Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time Robby really noticed it was during a late afternoon shift in the emergency department, when the waiting room had been packed for hours and everyone was running on too much coffee and too little patience.

The patient was an older man with a sprained wrist and a mouth that clearly hadn’t learned when to shut up. He hated those.

Dennis had been checking the mobility of the hand while one of the nurses, Claudia, updated the chart beside him. The man watched them both for a moment before snorting.

“Two of you hovering over me like that,” he said, shaking his head. “You act like a couple of girls.”

Claudia didn’t even look up from the tablet. The comment didn't make much sense either way.

“Comments like that aren’t necessary,” she said calmly, the kind of practiced neutrality that came from years of dealing with people like him.

Robby, who was leaning against the counter nearby and half-listening while writing something down, expected Dennis to do the same. Usually Dennis handled patients well, patient, professional, almost annoyingly calm.

But Dennis went very still.

His shoulders stiffened like someone had pulled invisible strings through them. For a second Robby thought Dennis hadn’t even heard the comment, but then he straightened abruptly.

“I don’t act like a girl,” he snapped.

The words came out sharper than the situation called for.

The patient blinked, startled.

“I didn’t mean-”

Dennis was already moving, suddenly brisk, suddenly all business again.

“Your wrist isn’t broken,” he said curtly, stepping back and pulling off his gloves. “You’ll get a compression wrap and instructions for pain management.”

Claudia shot Robby a brief look over the patient’s shoulder. Not annoyed. Just confused.

Dennis had already turned away, disappearing toward the supply cabinets before anyone could respond.

It was strange.

But Dennis finished the treatment, the patient left with his paperwork, and the department kept moving.

So Robby shrugged it off, but there was something else.

Most of the staff changed in the locker rooms before their shifts, the men in one side, the women in the other. It was routine, quick, unremarkable.

Except Dennis never did.

While everyone else filtered toward the lockers after clocking in, Dennis always walked off in the opposite direction down the hallway toward the public patient bathrooms.

At first Robby assumed it was coincidence.

Then he started noticing the timing.

Dennis would arrive in normal clothes like everyone else, greet whoever happened to be nearby, then disappear for a few minutes. When he came back he’d already be in scrubs.

No locker room. No casual conversation while changing. Just the patient bathroom down the hall. Robby mentioned it once offhandedly to another doctor.

“Dennis? Yeah, he does that,” the guy said with a shrug. “Probably just likes the privacy.”

Maybe. Still, it was odd.

The touching thing was stranger.

Hospitals were full of casual contact, hands on shoulders, quick pats on the back, someone nudging your arm to get past. Dennis reacted to it like it physically hurt.

One night after a particularly brutal shift, a nurse clapped Dennis lightly on the back.

“Nice work with that trauma case,” she said.

Dennis jerked forward instantly, arching away from the contact like a startled cat. The movement was quick but obvious.

“Oh- sorry,” the nurse said, pulling her hand back.

Dennis forced a tight smile.

“No, it’s fine.”

But he had already stepped out of reach.

Robby noticed it happening again and again after that. Someone would reach out casually, a friendly gesture, nothing unusual, and Dennis would instinctively twist away before the contact even landed.

Then there was the other thing.

Dennis was… weirdly intense about being a man.

Not in a loud or obnoxious way. He wasn’t one of those guys who bragged about bench presses or motorcycles or whatever.

But the topic came up more often than Robby expected.

If someone joked about crying during a sad movie, Dennis would scoff. He didn't say anything but it awkwardly felt like when your parents would tell you "real men don't cry".

If someone complained about being tired, Dennis would mutter something about pushing through it.

When a nurse once teased him about looking pale during a long shift, Dennis immediately straightened.

“I’m fine,” he said sharply. “I’m not weak.”

Robby had raised an eyebrow at that one. Nobody had called him weak. Dennis just… reacted like someone had.

It happened enough times that Robby eventually filed it away under Dennis being Dennis. Some people were just weird about masculinity.

The thing was, none of it actually affected his work.

Dennis was a good doctor. Better than good, honestly. He was precise, fast under pressure, and patients trusted him. Even the difficult ones usually calmed down once Dennis started explaining things.

He stayed late when necessary. He handled emergencies without panicking. He didn’t cut corners.

So Robby never said anything. Everyone had quirks. Dennis just had… more of them than most. But as long as those quirks didn’t interfere with the job, Robby figured it wasn’t really his business.

Still. Every now and then Robby caught himself watching Dennis across the department, noticing the way he carried himself, stiff shoulders, careful posture, always keeping a little distance from everyone else.

Robby didn’t know what to make of it. So he stopped trying. Dennis did his job. That was enough.

***

The halls had finally quieted down by the time Dennis slipped into the staff washroom. The end of a shift always left a certain residue behind, not just the physical kind, though there was plenty of that too. The smell of antiseptic clung to everything and the fluorescent lights buzzed faintly above the sinks. Dennis rolled up the sleeves of his undershirt and turned the water on hotter than it probably needed to be.

He scrubbed his hands first, automatically, like muscle memory. Soap, rinse, soap again. His fingers moved through the routine with the kind of precision that came from years of training. But he didn’t stop there. He kept going, dragging the soap up his wrists, over his forearms, scrubbing harder than necessary as if the day could be washed off if he just tried hard enough. The water stung slightly against the skin from how hot it was, but he barely noticed.

He leaned forward, splashing water onto his face next, rubbing at his skin with both hands until it felt raw. When he finally looked up, his reflection stared back at him from the mirror above the sink.

Dennis held his own gaze for a moment.

And immediately started picking himself apart.

His eyes looked tired under the harsh hospital lighting, lashes darker and thicker than he liked. Too soft. Too noticeable. He dragged a hand down his face, jaw tightening as his gaze moved lower. His lips, full in a way he had always hated, looked even worse when he was this exhausted. Everything about his face felt wrong in ways that were hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t spent years analyzing every inch of themselves in mirrors.

But it was the beard that made his stomach twist.

Or rather, the lack of one.

Dennis rubbed his thumb across his chin, feeling the faint, uneven stubble that barely counted as anything. Months. Years, even. And this was still all he had to show for it. A patchy shadow that disappeared if he shaved too closely and never grew thick enough to look the way it was supposed to.

The memory of earlier that day crawled back into his head whether he wanted it or not.

“Excuse me, ma’am”

The older woman had stopped mid-sentence the second he turned around and answered. Fuck, he hated himself for that. Why would he even reply to ma'am at all?

“Oh! I’m sorry, doctor. I didn’t realize-”

She hadn’t meant anything by it. He knew that. The apology had come quickly, sincere even, the kind of automatic correction people made once they heard his voice.

