Chapter Text
“You’re like, too sweaty.” Santos mumbles to him, quiet despite her mean tone so as to not embarrass him in front of their colleagues. She was a strange one, he liked that about her. Being raised in a highly secluded religious community in bumfuck Nebraska and homeschooled, Whitaker found he did better with strange people.
Strange people didn’t care about how strange he was, after all.
And you couldn’t spend your entire life with farmland as your closest companion without being a little introverted, a little rough around the edges when it comes to socialization, though the intro to personal communications class he took in college had been helpful.
Dennis sighs, wiping sweat off his brow and onto his black scrubs, they stuck to his skin like a spider's web, he hadn’t noticed just how bad it was until she said it. They definitely needed to get Gloria to increase their budget, the air conditioning has been freaking out all month.
Just his luck, that his second month at The Pitt is when the building’s synapses goes haywire, he had two more ahead of him and from how Doctor Robby acted, it’s unlikely Gloria would have that fixed anytime soon.
“Just- look, your scent glands are woefully underdeveloped for a beta,” Santos says, both concerned for his overheated body and cranky at having to smell him, she leans against the shiny wall, “just take my O-scent patches from my locker, the code is my birthday.” She whispers, poking him hard in the kidney to make his flinch.
“Of course it’s your birthday.” He says back, head down. It’s a rare quiet moment for them, it won’t last long. Dana is chatting with Princess in Tagalog, the sound is more comforting than he would have expected, he’s gotten used to her peaceful presence, it means everything is right in the world. He actually did save up to get her a gift basket for not quitting after what went down at Pittfest.
That right there was something that made him strange, he supposed.
Underdeveloped scent glands.
He had never so much as heard that phrase until he moved here for seminary, eager to escape his family’s cloying grip with the cash he had saved under his bed doing chores for their dementia-addled neighbor and a college acceptance letter he fought tooth and nail for (if Whitaker ever prays to anything again, it will be the tiny, underfunded library in his town that secretly helped him formalize his high school papers so that he was eligible for University in the first place.)
Of course, he switched over to medicine as soon as he was able. The first time he saw someone with purple hair and they didn’t immediately set him on fire the way he had been taught they would.
Regardless, something Dennis thought was completely normal in his secluded Amish-adjacent community, was apparently a medical abnormality in the city. Not dangerous, not likely to kill him, the only side effect being that his scent was fairly mild in comparison to his other city-slicker beta counterparts. It was normal for betas, alphas, and even omegas to have perfectly flat scent glands where he was from; it had confused him at first, the sheer number of scent glands he could readily see upon setting foot in Pittsburg. Especially the comments he got about them, something he had always thought was fairly normal. Only one of his brothers, an omega, had developed scent glands, he took after their Alpha Ma. It wasn’t something you questioned back where Dennis was from. God didn’t make mistakes with your body, after all. Why would you go to a doctor and get medicine to pump you full of hormones if God didn’t want you to have them?
Dennis did his best to hide them now, not wanting to stick out any more than he already did. Long sleeved shirts under his hospital scrubs to cover the ones on his wrists, close cut to the neck as well, even long compression socks to hide the ones at his ankles. Luckily, the ones on his hips and inner thighs were fairly easy to hide.
So he must be sweating up a storm for Trinity to be practically gagging at him in the medical ward, the neutralizers they pump through the vents not up for the task that was Dennis Whitaker’s latent beta hormones.
“Yours is also my birthday, scoot scoot.” Trinity glares, omegan teeth bared. Dennis liked that about his roommate, most city omegas didn’t ever bare their fangs like country ones did. Like Santos did. It made him feel more at home.
“Scoot scoot.” She says again, and he defers to her, head bowed to the left like one would an alpha, right for omega.
Santos preferred Alphan appeasement gestures, something Whitaker was still getting used to but found enjoyment in doing. Gender fuckery, she explained to him one tired night, forcing him to listen to ashnikko’s entire discography. She had been surprised he didn’t keel over like a Victorian orphan discovering Mountain Dew. Though he resented that description of him.
Rolling his eyes, Whitaker lugs himself down the hallway, nurses bustling around the antiseptic-drenched hospital, the gentle racket of wooden clipboards and squeaking gurneys soothing his aching head and sore limbs. After all, it meant no one in Chairs was actively vomiting, fighting, or dying. The beeping of monitors becomes background noise, something he can easily tune out.
The blinking fluorescent lights stung his eyes, tears threatening to spill down his sweating face. He had a migraine nudging at the base of his skull for the past two weeks now, the buzzing of electricity in the walls becoming more apparent with each passing long-dredged shift. Doctor Robby had pulled him to the side just yesterday, a sufferingly large hand gripping firm to Whitaker’s clammy neck, thumb pressed to that ever illusive scent gland. It had paused each ailment, his wracked body losing all tension, until Doctor Robby pulled away, and it all came flooding back.
