Chapter Text
Robby thinks it’s some weird sign from the universe, all the stuff he and Dennis have in common. They like a lot of the same music and movies; they’ve read a lot of the same books; and they can have hours of conversation meandering from topic to topic without Robby becoming bored. Dennis is smart and interesting and not at all like most of the twenty-somethings Robby has interacted with in the last fifteen years.
Robby is human, and a man—a weak man, some would say—so it’s not like he hasn’t slept with younger people as he’s aged. He knows that he’s not unattractive, and it helps that he’s a successful doctor earning an impressive salary. Even as he gets older, people in their twenties and thirties seem to stay interested, and he’s not going to turn down attractive offers when they arise. Again—he’s only human.
So hooking up with Dennis seemed mostly normal, except for the working-together thing, at first. But now Robby knows that Dennis is actually pretty different. In good ways. All the best ways. Ways that make Robby want to cling to him as hard as he possibly can. It’s a little odd but mostly fucking amazing, the way that Dennis makes Robby feel, how perfectly they seem to fit. Robby thinks it’s the weirdest coincidence in the world that they found each other. He doesn’t know how he got so lucky.
**
Robby tells him, one afternoon, when they’re sitting together on the couch, sharing a day off. It’s rare and wonderful, legs tangled together, Robby reading a book while Dennis focuses on a medical journal. And Robby looks up at one point and just stares at him, stuck in a sort of awe.
“You’re different from anyone I’ve ever…” He hesitates as Dennis looks up at him, eyes wide. “I didn’t think it was going to be like this. With you.”
Dennis’ mouth twitches into a half-smile. “Is that a good thing?”
“A very good thing,” Robby says. “I think.”
“Okay,” Dennis says with a nod, poking Robby’s thigh with a friendly toe. “Good.”
They fall back into their companionable silence.
A couple of minutes later, Dennis lifts his head again and asks, “What did you think it was going to be like?”
Robby allows himself a momentary (and internal, invisible) wince. He should have known Dennis would pick up on that. He tries not to let his embarrassment show as he says, “You know. People your age—they want to go to clubs and bars and be with other young people.”
“We go to bars,” Dennis says.
“We go to gay bars,” Robby corrects him. “That’s different.”
“Sure,” Dennis laughs. “If you say so. You know lots of people your age do that stuff too. I think it’s less about the age and more about us just being, like, compatible.”
Robby can’t fight off the grin that settles on his face. He agrees, clearly. The age thing is really unimportant when they’re clearly just—right for each other. He’s going to say so, just agree and move on, but then Dennis keeps talking.
“My last boyfriend always wanted to go out and do that stuff,” Dennis says. And then, not what Robby expected, “He was about your age.”
“What?” Robby says, automatically.
Dennis shrugs, nods, not even looking up from the journal in his hands. “Yeah, it’s a big part of why we broke up—I was too busy with school and exhausted all the time, so I wasn’t trying to spend time in clubs.”
Robby’s still stuck on one particular detail: “He was my age?”
Dennis hums, finally looking up with a thoughtful expression, as if doing math in his head. “Hm, I guess a little younger. He was born in 1975.”
“How’d you meet?”
“Grindr.” Dennis gives him a sheepish look. “I don’t use it anymore. I deleted it when we got together. For the record.”
Robby really doesn’t care about that. Or, he does, but he had already assumed that Dennis had gotten rid of his various dating apps so that’s not really the part that’s holding his attention. “So I’m not the first older guy you’ve been with,” he says.
Dennis laughs a little. Also not what Robby was expecting.
“No,” Dennis says with a smirk, “you’re not the first.”
“The second?”
Dennis tilts his head, examining him. His smile has faltered a little but not entirely disappeared. “Not the second,” he says. “You want me to count?”
“Kind of,” Robby admits.
He thought—he thought Dennis settled easily in their relationship because of their bond. It hadn’t occurred to him that maybe Dennis is used to relationships like this, relationships with settled, older men, who have real jobs, bad backs, and gray in their beards. It hadn’t occurred to him that he was simply Dennis’ type.
“I’ve had two serious boyfriends over forty-five,” Dennis tells him. “And a couple not-so-serious. You’re not even the oldest guy I’ve dated.”
