the hallway. Then triage called overhead about an incoming respiratory distress patient, and Robby was already moving again before Shen even disappeared around the corner.

The morning settled into its usual relentless rhythm after that, patients rotating through rooms quickly enough that time stopped separating itself cleanly in Robby’s head. Orders. Scans. Consults. Reassessments. One problem folded directly into the next before the previous task was even fully finished. Somewhere in the middle of it, Robby reached automatically for tubing during a respiratory workup and found Dennis already holding it out toward him before he asked.

That was the thing currently destroying Robby’s ability to function normally around him.

Dennis had gotten good. Quietly and steadily, without ever turning it into a performance. Somewhere over the last few months he had stopped moving through the department like a student trying desperately to keep up and started moving like somebody who genuinely belonged there. He knew when to speak, when to stay quiet, when to anticipate what somebody needed before they asked for it.

Robby watched him talk a shaking teenager through an IV placement by asking about motorcycles and college football, voice calm and even while his hands worked without hesitation. Ten minutes later Dennis corrected a medication order so gently the intern only blinked once, fixed it, and kept moving before embarrassment even had the chance to settle in.

The kid had good instincts. Better people instincts than half the attendings in the building, honestly.

During a lac repair Dennis stepped around the tray table for another suture packet and braced one hand briefly against Robby’s side to steady himself. Robby lost the thread of his sentence immediately. Dennis, meanwhile, kept talking to the med student across from him while tearing open packaging with practiced efficiency.

“You want absorbable for the deeper layer,” he said. “Skin gets staples unless Dr. Robby feels like making you suffer through interrupted stitches today.”

The med student gave a nervous laugh.

Robby stared at the wound for half a beat too long before the silence caught up with him.

“Dr. Robby?”

He blinked hard and reached for the needle driver again.

“Interrupted’s fine,” he muttered. “Builds character.”

Dennis glanced at him briefly then, brows drawing together for half a second before his attention shifted back toward the tray. Robby focused on the repair in front of him and ignored the lingering awareness of Dennis’s hand against his side like his brain had not apparently decided to archive every single point of contact now for future analysis.

By the time the department settled into something marginally less catastrophic, a headache had started pressing steadily behind Robby’s right eye. Three unfinished charts sat open at the workstation near the Hub because apparently none of his residents possessed the miraculous ability to complete documentation before it became a legal concern.

Around him the Pitt slipped into its usual mid-morning rhythm. Phones rang somewhere near triage. Printers spat out paperwork in uneven bursts. Somebody laughed too loudly down the hall before Dana immediately shushed them back into professionalism.

Robby dropped heavily into one of the rolling chairs and pushed his glasses higher up his nose while opening the first unfinished chart. The headache behind his eye had settled into something steady and unpleasant by now, pulsing faintly every time somebody raised their voice too close to him. Around the Hub the department continued moving in constant uneven rhythm, printers spitting paperwork somewhere behind him while Dana redirected an intern with the exhausted authority of somebody who had already prevented at least three disasters before ten in the morning.

He had barely made it through two lines before Santos appeared beside him with the unmistakable energy of somebody carrying information purely for the joy of watching another person suffer through it.

“There you are.”

Robby kept his attention on the chart.

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“With that tone? I already know I don’t want it.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her lean one hip against the counter, visibly delighted with herself already. Trinity Santos approached gossip the way some people approached hostage negotiation: patient, strategic, and enjoying herself far too much.

“I just ran into Gloria.”

Robby closed his eyes briefly.

Right.

Nine-thirty. Employee files. Resident compliance. Gloria and her increasingly personal campaign against incomplete administrative paperwork.

He glanced automatically toward the clock mounted above the station and swore quietly under his breath. Technically, the meeting had started three minutes ago already. Realistically, Gloria was probably somewhere upstairs checking the time, growing steadily more irritated, and debating whether she needed to come downstairs personally to drag him into her office.

“She’s already looking for me?”

“Oh, she’s hunting you.”

“Fantastic.”

“And before you start blaming everybody collectively,” Santos added, “apparently Huckleberry over there still hasn’t finished his file.”

Robby looked up before he could stop himself.

