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The spring when Dennis was seven, he bottle fed a lamb at the county fair.
“Could you take your hands off of your lap for me, sweetie? You ready?”
The lady at the sheep pen had soft, smooth skin and she smelled like hay. Her wavy light brown hair made Dennis think of his mom. She had a smile so warm and wide it made her squint, and her face was round like the sun. All afternoon she’d been dealing with children like him, clutching their five dollar bills so they could meet one of her flock of sleepy, floppy animals and lift a bottle to their mouth, but she knelt to where he waited on the stool with the patience of a saint.
Dennis took both hands off of his lap and sat up straight, shoulders back so far his spine went concave and his chest puffed out; the same position he would assume when he got reprimanded for slouching at the dinner table. Good man, he thought, the voice in his head taking on his father’s gruff, halting cadence of approval.
The lamb was so warm and light, all white with her woolly coat and a shiny pink nose. When her body was placed over his knees, Dennis almost couldn’t touch her for how delicate she felt. A perfect snowflake, and you can’t hold those without them disappearing forever.
Gently, he rubbed one of the lamb’s floppy ears between his thumb and forefinger. Soft. Velvety. A nice feeling in his hands and in his tummy.
“So cute…” he murmured.
The handler’s eyes took on that joyful crinkle again. “Yeah, she is. Now, cradle her chin, just like this…” Her hand guided his small one into place and he kept it there, assiduously still as he watched the handler help the lamb to the nipple of the bottle. As the lamb began to feed, Dennis’s eyes widened. He could feel her drinking.
“Wanna take it? Wanna feed her?” The handler offered him the bottle. The lamb’s eyes had closed by then, she appeared at total ease in Dennis’s lap. He nodded, moving to take the bottle, though not before running his fingers through that lovely white wool.
“You just make sure that chin stays supported, okay, Dennis?”
The instruction bore a striking similarity to one he’d heard before. His brand new niece, born that Christmas — when he first met her, when she was all red and wrinkly, Dennis had to hold her head too, because she couldn’t do it on her own yet.
“She’s like a baby!” He exclaimed. The comparison burst out of him with a laugh. His lamb was like a baby with white curly hair. Like his hair but even lighter, even curlier.
“She is a baby! She’s a sheep baby.”
A sheep baby. Animals back home, the pigs and the chickens and the cows they had, they could never be babies. Only piglets and calves, because to call them babies would be to confuse the members of the farm served up on the table with the ones sitting around it, saying grace. He grinned at the handler. One of his front teeth was missing and his brother said it made him look like a goof, but he did it anyway. The lamb suckled in his arms and she was so pretty, so lovely, and he was holding the bottle and feeding her all on his own. He just had to show someone, he wanted to show…
“Dad! Look!”
He hadn’t yet spotted his father among the other grown-ups that lined the perimeter of the sheep pen the first time he called out. His head whirled around, even jostling the lamb in his lap in his excitement. “Dad, she’s drinking the milk!”
Except, when Dennis found his father, it was only the slopes of his shoulders and the expanse of his brown leather jacket. He wasn’t looking at all; his back turned, facing out to the rest of the fair. But there was one person watching. Standing next to his father, one of the men his dad invited over a couple times a month to watch big games on the TV looked right at Dennis from the edge of the pen. Dark eyes and a wolfish smirk. He watched the small, soft boy cradle that small, soft creature, bottle in hand.
“Mary had a little lamb, huh?” The man’s words floated over on the light April breeze, through the chatter of the crowd, and found where Dennis sat with the lamb over his knee. He snickered and used his beer cup to point over. “That not one of yours, Jim?”
Finally, his father turned around, but he didn’t smile. What Dennis had been trying to show him appeared to inspire no joy. It inspired nothing at all. The expression he gave as he followed the line of his friend’s point was one of total indifference.
“No,” his father said. The denial found its way to Dennis, the rich timbre of his father’s voice, as well as the word it formed, unmistakable.
Two sets of pale blue eyes met across the pen, their brightness handed down between generations. Jim Whitaker’s gaze landed on his son for only a second, and then it was gone. Already, he was turning back around.
“No, that’s not mine.”
𓃔 𓃔 𓃔
The spring when Dennis was twenty-seven, he graduated from medical school.
“Remind me, when is that again?”
He was shoving his boots back on in Robby’s living room when his mentor asked him this. Robby leant by the bedroom door, sweater thrown over his bare chest and only his boxers beneath, watching as Dennis readied himself for the Lyft that’d been requested to take him back across the city.
“It’s next month. The sixteenth.”
“You excited? Family coming to town, celebrating and stuff?”
“Uh…” Dennis laughed lightly as he rose to his feet. “No. No one’s coming from home, they’re…” How did his mom put it during their call? Busier than a one-armed paperhanger. “It’s not a great time. A lot needin’ doin’, y’know, over at the farm.”
He gave Robby a wry smile as he held his hands up and shrugged. Disappointment was too strong of a word. He thought maybe one of them could’ve made it — a representative of the Whitaker clan to, if nothing else, remind him of where he came from, but it wasn’t to be. And if it wasn’t to be, it wasn’t to be.
Trinity biffed him lightly on the shoulder when he told her, mild violence the apparent requisite for the genuine care she displayed in telling him, “That sucks, Huck. They don’t know what they’re missing out on.” It was more earnestness than Dennis felt the situation warranted.
Even with the laissez faire waving of his hand, the reaction to his lack of parental attendance came once again with a far deeper concern than Dennis ever asked for. Robby straightened in his bedroom doorway, standing to attention like anything could be done.
“You’re kidding.” He put a hand through his beard. “Fuck.”
Dennis slung his backpack over his shoulder, not entirely sure what he was supposed to say. “It’s… That’s how it works with me, with my family, they don’t— I mean, we don’t—”
Robby tilted his head back and sighed. Dennis carried on.
“It’s not a big deal. Really, it’s not. It’s just the reality of—”
“I’m gonna have to remember where I put my ties.”
What? Dennis’s brow furrowed. For a moment, he could only stare at Robby, the implication of his words slowly revealing itself to him.
“You…”
Robby made his way over to him crossing the apartment living room to where Dennis startled through his confusion. Two large hands came up and cupped Dennis’s jaw to resolve the matter. “The sixteenth? I’ll make a note of it.”
“You can’t!” Dennis tore away, the contact something he usually longed for, but surprise had set the room spinning. He stumbled back, retreat feeling the only way to keep his wits about him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” Robby frowned in a way that made Dennis indignant.
“It wouldn’t exactly be subtle.”
“Subtle about what?”
He lowered his voice to a hiss. “Subtle about this!”
‘This’. It was the only word Dennis could come up with for it. Because what exactly was this?
It started with a question. It started with Robby catching him down to meet Trinity in one of the last weeks of his final rotation and asking Dennis if he ever played pool: “There’s this place you can hire out tables and it’s a pretty fun evening. I used to take Jake. Think you’d be into it?”
It started there, with a question and Robby’s tight-lipped smile that said more than his affected casualness wanted to let on.
I used to take Jake.
Used to.
But he’s pretty sure that Robby didn’t do what happened after with his surrogate son. After a night of correcting Dennis’s stance, bullying his legs apart with his knee and sliding a hand across the small of his back, get a little lower, see where you’re aiming? purred into his student’s ear, chuckling at every pathetic missed shot, he didn’t sit back in the driver seat of his car and assess his young companion with narrowed eyes and a creased brow before asking, “You wouldn’t like to come up to the apartment, would you? Join me for a nightcap?”