That is kind of startling. “I’m nearly sixty,” Robby protests.
Dennis scoffs. “Don’t be dramatic.”
Fifty-five is pretty close to sixty, Robby thinks. He’s not being unreasonable, not really. “Who was he?” Robby asks, even though he’s not sure he wants to know.
Dennis gives him a look, one he can’t quite parse. It’s…uncertain and a little uncomfortable and it seems like maybe he really doesn’t want to answer the question. Which is another troubling sign.
“Den,” Robby says.
“It’s not like it was illegal or anything!” Dennis says with a huff. “When I was twenty I had, like, a little sort of fling with one of my professors. He was in his sixties, although you couldn’t tell just by looking at him.”
“Your professor?”
“Cool it with the judgmental tone,” Dennis warns, narrowing his gaze at Robby. “Or did you forget that you’re my boss?”
Robby does, sometimes, forget that. He tries pretty hard not to think about it actually, because he’s pretty sure doing so will only lead to some kind of spiral, which will end badly for both of them no matter what. (He doesn’t want to break up. He doesn’t want either of them to leave their jobs. It’s a stalemate he has not yet figured out how to address.)
“You asked,” Dennis reminds him, relaxing again as his eyes move back to his reading material. “Do you want me to ask you how many med students you’ve hooked up with?”
Robby bites the inside of his mouth. In fairness, the number is higher than it should be. He never slept with someone who was actively his student at the time, but that’s probably not meaningful enough to argue over.
“So you like that I’m young,” Dennis says, with a familiar smirk, “and I like that you’re not. That doesn’t seem like a problem to me. Is it a problem for you?”
Robby doesn’t have to think about it very hard. “No,” he says, because it’s true. The fact that Dennis wants him at all is the opposite of a problem. “No problem.”
“Good,” Dennis says. “Let me finish this article and then we can go take advantage of my youth a couple times if you want.”
Robby reaches out, puts a hand on Dennis’ thigh and squeezes. “Sure,” he agrees. That sounds good to him.
**
He does think about it later. Maybe a lot.
The realization isn’t great inasmuch as forces him to reevaluate the assumptions he’s made about their relationship. But it’s also not the end of the world. Obviously. Being Dennis’ type is, overall, a good thing because Robby wants him, and that’s really all that matters. So they want each other and Robby isn’t going to question what exactly makes Dennis want him. Gift horse and all that.
**
Dennis puts on a D Train album one night that they’re home together, having a drink, listening to records while they talk, kiss, get closer and closer. They’ve moved on to some version of dancing in Robby’s living room, both of them loose and a little bit silly, clinging to each other and moving in some semblance of rhythm, more using it as an excuse to touch than anything else.
When the record scratches to a conclusion, Dennis goes to put on a new one and says, “You know I worked in a record shop in college.”
“I think I remember you saying that.” It explains so much of Dennis’ eclectic taste, the broad range of music he listens to.
“I considered being a music minor,” he goes on, “but then in my final year I was thinking about the MCATs, so it never happened.”
“You play anything? An instrument?”
Dennis picks one of Robby’s Ready for the World albums next, a favorite of both of theirs. “A little piano,” he says as he sets up the record, setting the needle down in place. He laughs when the music starts and Robby draws him closer. “All of us, my brothers and I, we took piano lessons at church on Tuesday nights. Most of it’s gone now, though.”
“Maybe not,” Robby says. “When’s the last time you tried?”
“Hmm, it’s been ages. Last time I touched a piano was…” There’s a look of recognition, of realization, on his face, just a flash of it that drops away after a moment. “I was in college. So, you know, six or seven years.”
Robby slides a hand up the back of his shirt, just holding him there, a hand on the small of his back. “The attempted minor.”
“Uh, not really. A professor of mine…had one.” His expression is nonchalant, casual, but Robby can see the nervousness in his gaze.
“A professor,” Robby says. “You mean the one you were sleeping with.”
Dennis hardly reacts except to wrap his arms around Robby’s shoulders. They’re not really moving with the music anymore, but neither of them seem to care. “I went to a small school in a small town. He had students over to his place for dinner sometimes. It wasn’t weird.”