His voice. Sometimes it still betrayed him too. Not all the time, hormone therapy had deepened it enough that most people didn’t question it. But when he was tired, or stressed, or if he spoke too quickly, there were moments where it cracked awkwardly or slipped into a pitch that made his stomach drop.

Moments where he sounded wrong.

He braced his hands against the sink, staring harder at the mirror like maybe something would look different if he glared long enough. What was even the point? He had been on testosterone long enough that this was supposed to be it. This was the result. The doctors had adjusted the dosage carefully over time, checking his levels, making sure everything stayed within the safe range.

Everything medically correct. Everything balanced. And yet it still wasn’t enough.

Dennis exhaled slowly through his nose, staring at his reflection with growing irritation. What was he even taking testosterone for if it didn’t do anything? His thoughts drifted, uninvited, to something that had been sitting in the back of his mind all week.

The vials. He had passed them in the medication storage room a few days ago while looking for something completely unrelated. A small box tucked into the back of one of the controlled shelves. Testosterone. Barely touched supply that the hospital almost never used.

The image had lodged itself in his brain and refused to leave.

Dennis turned the water off slowly, drying his hands with a paper towel while the thought kept circling. His dosage was controlled. Carefully monitored. Adjusted to match his bloodwork.

He knew that. He also knew exactly why it was controlled that way. Too much testosterone could mess with your system. Hormonal imbalance. Blood pressure issues. Cardiac strain if it went too far. He had studied all of it in medical school.

But that was for abuse. For extreme cases. A little more wouldn’t kill him.

Dennis stared down at the sink for a long moment after that thought appeared, as if expecting his own brain to correct itself. It didn’t. He didn’t really make a decision after that. At least, not consciously.

Dennis tossed the damp paper towel into the trash and stepped out into the hallway, his feet carrying him down the familiar corridors of the hospital almost automatically. The evening shift was winding down now, the chaos settling into something quieter, and most people were too busy finishing charts or preparing for handovers to pay attention to where he was going.

The medication storage room was empty when he stepped inside. Of course it was.

Dennis closed the door behind him and stood there for a second, suddenly very aware of the silence. The cabinet was exactly where he remembered it.

His hands moved on their own, retrieving the key, unlocking the compartment with the same practiced motion he used dozens of times a day for completely legitimate reasons.

When he opened the door, the small box of vials sat right where it had been before. For a moment he just looked at them. This was stupid.

He knew that.

Dennis rested one hand against the edge of the shelf, his fingers tapping once, twice, like he was waiting for his better judgment to kick in. It didn’t. The hesitation only lasted a few seconds before he reached in and grabbed one of the vials. The glass felt cool against his fingers.

A strange wave of guilt flickered somewhere in the back of his mind, but Dennis pushed it away before it had time to grow into something bigger. He had spent too long being careful, too long waiting for things to work the way they were supposed to.

This wasn’t reckless. Just… a little adjustment.

He closed the cabinet again, locking it with the same quiet click as before, the vial already tucked into his pocket before he could think too hard about it.

By the time he stepped back into the hallway, his expression had smoothed into the same calm professionalism he always wore at work. Whatever guilt or doubt had tried to surface was pushed neatly out of the way.

Dennis found Trinity near the exit not long after, gathering her things as her shift ended.

“Ready?” she asked casually.

Dennis nodded, slipping his hands into his pockets like there was nothing unusual about the weight of the small glass vial hidden there.

“Yeah,” he said.

And just like that, they headed out together.

What had started as a single moment of impulse quietly turned into something else.

Dennis didn’t wake up one morning and decide to keep doing it. There was no clear point where it became a plan. It simply… happened again. A few days later he passed the cabinet while grabbing supplies and found himself slowing down. His mind barely argued with him this time. One vial became two. A careful extra dose here and there, always measured, always small enough that he could still pretend it wasn’t really a problem.

After the first couple of weeks, it stopped feeling like a secret mistake and started feeling like routine.

By the time Dennis realized he was taking nearly twice the dosage he had originally been prescribed, the idea of stopping felt strangely impossible. And the worst part was that it worked.

The changes came faster than anything he had experienced before. His voice deepened noticeably over the span of weeks, losing the occasional higher pitch that had always betrayed him when he was tired. When he spoke now, it carried weight in a way it hadn’t before, steady and low enough that nobody ever hesitated when addressing him.

He started building muscle again, too. Not slowly, not the frustrating inch-by-inch progress he had fought for before. It happened quickly, almost aggressively. His shoulders broadened under his scrubs, his arms gaining definition from shifts that had never affected his body like this before. It reminded him of the time before Trinity had taken him in, when survival had forced him into physical strength whether he wanted it or not.

This time it felt different. This time it felt like proof. The change didn’t go unnoticed. Coworkers commented on it in the casual, teasing way people in hospitals always did when someone looked different.

“Someone’s been hitting the gym,” one of the nurses said one evening when Dennis lifted a heavy supply crate without even seeming to notice the weight.

Another doctor nudged him lightly during a break. “Look at you finally hitting puberty.” Dennis rolled his eyes at that, but he couldn’t stop the small grin that crept onto his face afterward.

For once, the teasing didn’t sting. It felt good. Really good.

Even better were the things that didn’t happen anymore. Patients didn’t hesitate when they called him doctor. No one stumbled over pronouns. No one accidentally used “ma’am” before correcting themselves. The awkward little moments that used to follow him through the hospital simply… disappeared. And when he looked in the mirror now, he could see the difference too.

His jaw looked sharper somehow. The growth along his cheeks was finally enough that the beginnings of proper sideburns framed his face. When he ran his hand across his jawline now, it actually felt like the beard he had spent years waiting for. For the first time in a long while, Dennis could look at his own reflection without immediately finding something to hate.

Trinity noticed too. She was the only person at the hospital who knew the full truth about him, the only one who had known since the beginning. One evening while they were back at the apartment, she watched him shave in the bathroom doorway, arms folded against the frame.

“You look happier,” she said casually. Dennis paused mid-motion, razor hovering against his cheek.

“Do I?”

“Yeah,” Trinity replied with a small smile. “I’m glad.”

She didn’t ask anything else. And Dennis didn’t explain.

Now, when Dennis stared at himself in the mirror, he didn’t feel that familiar twisting frustration in his chest. His voice sounded right when he spoke. His shoulders filled out his shirts. The stubble along his jaw caught the bathroom light just enough that it made him look like the version of himself he had always imagined.

For the first time, he could breathe a little easier in his own skin. At least… that’s what he told himself.

The headaches started quietly. At first they were easy to dismiss, the kind of dull pressure behind his temples that anyone working hospital shifts could blame on exhaustion or dehydration. Dennis ignored them the way doctors always ignored their own symptoms. They became more frequent after that.

