Chapter Text
The world had narrowed to the space on the other side of Robby’s apartment door. The walk from the diner had been a silent, tense bubble, the cool night air doing nothing to calm the frantic heat under Dennis’s skin. Now, standing in the dim hallway, the only sound was the jangle of Robby’s keys, a nervous percussion to the drumbeat of Dennis’s heart.
The lock turned with a definitive thunk.
The door swung open, and Robby stepped aside to let him in first. A gentleman’s gesture, absurdly formal given the electric current arcing between them. Dennis crossed the threshold.
Robby’s apartment was definitely everything he expected it to be. The floors were dark hardwood, the walls a neutral grey. A single, expensive-looking leather sofa faced a fireplace with a pristine, unused hearth. A stack of unread The New England Journal of Medicine sat perfectly aligned on a glass coffee table. It was clean, tasteful, and utterly lifeless. It smelled of lemony polish and, faintly beneath it, the distinct, clean scent of Robby’s soap. It was the home of a man who slept somewhere else, a waiting room for a life that hadn't started. Or rather waiting for someone else to make it into a home.
Dennis stood awkwardly in the center of the living room, feeling like he was tracking dirt across a showroom floor. Robby closed the door, the click of the deadbolt echoing like a gunshot in the quiet. He didn’t move further in, just leaned back against the door, as if barricading them in—or himself out.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy. The easy camaraderie of the diner booth had evaporated, replaced by the terrifying reality of their isolation. There were no waitresses here, no clattering plates, no public facade to hide behind. It was just them, and the ghost of a touch that had started it all.
Dennis could still feel the memory of Robby’s hand in his hair. It was all he could think about. The weight of it, the slight scratch of a callus, the way his fingers had curled, possessive and sure, before the realization.
Robby was watching him, his gaze a physical weight. He looked utterly wrecked. The casual confidence he wore at the hospital was gone, stripped away to reveal something raw and uncertain beneath. His eyes were dark, the circles under them pronounced in the low light. He looked like a man standing at the edge of a cliff, torn between the urge to jump and the instinct to flee.
“Dennis.”
His name was a rough scrape of sound, so different from the way he’d said it in the diner. This was an unknown territory that Dennis hopes to survive.
Dennis just looked at him, waiting, his breath caught in his throat.
Robby pushed off the door, but he didn’t come closer. He stopped a few feet away, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He was fighting a visible battle, his jaw tight, his shoulders rigid with tension.
“I want to touch you,” he said, the words blunt, forced out. “I’ve been thinking about it… God, for months. Just… touching you.” His eyes dropped to Dennis’s hair, and the hunger in that look was so stark it made Dennis’s knees feel weak. “I want to put my hands in your hair and not stop this time. I want to see if it’s as soft as I remember. I want to feel it against my skin.”
He dragged his gaze back up to meet Dennis’s, and the guilt was back, warring with the want. It was the same tortured look he’d had when he’d fled the break room.
“But you have to consent,” Robby said, his voice dropping to a desperate, hushed tone. He took a half-step forward, his expression one of pained sincerity. “You have to say yes. Explicitly. Because if you don’t… if you have even a single doubt…” He swallowed hard. “I will respect your wishes and leave you alone even if it is the last I want to do right now.”
The raw vulnerability in the confession undid Dennis completely. This wasn't the powerful attending violating a boundary. This was a man, laid bare, handing Dennis all the power.
All the fear, the confusion, the shameful flicker of excitement from the break room, the giddy hope from the diner—it all coalesced inside Dennis, hardening into a single, solid, certain point.
He took a step forward, closing the distance himself. He looked directly into Robby’s worried, stormy eyes.
“Yes,” he said. The word was quiet, but it was clear and solid and unwavering in the hushed room. “It’s okay.”
The effect was instantaneous. It was like watching a dam disintegrate. The tension shattered in Robby’s frame, his shoulders slumping in relief. A shuddering breath escaped him, and the last vestige of restraint vanished from his eyes, replaced by a blazing, focused intensity.
He closed the final distance between them in one swift, fluid movement. His hand came up, not with the frantic, impulsive energy of the break room, but with a reverent, deliberate certainty. His fingers sank into Dennis’s hair, his palm cradling the curve of his skull. It was the same gesture, but it was everything the first one wasn't. It was a question answered. A pardon granted. A benediction.
He fisted his hand gently, his thumb stroking a slow, soothing arc against Dennis’s temple. The touch sent a jolt of pure lightning straight down Dennis’s spine.
“Okay,” Robby breathed, the word a whisper against Dennis’s lips.
And then he pulled him in.
It was deep and searching and desperate, a silent, frantic conversation that spoke of all the months of stolen glances and repressed longing. Robby’s other arm banded around his back, crushing them together from chest to thigh, as if he could fuse them into a single being. Dennis met him with equal fervor, his own hands coming up to clutch at Robby’s shoulders, his fingers then tangling in the soft, disheveled strands of his hair, ruining whatever was left of its professional style.
Robby tasted of terrible diner coffee and a unique, essential flavor that was just _him_. Dennis drank it in, his head spinning. This was really happening. The world had shrunk to the points of contact: Robby’s mouth on his, Robby’s hand in his hair, Robby’s solid chest against his.