Across the station Dennis stood beside Javadi at one of the computers, focused hard enough on the labs in front of him that he had gone slightly cross-eyed from squinting at the screen. The dark green hoodie he had thrown over his scrubs that morning still looked rumpled from the drive in, the hood caught awkwardly beneath the back of his stethoscope while he leaned one elbow against the counter beside the computer. He looked completely absorbed in whatever Javadi was showing him.

Robby felt his irritation weaken almost immediately, which was deeply unhelpful considering the circumstances. Like he physically sensed the attention, Dennis glanced up from the screen and smiled at him automatically, warm and completely unsuspecting in a way that hit Robby square in the chest before he could prepare for it.

Robby pointed at him immediately, crooking one finger in a silent come here gesture while nudging his glasses higher again, and Dennis’s expression collapsed into pure guilt so quickly Santos actually made a strangled delighted noise beside him.

“Oh, that is incriminating,” she said happily. “That is the face of a Huckleberry who absolutely forgot paperwork.”

Robby made a vague shooing motion in her direction without taking his eyes off Dennis, though they both knew perfectly well Santos was never voluntarily leaving a situation once it became entertaining.

Across the station Dennis muttered something to Javadi before heading over with visible caution, like he suspected he was walking into an ambush and had already accepted his fate anyway. By the time he reached the workstation both hands were slightly raised in surrender.

“I handed everything in,” he said immediately. “I swear I did.”

Whatever irritation Robby still had disappeared the second he heard the genuine worry underneath the words.

Dennis always reacted like this whenever he thought he had dropped something important. He started apologizing before anybody even sounded upset, already trying to solve the problem while mentally blaming himself for it at the same time. Robby had noticed the pattern months ago and disliked it more every time he saw it.

“It’s probably sitting on somebody’s desk,” he said.

Dennis still looked unconvinced. His shoulders stayed tight beneath the hoodie while he mentally retraced every administrative task from the last few weeks, eyes narrowing slightly with concentration. Robby recognized the exact moment Dennis started trying to figure out whether he had forgotten a signature somewhere and felt something inside him soften almost immediately in response.

He reached out without thinking and squeezed Dennis’s shoulder once, thumb brushing absently against the thick seam of the hoodie. Dennis eased beneath the touch almost immediately, tension loosening visibly through his posture before he even seemed aware he was reacting to it. Robby, unfortunately, noticed everything. The warmth beneath his palm lingered after he pulled his hand away, settling somewhere low and distracting in his chest while Dennis leaned subtly toward him for the briefest second longer than necessary before finally straightening again.

“I’ll deal with Gloria,” Robby said, forcing himself to focus before his own brain embarrassed him further.

That seemed to help more than anything else had. Dennis’s shoulders lowered properly this time, the tightness easing out of him while he stepped back from the workstation with a quieter kind of relief that tugged at something soft inside Robby almost immediately.

Beside them Santos had gone very, very quiet.

Robby turned slowly toward her and immediately regretted it.

She was looking between the two of them with narrowed eyes and an expression that screamed I know something you don’t know I know, which was significantly more concerning coming from Santos than it should have been. At this point Robby strongly suspected Dennis had already told her entirely too much at some stage, because she had started watching both of them lately with the smug fascination of somebody sitting three episodes ahead in a television show.

“Hm,” she said.

“Don’t,” Robby warned immediately.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

Santos ignored him entirely and looked straight at Dennis instead. “You wanna tell him, or should I keep enjoying this?”

“Dennis made a quiet choking sound that was very obviously suppressed laughter, immediately ducking his head afterward like hiding the smile would somehow make him less suspicious.

“Oh my God,” Santos said, delighted. “That is absolutely the guilty face.”

“You’re insufferable,” Dennis muttered, still visibly fighting a grin.

“And you,” Santos informed him smugly, “are terrible at pretending nothing’s going on.”

Robby looked slowly between the two of them, catching the silent conversation apparently happening over his head with growing suspicion before he finally just shook his head once and pointed at Santos in warning.

She grinned back at him without an ounce of shame.

Then an alarm sounded sharply somewhere down the hall, cutting straight through the noise around the Hub, and the moment dissolved instantly back into motion as staff started moving toward the ambulance bay.