Robby didn’t pour Jake a glass of whiskey too fine for Dennis’s blunted palette to appreciate and put on old records that crackled quietly as they played. Didn’t slip a hand onto his knee, the thumb stroking over jeans as he took in his companion for the second time that night with warm brown eyes that shone with suggestion.
Didn’t put down his glass before the liquor could make him soft and crawl over Jake on the couch. Not like he did with Dennis; both of their mouths already open, panting into each other, hot damp breaths and clutching at collars.
Dennis was used to secrets. He was good at secrets. Kept them like jagged pieces of broken glass squeezed into his palm. Everyone could see the blood as it leaked from the closed fist, following the creases of his hand and running red tracks down his arm, they could see the contortions of his face with how much it hurt, but he was good at holding on — not revealing the shape of what lay at the centre. No matter how much they wondered, they’d never know. Not unless he chose to show them.
His father would tilt his chin up at him, sit back in his chair at dinner and ask if Dennis and the boy from three farms over weren’t getting awfully friendly. He'd squeeze tighter.
Maybe this one should’ve hurt more than it did. Another secret. But this one was theirs, and how could it hurt when Robby, handsome and wonderful, would take him into his arms, his murmur a gentle rumble as he let Dennis rut into his large, experienced hand. That’s a good boy. Does it feel nice, baby? Does it feel good?
Still asking even once Dennis became capable of nothing but gasps, his hums of “Mmm— mm-hm—” frantic so that Robby wouldn’t stop talking to him. That voice, the spice of his cigarette smoke and the musk of his skin, the kisses along his racing carotid, the blurry sight through teary eyes of Robby pumping his favourite student’s leaking cock. Robby would kiss him when he came, his climax wet and hot with the invasion of a slick tongue, and that would be the taste of him; malty from the whiskey they always drank on those nights, as if the magic of their coming together required a ritual.
No room for pain. Everything was Robby.
But Dennis was good at secrets. Robby’s asking to show up at an event with hundreds of their peers with his arm slung around the shoulders of his twenty-something-year-old student-fuckbuddy made Dennis question if he was too.
Robby only shrugged when Dennis reminded him of this. “I don’t think it’s ever been subtle that I’m proud of you.”
Stupid. How stupid that I’m proud of you warmed his cheeks when not even thirty minutes ago, Robby’s dick was in his ass. He scoffed. “You go to the graduation of all your med students?”
He couldn’t meet Robby’s eye. The way he smirked mirthlessly at the pattern on the rug behind his once-attending was that all that stood between Dennis and a lump in his throat. His arms folded over his body, a white-knuckled carapace between his tender core and the way Robby looked at him. Proud of you. The silence drew out, Dennis squeezed his own elbows, trying to seal the shell around himself. It was such a bad idea. The thought of that fond smile finding him as he crossed the stage gutted him; raked out all that Dennis tried to conceal and put it on full display. Something punched out of him, a hard exhalation. He disguised it as a cool laugh before either of them could figure out what it was.
A hand on the back of his neck brought him in closer and, oh crap, if Dennis’s jaw clamped any tighter he was going to shatter a tooth. Then came the soft press of lips against his forehead and Robby just had to say it again.
“I’m proud of you, Whitaker.”
He was going to have to remember where he put his ties.
𓃔 𓃔 𓃔
Robby booked them a cab to drive them into the city when the day arrived. It pulled up as expected at nine with Robby already inside, but when Dennis flung open his side door, he came to an abrupt halt.
There he was, Dr. Robby, in a crisp powder blue shirt, slacks, and a tie that was a silky copper, its colour well considered to go with the shirt and to bring out his eyes. His usual watch with its utilitarian fabric strap was gone, replaced with something leather. Taking him in from where he stood by the open door of the cab, the sight of his EM attending physician stunned Dennis into silence.
“Come on,” Robby said from inside, “we better get going, traffic’s been a pain in the ass this morning.” He beckoned. “I’m not having you late for this, it's your big day.”
“You…” Dennis slid into the other back passenger seat, eyes still on Robby as the door shut behind him. “You look really good.”
Robby smiled, lighting up behind the round lenses of his glasses. He smoothed the breast of his shirt. “You think? Figured I’d try scrub up a little. If there’s anything to make an effort for, right?”
As the cab pulled away, Dennis smeared his clammy palms on his dress pants. “Right.”
“Nervous?”
“No.”
About graduating, no, he wasn’t. Crossing a stage, shaking a hand, he’d manage it. But in the cab beside him, Robby was wearing the only collared shirt Dennis had ever seen him wear and his beard looked trimmed. He smelled of something expensive and looked like more than Dennis could afford. He must have spent all morning getting ready. Except, Robby didn’t spend time getting ready. Not usually.
The conclusion that this disparity offered put that same current through him as Robby’s I’m gonna have to remember where I put my ties. It made his skin crawl; made his soul want to leave his body. In the back of the cab, he could already feel himself starting to wilt.
It was the same as slipping from the confessional with the knowledge in his chest like sticky tar that there were sins he still held onto. Sins that he bled for. In the three times he sat on the hard bench at the oratory, driven there in fraught attempts to save his splintering soul, he convinced his priest just as he’d convinced his parents and teachers at school that he’d confessed to all of it, but he knew he’d never convince God. He’d never convince himself. If he’d really given all his sins over to the Lord, where did all that hurt come from? How come praying until painful bolts shot up his femurs never felt like absolution? It only made it worse. It made everything he said feel like a lie.
In the cab, where his hands were placed on each of his knees, Dennis pressed his fingernails into the flesh of his legs, the sensation dulled by his pants. I’m sorry, Father, I told another lie again. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, but I must have.
Must have, because without the deception, Robby couldn’t have got all dressed up for him. Robby couldn’t have ironed a shirt just for Dennis. It wouldn’t be right. It went against the fundamental truth of something he struggled to put a name to.
How could he expect to be forgiven for that which he wouldn’t repent for?
It was wrong. It was just plain wrong.
The battle against himself to stay composed was hard fought, but ultimately lost. He turned to Robby, words exiting his mouth like a surge of water breaking a dam, “You know, you really didn’t have to—”
“Kid, what’s going on here?”
He was frowning at Dennis’s neck, where Dennis’s own tie, a navy blue hand-me-down that made him look like a sailor against his white shirt, was loose and squint. He’d spent too much time in the apartment this morning watching out the window and checking his phone, stomach churning with a disconcerting mixture of hope and dread waiting to see if Robby was gonna bail on him, to have given his own outfit the same attention as the man sitting beside him. He didn’t want Robby to come to his graduation. He wanted more than anything for Robby to come to his graduation.
Robby tutted, already reaching across. “You have any idea how special today is? You wanna look back in thirty years and remember being a mess?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dennis huffed, but didn’t try to stop him. “It’s all gonna be under a gown anyway.”
“It does matter. Of course it matters.” Robby peered over the tops of his glasses as he tightened the knot.
Dennis blinked up at the ceiling of the cab, powerless as his chief made him presentable. His exposed throat bobbed and at his sides, his hands balled into fists. The chill of guilt sluiced through his veins, like a lie had gone too far.
“Besides,” he added as he finished, “I need you looking your best so I can give you these.”
The black velvet box he produced was small enough that at first, Dennis was certain it was a ringbox. What the hell? His eyes widened at the sight, hand going to the tightened tie knot like it was about to start strangling him. But, no, this was bigger than a box for a ring, this was—
“Cufflinks,” Robby said, tilting the open box towards Dennis so he could see what lay inside. Two gold ovals, the metal warm and burnished, clearly antique but not at all dull, each with a cut stone at their centres. Beautiful enough to take his breath away at first glance.
