Stuff N' Things

Months into joining them, the older men get put up on the kiss cam. Both turning beet red, trying to signal to the camera that they're just friends.

Then, barely in frame of the shot, Dennis's hands come into view, gripping both their heads and turning them till their mouths slot together.

galadriel's been around since the beginning, like, for pretty much all of middle-earth's history you understand, she has Seen it all and despite what you may have been led to believe is at all times this close to snapping. also the reason lothlorien is so chill is she has this magic ring that makes it so the whole place exists slightly outside normal time

i can't emphasize enough how much of a post-apocalyptic horror story thranduil lives in. homeland destroyed and half his people massacred. has fucken sauron in his backyard and the spawn of the primordial beast that eats light puttering about on his lawn. a dragon lives next door. does NOT have a magic ring and is therefore obliged to rule over his murderforest in normal time

just so we're all on the same page here, legolas' day job before joining the fellowship was to hunt the spawn of the primordial beast that eats light and it's not like, a big deal or anything. he just has to do it. he's used to it.

People have being trying to figure it out for months now to no success since it’s Trinity’s most closely guarded secret. She genuinely threatens to kick him out she’s so mad.

Bonus points if she’s then thrown a surprise birthday party to her absolute horror (she cries afterwards and finally feels welcomed by everyone).

They both need a bath desperately, and they’re a little delirious from working, so they decided it’s just better to take a quick shower together

While they’re in there, they just break down crying and slump against each other

They’re cold and wet cause the shower barely fits one person, and now they’re both squeezed in there, and they’re rotating every few seconds to try and get water so they can be semi-clean. The shift was horrible, and Dennis is pretty sure the heating is on the fritz again, so it's fucking cold in the apartment

Once they come out, they’re even more codependent than ever. They’ve crossed all boundaries in their relationship. They’ve transcended

Xena & Gabrielle

they were so important to me as a baby lesbian :')

Submitted by the incomperable @sheafrotherdon

"I've dealt with my demons," Jack had told Robby. It had been a complete, utter bald-faced lie, and Robby's wholly unimpressed face - even in the midst of his own crisis - had called him on it.

he collapses and sobs until he gags, he cries and he hits things, denting the wall in places and smashing a glass all over the kitchen tile. he sees dennis there, standing close and looking upset, in the corner of his eye as he falls to pieces. if he had the capacity, he'd feel remorseful that he's putting his favourite intern through this, that such a kind and pretty boy was having to see him crash and burn in the worst way possible. but he doesn't have the strength.

he mourns the fact that dennis will surely run, take his leave, report his lack of stability to the hospital. his grief at losing this young man in his life only adds to his cries and his anger and his upset, and he ends up curled in a ball and catatonic, gasping for air as he spasms from all the crying. it's left him dehydrated and with a migraine, and eventually he passes out on the hardwood floor. he can see a blurry image of dennis's feet in his vision as he blacks out, and he hates that that's the last he'll ever see of the boy. he's ruined every last thing.

he wakes up fourteen hours later, confused and weak. he's exhausted from the sobs and his hands ache from the bruises from his destruction of the wall. he doesn't understand how he's in his bed or how his jacket is gone, or how his knuckles have been cleaned and bandaged. there's water and painkillers on the side table, and the mess has been cleared up.

there's a knock on the door after a while, and robby's eyes widen and he's frozen when dennis walks through the door. he looks a little tired, but he's dressed comfortably and holds warm toast and soup on a tray. he smiles at robby, and its a sad smile.

robby can't help but feel tears blur his eyes again, reasoning with the fact that dennis saw it all- saw him screaming and swearing and punching, saw him sobbing until he couldn't breathe and passed out, saw him so unbearably ugly, and stayed. he didn't run and tell or judge. he tucked robby into bed, treated his wounds, and cooked him warm food.

no one assumed robby was a sub.

he was fearless in his dissents. he did not cower in the face of aggression. he did not melt under the effusive praise from relieved family members, nor the stern chastisements from admin. no one at work knew he was a sub. shit, heather and janey had always just assumed he was neutral. it wasn’t a lie. he did not mislead anyone, but he allowed the assumptions. the stereotypes were in his favor, for once.

