Chapter Text
"Whit, look at what Vic just sent me, isn't that literally the cutest thing you've ever seen?" Trinity sticks her phone into Dennis' face, briefly blinding him from the sudden bright light in the dim room.
Dennis squinted his eyes and pulled back until the screen came into focus. It was a collage of photos of calves with 'earmuffs' as the caption stated. Dennis smiles, taking in the cute animals. "That's adorable. You know, they kind of remind me of back home."
Trinity quirks an eyebrow, "I knew you were a farm boy, but you had cows too?"
Dennis winced, "Sorta, we had two, and one of them was secretly pregnant when my momma bought her, so we ended up raising the calf before having to sell her to our neighbor. Three cows were just too expensive, and we weren't profiting off of them in the first place."
Trinity beams at Dennis, "Do you have any photos of them?" She pulled her leg off Dennis' lap and leaned forward on his shoulder.
"Maybe, I didn't get my own phone until a year or two before I left, so there may not be many photos of back home." He unlocked his phone and went to his camera roll, using the bar to quickly jump to the beginning of his photos. The first photo he ever took on his phone was only from 2015, and it was a simple picture of the sun setting behind a line of trees filled with yellow and red leaves. There were a few more photos of the landscape of his home, mostly shots during sunrise and sunset. "I like the city and all… but I miss the fields, the rural lands — s' partly why I like going to help out at Amy's."
Trinity made a slight frown and nodded with him, sympathizing with his homesickness. She too missed getting to fly out to the Philippines as a kid and get to see all her family, and the nature. She made a noise in her throat, then directed her attention back to his phone. A photo at the bottom, partially cut off by the end of the screen, caught her eye. She grinned as he reached a finger around to scroll and click on the photo. Dennis attempted to question what she was doing before getting interrupted by a loud laugh. When Dennis realized what photo she was looking at, his face paled, and he threw his phone to the side, causing Trinity to immediately go retrieve it.
"Wow, Huckleberry!" Trinity cackled as she looked at the photo again. Dennis huffed and stuffed his face into a pillow as an attempt to hide his mortification. The photo was a selfie taken by him on top of a tractor, all sweaty from the heat of the summer. His shirt was rolled up into a very short, makeshift crop top, showing off his pale stomach. There was another person in the photo, a slightly older-looking boy, tan skin brushed with a red dusting. He was standing on the ground leaning against the tractor, one arm snaking behind him, his hand resting against the waist of Dennis. He was smiling at the camera while the guy was smiling up at Dennis. "Show off that skin!"
"Shut up," his voice came out muffled by the pillow.
She poked the back of his neck, "Who's the other guy?"
He turned his head just enough to see where Trinity was holding the phone out. "Neighbor that came around to help. Isaac. He didn't like to be at his a lot, so he'd come over and hang with my brothers or do some work on the fields with us."
A memory flashed through Dennis' mind. It was a night where Isaac had come to hang after getting into an argument with his parents. For the most part, he stuck around Samuel, Dennis' second-oldest brother, his closest friend, but he always would look around for Dennis until his eyes found him, then he'd just go back to whatever roughhousing he was doing with Samuel. Eventually, a bad storm had started to roll in, and Dennis' mom urged Isaac to stay the night.
His brother and Isaac moved upstairs, but Dennis stayed downstairs with his mom in the living room, leaning against her while they both anxiously watched the weather report. Their county had just been put under a tornado warning, so his dad had gone out to secure everything with his two other brothers. Dennis wanted to go out and help, too, but his dad told him to keep his mom company, so that's what he did.
He wasn't necessarily a momma's boy; he wanted to be close to his dad, like his brothers were, but his dad always deflected, telling Dennis his mother needs him more. So that's why he would typically always stay near his mom.
When it started to get really late, his mom forced all the kids to head to bed (despite the oldest being a full-grown adult and Dennis nearly there), and told them to sleep through the storm. The winds had calmed down some by the time 1 am rolled around, but the booming thunder and bright flashes of lightning kept Dennis up.