Sharp flashes of pain that appeared suddenly during long shifts, forcing him to rub his forehead while pretending nothing was wrong. A couple of times he had to pause in empty hallways, closing his eyes for a few seconds until the pounding in his skull faded enough to keep moving.

Then came the breathing. It happened once while he was lifting a patient stretcher with another doctor. Dennis straightened up afterward and realized his chest felt tight, like the air in the room had suddenly gotten thinner.

He took a slow breath. It didn’t help. Another breath, deeper this time, but the tightness remained, spreading across his ribs like something pressing inward. After a minute it faded on its own. Dennis didn’t mention it.

It happened again a few days later while he was simply walking up the stairs between floors. His lungs refused to fill properly, forcing him to stop halfway up the staircase until the strange pressure in his chest eased enough to continue. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice knew exactly what those symptoms meant.

Headaches. Shortness of breath. The early signs of hormonal imbalance. Signs that his body was being pushed further than it was supposed to go.

Dennis recognized them immediately. He was a doctor after all. But the thought barely lingered.

Because every time he passed a mirror now, he saw the beard slowly filling in along his jaw. He heard the steadiness of his voice when he spoke. He noticed the way his coworkers no longer hesitated when addressing him. He looked like a man. Finally.

The knowledge that something might be wrong floated somewhere at the edges of his thoughts, quiet and easy to ignore. Dennis had spent too long fighting his own body. Now that it was finally cooperating, he wasn’t about to question it.

Even the things that used to bother him, the long lashes, the softness around his eyes, didn’t seem so important anymore. They didn’t stand out the way they used to.

***

The ER had settled into one of those weird and calm set of minutes where everything seemed manageable on the surface but everyone still moved with the quiet urgency of people waiting for the next ambulance to arrive. Dennis stood on the opposite side of the patient bed while Robby finished examining a middle-aged man with a minor abdominal complaint. It wasn’t a difficult case. No rushing, no heavy lifting, no chaos spilling into the hallway. Just routine questions, a quick physical exam, the kind of thing Dennis had done hundreds of times before.

And yet his chest felt tight.

Dennis kept his expression neutral while Robby spoke to the patient, nodding occasionally at the right moments, but he was painfully aware of the way his lungs refused to cooperate. Every breath felt shallow and unsatisfying, like the air in the room had been quietly thinned out without anyone telling him. He tried to slow it down, tried to pull in a deeper breath through his nose the way he sometimes did when the headaches came on, but it didn’t really help. His heart was beating faster than it should have been for someone who had been standing still for the past ten minutes.

He shifted his weight slightly, hoping Robby wouldn’t notice. The patient certainly didn’t. But Dennis knew the sound of his own breathing too well. It was louder than it should have been, the uneven rhythm of someone who had just climbed several flights of stairs instead of simply standing beside a bed.

When Robby turned to grab something from the tray, Dennis took the opportunity immediately. “Excuse me for a second,” he muttered, already stepping toward the door before anyone could question it.

The hallway outside felt marginally cooler, but the relief he expected didn’t come. Dennis leaned one hand against the wall and forced himself to inhale slowly through his nose, exhale through his mouth, trying to make the breaths look controlled instead of the ragged pulls his body actually wanted. Anyone walking past might have assumed he had simply stepped out to gather his thoughts for a moment.

Inside his chest, though, it still felt like he had just run a marathon. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly, focusing on counting the breaths. One. Two. Three. Slow it down. Slow it down. One. Two. Three…

Footsteps approached from behind him a minute later. Before Dennis could even turn around properly, a firm hand grabbed his arm and steered him sideways into the nearest empty room. The door shut behind them with a quiet click.

Dennis blinked, startled, immediately recognizing the irritated look on Robby’s face. “What-” Dennis straightened instinctively, already pulling his arm free. “I have something else to-”

“No, you don’t,” Robby interrupted flatly. Dennis stiffened at the tone. The room was small, probably used for quick consultations or paperwork, and the closed door suddenly made the space feel tighter than it really was. Dennis shifted his weight again, trying to steady his breathing before Robby noticed how uneven it still was.

Robby folded his arms. “What’s the deal?” he asked.

Dennis frowned immediately. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Robby said slowly, “you just walked out of a routine exam breathing like you ran five miles.”

Dennis felt irritation spike instantly, sharp and defensive before he could stop it. “I can handle myself,” he snapped. “There’s nothing wrong.” The words came out harder than he intended, edged with something almost hostile.

For a moment the room went completely still. Robby’s eyebrows lifted slightly, more surprised than anything else. Dennis never spoke to him like that.

“I’m sorry,” Robby said after a second, his voice suddenly dry with irritation, “for thinking breathing like that for no reason might be a problem.”

Dennis opened his mouth to fire something back automatically-. And then the reality of what he had just said hit him. The anger drained out of him so quickly it almost made him dizzy. His shoulders sagged slightly, the defensive tension collapsing all at once as he looked at Robby again.

What was he even saying? This wasn’t how he talked to Robby. This wasn’t how he talked to anyone, really. Dennis swallowed hard, his posture shrinking a little as the frustration gave way to something closer to embarrassment. His eyes dropped briefly to the floor before lifting again, the familiar softness creeping back into his expression without him even noticing.

“I’m… sorry,” he said quietly. The words sounded genuine, almost awkward. Dennis rubbed the back of his neck, looking tired now rather than angry. “I just had a hard day, that’s all.” The shift was so sudden that it completely unraveled the irritation Robby had built up over the last thirty seconds.

Dennis was looking at him with those large, tired eyes that always made him seem younger than he actually was, the earlier defensiveness replaced by something apologetic and a little worn down. It was a look Robby had seen before, usually after long shifts or rough cases, and it had the unfortunate side effect of making it very difficult to stay annoyed at him.

Robby exhaled slowly, the tension leaving his shoulders. “Alright,” he muttered.

Dennis waited, watching him carefully. Robby shook his head once and reached out to give Dennis a brief, firm squeeze on the shoulder. “Just don’t fight stuff on your own,” he said. “If something’s wrong, you say something.”

Dennis nodded quickly. “Yeah.” Robby narrowed his eyes slightly. “And if you lie about being okay, I swear I’m gonna kill you.”

For a moment Dennis just stared at him. Then he huffed out a short laugh, the tension easing enough that the threat clearly landed as the joke it was meant to be. “I’m fine,” he assured him, the words coming quickly now. “Really.”

Robby studied him for another second like he might argue further, but Dennis was already stepping toward the door. “I should get back,” he added, reaching for the handle before Robby could ask anything else.

The door opened, and a second later he was gone again, disappearing back into the hallway with the same calm professionalism he always wore at work. Robby stood in the empty room for another moment after he left. Something about that whole exchange still felt… off.