“Now these…” As Robby began his narration he motioned for Dennis to give him his wrist. “These actually belonged to my grandmother’s father… But they came to me when I was far too young to appreciate them.”
With the first cufflink secure on his wrist, Dennis could look closer. His attention was rewarded, as it was with this longer look that he came to notice the engravings — the fine, delicate lines on the surface of the gold surrounding each stone. They snaked around the circumference, weaving, intertwining like… He let the light from the cab window illuminate the metal. Tree branches. They were tree branches. At the top of each of the cufflinks, the branches had equally detailed blossoms adorning each branch. Lower, the branches became instead crowned with leaves, lush and verdant looking, even in miniature. Lower still, those leaves were falling away, as if caught on an imaginary breeze, floating off to where the branches at the bottom of the cufflinks became jagged and barren. Winter. The changing of the seasons.
Then there were the gems themselves, and how they appeared to change before his very eyes. The prisms of the cut stones took the light in the cab and transformed it, reflecting a rich, ruby red one second, then sumptuous garnet, then a fierce emerald green, and then, against all odds, a deep, oceanic blue.
“What are they?” Dennis breathed, his eyes like saucers as the careful, painstaking engravings and the vital, seemingly living gem stones fought for his attention.
Robby motioned again and Dennis gave him his second wrist, too astounded to find it in himself to protest.
“Before my great-grandfather, we don’t know where they came from,” he carried on, speaking absently as he worked to affix the second cufflink in place. “But what I can tell you is that they’re gold, just don’t ask me what karat, and that centre stone is alexandrite, which if superstition is to be believed, is supposed to bring good luck… fortune… and love.” He shot a grin up at Dennis over the tops of his glasses, which is when Dennis realised that he was watching Robby speak in open mouthed wonder; that he’d finished on Dennis’s shirt sleeve but Dennis hadn’t taken back his wrist, which lay limp in Robby’s grasp, totally given over to him. “Sounds all like pretty useful stuff, wouldn’t you say?”
Witchcraft, his church would say, to believe in anything so arcane as something as inert and strange as gemstones bringing what one is supposed to pray for. Looking down at the cufflinks, though, Dennis couldn’t help but believe it. To be in possession of these had to be a sign of pretty good fortune. He couldn’t figure out how to say any of this, though, so he just nodded.
Robby placed his palm over Dennis’s, held his student’s hand in both of his and squeezed. “I can also tell you that my grandmother took very, very good care of them. I know she wanted me to have children one day to keep them safe, so I’m sure she’d be furious with me if I never passed them down.”
“These are…” As Robby let Dennis’s hand slip from between his, Dennis returned to his senses, “Are you sure? I’d hate myself if something— if I lost—”
Robby simply sat back. “I’m not worried, kid. I know you’ll take good care of them.”
Putting his palms together, as if in prayer after all, Dennis admired the cufflinks side by side. He considered them — considered how their intricately engraved changing of the seasons captured the magnitude of an entire year in something so small, and how the magically changing alexandrite made the stones in the centre seem almost to glow. Wow. And on his wrists too. It was clear then that Robby was right. Dennis was very glad that his tie had been fixed and set straight, and it did matter what was under the gown. It mattered when it was something as special as this.
“You look beautiful.”
Dennis glanced up, smiling for the first time he got into the cab and truly meaning it. Robby wasn’t looking at the cufflinks. His deep, brown eyes had captured Dennis’s and that’s where they both stayed. Dennis held his gaze. Like that, they fell into silence, with only the purr of the engine and the low mumble of the radio coming from the front of the cab. He waited for Robby to look away. The moment never came. Robby only smiled back at him and for that short while, Dennis was pleased and proud to just be. His body relaxed into itself, the fizzle of discomfort quieting at last.
Without it, there was only one thought left. He was safe.
So, that was what it felt like.
𓃔 𓃔 𓃔
Graduates, this is your moment!
It was plastered literally everywhere. Banners, posters, even the back of the programme they collected when Dennis gave his name at the table set up for registration. Maybe it was the crowds, which were huge, noisy swells, constantly in need of something in the opposite direction of the one Dennis walked, or maybe it was the urgency of those posters with their bold serif font, jagged graphics and their frantic proclamation of now, now, NOW, but the soft landing that he’d found in the cab had been ripped back out from under him. He couldn’t keep his hands off of the cufflinks, like the sheer volume of rabble in the busy hall was gonna carry them off of his wrists and they’d vanish.
The memorial hall where the medical school graduation always took place didn’t help with noise control. High, cavernous ceilings, sturdy stone walls panelled in wood or embellished with ornate plaster mouldings, and the mosaic tiled floor made it feel heroically grand, but it also amplified every word, footstep, laugh, and cheer.
“Why don’t we step out for a while?” Robby had to physically lean down to ask this into Dennis’s ear. Automatically, Dennis’s arm went around Robby’s back, seizing at the liferaft of one familiar voice among what felt like a chorus of thousands. “We’ll come back in once we’re ready to be seated.”
How perfect that sounded. They could’ve sat on the steps outside in the fresh spring air and shared a sigh of relief. But he was ruefully shaking his head.
“I need to go get my gown and stuff…” even with Robby’s head conspiratorially close to his, Dennis still had to raise his voice. He glanced at his watch. “I’m supposed to go there now, I think.”
His hand had started to curl into a grip on the back of Robby’s nice shirt, probably wrinkling it.
“You know where you’re going?” Robby asked. Dennis searched the hall, hoping for the answer to reveal itself.
“I think it’s somewhere over there…” He nodded over to where a congregation of gowned cohort milled around, helping one another get their caps straight. “Then I need to find out where I’m meant to be sitting, or standing, um… I think I have an email with directions on my phone…”
“You want this?” Robby offered him their copy of the programme. Graduates, this is your moment!
“Keep it.”
“Okay, well, listen,” Robby’s voice was beginning to strain, “I think I’m still gonna take a breather. But you enjoy yourself for me, alright?”
Dennis forced himself to release the back of Robby’s shirt. “I’m sorry it’s so loud.”
As Robby straightened he laughed, “You’re sorry? I think you might be the quietest thing in here.”
As well as the thing that dragged him all the way out here to stand around on his own, putting up with all the noise, waiting around while Dennis—
“Hey.” The trailing of fingers through his hair blinked Dennis out of it. “Want you to know, I couldn’t be happier to be here. Now why don’t you go show all of us what all your hard work was for?”
He wondered briefly if it was too late to graduate in absentia. Dennis could’ve joined Robby out on the steps. Once the ceremony began and it stopped being so crowded, he might’ve even gotten an arm pulling him against Robby’s side, a broad chest to lay his head on.
He’d be participating in a close-held family tradition to not show up to Dennis Whitaker’s graduation.
“I’ll come find you after?” he called up, over the noise.
Robby’s hand found one of his. There were too many people around for him to touch him like that. Attending physicians and the aspirant doctors hoping to get matched to their department were not supposed to hold hands. It could only have meant one thing: Dennis must have looked terrified.
He gave Dennis another warm smile and a brief squeeze before letting him go.
“Can’t wait.”
𓃔 𓃔 𓃔
He was to be one of the last in his class to cross the stage. That came with the territory of being a Whitaker. Occasionally he felt like a finale, but more often it meant he felt a need to apologise.
Sorry everyone, I know it’s been a long day, but we’re on the Ws now, so soon you can all go get a drink. I know, I know you probably wanna get out of here already, but I swear, I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll only be a sec!