“Uh huh.”
Robby can only imagine. A twenty-year-old Dennis sticking around after some dinner party with a bunch of other undergrads, helping his professor—a professor older than Robby is right now—clean up dishes, the two of them reaching for each other—
It’s too weird to think about, actually.
So Robby refocuses on Dennis, on his boyfriend, on holding him and kissing him and making him laugh. And that works for a little while, until eventually the new record ends while Robby’s thoughts keep on spinning.
“You seem a little jealous, you know,” Dennis says as he thumbs through Robby’s collection.
Robby frowns at his back. “I’m not,” he says. “I’m just…thinking.”
“About me and my professor.”
He wonders, not for the first time, if Dennis is attracted to him because of his position of authority. Maybe if their relationship weren’t so illicit, if Robby weren’t so many professional levels above him, if they weren’t in the same department or the same hospital, Dennis wouldn’t actually be into him at all.
Robby doesn’t like that thought.
“Do you want to ask me about it?” Dennis offers. He glances at Robby over his shoulder, meeting his eyes. He seems genuine, and Robby suspects that he wouldn’t actually be all that freaked by real questions.
Robby sighs, crossing his arms over his chest in a defensive move. “How long were you together?”
“We saw each other for a couple of months,” Dennis says. “It was never a real relationship. We just had sex a couple times a week for a while, and then I went back home for the summer and it fizzled out.”
“Were you—was he cheating on someone with you?”
Dennis turns around properly, giving him a pointed look. “You’re asking if he was married.”
“The possibility occurred to me,” Robby says with a shrug. “Can you blame me?”
“He was divorced,” Dennis says, maybe a little shortly. “I know you were with Dr. Collins when she was a med student.”
Robby holds up his hands, brow furrowing. “Hey.”
“I’m just saying,” Dennis mutters as he turns back to the records, “don’t throw stones, Robby. Sorry I’m not some perfect virgin with a spotless dating record. If you wanted that, you should’ve gone for Victoria.”
“Hey,” Robby says more firmly, because he is pretty offended now. “I don’t want a—that’s not what I’m saying and you know it.”
“Do I?”
“You should,” Robby insists.
Dennis sighs, a long, drawn-out sound. “You’re a pretty judgmental guy, you know.”
Robby grits his teeth, trying not to rush into proving Dennis’ point. “I really didn’t mean for it to come out that way.”
“Oh, yeah? What was the nonjudgmental way you were going to accuse me of seducing my professor away from his fictional wife?”
“It wasn’t an accusation,” Robby says. “It was a question. And you said I could ask.”
“You can ask,” Dennis says. “You can ask whatever you want but you don’t have a right to be upset by the answers.”
He picks another record, showing Robby the cover for his approval, and Robby remembers for the first time in a few minutes that they’re supposed to be having fun. Before they started talking about Dennis’ ex, they were dancing and kissing and probably on their way to having sex. Robby has a feeling they’re pretty far from that right now.
This album is less dance-y, more classic rock, an old Smiths record. It feels like an appropriate backing track to their tense back-and-forth.
“Maybe if my dating history upsets you,” Dennis says as he turns to face Robby again, “we should stop talking about it.”
“I’m not upset,” Robby says.
“Really? ‘Cause it seems like you are.”
Frustrated—mostly that they ended up here at this precise moment, not over the details of where here is—he pulls a hand down his face, rubbing his fingers through his beard. It gives him something to do while he thinks of what to say.
“Excuse me for not being thrilled to hear about you sleeping with your professor as an undergrad.”
“Is that what bothers you? The power imbalance?”
Robby hates that question; it’s a stupid question. His expression probably shows his distaste, face pulling up into a displeased cringe. “That’s not great, but none of it is. You were his student. He was forty years older than you. You weren’t even old enough to drink yet but you were going home with a…” He gestures vaguely, grappling for the appropriate word and coming up short.
“I was an eagerly consenting adult,” Dennis informs him, and that actually makes Robby feel worse for some reason. “I made the first move.”
Robby is pretty sure he didn’t want to know that. If he thinks about it too hard, he’ll remember the way Dennis hit on him, and then that memory won’t be quite so nice.
