Archive of Our Own

11:00 PM

Sterile is the first word that comes to Dennis's mind when he first opens the door to Robby's house. Meticulously dusted and organised. Nothing is askew, not even the couch cushions.  

Before stepping past the threshold into the entryway, Dennis wipes his shoes on the doormat and kicks them off. He doesn’t know if Robby is a neat freak who detests tracking in dust, who hates ‘outside’ clothes touching his bed—Dennis never asked.

He won’t get an answer, now.

Despite his explicit invitation, Dennis elects to err on the side of respectful caution rather than tarnish the space any further than he knows his presence inevitably will. He sets down his backpack and Robby’s keys upon the valet table by the door and nudges his shoes underneath with his socked foot, eliminating the trip hazard.

Streetlamps beam artificial light through the partly shut roller blinds, illuminating Robby’s abandoned turntable spinning around a skipping record. The corresponding vinyl sleeve rests neatly upon the unit, nudged into place at the corner. Dennis can just about make out the text without flicking on the lights. David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

The skipping serves to combat the lonely silence of Robby’s empty home. Dennis doesn’t have it in him to turn the machine off, nor tuck the record safely back into its sleeve. Not yet.

It eases his frayed nerves as he probes around further.

A liquor tray rests by the loveseat, stocked with an assortment of bottles from top-shelf gin, to peach brandy and vintage scotch—all with the foil intact. A large crystal decanter contains an inch of amber at the bottom, unlabelled. At the front, there’s a seven-inch plastic bottle of Jack Daniels with a folded notecard affixed to the neck.

Dennis thumbs at the note absentmindedly, runs his blunt nail across the flattened crease. Penned in blue-ballpoint PhD penmanship, it reads,

for when you get back from your vacation

see you soon, brother

jack

Delicately, Dennis tucks the note back in place and switches his attention towards the array of drink choices before him. After a moment of sombre contemplation, he decides to sample the virtually empty decanter, intending to uncover the oh-so thrilling mystery laying within. He pops off the glass stopper, readies the tumbler to pour himself a finger but pauses, and lifts the vessel closer to his face for a better look.

Smudged lip marks scatter the narrow mouth of the decanter. Robby’s, Dennis infers.

“Cheers,” Dennis mumbles to himself, raising the bottle to his lips.

11:40 PM

After some deliberation, while making his way upstairs in search for a bathroom, Dennis concludes that what he drank was Bourbon. Now Bourbon, or any dark liquor, really, wouldn’t be Dennis’s first choice. Usually, he was more of a tequila guy, or any cheap clear-spirit—like vodka.

Often Smirnoff…

But that isn’t to say that whiskey wasn’t a new friend to him, quite the opposite in fact; his family had often had a shoulder of whiskey laying around the house back home in Nebraska. It was around on good days, celebrations, birthdays and baby showers. And it was around on dark days, during funerals and other tragedies.

It was there when Dennis’s shot his first coyote.

When he couldn’t cope after; when he saw the swell of the animals pregnant belly, soon due a litter. When the poor thing’s dying howls haunted him for weeks and he had nightmares that made him piss the bed like a child. When he refused to pick up a rifle again until a thorough belting from his father straightened him out.

Then when he stopped going to church, stopped stealing whiskey from the liquor cabinet and became dead set on becoming a doctor—a title, a feat, that he finally achieved today.

Beneath the sink where Dennis washes his hands after taking a leak, he notices Robby’s laundry basket. At first glance it appears empty. But, as his eyes adjust, he notices a t-shirt and a pair of boxers folded at the bottom of the otherwise empty hamper.

He dries his hands on his scrubs—it’s gross, but there’s no towel on the rack. Heads past Robby’s bedroom down the stairs to grab a change of clothes from his overnight bag and he’s halfway before the thought occurs to him—

It’s filthy, downright fucking disgusting.

Sleazy.

Pathetic.

Wrong.

He shouldn’t.

He knows better.

But nobody would know if he just…

11:52 PM

He’s prone on Robby’s bedspread before he knows it; face buried in Robby’s now crumpled shirt with his scrubs yanked down his hips where Robby’s dirty boxer briefs lay curled in his fist; soft cotton gentle against his aching rock-hard cock.

Dennis huffs the faintly sour remnants of Robby’s sweat like an oxygen mask, and he keeps thinking of Robby over and over and over again with each rock of his hips in this cruel incessant loop inside his head, a one-way track he can’t escape no matter how far he runs.

Doctor Robinavitch.

Who took Dennis under his wing, nestled in the spot where his Prodigal Son Langdon used to be. Who often favours Dennis above the other residents. Who has always been hands on with Dennis even while holding him at arm’s length. So tactile, with friendly fist bumps when Dennis has earned due merit and open palms to his back to guide his path, or firm grasps, swinging him around to attain his rapt attention—manhandling Dennis like a boy, despite him being a grown man—and today, heralded a doctor—inching towards thirty.

‘Ran Through Robby’.

Who, despite being the town bicycle, has never flirted with Dennis. Who, when he thought Dennis wasn’t aware, took a page from Jack Abbot’s book and watched him behind through furrowed brows, from trauma-bay doorways, from across the Pitt. Just watching, nothing more. Who wanted nothing to do with Dennis outside PTMC doors unless it was work related, claiming they had to maintain ‘professional boundaries’ as colleagues.

Michael.

Who broke down sobbing like a young boy the night of PittFest on the floor in the peds-room-turned-morgue, whispering quiet prayers while covered in the blood of tens of unnamed patients. Who looked up at Dennis with those big brown, red-rimmed puppy dog eyes of his, silently begging for an olive branch to pull himself up out of the hole he fell in years ago.

Who couldn’t look Dennis in the eyes as he took his outstretched hand, and pulled him to his feet with that very branch.

Who shoved Dennis away immediately after, snot-nosed and ashamed.

Robby.

Who wound Dennis that little bit tighter around his finger mere hours earlier, who told Dennis he was proud of him, and who knew how to spin the narrative in his favour to sway Dennis’s better judgement. Who shamelessly chewed the cud of his words free of ulterior motives before turning to Dennis with a glean to his eye, a thinly veiled smirk, and offering his home to Dennis.

“Robby.”

Whose rugged salt-and-pepper beard—Dennis imagines—trails further down than just his neck beneath his Magen David chain, all the way from his broad chest straight down the swell of his gut in a furred line and thicker, bushier past his navel to his unkempt groin from where his thick cock would protrude, half-hard against his thigh. Whose petal-wrinkled thighs Dennis would kill to slot his hips between, only to line himself up with Robby’s tacky, furred hole and finally sink into his slick heat. Who Dennis would fuck silly until Robby cried heaving sobs, salty tears dripping down his crows-feet, all while Robby wore those reading glasses that remind Dennis of his own father…

Who Dennis never even thought like that about until tonight.

“Robby…”

Whose grey matter is splattered across the double yellow road markings of the Roberto Clemente Bridge alongside the remaining fragments of his skull and his ’69 Bonneville—whose body is still warm down in the morgue while Dennis lays atop his navy sheets fisting his cock, where Robby should be instead, tucked safe and sound.

“Oh, fuck—Robby!”

12:00 AM

The second the day overturns anew, Dennis receives an email in his inbox.

He doesn’t see the notification light up his phone, too busy bawling over the bathroom sink trying his best to scrub his spend out of Robby’s now defiled boxers with hand soap.