***

Dennis had spent the last couple minutes pretending everything was normal. The shift was almost over. Just about an hour left when the incident with Robby had happened, and now even less than that remained. If he could just make it to the end, clock out, and get home, then he could deal with whatever the hell his body was doing in private. That was the plan.

Robby had clearly not forgotten their conversation, though. Dennis could feel it every time he crossed the department, the occasional glance from across the nurses’ station, the subtle way Robby seemed to drift closer whenever Dennis stopped somewhere for longer than a minute. It wasn’t obvious enough for anyone else to comment on, but Dennis noticed it.

Dennis ignored him. Or at least he tried to. He focused on charts, on quick patient updates, on reorganizing a tray that didn’t actually need reorganizing. Anything that kept him moving and looking busy enough that nobody would start asking questions. Every now and then he checked the clock mounted above the hallway intersection.

Fifty minutes left.

Then forty-two.

Then thirty-five.

He told himself he just had to hold out a little longer. The first stab of pain in his chest came suddenly enough that he physically paused mid-step. Dennis stood still for a second, hand braced lightly against the edge of a counter while he waited for the sensation to fade.

It didn’t. Instead it tightened. The pressure felt wrong immediately, not sharp like a pulled muscle, not fleeting like a brief cramp. It was heavy, deep in the center of his chest, like someone had quietly placed a massive weight there without warning.

Dennis forced himself to inhale slowly. The breath barely filled his lungs. He straightened again quickly, hoping no one had noticed the pause.

It’s nothing. The thought came automatically, practiced. You’re twenty-something years old. You’re healthy. You don’t just have a heart attack in the middle of a shift for no reason. Except the pressure kept growing. Each breath became harder to draw in than the last, the invisible weight in his chest pressing down harder every time he tried. Dennis clenched his jaw and kept walking, refusing to let his posture betray the way his ribs felt like they were slowly being crushed inward.

Across the room he could feel Robby’s eyes land on him again. Dennis immediately turned toward a stack of paperwork like he had meant to go there all along. Just get through the shift. That was all he had to do.

The pain spread slowly, radiating outward from his sternum into the muscles around it. His heartbeat felt too loud inside his chest now, each pulse hammering against the pressure like it was trying to break free. Dennis swallowed hard. His vision blurred slightly at the edges.

He forced himself to stand straighter. Another breath. Another one. Bit each one felt thinner than the last. By the time he made it to the wall near the hallway intersection, Dennis wasn’t sure he could keep standing. His legs had started trembling faintly, the muscles refusing to stay steady beneath him. The room felt oddly tilted, the lights above him slightly too bright.

Just sit down. The thought came quietly, almost detached. Dennis lowered himself onto the nearest chair before his knees had the chance to give out entirely. The moment he sat, the weakness in his legs became obvious, they shook uncontrollably beneath him, the adrenaline in his system surging wildly while his body clearly struggled to keep up.

His chest hurt. It hurt so badly now that it felt like his ribs were folding inward around his lungs. Dennis bent forward instinctively, one hand pressing hard against his sternum as if he could physically hold himself together.

Dennis didn’t understand what was happening to his body, or maybe he did and just didn’t want to. That was the part that scared him the most. He had treated hundreds of patients who were panicking, people convinced they were dying, convinced something inside them had broken beyond repair, and he had always been the calm voice explaining that their bodies were simply overwhelmed. Anxiety. Adrenaline. A spiral the brain couldn’t stop once it had started.

But this didn’t feel like that. This felt wrong in a much different way. His chest tightened again, harder this time, the pressure squeezing inward like invisible hands were crushing his lungs together. Dennis tried to take another breath and only managed a shallow, broken pull of air that did nothing except make the tightness worse. His heart slammed against his ribs so violently he could feel it in his throat.

Something was very, very wrong.

You’re dying.

The thought didn’t come as a dramatic realization. It arrived quietly, cold and clinical, the way medical facts always did when he was diagnosing a patient. Dennis’ vision flickered. He tried to pull in a breath again and the air caught halfway down, his lungs refusing to expand no matter how hard he tried. Panic surged instantly, raw and primal in a way he had never experienced before. He bent forward more, fingers digging into his own chest as if he could pry the pressure away from his ribs.

“Dennis-”

Someone said his name but the voice sounded distant, warped. His heart was beating too fast. Too hard. Each pulse slammed through his chest like a hammer blow, sending waves of pain radiating down his arms and into his jaw. His fingertips had gone numb. His head throbbed violently behind his eyes.

Dennis tried to inhale again. Nothing. Just another thin, useless breath that scraped down his throat.

This is it. The realization hit him like a drop into freezing water. Every single warning sign he had spent weeks ignoring suddenly rushed back into his mind all at once.

The headaches. The pressure in his chest. The moments where he couldn’t breathe. The hormones.

Oh God.

Dennis’ stomach twisted violently as the understanding finally slammed into place. He could practically see the bloodwork numbers in his head, the charts he had memorized during medical school flashing through his thoughts like a cruel slideshow.

Testosterone overdose. Cardiovascular strain. Risk of clotting. Heart failure. He had known every single one of those risks. And he had done it anyway.

Another wave of nausea hit him and his body jerked forward violently as he vomited, his throat burning as something thicker than bile came up with it. The metallic taste flooded his mouth instantly and Dennis’ blurred gaze dropped toward the floor just in time to see the dark red splatter spreading across the tiles.

Blood. It looked like coffee grounds.

The room tilted sharply. Someone grabbed his shoulders to keep him upright.

“Jesus-” Robby’s voice.

Dennis blinked slowly, struggling to focus on the shape in front of him. Robby’s face looked wrong somehow, his usual easy confidence completely gone. His eyes were wide, horrified in a way Dennis had never seen before. Robby looked like he was watching someone die. And maybe he was.

Dennis’ body shuddered violently as another tremor ran through him, his muscles tightening uncontrollably while the pounding in his chest grew louder, faster, more erratic.

He couldn’t breathe. The air just wouldn’t come.

“Stay with me,” Robby was saying, his voice rough with panic. “Sweetheart, hey, look at me.”

Sweetheart? Dennis tried. But the world had begun to drift sideways, the ceiling lights smearing together above him. Another voice cut through the chaos.

Trinity.

“Move.” Her tone was sharper than Dennis had ever heard it before. Much to his surprise, Robby actually moved and instead yelled across the hall for someone to bring a stretcher. And a mop. This was gonna be annoying to clean up.

Trinity dropped to her knees beside him, her hands immediately moving with the fast, precise efficiency of someone who had spent years in emergencies. But the moment her fingers pressed against his wrist to check his pulse, something in her expression changed.

