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It was shaping up to be a simple sort of evening which, for Mel, was hard to come by these days. She had actually managed to leave work on time for once, and had even been a few minutes early to pick up Becca.
They had decided to eat at their favorite burger place this particular Friday, Becca opting for her preferred chicken tenders, and Mel for a veggie burger that she was pretty sure was cooked on the same grill as the regular burgers, but it tasted so good that she pretended that it wasn’t.
Becca chattered about her day, and Mel dodged her questions about her own.
They went home to their quiet apartment, and Becca insisted on putting on her new favorite movie, Gremlins, which even Mel hadn’t gotten tired of quite yet.
All in all, a good evening, in routine, which was preferred for both of them.
Well, it was all in routine, until Mel’s cellphone lit up on the coffee table, buzzing with a call from a California number that she didn’t recognize.
“You should answer,” Becca said, staring at the screen, “It could be someone really important.”
“I don’t know anyone really important from California,” she said, staring at the number, about ninety percent sure that it was spam.
“But what if it’s someone you know on a borrowed phone?” Becca reasoned, “And they need your help?”
Mel picked up her phone, wondering if spam callers even worked this late at night.
“I’m getting a divorce,” Langdon said on the other end, without any kind of preamble, “Can I crash with you?”
Things between her and Langdon had been…professional and polite ever since he had returned to the ED. He seemed to be keeping a distance from everybody, not letting anyone get too close, like he was afraid of breaking if they did.
But Mel still noticed him, still watched him when she knew he wasn’t looking. She couldn’t help herself, even though she knew it was silly. That he was married. That he had much bigger and better problems than a third-year resident that he had known for one single shift before he went away for ten whole months. Without so much as a goodbye.
Less than one full shift, as Santos often told her when she looked too much like “a kicked puppy” in her words.
Mel couldn’t explain, even to herself, why she couldn’t shake him. The facts of her situation didn’t matter, all that mattered was that she had never met anyone like him before. His return to the Pitt three months before hadn’t helped her; she felt more off-kilter around him than ever, and the more she tried to hide it, the more obvious she was afraid it was.
So, to have her be the person that he would call the moment his marriage ended, to have her be the one that he wanted to stay with…it was hard not to wish, not to dream that it meant something more.
Langdon was at their door within an hour, holding a duffel bag and the leash of a very excitable goldendoodle, and looking profusely apologetic at the situation that he had put her in.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, while Becca greeted the dog excitedly, “I don’t even know if your place allows pets. He’s quiet I swear, but Abby said I had to take him or he was going to the pound and I- I’m so-”
“It’s okay,” she smiled at him, patting the dog’s head, “We’ve fostered dogs before. It’s been a while, but our super doesn’t mind.”
“Good,” he sighed in relief, turning to look at Becca, who was still focused on the dog, “You must be Becca, I’m Frank.”
“Hi Frank,” she didn’t look up at him, “I love your dog.”
“His name’s Biscuit,” he hoisted the bag higher up on his shoulder, sucking in a breath. Mel watched him, her head listing to the side. She knew that she wasn’t at work, that he wasn’t a patient, but diagnosing on site had become something of a muscle memory for her, and she could tell that he was in pain. “Can I set this down somewhere?”
“Oh!” she could have kicked herself, “Of course, just- You’ll be on the couch if that’s okay, we only have two bedrooms.”
“That’s fine. More than fine, I really owe you.”
“No you don’t,” she said earnestly, leading him down the hall towards the living room, and indicating where he could set his bag, “You can stay as long as you’d like, we don’t mind.”
“Is Biscuit staying too?” Becca asked eagerly, still petting his soft fur, “He can stay in my room.”
“I don’t know if-”
“He’d love that,” Langdon smiled at her, “He likes to sleep at the end of the bed, but I brought a dog bed for him too-”
“No! He can stay in my bed!” Becca was delighted, “I love dogs!”
“And he loves people,” Langdon’s smile was easy, but Mel could tell that it didn’t reach his eyes, “Thank you for having us.”
“Come on Biscuit,” Becca unhooked his leash, “Come see my room.”
Mel watched her go, making sure she was out of earshot before she turned to Langdon.
