#maybe maybe

!!

Dennis isn’t born yet — isn’t even a thought in his mother's head, when she leaves Nebraska. It’s the abuse that drives her to abandon her three boys. The heavy hand of her husband. The drinking problem that fuels the anger, which makes his words acidic and his touch searing.  

She ends up in Pittsburgh. It’s where her sister lives. And she hasn’t talked to her sister in years now, doesn’t even know she’s married, until she’s standing on the brick and board steps to her sister's townhouse, in the middle of the day, and it’s not her sister who answers, but a man. He says his name is Jack.  

They work out a nice little arrangement.  

She lives with her sister, and Jack, and for a while, everything is peaceful. It’s Jack who helps her through the medical side of things when she realizes she’s pregnant. It’s Jack who drives her to the hospital when she goes into labor, and it’s Jack’s friend Robby who delivers the baby in the ambulance bay of the ED, because she couldn’t make it those few steps inside.  

Dennis becomes his mother's pride and joy. The one good thing that came from her relationship with his father.

And sometimes, it’ll creep up on her, the remorse, the guilt for the sons she couldn’t raise, but when she looks at Dennis’s sweet face, wide-blue eyes the color of the Nebraskan sky, she’s glad she got out.  

Dennis’s mother dies in a car crash. A drunk driver and a head-on collision, and his mother is dead in less than five minutes, and the other driver walks away with a concussion.  

Dennis is old enough to be on his own by then, an adult, but just barely. Alone now, in the world. No familial ties except the ones that reside in the townhouse, and those distant Nebraskan connections adrift in the wind. 

His aunt and his uncle let him stay. And Dennis is grateful for it. He doesn’t want to be on his own.  

When his aunt gets sick, Dennis gets nervous. He’s in his twenties by then. And maybe it’s selfish for him to think of himself when she’s the one with cancer, but he can’t help it. 

Growing up, Dennis didn't see much of Jack, night shifts at the hospital and incompatible schedules, lending to a distant relationship between the two, despite the fact that they lived together. And it’s fine, but without the bridging connection of Dennis's aunt, Jack has no reason to keep Dennis.  

Especially not because Dennis harbors Jack’s secret. Because Dennis knows what he saw late one night, sneaking into the kitchen for a glass of water, not realizing Jack was home. 

The moonlight had come in at just the right angle to illuminate them— Jack and Robby, making out, hands moving in jerky movements between their bodies, the wet, slick sounds of their mouths like a gunshot in the night.  

Dennis had frozen in the entryway, staring, half-hard in his sweatpants, uncomprehending. Because Dennis knew Robby — as a friend of Jack’s, as a funny story told by his mom when she would recount to Dennis the details of his birth — but Robby as Jack’s secret lover? That didn’t compute.  

Dennis went back to bed that night and touched himself to the image of Jack and Robby bathed in moonlight in the kitchen, and in the morning, when nothing seemed to have changed, Dennis put it out of his mind, despite the guilt that threatened to consume him.

When his aunt dies, and Robby comes to live with them, Dennis is still playing at faux incomprehension. Letting Jack sell him a story about how it’ll be easier with rent if they have another person. Dennis is just glad he’ll be kept. That Jack isn’t tossing him out immediately.

And it works, except that when Dennis tries to bring someone home during the night — an older man, grey in his beard and his hair, with dark eyes that are almost familiar — he forgets Robby will be there. He’s too embarrassed to fuck the man, not with Robby’s dark gaze peering up over his reading glasses, assessing Dennis with a knowing look as he enters the living room.  

“A friend?” Robby asks.  

“Yeah.” Dennis says, and then sends said “friend” home fifteen minutes later, while Robby’s getting ready for bed.  

That’s how Dennis ends up being sat down for a talk. Jack and Robby watching him over the dining room table.  

“Listen, Dennis, we don’t care who you’re into.”

They do care, they just won’t admit it.

“Just don’t bring them home. We don’t want strangers under our roof, okay, kid?”  

And Dennis nods and agrees, and pretends that being called kid by Jack doesn’t do something for him.  

Meanwhile, Jack and Robby are losing their minds over this new revelation, fucking each other through the frustration of knowing Dennis is into older men, but not them.

They’re trying to figure out how to reveal their interests. To not scare the kid off before they can have their way with him.

It starts out as little comments,

“Go tell Dad, food's ready.”

Dennis is sitting at the kitchen table, watching Robby cook. He startles at Robby’s words. “What?”