Confusion. Then realization. Her eyes flicked toward Dennis’ face, toward the stubble along his jaw, toward the unnatural flush creeping across his skin, toward the trembling that had spread through his limbs.

Dennis saw the moment it clicked. The horror in her eyes was worse than the pain in his chest. “Dennis…” she said quietly. She didn’t sound disappointed, did she? No. Just very sad.

Dennis couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze. Because she knew. Of course she knew. She was the only person here who understood what he had been chasing these past years. The only person who had watched him finally start smiling at his reflection, who had celebrated the deeper voice and the growing beard with him. She was happy for him without knowing what was actually going on and now she was watching the consequences.

Robby had come back with a wet cloth and was carefully, so carefully, wiping Dennis' face clean, cradling one of his cheeks before he pulled away and instead helped Trinity pull him onto the stretcher that some nurses finally rolled over. They both looked terrified.

Dennis tried to speak. He wanted to explain. He wanted to tell Robby that he hadn’t meant for this to happen, that it had only been a little extra at first, that he had just wanted to feel right in his own skin for once. But the words wouldn’t come.

His lungs spasmed again, the lack of oxygen sending another violent wave of dizziness crashing through his head. The edges of his vision darkened further, swallowing the frantic movement around him. The only thing he could focus on was the crushing realization spreading slowly through his chest. He had finally gotten everything he wanted.

The deeper voice. The strength. The beard. He had finally looked in the mirror and seen the man he had always wanted to be. And now that same thing was killing him.

The irony would have been funny if it didn’t hurt so much.

Dennis’ body jerked again as another seizure-like tremor rippled through his limbs. Robby grabbed him instinctively, trying to hold him steady while people rushed around them.

“Don’t you dare pass out on me,” Robby muttered. Dennis heard it. Somewhere deep beneath the panic and the pain, guilt twisted painfully in his chest.

Because Robby didn’t know. Robby just thought his colleague was suddenly collapsing for no reason. Dennis had lied to him. To both of them. And now they were the ones who had to watch the consequences unfold.

Even though everyone in the department was familiar, something about the situation threw the entire team off balance. They were used to chaos. They were used to patients collapsing, to alarms and rushed orders and the tight choreography of people who knew exactly where to stand and what to do. Normally those situations snapped everyone into focus, muscle memory taking over while emotions stayed carefully locked away. But this was Dennis, not a stranger.

As the stretcher was wheeled out of the hallway toward a nearby treatment room, the controlled urgency of the team carried something unfamiliar. People spoke faster. Movements were sharper. A resident nearly dropped a tray of supplies before catching it again, his hands visibly shaking.

Robby walked beside the stretcher the entire way, his fingers pressed firmly against the inside of Dennis’ wrist as he tried to feel for a pulse. For a moment he couldn’t find it.

His stomach dropped violently, panic punching straight through the professional detachment he normally relied on. He adjusted his fingers, pressing again, harder this time, concentrating through the tremor in his own hands. Then he felt it.

Fast. Too fast. But there.

Robby exhaled a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Pulse is there,” he muttered quickly as they pushed through the treatment room doors. “Tachycardic, but it’s there.”

The relief barely lasted a second before the rest of the situation crashed back in. Dennis’ chest was still rising in uneven, shallow movements, his breathing erratic while his body trembled intermittently against the stretcher straps. “Get him on monitors,” Robby ordered, his voice sharper than usual as the team moved around the bed.

Someone attached the cardiac leads to Dennis’ chest while another nurse wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm. A resident had already started preparing an IV line, snapping gloves on with hands that still looked a little too tight around the fingers.

The heart monitor flickered to life a moment later. Robby’s eyes snapped toward it immediately. The rhythm racing across the screen made his jaw tighten.

“Fuck…”

Dennis’ heart rate was well past where it should have been, the spikes on the monitor crowding together in frantic bursts. It wasn’t cardiac arrest, not yet, but it was close enough that Robby felt a cold knot settle in his stomach. “Fluids,” he said quickly. “Start with a liter. Draw blood, full panel.”

The room moved again, the staff slipping into the familiar rhythm of emergency care now that they had a direction to follow. Needles, tubing, syringes, everything appeared almost instantly in practiced hands. Still, Robby couldn’t shake the feeling that something about this didn’t make sense.

Dennis drifted in and out of consciousness while they worked. One moment his eyes would open halfway, unfocused and glassy as if he were trying to figure out where he was. The next moment they would roll shut again while tremors shook through his limbs. His breathing still sounded wrong, each inhale catching halfway down like his lungs had forgotten how to work properly.

“Dennis,” Robby said once, leaning closer to check his pupils. Dennis’ eyelids fluttered slightly at the sound of his name, but the recognition behind them looked distant at best.

Across the bed, Trinity stood unusually still. She had been helping since the moment they wheeled him into the room, holding an IV bag, stabilizing Dennis’ arm while the resident placed the line, checking his breathing, but something about her expression had changed.

Robby noticed it immediately. She wasn’t just worried. She looked like someone who had already started putting pieces together.

Once Dennis’ vital signs stabilized enough that the immediate panic eased slightly, his heart still racing but no longer spiraling completely out of control, Robby stepped back from the bed.

Then he turned toward Trinity. Without saying a word, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her a few steps toward the corner of the room, away from the cluster of residents and nurses still working around Dennis.

“Trinity,” he said quietly. “If you know something, now would be a really good time to say it.” She didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze flicked once toward Dennis on the bed, pale, barely conscious, his chest still rising unevenly under the hospital lights. Robby followed the look.

“The blood work’s going to take time,” he continued, lowering his voice further but not softening the urgency behind it. “You and I both know that. If there’s something going on with him that we don’t know about yet, it could matter.”

Trinity’s jaw tightened. “Robby-”

“Don’t,” he cut in quickly, the word slipping out before he could stop it. “Don’t do that thing where you say it’s nothing. Because it’s clearly not nothing.” He gestured toward the bed behind them.

“That’s one of my doctors lying there barely conscious and throwing up blood.” His voice cracked slightly on the last word. “And you’re standing here looking like you already know why.”

The accusation hung heavily in the air between them. Trinity didn’t say anything. Her eyes drifted back to Dennis again. His body twitched faintly on the bed as another tremor passed through him, one of the residents quickly adjusting the oxygen mask that had been placed over his face. The sight seemed to break something in her.

Trinity dragged a hand over her face slowly, the tension in her shoulders collapsing inward as the weight of the situation finally caught up to her. “I think…” she began quietly.

Then she stopped. Robby waited. The silence stretched long enough that his patience began to fray again.

“Trinity.”

Her eyes closed briefly. “He’s on hormone therapy,” she said finally. Robby blinked. “What?”