Behind him, where they waited in line for the roll call of names to creep down the alphabet, there were only three other students to be called after him. Alannah and Alex Williams, the wonder twins both tipped to be neurosurgeons, and Vivian Zhao, who had her neck bent, eyes on her phone the entire time they stood there, making incremental steps closer towards where the line turned a corner into the ceremony hall, to where one-by-one they went from med students to graduates. A trail of capped heads and gowned shoulders stretched out before them, like someone had dripped black ink along the hallway, or like they were a murder of crows perched on a wire. Gina Ortiz showed her friend her shoes, sticking one foot out from beneath her gown.
“My mom gave me them for today but I’m so nervous that they’re gonna make me trip! So embarrassing. Seriously, I never wear heels.”
It wasn’t until they’d reached the Ns that Dennis could even see the stage. Erica Navarone, Deacon O’Reilly, Devi Prasad. Step forward. Gina’s heels didn’t make her trip, but they clicked loudly over the wooden boards and she gave a small curtsey as she took her scroll. Christopher Ryman. Step forward. A moment in the spotlight, that’s all any of them got. They’d walk up briskly, reaching the Dean of Medicine before their name had even been fully read out, take their scroll, shake a hand, and then they’d be gone again, smiles cast out across the darkened audience, the faces in the crowd obscured. Waves from some, in the general direction of families, but still while walking — no time to linger or bask. A moment. Graduates, this is your moment! But by the time Stephanie Rainsford was halfway between the Dean and the stage left stairs back down to anonymity, Ricky Ramos was already being introduced, and it wasn’t her moment anymore anyway.
It was exactly like he told himself it would be when his mom told them they wouldn’t make it. Could he really go kicking up a stink about this? About sixty cumulative seconds on stage and an announcer reading out his name? All the way from Nebraska? All the way from Broken Bow? It was bad enough pulling Robby out of bed on his day off, making him put on a tie and dress all smart.
Step forward.
All that for this? For him?
It was just a stupid day. In these heavy robes, getting a piece of paper that said he could do what he’d been doing already for months anyway. His job. No need for them all to crowd into the minivan, which didn’t have working AC, drive for days, spend all that money on gas. No need for a night in a hotel, Dad looking for his suit and Mom picking out a dress.
Step forward.
No need for Robby to remember where he put his ties, trim his beard, and spend a whole morning waiting around in a noisy, echoey building to watch his once-resident take forty steps or so and shake someone’s hand. Stupid day, all just ceremony. Stupid Dennis, why’d he let anyone make such a big deal—
“Marco Voss!”
There was nowhere further to step forward to. Behind him, Alannah Williams leant over and said something to her brother. Dennis couldn’t hear what the twins were saying anymore, not over Marco’s thunderous applause.
Oh God.
His stomach lurched. Was the cap on right? The hand that flew up to check knocked it forward, over his brow, its tassel swinging wildly. Dennis couldn’t breathe. He swiped at the tassel and missed. Gina was right, one of them really could get out there and trip over their own feet.
“Dennis Whitaker!”
Had his name ever been said so loud?
Dennis’s jaw dropped open, the tassel, where was the tassel?
A hand on his back, smoothing down his robes, everything getting set back in place. “Go, man, that’s you!” Came Alex Williams’s hissed whisper. “You’re good, go!”
The lights hit the side of his face, immediately warming the apple of his cheek. Watching his own feet for mishaps, he saw how it bounced off of the shiny leather of his dress shoes almost blindingly. But he didn’t need to look at them, his legs carried him confidently over. Step forward, step forward, step forward. He was graduating. Dr. Dennis Whitaker had graduated medical school.
“Congratulations, doctor.”
That was the Dean of Medicine, who was extending one hand for Dennis to shake and at the same time presenting him with his scroll. His scroll.
“Thanks,” Dennis replied, or that’s what he thought he replied. Truly he couldn’t hear his own voice over the echo of applause and the roar in his ears, and he could hardly think over the mental effort it took to make each hand do what it needed to — one to shake and one to take. Right to shake, left to take. No, that would mean he’d be awkwardly crossing his arms and…
Somehow, while his conscious mind spun out, his body once again corrected its course. The Dean’s handshake was firm and dry. For what must’ve been at least his hundredth, he shook Dennis’s twitchy hand with all the intention of someone who had been waiting only for him.
For the first time since he had stepped onto it, Dennis’s face turned outwards from the stage, to where applause crashed over them like a wave. He had graduated. Through debt, though hunger, through cold, through certainty he never would. He’d never have to fight to believe it again. The scroll in his hands felt like the hilt of a sword, the thing he had now forever to brandish against doubt. A physical thing. The real thing. He was the real thing. Dr. Dennis Whitaker.
Head down, step forward, leave the stage. That was the moment — it was supposed to be over. But Dennis stole a second more. With a smile beginning to make its way across his face he held the scroll, two hands around it, aloft. He held it up for everyone to see it. A beacon.
The black robe slipped down his arms, the fabric gathering in the crooks of his elbows. In the lights, Robby’s cufflinks gleamed.
𓃔 𓃔 𓃔
“Robby! Look!”
He’d spotted the back of his blue shirt between bodies and called out, starting to weave, ducking and bobbing through the crowd. Robby hadn’t heard him, Dennis could see his head turning, surveying the masses without spotting Dennis.
“Robby!”
Then he was racing towards the man, charging through the chaotic swirl of people with his scroll held out in front of him. Robby heard him that second time, he was turning around, his arms going out at his sides. Dennis laughed as they collided, faceplanting into Robby’s shoulder and grinning so widely his face hurt. Then warm, protective arms came around him and Dennis did the impossible, what he was sure was impossible: he felt himself grow even happier.
If anyone had what it took to diminish what Dennis held, the scroll he kept tightly in his grip, it would be the man he was flinging his arms around. There Dennis was, waving around this glorified piece of paper to who else but Dr. Michael Robinavitch — department chair of what must’ve been one of the busiest emergency departments in the state, who saved a dozen lives nearly every day of the week. If his achievements were still measured in scrolls of handshakes, Robby would have a hundred of them. He'd have a thousand. So many that Dennis could’ve easily plucked one from his collection and held it up as his own and Robby wouldn’t even notice. If anyone could shrug it off, it was Robby.
But Robby was just as ecstatic as him. He was sweeping Dennis into a tight, bone-crushing hug; Dennis burying his face deep into his favourite attending’s warmth.
“I’m so, so proud of you,” Robby whispered from above him. Somehow, without the room getting any quieter, Dennis heard him.
“I did it,” he replied, and though all those people around them knew it to be true, watched it happen even if by the time they reached his name they were checking their phones, he said this into Robby’s ear like it was something for them alone.
“You sure did.” The arms around Dennis released, but they didn’t leave him alone entirely before Robby, with an attractive glint of mischief in his eyes, flicked the corner of Dennis’s cap and almost sent it off his head. “Success suits you, kid,” he said.
Dennis could have kissed him then. In front of everyone, he didn’t care. He could do anything, it really felt like he could do anything. People would stare and he’d let them stare. People would wonder and he’d let them wonder. People would judge and he’d let them do that too. He found his eyes on Robby’s mouth and put his hand to his own lips as they tingled in anticipation of it, like they were being pulled magnetically towards where a silver threaded beard would rub hot against his own chin. Graduate, this is your moment.
“How was it up on stage?” Robby asked, and the moment passed.
“It was weird,” Dennis told him with a shrug. He cast his tongue briefly over his own lips as a consolation, but that was never enough. A lot of the things he used to do to satisfy himself hadn’t been the same since Robby gave him that look that night after they played pool. “It was like for a second I forgot how to walk.”
