Chapter Text
Robby had known it would be an interesting day in the Pitt when Jack had reminded him today was the day for new students, and Dana had given him the unexpected information that three of them were littles.
Santos, and to an extent, Mel, had been somewhat understandable. Santos was a twelve-to-sixteen year old, and Mel was eight-to-eleven. But Whitaker had been a little less expected. A toddler with a range of two-to-four. It was a very low range, and a little type that would normally avoid high stress jobs… like, being an ER doctor. Clearly, this was one of his main goals for fitting if Dennis was being assigned to them; but not many littles lasted in high stress positions like this with such a low drop range.
Then again, his scores were top marks, just like the rest of them, and he seemed stable, if nervous. Weirder things have happened.
And he was proven wrong. Not only could Dennis Whitaker handle himself -with a bit of minor flailing and stumbling to get himself into place in the beginning- but that boy had managed to hold off the biggest breakdown Robby had had in years just by being the kind little thing that Robby had gotten to know over the course of the day.
Santos and Langdon had immediately annoyed each other, and Robby was trying to be kind because he knew Langdon was having a rough time getting back into the swing of things post-rehab, but Langdon was another caregiver, and should know better than to rib at an overwhelmed teenage middle. Thankfully, it was proving to be a them-thing, since Langdon had all but adopted little Mel over the course of the day, easily able to navigate her issues while picking out cases that were perfect for her, and Robby was fairly sure the man was itching to get a hold of both King twins as a set as soon as he could. Mel was a sweetheart, and Frank’s kids would love having some sisters. Robby had rolled his eyes at the daddy looks Frank was giving Mel under his guidance, but kept on moving.
It was good to develop both working and familial relationships with the ED family you were becoming a part of.
He couldn’t say anything himself, he hadn’t gone more than an hour without an eye or hand on Dennis since they day had started.
Trinity had her moment with trying to put a patient on BiPAP, finding out why that was a horrible idea, and getting sent into a bit of a tailspin when Garcia started to flirt with her. She was a solid presence and could keep her head about her, but someone needed to warn Trinity that she was probably a bit out of her depth with that dom.
He passed by Trinity, back in the hands of Samira and Javadi, the neutrals taking the role of big sisters seriously. Well, in Samira’s case, because Javadi looked like she’d never been sisterly with anyone in her life. Poor kid, they’d have to remember to coddle her just a little outside of the ED to soften those awkward angles. It was something they normally only saw with littles who didn’t get enough drop time, or particularly awkward students who had been outcast for some reason, which in this case, included being a child prodigy who started college at age thirteen and had two doctor parents to hold expectations up to her.
Trinity and Samira looked like they would help her out of that shell a little, soften her up some. He could trust the three of them. He could trust that the loving caregiver she was, Samira would be itching to get both girls settled in their skin. Good. She might be slower with patients but she was exactly where she needed to be everywhere else.
Including information, but that was something she was still working on trusting him about.
He walked past the room they were keeping the Kraken in, just in time to see Dennis coming out with a disgruntled look and Kim trying not to laugh at him. He pouted at Robby as the man stopped. “An accident, Whitaker?”
Dennis’s lower lip trembled for a second, before stilling. Robby mentally noted that, wondering why this was different than the last change he’d needed. The one that Trinity had teased him over with no more than an eye roll. “Not my accident!”
Ahh. The last one hadn’t been urine, so maybe the toddler brain was having a hard time compartmentalizing that he could be peed on, or worse, maybe imagining some teasing about littles with accidents. Robby gave him a soft smile, trying to look reassuring, but probably just hitting fond. “I know that wasn’t your accident, kiddo. These things happen, I’m sorry to say, but you’re doing good. Go get changed, you’ll be okay.”
Dennis gave him a determined little nod, slipping off to go for another medical gown and to change. Robby made a mental note that they should put a second pair of scrubs in his locker so he could change, and then worry about the scrubs machine. Littles were no more shy than neutrals, but this one seems like a nervous boy at the best of times. “Walk, please. Running in the ED can cause more accidents, bud.”
Dennis nodded, slowing down as he made a beeline for the scrubs dispenser again. Dana patted Robby on the shoulder and grinned. “He did good. Worry over being told he needs to wear pull-ups aside, I guess, he did very well and was extremely brave and ready. He’s been very on top of his patients since this morning.” Since he lost one. And unfortunately, it was that patients one-in-a-million time to get hurt, but he’d straightened up since getting back to it.
“He’s good with taking orders. Probably on the more submissive side when he’s not little than neutral, but he seems not to doubt his decisions unless he has someone there to confirm for him.”