Trinity opened her eyes again, exhaustion and fear written plainly across her face now. “He’s been on testosterone for a while,” she added, her voice still quiet but steadier now that the words had started coming out.

Robby stared at her. For a second the information simply… sat there. Then he understood what Trinity was trying to tell him. “And?” he asked slowly, wanting to hear her say it.

Trinity hesitated again. Her gaze dropped briefly toward the floor. “I think he might’ve been taking more than he was supposed to.” The room seemed to tilt slightly around Robby.

“What do you mean more?” He asked like he didn’t already know by now.

Trinity swallowed. “More testosterone,” she said quietly. “Enough that it could seriously mess with his system.” She glanced back toward Dennis again. “He’s been changing faster than he should have lately. His voice, the muscle growth… I thought maybe his prescription had just been adjusted.”

Suddenly everything snapped into place all at once. The strange symptoms. The headaches Dennis had brushed off. The breathing problems. The way he had looked earlier in the hallway, trying so hard to pretend nothing was wrong.

Even the small things Robby had noticed over the past few months, the weird reactions, the defensiveness, the constant pressure Dennis seemed to put on himself about being strong, about being a man. All the things Robby had dismissed as quirks.

The memory of their conversation earlier slammed back into his head. If you lie about being okay, I swear I’m gonna kill you. Robby felt a wave of guilt crash through him so suddenly it made his stomach twist. Dennis hadn’t just been lying. He had been terrified. And Robby had completely missed it.

Across the room, Dennis stirred weakly on the bed again, his eyes opening halfway before drifting shut once more. Robby looked at him for a long moment. The person who had somehow managed to make every miserable shift a little easier.

Now he was lying there barely conscious because he had pushed himself too far trying to become someone he thought he needed to be. Robby rubbed a hand over his face slowly.

“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath. But he dismissed Trinity, knowing her shift was over long ago and she definitely needed to get some rest after… this.

***

It took far longer than anyone in the room liked for Dennis’ heart rate to slow down.

At first the monitor had screamed numbers that made everyone panic, spikes so high they forced the team to keep working in tight, careful rotations. Fluids had been pushed, medications adjusted, oxygen monitored constantly while the staff hovered between cautious intervention and waiting for his body to settle on its own.

Eventually the worst of the immediate crisis passed. Dennis’ heart was still beating far too fast, the rhythm uneven and stubborn, but it had stopped climbing toward the dangerous territory that had everyone preparing for the worst.

Even so, the room stayed tense. Robby had barely moved from his position near the bed since they had wheeled Dennis in.

By the time the clock crept past the official end of several shifts, the exhaustion on everyone’s faces had become obvious. The residents were still hovering, one nurse rechecking the IV line every few minutes like she didn’t trust it to behave.

Finally Robby pushed himself upright. “Alright,” he said quietly, looking around the room. A few heads lifted immediately. “You’ve all been here long enough,” he continued. “His vitals are stabilizing. Go home if your shift’s over.”

No one moved right away. It took another firm look from him before people started reluctantly stepping away from the bed. Some muttered quiet acknowledgments. A couple of residents lingered a moment longer, glancing between Dennis and the monitor before finally giving in.

Within a few minutes the room had emptied out significantly. The way Robby had handled it looked exactly like the leadership everyone in the department relied on. Calm voice. Clear instructions. The kind of authority that made people trust things would be alright even when they weren’t sure. But the moment the door closed behind the last resident, the tension in his shoulders dropped slightly.

He dragged a hand over his face, staring at the heart monitor for a long moment. He looked less professional now, more worried. The heartbeat was still too fast.

Robby pulled a chair closer to the bed and sat down slowly beside Dennis. Up close, he looked even worse than he had during the chaos earlier. His skin was pale under the fluorescent lights, a faint trace of sweat still clinging to his temples. The oxygen mask rose and fell slowly with each shallow breath while the IV fluids dripped steadily through the line in his arm.

Robby reached out without thinking and wrapped his hand gently around Dennis’. His fingers were cold. Robby stared at their joined hands for a moment. The guilt sitting in his chest hadn’t faded at all.

He had spent weeks noticing things about Dennis, the strange reactions, the stubbornness, the way he seemed so desperate to prove something, and instead of asking the right questions, Robby had simply filed it away as odd behavior. Weird. That word echoed unpleasantly in his head now.

Dennis hadn’t been weird. He had been struggling. And Robby, of all people, should have noticed.

He leaned back slightly in the chair, his thumb absently brushing once over the back of Dennis’ hand as he watched the monitor.

“I’m not mad at you,” he muttered quietly, more to the unconscious man than to himself. Because he wasn’t. The knowledge Trinity had shared hadn’t changed the way Robby saw Dennis at all. If anything, it only made the last few months make more sense. The pressure Dennis had put on himself, the determination to push harder than everyone else.

Robby just wished he had understood sooner. Across the bed, Dennis remained still. From the outside it looked like he was still unconscious. Inside his own mind, though, Dennis was painfully aware of everything.

The room around him existed in fragments, the distant sound of hospital equipment, the beeping of the heart monitor, the smell of disinfectant that always clung to these rooms. He could feel the weight of the blankets over his legs, the tug of the IV line taped against his skin.

But his body refused to cooperate. His limbs felt heavy and unresponsive, like they belonged to someone else entirely. Even opening his eyes seemed impossibly difficult. All he could do was think, and thinking was quickly becoming the worst part.

The fog that had surrounded his mind earlier had begun to clear slowly, leaving him with the awareness of what had just happened. He had collapsed in front of everyone. Dennis swallowed against the dryness in his throat, though he wasn’t sure the movement was even noticeable or helped the case at all.

What would happen now? The question repeated endlessly in his mind. Blood work had been drawn. He knew that. He had felt the needle, heard the conversation around the bed earlier.

They would know. Sooner or later the numbers would come back. His hormone levels would be impossible to ignore. Would Robby hate him? The thought twisted painfully in his chest.

Dennis tried to imagine the expression on his boss’s face once everything was confirmed. The disappointment. The anger. The realization that one of his own doctors had been reckless enough to nearly kill himself and not only that, he had also been literally stealing those vials, hoarding them like a crazy person.

Maybe worse than that. What if they forced him to stop? The idea surfaced suddenly and made his chest tighten almost as much as earlier. If they discovered what he had been doing, they could take control of his treatment. They could suspend the therapy entirely. Adjust the medication. Lower the dose. Take it away.

Dennis’ mind spiraled immediately. Without testosterone the beard would thin again. The muscle would disappear. His voice might change. He could end up looking like he had before. Like a girl.

The thought hit him with a wave of pure, instinctive panic.

No.

He couldn’t let that happen. Dennis felt the tension surge through his body despite the weakness holding him in place.