Dennis reacted on instinct now. The softness disappeared from his expression almost immediately as he turned toward the incoming stretcher, already reaching for gloves while Santos fell into step beside him and started firing questions at the paramedics before they even cleared the doors. Dennis adjusted automatically around staff and stretchers while catching a chart somebody handed him mid-stride, glancing down once before redirecting a transporter trying to push through the wrong hallway and shifting closer to Santos as report started.

Robby watched him for a second longer than necessary.

Somewhere along the line the hesitation had vanished completely. Dennis no longer moved through the Pitt like somebody trying to keep up with it. He moved like he belonged there, the noise and chaos settling around him with the same instinctive rhythm as everyone else who had survived the department long enough for it to get into their bloodstream.

Robby dragged his attention away before he stood there staring any longer like a complete idiot and finally headed toward the elevators instead.

Technically, as Chief of Emergency Medicine, he had an office upstairs on the administrative floor alongside the other department heads and people who willingly attended meetings containing phrases like budget allocation and staffing projections without developing stress-induced migraines halfway through.

Robby used the office as little as humanly possible.

The room itself was perfectly functional. Too functional, honestly. Quiet in the deeply unnatural way only administrative floors ever managed to be, all polished tile, muted conversations, and people carrying clipboards with terrifying purpose. Every time he spent more than twenty minutes upstairs he started feeling vaguely trapped, like he had been removed from his actual habitat and placed somewhere his nervous system fundamentally refused to adapt to.

Upstairs meant paperwork.

Upstairs meant Gloria.

It did occur to him occasionally that the office might become significantly more tolerable if he ever managed to get Dennis upstairs long enough for five uninterrupted minutes alone together. Unfortunately, that line of thinking tended to spiral quickly into mental images of Dennis pushed back against the office door while half the administrative floor wandered past outside, and there were entirely too many windows upstairs for thoughts like that to be remotely survivable. Not to mention far too many people who enjoyed “quick check-ins.”

The elevator doors opened with a soft chime and Robby stepped inside, already mentally preparing himself for whatever fresh administrative catastrophe waited upstairs. The quiet hit him almost immediately once the doors slid shut again.

His hand found the tubing of his stethoscope automatically. He turned it once around his fingers while leaning back against the elevator wall, eyes closing briefly as the car started moving upward.

That was the dangerous thing about silence.

Downstairs there was always another patient, another monitor alarm, another voice calling his name from somewhere down the hall before his brain had the chance to linger too long on how tired he actually was. The chaos kept him moving. Moments like this, sealed inside elevators and administrative hallways where nobody was actively bleeding or screaming at him, were usually when the exhaustion finally managed to catch up enough to settle heavily behind his eyes.

Sometimes Robby suspected Gloria possessed some deeply unfortunate sixth sense specifically designed to locate him the second he entered the administrative floor. The elevator doors opened again and immediately proved him correct. Gloria stood directly outside waiting for him, one eyebrow already raised like she had spent the last ten minutes becoming less and less surprised by his behavior.

Robby glanced automatically toward the clock hanging on the wall and winced slightly.

Yeah. He might have kept her waiting longer than intended.

Despite what half the department seemed to believe, Robby did not actually avoid Gloria herself. He just preferred her in settings that did not involve compliance folders, staffing reports, budget meetings, or reminders that his job technically included responsibilities he could not delegate to trauma surgery.

“Robby,” Gloria greeted curtly the second he stepped off the elevator, “I was about to come drag you in here myself.”

Robby lifted both hands slightly in surrender while falling into step beside her down the hallway. “Sorry. We got slammed downstairs.”

“You’re always slammed downstairs.”

“That’s because people insist on having emergencies in the emergency department.”

Gloria did not look remotely impressed by that explanation.

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” he added cautiously.

She fixed him with a long pointed stare before turning sharply toward her office without another word. Robby suppressed a sigh and followed after her instead of making the extremely poor decision to push his luck further. Irritating Gloria before she even sat down usually doubled the length of whatever meeting followed, and he already had enough unfinished charts downstairs waiting for him without adding another forty-five minutes of compliance lectures onto the pile.

Contrary to popular belief, he actually could behave professionally when necessary.

Gloria’s office looked exactly like every other office on the administrative floor, organized within an inch of its life. Even the framed certifications looked aggressively symmetrical.

Robby distrusted all of it instinctively.