“Forty years, Den,” he says. He thought the twenty-eight years between them was a big deal, considering that it’s greater than Dennis’ age. Forty is something else entirely.
“I thought he was sexy,” Dennis says casually. “He was smart—I like smart guys. And he was in great shape, I saw him running on campus a lot.”
Robby sucks in his gut a bit. He hasn’t been jogging in a while. “So you just have a thing for old guys.”
Dennis shrugs. “I don’t think you’re old.”
“You’re being really casual about this.”
“What do you want me to say?” Dennis asks with a startled sort of laugh. “It was ages ago. The sex wasn’t as good as it is with you, if that helps.”
The unfortunate truth is that it doesn’t actually help. If anything, it makes him even pricklier, contributing to his general discomfort over Dennis’ extremely laid back attitude, as if his torrid affair with a man four decades his senior doesn’t matter at all. And so maybe Robby is upset, actually. Maybe it does bother him, the fact that Dennis was with this guy, and the fact that he’s dismissing it so easily, like he can’t even see why Robby might have some complicated emotions about the whole thing.
The question that trips off his tongue is emotional, not logical—it’s his first thought, and certainly not his best one: “Is that all this is to you? A sex thing?”
He asks because that’s what it feels like all of a sudden. And it’s new to him, unfamiliar, off-putting—because he thought Dennis’ interest in him was a little more substantive. He thought they were on the same page, that they had a real connection beyond the sex. But if Dennis only went for him because he gets his rocks off with older guys—if Robby isn’t any different from a pervert professor who took advantage of him—then his whole worldview needs to be reshaped.
“Wow,” Dennis says, calm and collected. “That was—wow.”
Robby clenches his jaw, his fists, trying not to jump on his instinct to defend himself, to lash out. Without his permission, his jaw unhinges. “Do you even like me? If I weren’t just the type of middle-aged guy you go for, would you even look twice?”
Dennis opens his mouth to argue (no doubt), a hand coming up to gesture in tandem, but then he stops, mouth closing again. A chill runs through Robby’s body, starting in his chest. Part of him wants to take it back, wants to apologize, but he’s too stubborn, too committed to being right.
As if noting the weather, easy and unceremonious, Dennis says, “Fuck you.” He heads for the bedroom, taking great care to walk in a wide berth around Robby as he does.
And Robby assumes that’ll be the end of it. Their first fight. Painful, a little ugly, but fairly bloodless. He’s resolved to sit on the couch and give Dennis some space while they cool down, but then Dennis emerges from the bedroom with his backpack and he starts loading it with his things, his books, his chargers.
“Dennis,” Robby tries, “don’t—c’mon, don’t leave.”
“Sure, I definitely want to stay here so you can call me a slut some more.”
“That’s not—I didn’t,” Robby says. “I never said that, I wouldn’t say that.”
“But it’s what you meant,” Dennis accuses, his gaze hard when he finally meets Robby’s eyes. “God, you are really—sometimes you have this really fucking holier-than-thou attitude that can get really grating, you know that?”
Robby scowls, can’t help it. Now it seems like Dennis is just trying to rile him up, and it’s not his fucking fault they’re having this converstaion in the first place. “Fine, fucking leave then. No point in staying if we’re not hooking up, right?”
Dennis looks just as annoyed as Robby feels, face twisted up in a familiar expression, but one that Robby normally sees in the context of patient care, when Dennis disagrees with something. Most of the time, Robby finds that face amusing, evidence of Dennis’ complete inability to hide his own thoughts, but now it’s really not quite so funny.
“You’re gonna feel really stupid about this later,” Dennis tells him as he heads for the door, wrangling his shoes on. “When that happens, don’t call me.” He grabs his jacket and beanie off the hook and flips Robby the bird on his way out the door.
For a couple of beats, Robby feels—righteously furious. Dennis was the one who stormed out. Dennis was the one who couldn’t have a reasonable conversation. Dennis didn’t even try to answer his question, didn’t even bother to defend himself. He’s the wrong one.
Then the moment passes and the A side of the record finishes, leaving the room silent, starkly empty.
Shit.