Robby chuckled. He started saying something else, but that’s when something behind him caught Dennis’s attention. Alex Williams. The guy placed his hand on Dennis for what couldn’t have been any longer than a second, but without it, he’d probably still be standing there, looking out at the stage in total petrification.
He shot an apologetic glance upward. “I’m sorry, but could you wait a sec?” Nodding over to Alex he explained, “I gotta go thank that guy for something real quick, I’ll be back!”
“Absolutely, go,” was Robby’s game reply, “this thing’s about celebrating with your friends, take as long as you need.”
Truly, Dennis didn’t want to spend any longer away from Robby’s side than absolutely necessary, but he went anyway, dashing over.
“Alex! Hey. Thanks for… thanks for getting me outta my own head back there.”
Turns out Alex Williams was a pretty chill guy. So was his sister when she joined them, and then Gina was there too and Dennis was telling her her shoes looked great and five minutes had passed. Ricky, Stephanie, their group grew into a forum of exam cramming horror stories, rotation gossip, and nervous chatter about residencies. Then ten minutes had passed. There was so much to talk about now, with their futures unfurling before them like the sun rising in a wide open sky. What would happen next? Where would they go? Maybe they’d be the doctors to change the world.
He hadn’t forgotten Robby though. Every few minutes, Dennis would turn guiltily to where he waited patiently and hold up two fingers. Robby simply shook his head, standing quite contentedly. The crowd around them was finally starting to thin out by then.
“Is that… Is that Dr. Robby?” Someone in the group asked. Dennis’s head whipped around to try to identify the source. “Yeah, I think I did my EM rotation with that guy standing over there. Robinavitch? From Pittsburgh Trauma?”
“U-uh…” Dennis started, the prospect of being stared at, wondered about, and judged suddenly way too real.
Over where he stood waiting, however, Robby was making friends too. One of the parents, someone’s dad, Dennis hadn’t a clue whose, had sidled up to him.
“Kids,” the dad said, with a disbelieving laugh. “I guess they aren’t kids anymore. Can you believe it? I swear, yesterday I was putting band-aids on boo-boos and today he’s a doctor.”
“Yup,” Robby agreed, “an impressive bunch.”
“One of these yours?”
Uh-oh. Dennis spun around so fast his robes flew out around him, a black plumage, and a hand up on his cap to keep it steady. His mouth was already open to make the correction.
No, he’s not my dad, he’s my boss. No, he’s not my dad, he’s my mentor. No, he’s not my dad, he’s my friend. No, he’s not my dad, he’s the man who gave me purpose. No, he’s not my dad, he’s the man who made me believe in things again. No, he’s not my dad, he’s the man who made me believe in myself. No, he’s not my dad, he’s the reason I made it here. No, he’s not my dad, he’s the person who made me. No, he’s not my dad, he’s just the only person who showed up.
No, he’s not my dad, he’s the guy I’m sleeping with.
“Yeah. Him.”
He turned at just the moment to see him say it. Robby took the question, one of these yours? in stride. He didn't even falter. The pleasure and pride of his answer deepened the smile lining his face as he nodded in Dennis’s direction.
“Dennis,” Robby said. “He’s mine.”
𓃔 𓃔 𓃔
“I tell you how proud of you I am yet?”
With how many times Robby had said it that day alone, yeah, Dennis was pretty sure they both knew that he had. It was a tease, a joking murmur that tickled the skin below his ear as Robby asked against his neck. He still meant it. Every time he said it, it had been with enough sincerity to make Dennis ache. Hearing it again, how proud of you I am, Dennis’s head fell back, bumping against the wall in Robby’s entryway, where he was being held up with his legs wrapped around Robby’s middle, gasping between ravenous kisses on his lips, face, throat and neck.
“Hm?” Robby prompted, mouthing at the hollow of Dennis’s throat. “You finally ready to admit I’m right about how special you are?”
“I just… I just graduated,” Dennis panted, the hands gripping the cushioning of his ass evaporating all intelligent thought out of his head.
“Yeah, which means you’re only getting started,” Robby contended. He sounded so sure it made Dennis dizzy, ready to give himself over entirely to this man who seemed to know everything — knew his body better than Dennis himself, knew what he wanted. Knew what he needed. He wanted Robby to know everything. He wanted him to pry bloodied hands open and see the things Dennis spent a lifetime hurting to hide and still say all these things, kiss the wounds until Dennis drenched him. If Robby really did know everything, then he knew Dennis and he still took him to his chest and kissed him tenderly, thought all those things and seemingly never ran out of ways to say them.
Robby! Look!
Perhaps Dennis wasn’t as good at secrets as he thought.
When he rejoined Robby, bashful after his quick thanks to Alex Williams had turned into an almost twenty minute long affair, Robby didn’t display an ounce of irritation at being kept waiting. “Lunch?” He asked. “I know a nice place and I think this calls for a drink.”
Instead of their usual whiskey, the woody taste of which Dennis had started to inextricably link with clandestine hookups on Robby’s couch, they shared wine. White wine, which was paired to go with the lobster that Dennis had at Robby’s behest.
“You have the lobster and I won’t feel so crazy for getting a steak,” he reasoned as he watched Dennis waver between his true desire and some of the humbler options on the menu. “Come on, kid, we’re celebrating!”
It was the first time they’d been alone together outside of Robby’s apartment since that night two months ago, when Dennis had shown his boss his uncanny ability to only pot the white. With the restaurant window casting the brightness of a May afternoon across their faces, it occurred to Dennis that they’d almost never seen one another in sunlight.
“You know, someone recognised you back there,” Dennis told him once the wine had him brave enough to say it with a challenging raise of his eyebrows. A glass prior, it had given him the courage to hook an ankle around Robby’s leg under the table.
“Oh yeah?” They were between entrees and dessert. “Well, don’t I feel like a celebrity?”
“It was one of your other med students. I couldn’t figure out who.”
“Ah, one of my other med students…” Robby smirked, appearing entirely unbothered by the revelation. “I’ve had a lot of those, I'll admit.”
“You don’t think it’s a problem? I mean, they were telling literally everyone.”
“There’s no prohibition against me attending graduations to support students, Whitaker.”
It wasn’t a joke, in fact, he said it quite seriously, but Dennis still bit out a “Huh.” Something close to a chuckle to disguise his aversion to the way Robby put it so bluntly. A teacher supporting his student was all it was. So the fucking, did that factor into the equation, or…?
That was the moment their dessert arrived. Two scoops of sorbet, mango and raspberry in one glass dish, delivered with two spoons. They thanked their server in unison.
“This, though,” Robby picked up his wine glass and used it to gesture to them both before taking a sip. “This is different.”
Different. That was something Dennis could get on board with. You’re different, Whitaker. You’re special. He smiled at the gleaming, vividly coloured balls of sorbet already starting to melt between them.
“I did warn you,” he pointed out. “I told you this wouldn’t be subtle.”
“There’s nothing subtle about my feelings for you, kid,” Robby volleyed back, and it was with a small mouthful of the mango sorbet on his spoon that he leant a few inches across the table and held it to Dennis’s lips. “Open.”
He needed to learn to be subtle. Maybe they both did. But Robby had taken them to a restaurant further out of town than most of the other celebrating families would be willing to roam. They could’ve been anyone. It made it too easy to do as Robby did: wave consequence away in favour of the fantasy in which liking each other enough made it so nothing else mattered.
Dennis took the spoonful. Tart, slightly floral, delicious. So many beautiful things in one day.