Dana nodded, humming. “He’ll do just fine here.”
They left the kids to their rounds and went to go check on their own patients and nurses.
And then he found Dennis on his way back to the scrubs dispenser again, covered in blood and looking sad. The boy looked even sadder as he left with morgue scrubs instead of ED scrubs, apparently having helped run the machine through everything in his size. Poor kid.
Checking up on Mel, he found the middle in a bit of a panic over her patient being left alone, but Robby helped distract that patient and Dana calmed her down. She was a brilliant doctor, but she seemed to struggle with speaking to patients, something that clearly upset her as she was convinced she had somehow unknowingly told a woman to abandon her mother entirely.
He would send her to Frank the next chance they could. Frank had been a godsend with her so far, and she could use the chance to shadow a ‘capable adult’ and get a hold of her emotions again. Not that many of them considered Frank a capable adult, but it was something. He was a damn good doctor.
Of course something had to happen with all the little spectrum kiddos today, and he preferred to ignore Trinity apparently impaling Garcia’s foot with a scalpel. The dom seemed like she had that one covered.
They finally had their stolen ambulance back, and Javadi seemed annoyed with the frat boys, but she can handle that.
And then the little farmboy had caught one of the rats with the help of an ‘emotional support dog’ and had managed to keep it under wraps when he’d snapped its neck. At least that didn’t further traumatize any patients, and Dennis had looked adorably shy as was applauded. Sweet boy.
And then Dana had been hit. This day wasn’t exactly the greatest. Langdon was especially snappy today, and Robby was sure the man had a headache of the post-addiction sort, so he tried to be kinder on him and steer him more towards Mel and further from Trinity. He couldn’t figure out what beef the two of them had, but it was up there.
Dennis had gone through the ringer with keeping a kid from bleeding out from his tonsil scars not closing up properly, but that was when Robby saw the real sass from him, asking the surgeon if he should cancel the Uber to another hospital. Boy has spark, and after his initial flip of being covered in coughed up blood, had been firm as he took care of the boy til he could get into surgery.
The biggest stress he’d experienced so far that day was trying to split between a patient turning into a literal blood fountain, and the surrogate mother having birthing complications in the next trauma room. Especially since she was starting to bleed too.
That was stressful, and along with trying to convince Theresa that she should get her son the help he needed, he was hoping that would be the worst of his day.
Then there was a mass casualty event. There was a shooter at PittFest.
Things got busier and busier after that, and they were on true trauma bag footing, and things got to be a lot. And he was crying in pedes, remembering losing his mentor four years ago in this room.
Dennis was a little in a high pressure field. If anyone would break down from being in a MCE, it would be a little around his age that was dropped.
But Dennis wasn’t even close to dropping. He was standing in pedes, trying to talk to him through a panic attack while Robby prayed to a god he wasn’t sure he believed in.
And that little hand held out to him to help him up, both of their gowns covered in blood, wearing gloves so no one would risk further contamination, holding out his little hand to his big attending over twice his age.
-That’s sweet. You think you can help me. Maybe you can.-
He took the hand and stood up, and then they left and he kept going. Dennis being a little didn’t define how he would work in an emergency room, but it probably shaped that stiff spine he carried himself with, the way he looked like he’d stand between a giant and a patient, just to continue saving lives.
Maybe Robby was enamored of that. He left the room and went back into the fray of chaos. Things were slowing down, but not fast enough. He had to stop police from arresting Cassie for tampering with her ankle monitor. It had been a necessary evil to save people and stop distractions.
And then a child had come in unresponsive because he had the measles.
He may end up getting in trouble about showing the father the makeshift morgue in pedes.
But today was over. He leaned into his husband’s side as they left the hospital to go across the street and have a few beers. “Where’d the regressors get off to? They all did so good and just disappeared.” Shen asked his fellow attendings as they settled down to sit. Jack missed the beer that was tossed to him and Robby grinned.
Javadi looked around, sitting next to Samira on a bench. She had a beer in her hand, but it was actually Samira’s, who was giving her the chance to try it and decide if she wanted her own or if sharing was enough. “Mel has to pick up her sister from her day center, but Whitaker and Santos said they wanted to get some sleep, I think? I just hope Whitaker doesn’t drop on his own. Not after today, anyways.”
Robby shook his head, looking at the way Jack’s prosthetic gleamed in the park lights. “He’s under five, he’ll have an assigned roommate from his med school program. They usually pair littles his age up with caregivers or middles above thirteen.”