Hospital offices were supposed to contain at least one unstable paper stack threatening structural collapse somewhere in the corner.

He dropped into the chair across from her desk while Gloria immediately started sorting through folders with sharp efficient movements. The next twenty minutes turned into a relentless parade of incomplete compliance forms, unsigned evaluations, expired online modules, missing signatures, scheduling discrepancies, and several employees who apparently believed deadlines were philosophical suggestions rather than actual requirements.

Robby listened with growing resignation while Gloria moved through highlighted spreadsheets like she was preparing evidence for trial. Half the missing paperwork belonged to residents who vanished post-shift before signing anything. The other half belonged to attendings who treated administrative responsibilities like personal attacks. Spreadsheet after spreadsheet slid across the desk while Robby skimmed names and mentally calculated how much bribery, harassment, and direct physical pursuit it would take to get everything finished before the end of the week.

“I’ll track down the day shift people before I leave tonight,” he said finally, rubbing a hand tiredly over his face while scanning another highlighted section. “And I’ll ask Jack to bully the night crew into finishing the rest.”

“That is not an appropriate management strategy.”

“It’s an effective one, isn’t it?”

Gloria exhaled slowly through her nose, which in Gloria terms qualified as conceding the point. Some of the irritation eased out of her posture after that, though only slightly, and she reached for another folder sitting at the edge of her desk before pushing it directly toward him across the polished surface.

Robby looked down suspiciously at the stack. “Why do these feel personal?”

“Because,” Gloria said flatly, “they’re yours.”

Robby stared at the papers for a long moment. Right… apparently he had also forgotten to complete several forms himself.

Between running the department again, covering shifts, surviving budget meetings, and readjusting to hospital administration after months away on sabbatical, his own paperwork had probably died quietly in a pile weeks ago without him noticing. Somewhere along the line his brain had apparently retrained itself into believing compliance modules and departmental evaluations simply stopped existing if he ignored them long enough.

Dennis had not exactly improved his concentration lately either, but Robby chose not to examine that thought too closely while sitting across from Gloria under fluorescent lighting.

Robby spent the next several minutes rapidly signing forms before Gloria found another stack to drop in front of him. Papers shuffled beneath his hands while he scrawled signatures across dotted lines, initialed things he vaguely remembered receiving three weeks ago, promised to print out one missing evaluation form before the end of his shift, and filled out the remaining sections in handwriting that deteriorated steadily the longer the pile became.

Honestly, he already felt sorry for whichever poor administrative assistant eventually had to decipher half of it.

Across the desk Gloria watched him the way trauma surgeons watched interns holding power tools for the first time, visibly unconvinced he could be trusted unsupervised around official documentation for longer than five minutes.

By the end of it, Robby shoved the completed forms back toward her before she could uncover anything else from the neatly stacked folders surrounding her workspace. Then he escaped the office carrying an entirely new stack of paperwork under one arm, already mentally drafting the lecture he was going to inflict on half his residents before the end of the shift.

The elevator had not even arrived yet before he started flipping through the remaining compliance notes. Most of it looked routine enough now that Gloria had finished verbally beating him over the head with it.

Then he found Dennis’s name.

Robby stopped on the page for a second before snorting quietly under his breath. Of course that was it. Dennis was only missing one document for the employee file update: a copy of his birth certificate confirming citizenship status. Easy enough to fix. They could probably request the damn thing online during a quiet stretch downstairs and Gloria would have it sitting in her inbox by next week.

He hit the elevator button absently while glancing down at the note again, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly.

Jack’s name appeared immediately beside three incomplete attending evaluations and one unsigned procedural review, which honestly surprised nobody. Robby stared at the paperwork for a second before making a mental note to dump the entire stack directly into Jack’s lap during evening handoff and let him deal with the consequences himself for once.

Further down, McKay apparently still needed to sign off on two competency forms she had been carrying around for almost a month. Santos had somehow filled out an occupational health update incorrectly badly enough that Gloria had attached an actual note in red text asking whether she had completed the form “under emotional distress or active sedation.”

Robby didn’t even need to guess which question Santos had answered wrong.

Another page revealed that two night shift residents still had expired online compliance modules because, according to the attached comments, they kept “forgetting their passwords” and then simply giving up halfway through the reset process. Robby rubbed tiredly at his forehead while flipping farther down the stack.