After they finished, when Dennis returned from the bathroom, Robby was already standing. The check had been taken care of. He’d called a cab.
“How’d you like to come back to my place so I can celebrate with you a little longer?”
They’d made it about three steps into the apartment before Robby was putting him to the wall. “You looked so fucking beautiful today, kid,” he rasped as they parted, that hungry kiss fantasised about as Dennis stood looking at him in his gown finally taken.
Robby’s shirt was already ruined with the way Dennis snatched at him, every attempt one of them made to pull away cut short by the other pulling him back in. Dennis gasped when he was lifted, his chief’s elbows hooking under his knees and putting him where Dennis could show him his throat; make mewling pleas with that mouth still on him.
“Robby…” his scroll was in one hand, the other at the back of Robby’s head to keep him close enough for breath to warm his skin. He could feel the hardening thickness of Robby’s fat cock through his slacks and wriggled for more of it, his own arousal starting to pulse between his legs.
Then, finally Robby asked, “I tell you how proud of you I am yet?” and Dennis fell apart a little in his arms. He could let himself fall apart when Robby was around. There, with his mentor keeping him upright, Dennis could just melt.
“Did you catch my standing ovation when you walked the stage?”
Dennis laughed, his forehead going to rest against Robby’s shoulder as he felt himself turn pink, his cheeks warming like he was on that stage all over again, under the heat of those lights. “You didn’t…”
“‘Course I did.” A firm peck on Dennis’s temple. “You think I was gonna let any of those other people watching leave that place not knowing who I was there for? Think I’d let them leave without making sure they all knew how amazing you are?”
“You didn’t.”
“Better believe it, baby boy. I did.”
And what harm would it do to believe him? What would Dennis lose by letting go of his certainty that it was out of a weird sense of obligation, a strange penance for screwing his med student that made Robby come along today? Why did it make him gasp, his chest feeling like it was about to cave in to entertain that Robby… That Robby might’ve stood, that he might’ve thrown his hands in the air and cheered, that he might’ve…
The next kiss Dennis took was frantic, a crushing of lips to try and ease whatever it was that had him suddenly feeling he was fit to burst. All he managed was a whine of approval when Robby’s response came in the way he pushed his tongue invasively far into Dennis's mouth, forceful and indelicate. A deep, rolling kiss. A kiss to make him see stars.
Dennis’s head fell back against the wall, knocking with a loud thud but he didn’t care, nothing left in that skull of his made any coherent sense by then anyway. That didn’t stop Robby from making a sorry, sympathetic, “Ohhh…” then, whispering, “Sweetheart, be careful.”
Dennis only looked at him, a kiss-bitten lip between his teeth, his core starting to cramp with how he tried to hump in midair against where their bodies were connected.
“You wanna take this to the bedroom, kiddo?”
“Please.”
Dennis held tight as he was carried, locking his ankles at the base of Robby’s back and winding his arms around his shoulders, but there wasn’t an iota of concern in him for how he was taken across the apartment. He wouldn’t fall. Robby knew how to take care of him.
Robby himself reminded Dennis of this as he lowered him down onto the bed: “That’s it, I got you. I’ll take care of you, sweet boy. I’m sorry you knocked your head, honey, but I’m gonna make it all better, alright? You gonna let me take your clothes off and kiss you all better?”
Take his clothes off, yeah… kissed better all over his body… Take his clothes…
Wait.
It hit him suddenly enough to make Dennis startle.
“Wait!”
He sat up straight so fast he almost whacked his head again, this time off of Robby above him, one knee up on the bed about to climb on over Dennis.
“Wait a minute,” he said again, a hand on the centre of Robby’s chest. The sudden turn had surprised them both, Robby fell away at the lightest push, stumbling back.
“Are you—” Concern creased Robby’s brow as he watched his young student spring purposefully back to his feet. “Whita— Dennis, what’s going on? Talk to me.”
“Your cufflinks.”
“What about them?”
Dennis had taken one off, his sleeve cuff gone loose around his wrist. He held the cufflink in his cupped palm carefully, like he was holding a butterfly or some equally delicate thing. A snowflake.
“I gotta give them back to you, before I forget or lose them or something.”
Gingerly, he placed the cufflink on the top of Robby’s dresser and began to unclasp the second. It was difficult with his non-dominant hand. “Just give me a sec… Let me…”
“Whitaker.” Robby’s arms slipped around him from behind, starting to mouth at the side of his head and couldn’t he tell how distracting that was? Made turning and pressing into his mentor’s chest all he wanted to do, but, God forbid, if he lost these things…
“Whitaker, they’re yours.”
His fingers stilled where he fiddled with his sleeve. He looked at the one on the dresser, at how it shimmered in the afternoon light of Robby’s bedroom.
“That’s…”
He could only turn and watch as Robby produced the box again.
“I can’t take them.”
Robby gave him a wry smile. “Whitaker, I’m not sure if you noticed, but I don’t have any kids.”
“But they’re yours!” Dennis insisted. “They’re your great, great…”
“And they were passed down to my grandmother,” Robby carried on for him with a nod, “and then to me. I got them on my sixteenth birthday. I think I’ve held onto them long enough.”
“But what if there’s someone else?” Like Jake, or like one of his other med students, a better one, one who wasn’t him. “How do you know—”
“Now they’re coming to you.” He unclasped the second cufflink from Dennis’s shirt for him and slotted it back into its box. Once the second of the pair had joined the first, he snapped it shut and held it up between them. “I can’t think of anyone I’d like more to have them. Feels right.”
It took a moment longer for Dennis to realise the box was being held up for him to take, for the transfer of ownership to be completed. Halfway up, he faltered, hand withdrawing the moment the backs of his fingers brushed against the velvet of the case, but Robby was unmoving. Whether or not feels right was a sentiment Dennis agreed with, he couldn’t decide, but until he took them, the cufflinks were Robby’s, and it was for Robby to choose what was to become of them.
He took the box, put it on the dresser next to his scroll. The number of things in Robby’s bedroom that belonged to Dennis had just increased by a very large percentage. The scroll, the cufflinks…
“Thank you, baby, now come here. Let me get my hands back on you.”
Robby was loosening his tie, the top two buttons on his shirt already popped open. Dennis took a step towards him, but it wasn’t enough. Robby’s head tilted to one side as he freed himself at last of his tie by pulling it out from his collar with one single, smooth motion of his arm. Then, before Dennis could say a thing about it, it was looped around his shoulders and yanked hard enough to bring him flush against Robby’s chest. That was all it took for the easy warmth of relief to quiet the way his mind spun, like tires in the mud. Getting nowhere fast, but someone had dropped a brick on the accelerator.
One strong tug with Robby’s tie, and the futility of thinking was revealed to him. This was how Dennis liked it best: with as much chance of overpowering Robby as a captured butterfly has of escaping its pins. Liked it best with both of his wrists forced into place above his head by the unyielding grip of just one of Robby’s hands, or pushed into the mattress with Robby’s broader, larger body caging him there. Liked it best shoved against the wall, with his legs hoisted up, his own body confiscated and handed over to someone more capable. Robby knew what to do with him. All Dennis had to do was take it.
This is what made his lips part, made his eyes go half-hooded, pupils fattening and cheeks colouring. It was a thing Robby knew too, so he displayed no hesitation in roughly pushing Dennis down onto the bed, or in climbing over and claiming that small, pink mouth without giving his young friend even a second to catch his breath. The dexterous fingers that were occupied this morning with fixing Dennis’s tie knot were now undoing all their work. Then it was each button, the movements quick and skilful, and he was telling Dennis what was about to happen to him as he pinched and teased the reddening bead of one of his nipples, by then revealed beneath an open shirt.