Samira smiled at the man. “I always forget you and Abbot are caregivers. You just seem like annoying parental figures while at work.”
Robby grinned at her, looking cheeky and like he might pass out from exhaustion any second. “Oh yeah. I had a roommate in my last year of medical school. She was a certified brat, you remind me of her.”
Samira stuck her tongue out at him. They bickered about pacing, but he really was the closest thing she had to a dad.
***
Dennis hadn’t realized that anyone had seen him go into the stairwell at the hospital, much less that they had followed him up to the eighth floor.
Trinity had caught him in the middle of listening to his music and washing up in the sink in the room. He’d jumped when she asked him what he was doing.
“So, you’re living up here?”
Dennis squirmed in place. “I’m sort of… in between places at the moment.”
Trinity reached a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Huckleberry… you’re under five, the college should have assigned you a housing situation with a caregiver or middle.”
Dennis couldn’t help the way his jaw worked in anxiety over that. “I’m… I might have been sorta missed under the radar. Sometimes when students change campuses it gets messy. I haven’t had the time to fix it.”
Trinity looked at him for a long minute, looking around the room.
She didn’t see anything Little. No stuffies that he could hold, no pacifiers or colourful clothing that someone his age should be wearing, no childish toys or anything fun. It was like Dennis lived as though he wasn’t even a little at all.
“Look, I have a spare room with it’s own bathroom. We can talk to Kiara, and she can ask your college to file the paperwork so we can split rent there. You’ll have a place to stay and our littles stipends will go further if we split costs.”
Dennis was looking at her with those big dumb eyes that made her want to shove a sippy cup in his hands and tell him to act his age for once. He was clearly struggling with himself, he was refusing to go to his college help center to get paired with a roommate, he didn’t show a single sign of regressor behavior all day that she had seen-
She wondered if the boy even regressed regularly. And then she remembered the years after her best friend killed herself, when Trinity could barely regress because she couldn’t handle the idea of people seeing her as weak in any way. Whatever Whitaker had been through that made him refuse to regress… it must be an iffy situation.
Either way, they both have a government littles stipend for regressors, and maybe she could convince him to get some toys and better clothes. Littles his age shouldn’t be so… adult presenting… they weren’t like neutral subs, and even pets shouldn’t present so human all the time, but it just isn’t right that a regressor would have so little colour in his life. He needed colours to stay stable and sane.
Dennis shifted in place a few times, wringing his hands in his tee shirt. It was way too big on him, but according to his shoulders and all, it should fit him better. If he were eating properly. He definitely was not, since being unhoused meant he didn’t have access to a fridge all the time. Kiddo was probably living off peanut butter sandwiches. With honey, if he was smart enough to add extra calories.
“Are you sure, Trinity? I’m kinda… people say I’m hard to deal with. Hard to live with.”
Trinity felt an anger in her soul. “I don’t care what people say about you, that’s my decision to make, not theirs. You’re sweet and you can kill rats. Not that there are any in my apartment, I just mean that it was kinda cool and just proves how brave you are. You should have a place to go home to that isn’t going to kick you out or contribute to bad habits. Come on, I want a shower and you definitely need one from how much blood you’ve had on you today.”
Dennis’s eyes were watery, and he started packing his bags. Three bags, to be exact. One with his laptop and school supplies, one with clothes all bundled tight to take up as little space as possible, and a third with some bits and bobs, including, to her satisfaction, a single well loved baby blanket and a couple fidget toys. Good, it wasn’t completely repressed. She might get him to regress in the next day before their next shift.
She grabbed one of the bags from him, the school supplies, and left him with the lighter bags, the two of them making their way back to the stairwell. She was already planning some stuff for settling Dennis into his new home. Kiara would be necessary for navigating the college help center to get Dennis legally on her lease and their rent split, which would be kinda awesome, since they’d have more money on hand each month. She’d be able to convince him to get some stuffies.
She hasn’t been the big sister in a long time. Her actual brothers weren’t regressors, and they were eighteen and nineteen now, so she was back to being the younger one. She remembered throwing a full fit when she had visited her family last Christmas, only for her mom to ask the boys to keep an eye on her while she was out, since she’d been at the bottom of her age range. She only got as low as twelve, she really didn’t need her brothers keeping an eye on her, and she might have ended up in the corner with a hot bottom when she’d hit her brothers with throw pillows, but she had been very mad at the time.
She led them out the back way to the parking garage, getting to her somewhat beat up car. She put both their bags in the backseat, and gave him a careful look. “You’re not gonna regress if I let you in the front seat, right? We might have to get you a booster for days when you will.”
