Chapter Text
"Don't touch me."
"Teddy, they're asleep, babe. You want this, we're married. We're allowed now." Dennis should have never started this, this pseudo-relationship, this trying to help that ended with him falling asleep in Amy's marital bed because he was just too tired to do anything else, but now he had to - now she was half asleep and on top of him, thinking he was her dead husband. How cruel would it be to pull her out of her fantasy? Remind her of her grief? Denial was a stage of grief, and she cycled through them like the wheels of the tractor Dennis had promised to work tomorrow.
No, Dennis kissed back, let her touch him, let her blather on about the past relationship he had no actual knowledge of because Dennis wasn't Teddy, he wasn't, but he was a man who could get hard, who was attracted to Amy even though he didn't actually want to be with her, he just didn't know how to say no.
What was it Victoria had said? "Ooh, that could get messy." Physically, they were what everyone thought they were, no matter how in denial Dennis pretended to be. "We're friends, just friends. I'm helping her out on the farm." Dennis wished that were true. So he pretended it was.
When Amy knew he was Dennis Whitaker, the doctor who had tried to save her true love, Amy never did what she was now doing. When she knew who he was, Amy wasn't snuggled against him or ignoring Dennis' milquetoast request to not touch him. They both just got so damn tired that Amy sometimes forgot who was sleeping in her bed. And Dennis was too cowardly to remind her of who he was. Dennis didn't deserve to be where he was in the first place, not when his family had... Dennis didn't discuss the Whitakers.
He missed home so badly it was like in the second Harry Potter novel, when Harry missed Hogwarts like a constant stomachache. Dennis missed Nebraska like a stomachache, although not as badly as the days he hadn't actually eaten, back when he was homeless on his internal medicine rotation. Being on the Miller's farm, helping take care of the son he had made lose a father (he hadn't, burns like that were almost always fatal, but survivor's guilt wasn't rational and Dennis survived) was healing something in his soul he hadn't touched since high school, since he had told his parents he was going to university and they had replied by saying he could never return unless he was ready to return for good.
Dennis had talked about maybe going into rural emergency medicine, maybe going back home for good once his residency was over. Talking about home was easier with Victoria Javadi, who had never left hers. Her family's overbearingness made Dennis' rejection almost feel like a blessing rather than a curse. That overbearing presence of Victoria's family in her life also kept Dennis from getting closer, though. He knew if she spent time with him outside of work, she'd be curious what his family was like, if he ever visited, if - no, it was far easier to spend all his free time on the farm or with Trinity. Trinity had a way of making Dennis feel small, like he didn't really belong where he was, the way his brothers had made him feel time and time again. Still, they weren't siblings; they were friends.
"Don't touch me," were words that had sharply fallen from Trinity Santos' mouth quite often in the early days of their sharing an apartment, back when Dennis kept his bag half-packed just in case. He knew better than to trust the kindness of strangers, although working and living together made them not strangers far faster than they otherwise would have been.
Amy inviting Dennis over to the farm had started early, not as early as Santos' fling with Garcia, but it was before October. Amy first forgot herself mid-October, kissing Dennis senseless after he returned from baling hay for the horses. Dennis didn't react, didn't think to push her away until she was pressing herself against him, at which point she realized who he was and broke down into sobs. Amy's crying triggered Theodore's crying, so Dennis went to calm the baby, and tried not to think about what had happened. He told himself it wouldn't happen again, or if it did, he'd stop it, but he never seemed to stop it. Maybe he wanted her. Maybe these were farm benefits. Santos certainly had fun insinuating such, and Dennis would return to her apartment stinking specifically so that the jokes would be about that and not the affair.
Dennis knew if he tried to talk about this, he would probably be misunderstood. Hell, he barely understood his own thoughts and feelings, never initiating but also always reacting as though he was a lover, a husband, a man. He wasn't a victim, not like the patients Dana sometimes had to take - Dennis chose to go to the farm, although sure, Garcia certainly encouraged him to leave when she wanted Trinity to herself, but still, Dennis knew what would happen once it happen more than once, once it became clear this was part of how Amy's grief was manifesting, that she wanted to believe he was Teddy when he was in her house, on her farm, in her bed. Dennis chose to continue going to the farm and playing with Theo and helping out because the sickness he felt when she touched him at least replaced his homesickness.
Sometimes, Dr. Whitaker wanted to scream "why can nobody tell something is wrong here?!" Only someone had, Dr. Robby had given Whitaker a talk about boundaries and the keys to his place with implied instructions not to bring Amy there. But then Dr. Robby was out on motorcycle, and the majority of Whitaker's coworkers saw him as someone who wouldn't have anything wrong with him. Certainly not this type of wrong. This type of wrong shouldn't be one a man felt, Dennis thought to himself. He should have been better, maybe playing less of a gentleman, agreeing to help with the same chores Teddy had, it all gave Amy the wrong idea. Maybe what was wrong was just him.