He’d rather die. Would Robby make his promise of killing him true? He had lied.

His fingers twitched where they rested against the mattress. Then something tightened gently around his hand. The pressure was warm, steady, grounding in a way that cut through the spiral of panic running through his head. Someone was holding his hand.

***

Dennis woke slowly, though he would rather go back to sleep the moment he felt the headache. The only reason it was bearable, was the fact the room was quiet.

Hospitals were never truly silent, but the chaos from earlier was gone completely. The room felt lonely and only the soft hum of machines, the steady beeping of the heart monitor beside him, the distant roll of a cart somewhere far down the hallway made him remember where he was.

He kept his eyes closed for a moment longer, trying to gather himself. Everything hurt. Not the sharp, suffocating agony from earlier. That crushing weight in his chest had faded into something more constant now, but the ache had spread everywhere else too. His muscles felt sore and drained, like his entire body had been wrung out and left empty, hung on a line to dry. Even breathing felt strange, not painful exactly, just too heavy.

Dennis swallowed weakly and finally forced his eyes open. The room was dark, as expected.

For a moment he wondered if he had somehow lost track of time completely, but then he noticed the faint glow coming from the monitors beside the bed. The green and blue lights cast soft reflections against the walls, barely enough to illuminate the room. Pale light slipped through the narrow glass panel in the door, the hallway outside providing the only real brightness.

Middle of the night, then.

Dennis blinked slowly, his vision adjusting as he stared at the ceiling. The memories from earlier were still foggy around the edges, pieces of them drifting through his mind without fully settling into place. The collapse. The panic. The blood.

His stomach twisted faintly at the thought. He closed his eyes again briefly before turning his head slightly to the side. That was when he noticed the figure sitting in the armchair beside the bed, the sight startled him enough that his body jerked slightly, his heart suddenly kicking up in his chest. The monitor beside him responded immediately with a sharper series of beeps that cut through the quiet room.

The person in the chair reacted just as quickly. Robby shot upright so suddenly the chair legs scraped faintly against the floor. He was beside the bed within seconds, his hand already reaching for the switch that controlled the small light mounted above the bed.

The light snapped on. Dennis groaned instantly. The sudden brightness stabbed into his eyes like a knife and he instinctively lifted his arm to shield his face, turning his head away from it with a low, miserable sound. He sounded (and looked) like a kicked puppy.

“Okay, okay-”

The light clicked off again just as quickly. Darkness settled back over the room, broken only by the gentle glow of the monitors. Robby let out a quiet breath that sounded halfway between relief and amusement.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. There it was again.

The word slipped out naturally, the kind of casual term people used when they were more relieved than they wanted to admit.

Dennis froze slightly at the sound of it. He was grateful the room was dark enough that Robby couldn’t see the warmth creeping up his neck and across his cheeks.

Robby moved back toward the armchair but didn’t sit all the way down, hovering near the edge of it as if he wasn’t quite ready to step away from the bed again. The monitor beside Dennis continued its steady rhythm now, the earlier alarm settling back into a calmer pattern.

The silence between them was awkward. Dennis wasn’t sure what to say. His throat felt dry and scratchy when he finally spoke.

“How… long?” His voice sounded rough, more than usual.

Robby leaned back in the chair. “Few hours,” he said. “You decided to scare the hell out of everyone and then sleep through the whole aftermath.”

Dennis let out a faint breath that might have been a laugh. It hurt a little.

“How are you feeling?”

Dennis stared at the ceiling for a moment before answering. “I felt better before.” The response came out flat, honest in the tired way people tended to be when they were too exhausted to filter themselves.

Robby huffed quietly. “Yeah, I imagine collapsing and almost stopping your own heart might do that.” There wasn’t any real anger in his voice, but the tension behind the words was still there. He definitely was disappointed.

Dennis shifted slightly under the blankets. “I didn’t-”

“Don’t,” Robby cut in gently. The word wasn’t harsh, just firm, but it was enough to make Dennis shut up.

Robby leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on his knees as he looked toward the shape of Dennis in the bed.

“Just… don’t do something like that again.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck before continuing. “I’m just glad you decided to collapse in a hospital instead of your apartment.”

Dennis stared at the dim ceiling again, his thoughts slowly catching up to the conversation. The memories from earlier were starting to line up properly now. The hallway. The chair. The blood on the floor.

“Was I…” his voice cracked, fuck. “Was I dying?” It was a stupid question. Dennis knew he was, all those symptoms could only mean dying. He was a doctor, not stupid. Robby also knew that, but the way Dennis asked it still got to him.

Even in the dim light he could picture the expression Dennis probably had right now, those wide, tired eyes staring at him with the same vulnerable look he always got after a rough shift.

Robby didn’t answer right away. Then he leaned forward and reached out, his hand found Dennis’ easily in the dim light. He wrapped his fingers around it gently.

“Don’t,” Robby said quietly. Dennis blinked. “Don’t ever do that alone again.” The words were soft but unmistakably stern.

Robby gave Dennis’ hand a small squeeze. “You don’t get to suffer like that by yourself.”

Dennis didn’t say anything and the silence that followed was long enough for Dennis’ thoughts to catch up with him. Now that the panic and confusion had faded, the reality of the situation began settling in piece by piece. He could feel the IV line taped to his arm, the thin wires attached to his chest, the steady pulse of the monitor keeping track of every heartbeat. None of that was surprising.

What surprised him was Robby, still sitting there, still holding his hand. Dennis swallowed, his throat tight for reasons that had nothing to do with the earlier vomiting. It dawned on him slowly that Robby probably knew more now than Dennis had ever wanted him to know.

There were only a few ways that could have happened. The labs might have already come back. That alone would have been enough to raise questions no one could easily ignore, or Trinity might have said something.

The thought made Dennis’ stomach turn. Under normal circumstances he would have been furious at the idea of her sharing something so personal without asking him first. They had known each other too long, trusted each other too much for that kind of betrayal, but lying here now, weak and wired to half the equipment in the room, Dennis couldn’t find the energy to be angry.

He had lied to her too, and not just lied. He had scared her. The memory of the fear in her eyes earlier flickered through his mind and made his chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with his heart.

Dennis focused on the warmth of Robby’s hand around his, his thumb absentmindedly nudging lightly against Robby’s palm like he needed the grounding contact to steady himself.

“Did… Trinity tell you anything?” It’s not like he had anything to lose now, they would find out one way or the other. The question came out hesitant enough that Robby almost didn’t catch it at first.

Robby didn’t respond at first. He had known the topic would come up eventually. There had never really been a chance that Dennis wouldn’t ask once he was awake and thinking clearly again. But now that the moment was here, Robby found himself oddly unsure how to answer.