“Gonna get you all nice and undressed for me,” he held Dennis’s head close, forcing him to feel the scratch of beard against the top of his cheek, the heat of his words; forcing him to hear them, “so I can see your pretty body, then I’m gonna take my time opening you up, sweet boy, because you know how much I love seeing you on my fingers.”
Dennis’s head went heavy and limp. Robby kept it in place. He wasn’t finished, though he did pause to take the shell of Dennis’s ear between his teeth. A light nip was all that was needed to light Dennis up, his legs falling open, his lower half starting to squirm.
“Does that sound good?” Robby cooed, his arm snaking between them to pet and fondle where Dennis strained against his pants. “You showed all of us how clever you are today, couldn’t stop thinking about touching you, showing everyone who this lovely, clever boy belongs to. ‘Cause you’re all mine aren’t you? Just wanna make you feel good, beautiful, just wanna keep you all to myself with your pretty noises, keep you sweet on my fingers ‘til I get to hear you beggin’ for my cock.”
If Robby said it would happen, it would. In this room, what Robby said, went. It was perfect; the turmoil of everything receding and becoming so simple. He didn’t need the degree sitting over by the cufflinks on the dresser for this. Robby would tell him what to do, guide him until he got it. Like that, he’d tell Dennis how to hold himself open, get him to put his lips around the ruddy head of his mentor’s cock just right, help him out of his clothes and teach him what parts of himself to show off. In return, Dennis would get to feel the warmth of his chief, his liferaft incarnate, descending upon him. He’d be so good as to let Dennis cling to him.
And so it was.
It was exactly as he promised: Robby lay, propped up against his pillows, reclining like some ancient king. Pantless, but only so the heavy, thick cock, hard in his briefs, wouldn't hurt confined in his slacks. His shirt, unbuttoned only enough to reveal the flash of gold and the tempting creep of dark chest hair, remained. The total nakedness of the young doctor draped over him was made all the more agonisingly obvious by this. The king’s lithe consort, kept secure in place by one strong arm around the narrowest part of his waist. Held like that, Robby steadied his boy’s wriggles and writhes; made it so any ambitions towards modesty were defeated before they could even begin.
The arm that wasn’t wrapped around his waist reached down the length of his back. Two thick lube-soaked fingers had found a lazy, unhurried rhythm to take him apart to, easing in just past the second knuckle then slowly withdrawing, slow enough for Robby to feel every twitch of his boy's needy hole, every spasm of his rim. Dennis’s cock, weeping in its neglect, pressed into the soft pillow of Robby’s belly, soaking his shirt a darker shade of blue.
“That’s it, just feel it, sweetheart. Got all the time in the world — all this time to show you how precious you are. Feel me opening you up? Feel how bad this hole wants to take me? Does it feel good, baby? Nice and full?”
So held, so safe, and so Robby’s.
One of these yours?
Yeah. Him.
Like this, whimpering into Robby’s shoulder, it was truer than ever. Robby’s. Oh, he was Robby’s.
It happened to Ezekiel too. On the cusp of his calling, for Ezekiel, the clouds of heaven parted and he saw Him — his Father — and what his own devotion was made of. In Robby’s bed, through his fog of desire, it came upon Dennis too; that same gift of sight. It made him moan, his earthly body in heavenly accord as he arched, shuddered back onto Robby’s fingers, every nerve ending sparking to life. Oh, God, God, he—
He couldn’t.
But, Lord, he couldn’t lie any longer.
“Da… Mmh…”
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
He’d tried to stop it, but it was too late. Dennis bit down hard on his lower lip, eyes shutting tight as those thick fingers moved agonisingly slowly inside of him. Fuck, fuck. All because of that stupid question that guy asked, and the way Robby answered. The way he smiled and how he nodded over and the way he said he’s mine.
“You tryna call me daddy, sweetheart?” Robby asked, softly teasing, and Dennis’s hand flew to his shirt, taking a handful of it and risking snapping a button as he clung… clung to his…
“It’s alright, I can be your daddy”
Daddy…
The reaction was immediate, the quake of shame and pleasure, the two of them hot and all-consuming. He felt himself go tight around Robby’s fingers, and heard his own gasp. Tearful. The first sob was a release not unlike an orgasm — something beyond pleasure, beyond words. But rather than turning his desperate writhing on Robby’s fingers into something with the prickle of too much, his need for Robby grew into something he could choke on. His mouth opened and closed as the word slipped through the most guarded parts of his psyche and pressed against one of his more ragged wounds. Daddy.
With his free hand, Robby was pulling Dennis’s head in close. He let him cry, let that first heaving sob collapse into a series of smaller ones, like ripples. Hot, salty tears had already soaked through his nice shirt. Daddy.
“‘m sorry, Robby,” he wept. “Sorry…” He whimpered as his entrance began to feel the pleasant burn of a third finger. His greedy hole was already pulling him in, clenching. Daddydaddydaddy.
Robby’s voice sank to a gentle murmur. When one of the round, hot tears fell, he thumbed it away. “Hey, hey, shh, shh… It’s alright. I can be your daddy. That’s it, sweet boy.”
By then, he barely needed to move, Dennis fucked himself on his daddy’s hand all on his own, hips finally finding a rhythmic pace. His open mouthed cries, both of pleasure and of something he couldn’t explain, made for strange half-choked moans.
“Ohh—! Nngh—! Da… Robby… Please, inside me, deeper, da…” He swallowed it down, another strangled cry as Robby stroked his hair and opened him up with crooking fingers against his prostate.
Robby’s grip on his chin then, and with a whimper, Dennis was pulled out of where he tried to hide in the warmth of Robby’s neck. Cheeks wet and pink, tears clung to his eyelashes. His mouth hung open, he couldn’t close it, not without this shaky descent into tears bursting with the wobbling of his lower lip. Not without all hell breaking loose and Dennis becoming a flood of tears, need, and everything kept closely guarded to sweep them both away.
Those lovely brown eyes, they looked upon his redrimmed watery ones so kindly. The lines beside them weren’t much younger than Dennis himself, but they were deepening in affection just for him. Robby smeared the tears on Dennis’s right cheek away. More would come, but Robby had no intentions to stop his weepy little boy from crying. If he did, he wouldn’t have pushed his wet thumb into Dennis’s mouth and asked, “Am I your daddy, Dennis? Did you graduate with your daddy today?”
Yes, oh God, yes.
“Daddy, ohh, daddy, it feels so good—” As Robby's thumb slipped from between his lips, trailing wetness from his eyes and from his mouth down his chin, Dennis’s jaw snapped open and clamped shut. Robby’s skilful stroking over his prostate made him able to do nothing but grip the front of his once-nicely pressed blue shirt. His eyes were wide, but they saw nothing but stars, everything spinning. “Gonna come, daddy, sorry, I can’t—”
“You can come, baby, it’s alright. Daddy’s got you, let it all out. Daddy's taking care of you.”
So real, so true, because Dennis was more of Robby than he had ever been of Jim Whitaker.
He cried so hard it hurt as he arched onto Robby’s hand, so deep his whole body went like a stringed bow: taut, close to buckling and breaking, thrumming with too much tension. So tight, so… so…
You win, Father, Dennis thought, a fleeting moment of clarity. You got it all out of me eventually. From him, I have nothing left to hide.
Losing it all, crumbling, lapsing, falling to pieces… none of it ever felt so sweet. So safe. Safe in daddy’s arms.