no one assumed dennis was a dom.

he had big, searching eyes. he shrunk when confronted. he blushed and stammered when complimented. he simply did not project the casual dominance expected of his designation.

it didn’t come up at work much. designations were personal. some people were more casual about the information than others, but it was uncouth the ask. there was the occasional emergency that made them relevant, but outside of the rare improper use of a dominant’s voice or an impromptu drop, it was generally not germane to the work day.

robby was dropping. fuck, he was dropping hard.

it felt pathetic to admit that it all started with gloria admonishing him for his department’s press-ganey scores, but that really was the inciting incident. robby felt his chest hitch, his shoulders drew up to his ears, and his fingers started to fidget with that loose thread in his jacket pocket. words like failure and fuck-up swirled in his head. he could get through the day, though. he’d gotten through worse.

and then someone asked about adamson. and then he lost a twenty year old kid who just wanted to backflip into a pool to impress a girl. and then he got blood all over his scrubs and his neck.

and then dennis found robby on the floor again, this time in a curtained off bay, on his knees, whimpering and trying to wash the arterial spray off with some half-dry wet wipes.

dennis didn’t seem like a dom when he was just walking around the pitt, but the way his voice got all even and deep, the way he cooed out oh, honey. what’s wrong? as he slowly approached robby, was nothing if not obviously revealing.

even the people that help him or confront him or reach out to him the most, he barely has. dana, who is first and foremost a coworker before a best friend, who had no idea about robby's abandonment. jack, who's admittedly closer, but I assume is included in "no one knows", + is avoidant, often working, and hasn't faced most of his own shit. not truly reliable.

I mean, that scene where robby is grinning and refusing eye contact and not reassuring jack he'll be okay... and jack doesn't even follow him. just leaves. and later, when dana is practically begging jack to at least say something. do something. but jack is also closed off, so it took that push. he didn't even truly initiate the reaching out.

even duke's connection to robby gets overinflated, and I think it suits the narrative much better to view it as it is: duke and robby are not particularly close. it's implied it's a recent friendship, mainly over motorcycles, which is a recent development in robby's life. and robby, over and over, has to practically plead with duke to stay, have the CT for him, and is generally difficult.

robby is grasping to this friendship because it's likely one of the only ones he has, possibly the only one. and eventually, yes, duke softens at the desperation and comforts him, but it's still just... they're clearly not very close. robby is desperate for connection and unwilling to let it go, he's crying out for help, whoever will help.

him and noelle clearly aren't that close, including the fact that she gossips about something personal to him to dana without a second thought. it's not even a want for robby, the comfort of a warm body in his bed, it's a need. he knows he can't be alone. he can't handle it. but he doesn't wanna get close enough to anyone to be abandoned, so he always leaves first.

yana kovalenko, who is one of the people who cut through to him emotionally the most, is a patient. cassie, who also checked in on him and made an effort, is his resident. the vast majority of people that are considered his "support system" are his responsibilities as well, or at the very least his coworkers first, which heavily clashes.

that's why he latches on so heavy to duke, why duke gets through to him easily, even though he's... honestly pretty surface level, and I assume knows very little about robby's inner self, just as everyone else. all he really knows, from that day, is wow this hospital is draining. but that was enough for robby. because robby is desperately lonely and duke is not a responsibility or a coworker. and duke is older, and robby is subconsciously always searching for a figure like that. someone to guide him. a mother, a father, a mentor. anyone.

this is the reality for a lot of people with complex lifelong trauma. Robby's traumas started, at the very latest, at age 8, with the destruction of his family unit and sense of safety. It continued, at the very least, with not only Abramson's death, but the PTSD by a thousand cuts he describes from his decades at the Pitt. this is a man who has endless internal wounds, whose ability to trust the love and affection of others was broken in elementary school, who has been shown by the world over and over that you cannot rely on anyone but yourself. who feels he has to literally devote his life to fixing people to earn his place in the world, who tells Duke that his life is intolerable to him unless he is working, actively in service to others.