“Do you- Do you want to talk about it?”
He sighed, closing his eyes and tilting his head towards the floor.
“Not really much to talk about,” he said, “It’s not like it’s a surprise. She wasn’t happy before everything went to shit and I went to rehab…twice. It’s not- It’s not fair to her, I know that but- I don’t know, I guess today was the final straw.”
“What happened today?” she asked, then immediately said, “You don’t have to answer-”
“It’s okay,” he sank down onto the couch, rubbing his face in the palms of his hands, “We just- Had a fight over something stupid. Dinner, of all things. And she just- Said she was done.”
Mel sat down next to him, keeping her distance.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked up at her, his eyes searching her face.
“Thank you. It probably shouldn’t have thrown me as much as it did. I could tell it was coming just- Not when.”
She wanted to reach out, touch his hand, but resisted, instead standing up from the couch, and going to drag a blanket and a couple of pillows from her closet, returning with them and placing them, neatly folded, at the end of the couch.
“You can stay as long as you need to,” she said quietly, “Biscuit too.”
“Mel,” she met his eyes, so blue they were arresting, “Thank you, really. It should only be for a few days.”
“No problem,” she shook her head slightly, “Come see- Come see the bathroom. We only have one, but it’s pretty big.”
“A few days” turned into a few weeks, so that Mel and Becca’s carefully crafted routine had morphed to include Langdon and Biscuit who, predictably, Becca was obsessed with.
Langdon had a car, a Jeep that was big enough for all of them, so they had stopped taking the train to Becca’s facility every day, instead dropping Biscuit at doggy daycare before driving to drop off Becca, then finally to the hospital.
Langdon loved Indian food, and had even gotten Becca, who was extremely change averse, to try it, so they added it into the rotation for their Friday evenings out.
He hated to cook but liked doing the dishes, and shooed Mel out of the kitchen every time she tried to come in and help him, insisting that she was doing enough, and that this was the least he could do since she refused any of the rent money he had tried to give her.
Mel found that she liked having him there. She liked his warm presence next to her on the couch, the extra dishes in the sink, the sound of his laugh in the living room when he was watching tv with Becca. She liked having a dog and seeing his toothbrush in the bathroom.
She liked it so much that she didn’t want him to leave.
He had visited apartments frequently on the weekends at first, but she was noticing that he was going less and less, opting to spend more time with her and Becca when he wasn’t with his children, going to movies and the zoo and Pirates games.
The only problem was, the emergency room was essentially a never-ending cesspool of gossip, so it was only a matter of time before someone saw them coming in or leaving together in his car.
She should have expected that it would be Santos that would bring it up to her first.
“Are you fucking Langdon?” she had cornered Mel in the staff room on a busy Tuesday in October, where Mel was chugging a glass of water before running off to find her next patient.
“What?” she blinked at her, stunned by blunt question.
“Are you and Langdon, like, together?” her eyes were narrowed, and her arms were folded, standing in front of the door, blocking Mel’s only exit.
“No!” she flushed traitorously, “No he- He’s staying with me while he figures out a place.”
“And he can’t stay in a hotel?” she scoffed, “He’s taking advantage of you instead of figuring it out himself.”
“He’s not taking advantage of me,” Mel snapped, and Santos looked surprised, “We’re friends. I’m helping out a friend.”
“You don’t have to be friends with him, you know,” she said, still blocking the door, “Just because he’s a senior resident doesn’t mean-”
“I know that,” Mel rubbed her forehead, feeling the beginning of a headache coming on, “And I’m not just- He is my friend.”
“No accounting for taste,” she said, rolling her eyes and pulling open the staff room door, leaving Mel alone, hugging herself to try and stay grounded.
“Are we friends?” she asked Langdon that night, just as he was turning onto her street, music low on the stereo, Becca with her headphones in, looking at her phone, Biscuit sitting next to her, his head on her lap.
Langdon cast a look over at her, evidently puzzled by her question.
“Of course we are,” she said with a finality that made Mel nearly smile, “Why?”
“It was just- I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t know if you- Felt like that.”