Dennis flushed hotly, looking away from her. “I won’t regress now. I’m good at controlling when it happens. I can’t sit in the front seat without getting hurt or playing with controls.”
Trinity shrugged. “Alright.” They’d totally be getting him one anyways, but that was a matter for later, since she couldn’t push him too much now. She watched him climb into the front seat, and refused to leave the parking space til he put on his seatbelt. It was so cool being the big sister now.
“Do you like Chinese food? We’re way too exhausted to cook right now.”
Dennis nodded at her with lidded eyes. It seemed that the adrenaline of the day was starting to wear off, and he was sleepy. “Yeah. I’ll honestly take whatever, but I love Chinese.”
“Awesome. We have a great place down the street. Since we’re so close they’ll deliver, and I’ll put in the order when you’re in the shower. It’ll take about twenty minutes to drive there though, and I’m not sure what the traffic looks like after… after today. You can take a nap if you want. I’ll point out the closest bus stop to us when we pass it.”
Dennis looked at her with big eyes that made her want to punch something. He was so damn cute. Ugh. “Thanks.” He closed his eyes, and while Trinity could tell he didn’t actually fall asleep, he did relax and slow his breathing.
She had pointed out the bus stop to him and made a call to the Chinese restaurant that was owned by a pair of immigrant caregivers that always adopted damn near every little that came by their restaurant. They always gave her extra sauces, since that was her kryptonite.
When Dennis came out of the shower in a big tee shirt and a pair of sweats, he looked sleepy and close to passing out, but he was shockingly able to get down three egg rolls, two crab rangoons, a heaping bowl of fried rice, and a bit of orange chicken. She was both impressed and proud. Littles in his age range should have some extra fat storage on them. It was actually pretty unusual to see any littles his age without, since they needed that baby fat in case they got sick. She’d help put that baby fat back on him. It hurt her heart a little to see someone his age without it.
And then he nearly passed out on her table. She snorted, getting him to sit up again, and pulling him up by the arm. “Come on, I added extra pillows and some more blankets to your bed. You can pass out there for as long as you want.
They didn’t have another shift til tomorrow night, since Doctor Robby had refused to let them work on this much exhaustion after an adrenaline crash, so he’d swapped time tables for a couple days to get them back on track again. These were his students, and while they couldn’t swap a full shift, the kids could take the night shift with Jack tomorrow. Mel said Becca would be able to stay at home during the day with her, and go to her daycare center for an overnight trip instead, otherwise Robby probably would have felt bad and let the kids suffer through some bad sleep for a few days before they got regulated. Him and Jack knew that the first few days would be the most important for the regressors, though.
Dennis’s room was pretty plain, but there was a bed and dresser and closet for him. The bed was mostly there because when her mom or brothers came over, they always expected to stay the night and keep an eye on her. Now she could tell them there was no extra room for them.
Dennis looked at the bed with extra pillows and blankets and give Trinity a wide eyed look of disbelief. “Can stay here?”
“Yeah, you’re with me now, Huckleberry.”
Dennis blushed, and in a second had his skinny little arms around her in a hug. “Thank you, Trinity.”
She was a little relieved that he already sounded younger. Good. Maybe he just needed a safer space to drop at. Maybe she’ll get to see him tiny tomorrow… though she kind of hoped not. He didn’t have any toys to entertain him, and she didn’t know how long he’d be content with her squishmallows and Bluey, what if he needed toddler snacks and sippy cups, and-
…but he deserved that. If he dropped and needed more than they had, Trinity would call Samira or even Robby or Abbot. They were all caregivers. Or Kiara. She wasn’t a caregiver, but she was a saint, and she would make sure Dennis had what he needed for a safe drop.
No, no, she hoped he dropped. He needed to drop. It would be good for him.
“Night, kiddo. You’ll be safe here. Sleep well.”
Dennis nodded, already heading into the room. He closed the door, but not all the way, which meant he either needed a nightlight -which she didn’t have any of- or he just didn’t like being alone, or maybe he just wasn’t used to it. Either way, she let him keep the door cracked, and kept the hallway lamp on, and went to go take her own shower and get ready for bed.
When she was snuggled under her comforter and blinking tiredly as she played a new save of Stardew Valley, she let go of her bigger feelings over the day she had today, wiping away a few tears as she decided that she was going to get Robin and Caroline to be her moms in this save. The non-littles couldn’t go on dates with non-romancable characters, but if you put yourself as a little, you could have play dates with anyone, and she deserved two moms to cuddle with.
It was hard work being the big sibling, but she could already feel that it was worth it.