He leaned back slightly in the chair, still holding Dennis’ hand. “Yeah,” he admitted after a moment. Dennis’ fingers tightened, he felt that.

“Trinity told me what she thought might be going on,” Robby continued carefully. “And why she thought that.” He paused, searching for the right way to phrase the rest. “But right now,” he added quietly, “the only thing I actually care about is why you did it.”

Dennis didn’t say anything. Robby glanced toward him, the faint light from the monitors outlining the shape of his face. “And before you start worrying,” Robby added quickly, “you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

For several long seconds Robby thought maybe he had pushed too far. Then something broke the silence. A soft, uneven sniffle. Robby’s attention immediately snapped back to Dennis. In the dim light he couldn’t see much of his expression, but he could hear the change in his breathing, the small, shaky inhales someone made when they were trying very hard not to cry.

Robby’s chest tightened, he didn’t know why the sound affected him as much as it did. Maybe it was because Dennis had always carried himself so carefully at work, always composed, always trying to prove something.

Dennis hadn’t even realized he had started crying. The tears slipped quietly down his temples, disappearing into his hair while his shoulders trembled faintly beneath the blanket.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Dennis took a shaky breath before the words started spilling out faster.

“I just… I hated the way I looked.” His voice cracked again halfway through the sentence.

“I tried so hard to ignore it but I couldn’t. People kept mistaking me for a woman and they didn’t even mean aything by it but it still-”

His had to take a deep breath and for a moment Robby wondered if he should reach for the oxygen mask again.

“I hated it. I hated my lashes, my lips, my face, my stupid body… everything about it felt wrong.” Another quiet sob escaped him before he could stop it. “I just wanted it to stop.”

Before Dennis had even finished speaking, Robby had already moved. The chair scraped softly against the floor as he stood and stepped closer to the bed. Carefully, mindful of the wires and tubing attached to Dennis’ chest and arms, he lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress beside him.

Dennis didn’t protest and didn’t pull away. Robby hesitated only a second before sliding one arm gently around Dennis’ shoulders, then he pulled him closer.

The hug was careful, one hand resting against the back of Dennis’ head while the other held him steady against his side. For a moment Dennis stiffened slightly out of pure habit, he had always avoided touch like this. Even casual contact made him tense, his body reacting to any hand on his shoulder or back.

But this time he didn’t pull away, he didn’t arch away or twist out of reach. Instead he leaned into the contact, his forehead pressing weakly against Robby’s shoulder while the quiet sobs finally stopped fighting their way out.

Dennis stayed leaned against Robby, his breathing slowly evening out now that the worst of the emotions had spilled out of him. The dull ache in his body was still there, the soreness in his chest and muscles reminding him with every breath that his body had been pushed far past its limits.

Robby didn’t rush him. His arm remained loosely around Dennis’ shoulders, one hand resting against the back of his head where his fingers occasionally moved through the curls there without really thinking about it. The simple motion felt strangely grounding to both of them.

Dennis’ mind, however, refused to stay quiet. Now that he had said the things he had been carrying for months, another thought crept in, one that he had worried about earlier already but only really grasped now.

What happened next. If the doctors handling his case decided he couldn’t be trusted with the hormones anymore… If they decided the risk was too high…

He felt a shudder run through him before he could stop it. Dennis lifted his head slightly, glancing toward Robby even though the darkness of the room made it impossible to really see his face clearly.

“Are you still planning on killing me?” he asked quietly. The words were clearly meant as a joke, a clumsy reference to Robby’s earlier threat in the hallway, and technically it did sound like one, like a joke. But something about it sat wrong in the air between them.

Robby huffed softly under his breath. Under normal circumstances he would have given Dennis a light smack on the back of the head for something like that, the way he sometimes did when the younger doctors said something particularly stupid.

Instead he just shook his head slightly. “No,” he said simply. His hand drifted back into Dennis’ hair, fingers absentmindedly combing through the curls near the base of his skull.

Dennis let his forehead drop forward again, resting lightly against Robby’s arm.

“Will they make me stop taking it?” Even as he said the words Dennis felt a flash of embarrassment twist through his chest. The question sounded childish the moment it left his mouth, as if he were asking someone else to fix a problem he had caused entirely on his own.

From a medical perspective he already knew the answer might very well be yes. He had abused the medication. He had nearly killed himself doing it.

There was every reason for the doctors in charge of his care to decide that he shouldn’t be allowed access to it anymore. Dennis stared down at the blanket in his lap, waiting. Robby didn’t answer right away.

For several seconds the room was filled only with the quiet beeping of the monitor and the faint hum of hospital equipment. Then Robby shifted slightly. His hand moved from Dennis’ hair to his shoulder, gripping it firmly as he gently pushed Dennis back just enough to create a little space between them.

“Look at me.”

Dennis obeyed automatically, lifting his head even though the darkness meant he could only make out the faint outline of Robby’s face. Robby held his gaze anyway.

“You’re going to promise me something first,” he said.

“What?”

Robby’s grip on his shoulder tightened slightly. “You promise that from now on you only take exactly what the doctors prescribe you,” he said slowly. “Nothing more. Nothing you adjust on your own.”

Dennis hesitated. The pause lasted only a couple seconds, but it was long enough that Robby noticed.

Finally Dennis nodded. “I… promise.”

Robby studied him for another moment as if trying to judge whether the answer was genuine, then he leaned back slightly. “For my own sanity,” Robby continued, “I’m not going to ask where the extra hormones came from.”

He paused.

“Because I can already imagine.”

The hospital supply cabinets weren’t exactly a mystery. Dennis felt his shoulders sink slightly under the weight of the words.

“But,” Robby added, his voice sharpening just a little, “whatever stash you got into? You forget about it.”

Dennis’ gaze dropped instantly to the blanket again. He suddenly looked smaller, the confident doctor who usually moved through the department with quiet competence replaced by someone who looked like he had just been caught doing something deeply stupid. Maybe a kid stealing sweets.

Robby watched the reaction carefully, then, after a moment, the tension in his voice softened.

“You know,” he said almost casually, “I always thought your lashes were one of your best features.”

Dennis blinked. The comment was so unexpected it took a second for his brain to process it. “What?”

Robby shrugged slightly, the motion barely visible in the dark. “They’re nice,” he said simply. “Most people would kill for lashes like that.”

Dennis stared at him. The words were so ordinary. So offhand, and yet something about them landed just in the right place.

For so long those lashes had been one of the things Dennis hated most about his own face. They had always felt like another detail that made people see him the wrong way. Now, sitting here in the dim hospital room, hearing Robby say it so casually…

For the first time, Dennis felt something else instead, and suddenly, in that small moment, he didn’t mind them quite so much anymore.