He quietly crept out of his shared room and padded down the stairs, missing every creaky spot. He made his way to the kitchen, suddenly noticing that his parents had gone to bed but left the TV playing softly over in the other room. He grabbed a cup from the drying rack and turned the faucet on, letting the cup fill up some before turning it off. He stood at the sink, looking out the window above it, and just watched the rain pelt the glass and the trees sway in the dark.
"Hey."
Dennis jumped out of his skin, spilling some of the water down his shirt. "Oh my go-"
"It's just me," Isaac took a step closer, quietly laughing at how he spooked Dennis.
Dennis used the back of his hand to wipe the water off his chin. "What are you doing up?"
Isaac shrugged, "Could ask you the same thing, Den."
Isaac got even closer to him, forcing Dennis to tilt his head almost all the way back just to look at his face. Isaac was one of those guys who got blessed with being tall, standing at a solid six foot two, while Dennis was a mere five foot seven.
"The storm makes it hard to sleep…" Dennis' voice nearly dropped down to a whisper; he wasn't even sure why.
Isaac hummed, "Precisely why I'm up too."
Dennis couldn't do anything but stare at him for a moment, words lost on his tongue. Sure, Isaac is objectively an attractive person, but despite never having a real attraction to his older brother's friend, he looked especially hot in the dark of the kitchen.
Dennis blinked a few more times, both of them still standing in silence, before deciding to say something… anything, "I can make you some tea?" Dennis grimaced. Tea was actually a bad idea; it'd wake his parents up.
"I'm good, thank you." Isaac smiled softly, and Dennis nodded awkwardly. It was at that moment that he noticed Isaac had basically trapped him against the counter, his body only a few inches away from Dennis. "There is something else I want, though…"
Dennis heart felt like it was going to jump out of his chest, "Oh…w- what?"
Isaac reached a hand up and cupped one of Dennis' cheeks and looked into his eyes for a moment before dipping down and firmly pressing his lips against his. Dennis made a shocked noise that caused Isaac to smile in the kiss, before pulling back. Dennis couldn't do anything except gawk at the older boy.
"You're cute…" Isaac whispered. He twirled a finger in a curl at the base of Dennis' neck, "Even for a girl with short hair." Isaac leaned back down again and kissed him.
Dennis was just frozen still, letting Isaac kiss him. Something low in his gut churned when he replayed Isaac calling him a girl. He wasn't exactly sure what the feeling was, or why it happened only then and not from the kiss, but he ignored it and attempted to focus back on the lips pressed to his.
Dennis pulled away after a few more seconds, his cheeks absolutely burning. "W- we should get to bed… It's late." He slid past Isaac and nearly sprinted his way back upstairs and into his bed, pulling the covers over his head.
"Are you sure he was just a neighbor?" Trinity's voice pulled Dennis back out of the flashback. He furrowed his eyebrows at what she was insinuating. She groaned and rephrased her question, "Was there anything going on between you two? Because that photo looks like more than two buddies."
Dennis' cheeks flushed, "For like barely a year… I'm still not even sure if I even liked him. I think I was just young and excited to be in a relationship, especially one that was secret from our families." He took the phone back to change the topic, quickly scrolling away from the photo.
Trinity barely had time to readjust on the couch into a more comfortable position before Whitaker was pulling up another photo. "This was one of the cows, her name's Charlotte. She was the pregnant one." The photo was actually just a picture of another photo that looked like it was in the sleeve of a photo album. Dennis was about 12, and he was kneeling on the ground with the widest smile ever. He was petting a newborn calf with a gloved hand, Charlotte standing next to both of them, looking down at her baby.
Trinity cooed at the photo, "You were so tiny, even that calf was almost the same size as you." Dennis rolled his eyes and swiped to the next photo. In this one, he was carrying the (now older) calf in his arms toward a truck. "You look like you loved it…" She offered him a soft smile. "Why medicine and not veterinary?"
Dennis chewed on his bottom lip, "Living in a very small, rural town, you just- I like helping people, being there for them on the worst days of their lives… And I want to help people like back at home."
Trinity nodded, "Makes sense… You got a good heart, Huckleberry." Something in Dennis' expression must've tipped Trinity off, and she made a move before Dennis could poke fun at her secretly being a softy. She punches his arm, then hops off the couch, stepping into the small kitchen area.