Yeah, most of this could become Jack’s problem later. If Robby had to suffer through administrative hell upstairs, then Jack could survive fifteen minutes of tracking down feral night crawlers and forcing them to sign documents before disappearing back into the darkness like medically licensed cryptids.

Nothing looked catastrophically wrong by the time Robby stepped back onto the floor of the Pitt. Near the Hub, Dana was redirecting a cluster of visibly lost med students toward one of the residents with exhausted efficiency while Santos sat hunched over one of the computers nearby trying to chart fast enough to catch up with the morning rush. Every few seconds Santos stopped typing just long enough to glare at the screen like the documentation itself had personally offended her before attacking the keyboard again.

Robby’s attention caught on Dennis almost immediately anyway. The kid emerged from one of the trauma bays at a near jog, tablet balanced in one hand while he tapped something onto the screen without slowing down, already angling back toward triage like he was mentally tracking six different problems at once. Halfway past the Hub he handed the tablet off to Javadi in passing without even breaking stride, stethoscope bouncing lightly against his chest as he kept moving through the hallway.

Robby reached out automatically the second Dennis passed close enough, catching the back of his neck in a quick familiar cuff that broke his momentum just enough to redirect him sideways into step beside him instead of barreling straight past.

“Don’t let Dana catch you running on her floor,” Robby said, amused despite himself as he squeezed briefly at the back of Dennis’s shoulder before letting go. “I don’t need another lecture from anyone today.”

“That sounds less like concern and more like self-preservation, boss.” Dennis shot him a long sideways look, still a little breathless from moving too fast, the corner of his mouth lifting as he shoved both hands briefly into his scrub pockets. “So the rule is no running unless somebody’s actively dying or Dana’s distracted?”

Robby rolled his eyes immediately and knocked his shoulder lightly into Dennis’s side hard enough to make him stumble half a step before recovering with a quiet laugh. Dennis shot him a mock offended look for that, though the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth ruined any real attempt at intimidation. There was a spark in his expression that made something in Robby’s brain immediately flash warning signs, the same dangerous glint Jack got whenever he was about to say or do something that would almost certainly become somebody else’s problem within the next thirty seconds.

Before Dennis could act on whatever terrible idea had just crossed his mind, Robby hooked an arm loosely around his shoulders and steered him back toward the Hub instead.

Dana did not even glance up when they approached. At this point she was either deliberately ignoring them for the sake of her own blood pressure or simply too exhausted to care after months of watching Robby and Dennis orbit each other in increasingly obvious patterns. Santos, meanwhile, looked up from her charting long enough to narrow her eyes suspiciously at both of them before returning to aggressively typing.

Robby dropped the stack of compliance paperwork onto his workstation with a level of resentment usually reserved for active personal enemies before letting himself sink into one of the rolling chairs. The thing squeaked faintly beneath him as he spun slightly toward Dennis again, unclipping his glasses from the collar of his scrub top and sliding them back onto his nose.

Dennis blinked at him from where he stood beside the desk, still faintly flushed from rushing around the department. Then he visibly squirmed beneath the look Robby gave him over the top rim of the glasses.

“I have to warn Jack about the paperwork avalanche waiting for him during handoff,” Robby muttered while flipping through the stack again. “Pretty sure Gloria’s one missing signature away from committing homicide.”

Dennis snorted softly.

Robby shuffled farther through the papers until he found Dennis’s note and held it up between two fingers, amusement tugging faintly at the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re only missing a copy of your birth certificate.”

The tension visibly eased out of Dennis almost immediately. He stepped closer to peer down at the form over Robby’s shoulder, brows furrowing slightly when he noticed another familiar name directly beneath his own.

Robby followed his line of sight and huffed out a quiet laugh.

“Santos apparently needs to refill one of her compliance forms.”

“What?” Santos looked up immediately from the computer. “Aw, fuck no.”

“You filled out the wrong section.”

She glared at both of them like they had personally betrayed her, muttered something deeply unfriendly under her breath about administrative sabotage, then dropped her attention straight back to the keyboard and resumed typing with violent determination.

Robby nudged Dennis lightly with the edge of the paperwork instead.