This is a new routine for them, sharing meals. Dennis is used to eating his food in his room, but recently, Jack has insisted they all eat together, and not the takeout Dennis is used to, but full meals with actual vegetables in them.

“You heard me.” Robby’s voice is firm, and his gaze, unwavering.

Dennis petulantly mumbles, “He’s not my dad.” But he goes to find Jack anyway, and Robby triumphantly takes note of the dark flush on Dennis’s face and the tense set of his shoulders.

One night, when Dennis tries to slink away to his room, Jack is calling to him with a,

“Kid, c’mere for a sec.”

And then he’s pulling Dennis down onto the couch.

And his arm is around Dennis’s shoulders, and Dennis is half in Jack’s lap because the couch is too small to fit them, especially with Robby on his other side, thigh pressed to Dennis’s.

“Have you thought about where you want to do your rotations?” Because of course Jack and Robby want him at the PTMC, with them.

Later, when Dennis is in the shower, he can’t help the way he hardens at the memory of it, of the way he presses his forearm to the tile wall, and uses his free hand to stroke his cock, thinking of Jack’s voice in his ear, low and gravelly, and the warmth of both of them on either side of him.

He feels so, so guilty for it too. That’s his aunt's ex-husband, a man he had grown up with, a man he used to call uncle. Of course, Jack doesn’t have any weird intentions with Dennis; he’s just being helpful, parental even. And Robby didn’t mean dad in the way Dennis thought of it. It wasn’t lewd, it was an offhanded comment that’s all.

Dennis finishes, biting his tongue, thinking of Jack and Robby.

…

Dennis comes home drunk one night. It’s following a shitty hookup where the guy could barely get it up, came in five seconds, and then didn’t even bother to make Dennis finish.

Dennis is irritated and worked up, and of course, Jack and Robby are home. They’re in Jack’s room, in bed. The door is open, spilling warm light out into the hall. And Dennis has stopped pretending to not notice them in there, together, but tonight he doesn’t want to talk to either of them. Doesn’t want them to see the weird tinge of desperation around him. To look at him and understand that these hookups he’s been having are poor imitations of what he actually wants.

“Where have you been?” That’s Jack’s voice. Dennis pauses outside the doorway, hovering. He doesn’t answer.

“Come in here, and look at me when I’m talking to you, kid.”

Dennis does, eyes rolling in irritation.

“Where were you?” Jack repeats.

“Out.” Dennis huffs, arms folding across his chest, and Robby raises an eyebrow at the tone of voice Dennis takes up.

“Out?” Jack says.

And Dennis can’t help it, the surge of irritation, the sudden anger at Jack and Robby for putting the idea in his head in the first place with casual touches, and low murmurs, and their proximity. “You’re not my fucking dad, stop acting like you are.”

There’s silence for a long moment. Dennis squirms at it. He wants to take the words back immediately, but he bites his tongue.

“No I’m not.” When Jack speaks his words are slow, carefully chosen. His eyes don’t waver from Dennis’s. “But you wish I was, don’t you, kid?”

“What?” The squeak in Dennis’s voice is embarrassing, and he can feel his cheeks warming from a combination of the alcohol and Jack’s words. And worst of all, he’s getting hard. The acknowledgment of it enough for heat to surge through him.

Robby’s eyes drop to the tent in Dennis’s pants. His smile is a touch mean. Dennis waits to be chastised, but instead Robby says, “C’mere kiddo, let your dad’s take care of you.”

…

Dennis ends up between them on the bed.

Robby has his hand in Dennis’s hair, guiding Dennis down on him. "Fuck, kiddo, could've told us sooner if you wanted a daddy. Can get what you want right here, no reason to go anywhere else." And Dennis can’t speak, mouth too full with Robby, eyes watering from the stretch of it, of the rough way Robby fucks into his mouth.

And Jack is behind Dennis, gripping Dennis’s hips and pulling him in with every thrust, panting out, “Promised your aunt I’d take care of ya—” Dennis whines around Robby, choking as Robby’s cock hits the back of his throat and gags him at the same time that Jack’s cock pushes into the sweet spot inside him. “Think I’m doing an okay job, huh, kid?”

Robby pulls out of Dennis’s mouth, spit soaking his cock as he fists it above Dennis’s face. “Go on, kiddo, tell your Dad how good he’s doing. Tell Dad how thankful you are.”