Even as he came hard enough for his ears to ring, Dennis asked for more, please more. Begged to be filled more, to be plugged up with the hard, leaking dick still tantalisingly concealed beneath black briefs. He needed to be closer — tucked up against daddy’s chest and full of his cock.
“That’s right…” Robby was groaning, answering pleas that Dennis was barely ludic making, palming his clothed hardness where it tented his underwear. He gently urged Dennis’s hand down from his tear stained shirt and over where he pulsed. “Would you like to show your daddy where this belongs, sweetheart?”
When Dennis only answered with a blustering cry and a nod, taking the shape of that thick shaft in his hand through the cotton, cupping the heavy sack of his balls, Robby simply traced a finger over where a loop of Dennis’s curls stuck to his skin on the side of his brow and asked, “Hm?”
“Yes, daddy.”
“That’s my good boy.”
There was no denying it longer. Not to God, not to himself, and certainly not to Robby. His daddy. The man who always knew what he needed became what he needed most of all. Or, no, perhaps he never became anything. He always was. This is where it was always leading.
He had met Robby kinless and roofless, the world open above his head, exposed and vulnerable to all of it. His ties of blood had thinned, petered out and left him empty. Not enough to sustain that red connective thread across so many states — Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois... Not enough to carry over so many versions of him — doctor, lamb mother, starving boy…
Not enough to last across the hills and valleys of so many secrets. What the secrets bled from him was not theirs. For so long, it was no one’s. Now these were Robby’s wounds to lick. Thank goodness Dennis found someone who knew how to suture.
Robby was the shelter under which he grew. He was Robby’s. He wanted to be Robby’s. Wanted to belong, to be of him.
“That’s it, stay with me.” It was murmured against his ear as Dennis’s head lolled back against the pillows as Robby’s generous frame came over him. His shirt was finally gone, allowing Dennis to fondle his bare chest, wrap around and hug their naked bodies together.
“Want you so bad, daddy.” And he could hear his own voice well enough, but it was hard at first to recognise the broken want in it. He’d never felt so small, never safe enough to be so small since… since a long, long time ago.
His legs were spread, Robby’s large hand gripping the underside of one limp thigh so he could ease himself past the dusky pink of his boy’s rim, hole prepped but still tight enough to make the older doctor hiss, the sound mellowing into a low groan as he sunk deeper, his lubed cock pushing into where he knew would take him.
“Feel me?” He asked as he rocked against Dennis, inching, agonisingly inching towards bottoming out and making Dennis full of him. His deep, confident gravel had lost some of its sureness, going ragged at the edges as he felt that rim hug him, but Dennis still hung off his every word, “Feel me deep inside— oh fuck— fuck, you feel so good, Dennis. Can you feel that? Feel how much I need you?”
A pitched moan as Dennis keened into him. The slipperiness of his earlier spill, still in smears across his stomach, put a slickness between their bodies as he wound each leg around Robby’s middle again.
“Making daddy feel so good, honey, taking me real well.” He sounded urgent as he began to thrust, the slap of his balls a chorus to their shared need, as well as the wet smacks of kisses shared between moans and heavy breathing. It seemed now that with every exhalation that left his mouth, Dennis’s lips were forming the word.
“Daddy,” his slurred whisper, “daddy, please, daddy, want you to… wanna feel…”
Robby’s forehead pressed to his, feverishly hot and damp, their faces close enough that when he blinked, Dennis could feel the fluttering against his own eyelashes. He cupped his baby boy’s face, the frantic pace of his thrusting letting up and slowing, and for a moment he was still, his cock fully sheathed and staying that way.
“Fuck,” he swore, “I could stay like this forever.”
Dennis pressed against his hand, hoping this conveyed what he couldn’t in words. That yes, forever, stay like this forever. The legs hooked around Robby’s thick torso clung tighter, pushing daddy’s cock all the way to the root, coarse hair meeting the underside of Dennis’s thighs.
“Oh is that right?” Robby asked, taking one earlobe for a teasing bite. “You asking for my load?”
The desire to feel himself pumped full was too great to say he was wrong. The steady back and forth resumed, the perfect, spine-tingling warmth of Dr. Robby’s thrusting brought out a pleased hum. The movement rubbed Dennis’s twitching cock between their bodies too and Dennis knew it — he was done for. His daddy was about to take him apart again and lay it all bare. Dennis would unspool himself, give it all up, trusting the careful, attentive way Robby would put him back together again.
And he did. As he lost his mind again, painting both of their bellies a second time, this time at the sensation of the growl vibrating against his throat and at the wet heat of spend as Robby emptied himself deep enough inside that Dennis momentarily forgot how to breathe, Robby caught him. He was whispering, words sliding over Dennis without comprehension but Dennis fell into them all the same. The rumble of his voice was enough, that sweetened, soothing tone reserved just for his favourite student. Just like the cufflinks. Just like the tie and the shirt. Just like the cheering, the standing ovation and the he’s mine.
He kissed him back around, only on the cheeks and the forehead, a few peppered along the jaw, letting his young thing breathe. Able to rise on shaking legs first, though still with a stumbling kind of gait, Robby was the one to bring through a wash cloth. Warm but not hot — just right for the tender dabbing that left Dennis clean. He murmured patient responses to his boy’s babbling, until daddy became Robby again, by which point he was curled up at Robby’s side, the two of them under the blankets. Dennis had never stayed under the haziness this long — the strange, punch-drunk stupor that always came over him after the force of nature known as Michael Robinavitch had had his way with him. This time, Dennis remained, still floppy and pliant and sleeptalking even as Robby brought him in close and positioned him against his side, a cool glass of water at the bedside for when he was ready for it.
“Was that really weird?”
“Hm?”
Robby had started reading by then, enough light left in the day to do so without a lamp. His books were always dogeared, spines lined and cracked, like they’d been read a hundred times already. He tended to fold the front cover back so he could read one-handed. The smell of paper seemed more prominent that way. Dennis tracked his eyes over a few of the lines on Robby’s open page. It was then that he also realised he’d been crying again.
Dennis swallowed. “That. All of it.” Then, because he was sure that it was weird — sure that it was devastatingly, sign him up to see a professional kind of weird, he added, “I’m sorry, it was just… a really intense day.”
The book went down, pages first onto the floor next to the bed, which is how Dennis knew he was in for a talking to.
“Kid, knowing you has been one of the greatest honours…” he hesitated and Dennis shut his eyes for impact. This was the start to a it’s not you, it’s me conversation, if ever there was one.
Then Robby continued, “One of the greatest honours, one of the most special things, and if you think that’s how you get rid of me, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Sometimes Dennis was afraid. He saw it now and then, though Robby clearly thought or pretended he didn’t. Saw Robby flicker, like a flame dancing in the wind. His own hands were too small to cup around it. He’d tried, but it felt so much like he made no difference at all.
“What’re you reading?”
He held the book cover where Dennis could see. John Williams, Stoner. Then, as if appraising it for the first time himself, Robby looked at the cover too and frowned thoughtfully. “You know, the first time I read this I was a little older than you are now. The words are the same, but they’re different. I must be different. I must’ve changed. It’s funny, I never even noticed.”
It was funny — Dennis, curled up at his side, had been ruminating too. Both of them were looking back over the twenty years spent before they’d known the other existed, but as Robby thought about how much he'd changed, Dennis was realising how much he was the same.
If he couldn’t save Robby, maybe he could make him see how badly he needed Robby to save himself.
So he pushed himself deeper into the space created for him by his mentor’s side, laid his head back on his chest and stayed there.
“Could you read to me for a little while?”
Robby! Look!
And keep looking.
And keep looking.
And keep looking.