“Your birth certificate?”

Dennis shrugged one shoulder. “Oh. Yeah.” He cleared his throat once, something almost sheepish flickering briefly across his face. “Fun fact, I guess. I was actually born here. My parents were driving through Pittsburgh and had to stop because I decided to show up early.”

Robby blinked once.

“Huh.”

Honestly, he had somehow always pictured Dennis being born in the middle of a Nebraska snowstorm with a tractor running outside and at least four anxious relatives hovering uselessly around a kitchen table while somebody boiled water for no medically explainable reason. The idea of Dennis being born here, inside the Pitt, felt strangely wrong for a second. Or maybe just strange in a way Robby could not immediately place.

Beside him Dennis smiled faintly and leaned one hip against the edge of the desk. “Pretty sure the records should already be in the system somewhere.”

Robby hummed absently and turned back toward the computer, fingers already moving across the keyboard as he logged into the employee database. The system loaded with its usual irritating slowness before Dennis’s employee file finally appeared on screen, another notification linked directly beneath it.

Existing patient record found.

Robby frowned slightly.

That definitely had not been there the last time he checked employee files. Administration must have finally finished digitizing another batch of archived records from storage downstairs. God knew how many years of old paper charts still sat boxed away in hospital basements waiting for somebody to remember they existed.

Beside him Dennis leaned closer to look at the screen.

“Yeah,” he said with a quiet laugh. “Kinda feels like destiny coming back here, doesn’t it?”

Robby barely processed the words.

Because the second he opened the linked chart, something inside him seemed to abruptly stop functioning properly.

Dennis shifted a little closer beside the chair, probably reacting to how suddenly still Robby had gone.

“You okay?”

Robby did not answer.

His eyes stayed locked on the screen while his brain struggled to catch up with what he was looking at. The birth date itself meant nothing. He knew exactly how old Dennis was. The age gap had never exactly been hidden from him. That part was not new.

But this–

His gaze moved automatically down through the newborn admission details, the information registering in clipped fragments that somehow still hit with disorienting force.

Premature delivery.

Trauma Bay 2.

Five day inpatient observation before discharge.

His chest tightened strangely.

Robby could practically picture it without meaning to. The old trauma bay layout before renovations. The terrible fluorescent lighting they finally replaced in the early 2000s. Exhausted residents stumbling through overnight shifts half alive on cafeteria coffee and adrenaline.

Himself among them.

Back then he had been finishing an elective rotation at PTMC before continuing the rest of his residency down in New Orleans, existing in that strange stretch of training where every shift blurred into the next until entire weeks disappeared beneath exhaustion and fluorescent lights. He could still remember dragging himself through the department at three in the morning with cold coffee in one hand and unfinished charts tucked under his arm, young enough to believe functioning on two hours of sleep counted as resilience instead of slow self-destruction.

He had spent so many years inside rooms like these that parts of the hospital still existed in his head exactly as they used to be.

Then his eyes moved lower.

For one strange suspended second Robby genuinely thought his brain had misread it. His gaze snapped back to the line automatically while something cold and electric rushed through his chest hard enough to leave him almost dizzy.

Beside him Dennis was still talking softly about something now, voice edged faintly with confusion at Robby’s complete silence, but the sound barely reached him over the sudden roaring static filling his own head as he stared at the screen, unable to look away from the name sitting there in black and white beneath Dennis’s birth records.

Delivering Physician.

Michael Robinavitch, MD.

✦••──────────•• ✧ ••──────────••✦

✦••──────────•• ✧ ••──────────••✦

This is based on the awesome prompt of @haggravated-lassault

If you’re interested in checking out the clickable file, you should definitely read the fic on AO3! I spent way too much time crying over the coding for it 😂

Anyway, everything in Dennis’s employee file is probably complete nonsense and I have absolutely no idea how accurate any of it actually is.

Does it make sense? Maybe.

Did I spend an unreasonable amount of time building a fake employee file, a birth certificate, an archived patient chart, and thirty-year-old medical records anyway? Absolutely.

Chapter 2 will be a flashback to March 14, 1998, featuring baby Dennis, exhausted resident Robby, Dana bullying him about his tie, a terrible shift, and one very unexpected delivery in Trauma Bay 2.