Doctor Robby liked to grab him and place him where needed, like a marionette. Considering everyone else in Whitaker’s life expected him to have everything figured out by now, his ripe old age of twenty six, he appreciated Doctor Robby. His favorite shifts were the ones where he got to shadow the man, he theorized he learned better, physically felt stronger and confident. If Whitaker had still been the religious sort, he would have likened Dr. Robbie to that of a guardian angel, something softly-glowing and holy. Star shaped in all ways.
Doctor Robby had taken one look at Whitaker’s sunken face, the tension around his eyes, the moment lasted too long, Whitaker’s heart rate picking up— fear response, he had to get that under control. The attending only said it made sense, Whitaker was stressed, he wasn’t used to this sort of high-intensity environment. He needed to find balance. Doctor Robby looked at him with those pretty crows-feet lined eyes, his soft omegan scent fluttering around Whitaker like a swan’s wings, gave him a peanut butter banana sandwich he had in his lunch, and sent him to their dedicated nap room for a quick snooze.
Whitaker had spent a solid ten minutes sniffing the bread before eating it. He had no idea why. He would have been embarrassed if he had the mental wherewithal to think about anything other than the pain. The hunger. Something about the wheat scent had calmed the ravenous, scared part of him that had only just announced itself months ago, the part of him that was slowly growing in the pit of his stomach with every passing day, that pressure he couldn’t explain.
Stress.
He knew it was just stress.
He had never felt stress like this though, so full-bodied, so entirely encompassing. It didn’t go away, only grew, until even sitting with Mel on the staircase watching her digital lava lamp didn’t comfort him anymore. Just made him feel antsy to get back to work.
No.
That wasn’t right.
Get back to something.
Get back to something he couldn’t find, something he was craving so desperately it made his flat teeth ache.
Whatever it was, it was closer when he was in the ED. He found that the hungry void in him was more settled in the medical ward than at Trinity's cramped apartment, loath as he was to admit it to himself. Trinity would call him a workaholic, say it was bad for his health to be that attached to an unpaid internship. To that, Dennis would say it isn’t the internship. He knew how it would go. She would ask what it was, rightly so, and the truth of the matter is that his jaw ached and his head swam but something about the stale hospital air made it fade. A pain that started and stopped in the medical bay.
Maybe he was coming down with a stress-induced flu. He would see if they had any vitamin C packets in the break room.
Dennis pauses in the empty hallway, doing a sniff check on his way to their lockers.
Damn, he was rancid. Santos was right. It made him itch with nerves, knowing just how much she hated man-scent. He would like to think they were close, that she wouldn’t kick him out just because he’s sick and smelling awful, but he wasn’t paying rent yet and if she told him to go, he’d have to.
Eyes fogging over, that building sensation in his stomach pulling, pulling, he shook his hands out, grabbed onto his stethoscope— there is yelling down the hall.
He doesn’t know why he does it. His tired body takes over. That suffocating string tied around his spine leading like a leash suddenly has a direct place to go, it seems, and without meaning to, his shaking legs are taking him there, walking a straight and solid line for the first time in days. A thought doesn’t even cross his mind, his perked ears solely focused on that deep, pained yelp like a sounding beacon. Right there. Something in his skull says. Go. Go. The sharp crack that follows. The sound of a metal tray hitting the linoleum floor. His mouth hurts, his skin is burning him alive, he can feel all the hair on his arms, the few moles dotting his torso, like live wires. He’s upset, what kind of upset?
They really must tell Gloria about this muggy weather, it can’t be good for patient satisfaction scores.
He finds himself at Dana’s desk, devoid of Dana herself, but a few feet away McKay has an alpha man in a chokehold, patient’s personal files littering the floor, ripped and crinkled. Her arms are wrapped around his torso, her narrow elbows digging hard into his shoulders to subdue him. Whitaker can see her heels digging into his protruding stomach, hitting pressure points, maybe, with the way the man is wailing, his brief hits to McKay’s face barely landing. They tussle on the floor, limbs flailing.
There is blood on his arm, staining the pale ground, Whitaker can see tooth marks—omega, by the spacing of them. McKay is an alpha.
The sound of Doctor Robby’s whine makes his blood run cold.
Doctor Robby was an omega, yes, but he rarely acted like it. Most confused him for a beta or an alpha. Dennis had never thought about the fact that Robby could trill, could make omegan distress calls at all. The thought seemed foreign.
The sound cracks something in Dennis that he hadn’t known was there.