They broke apart, gasping for air, their foreheads pressed together. Robby’s breath was hot on his face.
“Bedroom,” Robby rasped, and it was less a suggestion and more a shared, urgent goal, a destination they were already moving towards.
The journey there was a clumsy, frantic shuffle. Robby walked him backwards, never breaking the seal of their mouths for long, his hands roaming under Dennis’s t-shirt, mapping the skin of his back with a surgeon’s intent. Dennis’s own shirt was pushed up and over his head, discarded somewhere near the sofa with a soft rustle.
Robby pushed him against the doorframe of the bedroom, his mouth leaving Dennis’s to blaze a hot, open-mouthed trail down his jaw to his neck. He sucked at the sensitive skin there, and Dennis cried out, his head falling back against the wood with a soft thud. His hands scrabbled at Robby’s belt buckle, fingers fumbling in his haste.
“Impatient,” Robby murmured against his throat, the word vibrating through Dennis’s skin. There was a dark, thrilling amusement in his tone.
“You have no idea,” Dennis gasped out, finally getting the buckle undone.
Then they were falling onto the bed, a tangle of limbs and hungry mouths. The rest of their clothes were shoved away, a button popping from Robby’s shirt and skittering across the floor. The sound was loud in the room, a testament to their desperation. Dennis didn’t care. The world outside this room, the hospital, the gossip, the rules—it had all ceased to exist.
There was only this: the slick heat of skin on skin, the sharp, delicious bite of nails, the ragged, pleading of each other’s names. The moonlight streamed through the window, painting silver stripes across Robby’s back as he moved above him, then beside him, then below him. The power dynamic that had defined them for so long had not just vanished; it had been inverted, explored, and shared. Here, in the dark, Dennis was not an intern. He was a man who knew how to make the brilliant, infallible Dr. Robby come completely, gloriously undone.
Robby was everywhere, his touch both demanding and reverent. He explored Dennis’s body like a man memorizing a new religion, his lips and hands and tongue worshiping every newly revealed inch. He whispered against Dennis’s skin, his voice a low, guttural thread of sound, all the things he’d been too guilty to even think before.
“You have no idea,” he breathed into the hollow of Dennis’s throat, his hips moving in a slow, devastating rhythm. “No idea what you do to me. I thought about this. In the on-call room. During rounds. God, Dennis.”
Dennis could only clutch at him, his own responses reduced to breathy moans and gasped pleas. He learned the secrets of Robby’s body—the way he shuddered when Dennis’s teeth grazed his hip bone, the sharp intake of breath when a thumb circled his nipple, the broken, shattered way he cried out Dennis’s name when they finally, completely fell over the edge together.
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Time bled back slowly, like ink on wet paper. Sensation returned one piece at a time. The weight of Robby’s arm, heavy and possessive across his chest. The damp coolness of sweat drying on his skin. The frantic, steady beat of Robby’s heart against his side, gradually slowing to a calm, strong rhythm. The scent of sex and their mingled sweat, a primal, intimate perfume that filled the air.
Robby’s hand moved, his fingers gently, absently combing through Dennis’s hair again. This time, there was no question in it. No guilt. No desperate hunger. It was just a touch. A quiet, possessive, peaceful touch. A habit already being formed.
Dennis let out a long, slow breath, feeling boneless and sated in a way he never had before. Every muscle was liquid, his mind a blissful, empty quiet. He felt… claimed. And for the first time in his life, he felt like he truly belonged to someone, and they to him.
After a long, content while, a practical thought nudged at the edges of his blissful haze. He shifted slightly, the movement making the muscles in his thighs protest pleasantly. He groped blindly on the floor, his fingers brushing against rough denim and then finding the cool, hard rectangle of his phone. He pulled it up, the screen lighting up with a sudden, harsh glow that made them both blink in the darkness.
Robby stirred, nuzzling his face against Dennis’s shoulder. His voice was a sleepy, deep rumble that vibrated through Dennis’s very bones. “What is it?”
Dennis turned his head on the pillow, looking at the man beside him. Robby’s eyes were closed, his face softer and more relaxed than Dennis had ever seen it. A small, unguarded smile played on his lips. A wave of sheer, dizzying fondness, so powerful it was almost painful, washed over Dennis.
He looked back at his phone, at the time glaring back at him. 11:47 PM. And then he saw the text notification from Santos, sent over two hours ago.
>> Santos: So??? Is the coffee that good? Do I need to send a search party?
A slow, dazed, and utterly satiated smile spread across Dennis’s face. He felt a bubble of laughter rise in his chest, pure and uncomplicated.
He tapped out a quick reply, his thumbs clumsy.
>> Dennis: Sorry. Got distracted. Not coming home tonight.
He tossed the phone back onto the floor, not waiting for a reply. He turned back into Robby’s warmth, settling against him with a contented sigh.
Robby’s arm tightened around him. “Everything okay?” he mumbled, his voice thick with impending sleep.
Dennis curled closer, tucking his head under Robby’s chin, right where it seemed to fit perfectly.
“Yeah,” he whispered into the dark, the word full of a wonder he couldn’t contain. “Everything’s perfect.”