His eyes fall on a disheveled Doctor Robby, leaning against the glass door leading into one of the separate wards, Dennis can see nurses rushing around on the opposite side. His scrubs are crinkled, his usual sweater on the floor a few feet away. The thin collar is somewhat torn, his hair-smattered knuckles pressed to his own sternum, like he’s trying to push the sound back in. Dennis feels something deep and angry in the back of his throat, scratching, expanding something swollen and red. His teeth throb.
The fluorescent lights are screaming at him. Tell him to do something. There must be a broken fuse somewhere, his entire body is shaking, shaking, but Dr. Robbie is also shaking, shaking—
He’s looking down at his dull blue sweater, still as limp on the floor as dead bodies were when still warm, McKay still has the man keening on the ground. She’s grumbling at him, her alpha voice strongest compared to anyone else in the morning shift, she subdues him just barely, until Dana finally comes rushing in with a syringe.
No one is looking at the chief attending, huddled half in the corner as he was, Mckay already brandishing an ice pack as she walks down to Triage to continue whatever she had been doing before, a security guard handcuffing the unconscious alpha and dragging him past the desk. The entire episode lasts less than ten seconds.
But Dennis is looking, and Dennis can smell him through the neutralizers and hospital grade soap.
Robby is terrified.
Whitaker is at Doctor Robby’s side, his hands coming up to Robby’s biceps before he can think more about it. Everything inside him hissing with rage at whatever had caused his attending to make a distress call, more pissed that he seemed to be the only one who heard it.
Dr. Robbie leans into Dennis’s touch, but his eyes don’t notice Whitaker, another soft trill leaving his throat. That doesn’t stop the giddy rush of satisfaction that rushes to Whittaker’s hypothalamus. Robby always touches him, but rarely does Whitaker get to touch back. Give him that comfort and serenity that the man always gifted readily unto him.
“C’mon, omega.” Dennis whispers, as though possessed. His head is full of cotton swabs, he can smell isopropyl alcohol, can almost taste it in his sour mouth. There is a streak of red in Doctor Robby’s grey-splattered beard, and Whitaker‘s heart rate speeds up at the horrible sight. He feels his tiny claws wanting to extend with his feelings, the pressure of it is more than he’s ever experienced. High-stress environments would do that to you.
Did that man do something to Dr. Robby? The teeth marks in his arm… did their chief attending bite him?
What the hell could he have said, done, to send Robby into fight or flight this way? So out of it that he was responding using base instincts, feral noises, he hadn’t even gotten this bad during Pittfest.
Whitaker has never felt the urge to growl, sure, betas could do it, especially if they tried hard enough or were mad enough. He had never been the type; omegas and alphas did it much more. He feels it now, creeping its way up like coal and sludge. There is too much pressure behind his eyes, his brain filling with helium, the Mylar close to breaking.
But he needs to take care of Doctor Robby. It’s important. It’s so important that the idea of not being the one to do so sets him on edge. Suddenly, he needs to get Robby out of the room. For Robby, but also for himself.
His attending’s eyes are still stuck on the ground, his sweater.
Dennis has never seen Doctor Robby look like this. He’s been in rotation for two months, he’s seen some of his attending’s worst days, has been the one to help him through it. Doctor Robby was known for being infallible.
Whitaker didn’t want anyone else to watch Robby fall apart. Something green in his gut bristled at the idea of anyone else seeing Robby, the feeling just as foreign as the rest of his body felt.
It was all so confusing,
but he couldn’t think about himself right now. He needed to get Robby to safety, somewhere dark, somewhere away from prying eyes until his instincts told him he was safe to use spoken language again.
Was it for Robby, or for both of them? Dennis didn’t know.
Barely keeping himself together, unaware of what would even happen if he were to fall apart, Dennis holds Robby by his elbows, thumbs rubbing what he hoped was comforting circles on the exposed skin there. He tries not to relish in the touch, he knows he wouldn’t be getting it under normal circumstances. He leads the trembling attending slowly down the hallway until he can reach and grab the sweater, sloppily tossing it over Doctor Robby’s shoulders. He might need the comfort of his own scent, it was well known Robby didn’t scent others much, preferring a lone smell. He looks around, the nurses and doctors already rushing to their next task, none of his own fellow doctors anywhere to be seen. Santos had been with at the opposite side of the wing just minutes ago.
Dana is the only one looking at them, from the comfort of her now-messy desk as she and Mohan try to put all the scattered files back together. Why Mohan, most skilled doctor in training in the hospital, was doing that task? She was humble like that, maybe. Dana doesn’t approach the two huddled figures, just gives Whitaker a concerned look, before nodding towards the left wing.
Something in Dennis flares red and hot. Pride. Horror. Acceptance. His small hands are sweaty and all he wants to do is rub the smell onto the crooks of Doctor Robby’s elbows.
Giving permission.
Allowing Dennis the time he needs to take care of his omega.