“We’re definitely- Definitely friends,” she thought he was holding something back, but he said nothing else, instead pulling up to the apartment to let them out, then driving down the street until he found a parking spot. They waited for him, Becca dancing around with Biscuit, and Mel watching him climb out of the car, wondering what he wasn’t saying to her.
Not that this was the first time he didn’t tell her something. Mel knew something was wrong. She could see it in the evenings, when they got home from their shift.
Langdon would arch his back forward, then all the way back, hyperextending his arms, trying to find some sort of relief in the stretching.
He would do this repeatedly when Becca had gone to bed, standing up from the couch and swinging his arms above his head, bending down to touch his toes, hissing as he did so, and never answering her questions about what she could do to help.
She was sure that part of it was that he wasn’t sleeping in a bed. People with chronic pain needed a mattress with good support, and he hadn’t had a mattress with good support in at least five weeks, maybe longer, since she didn’t know what he was sleeping on before he had left his house.
All she knew was that she couldn’t stand to see him in the pain that he was clearly in, and even if he wouldn’t ask for help, she would give it to him anyway.
So, when he began his ritual one evening, standing up from the tv show they had started watching together and doing his stretches, she paused the show and said,
“We need to get you into a bed.”
His eyebrows shot up and he stopped mid-stretch, so that some of his stomach was exposed to the open air.
“What do you mean?”
“You need to sleep on a good mattress in a real bed.”
“I’ll be fine,” he smiled at her, but she could tell that he was hiding a grimace as he twisted his spine, his hands on his hips, anchoring his lower body in place, “Don’t worry about me.”
But she did worry about him, all the time really. She tilted her head to the side, watching his continued stretching, taking in the twist of his mouth.
“You can take my bed,” she heard herself saying, looking away quickly as his eyebrows shot up and his head swiveled to look at her, “Really, it’s okay.”
“I’m not taking your bed, Mel,” he sounded incredulous, “You’re already letting me stay here, you won’t even let me pay. I’m not- I’m not taking your bed.”
“It-” she felt herself twisting her fingers together, afraid of a confrontation with him, “It’s-”
“Mel,” his voice had a finality to it, something that she had only ever heard at work, “I’m fine. Sometimes I just need to stretch. Okay?”
She knew he was lying to her, but she didn’t want to push the issue, afraid that he might disappear, find the hotel that Santos had suggested more than once he stay in, and leave their little home behind him.
“Okay,” she conceded, not at all pleased by how this conversation had gone, “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” he didn’t have much conviction in his voice, but Mel let the subject drop, turning the show back on, and watching him stretch out of the corner of her eye.
She tossed and turned that night, feeling simultaneously too hot and too cold, throwing her blankets off and pulling them back on, before finally sitting straight up in bed, wide awake, and ridiculously thirsty.
She reached blindly for the water cup she kept by the bed, only remembering that she had set it in the dishwasher the night before, insisting to Langdon that she would remember to grab one before she went to bed. Slowly, so as not to wake anyone else in the apartment, she eased her bedroom door open and tiptoed down the dark hall, stepping over the floorboard that always creaked, and silently retrieving a clean cup from the cabinet.
Deciding it would be less noisy to fill it in the bathroom sink, she turned, ready to make her silent journey back down the hall, when she realized that the television was on, images flickering across the wall of the living room.
She peeked around the corner, surprised to see Langdon sitting upright, staring at the tv, seemingly completely unaware of her presence.
She should go back to her room, leave him be. If he wanted to stay up all night, that was his business.
But then she remembered the way he had acted before she went to bed. How he had clearly been in pain, but had refused her offer of her own bed.
No, this simply wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t let him do this, no matter how stubborn he was.
She marched straight forward, into his field of vision, so that he jumped, looking at her in stunned surprise,
“What-” he started, but she held out her hand to him, expectant.
His eyes moved from her outstretched fingers to her face, and it was like she could see the cogs working in his head, trying to figure out what she was up to, maybe whether he trusted her.
Evidently, he did, because he took her hand, standing up, and turning off the television in one swift movement, but not before she could see his face twist in discomfort again. Wordlessly, she led him down the hall, back towards her bedroom. The moment he realized where they were going, he stopped, so completely that she was afraid she had tugged his shoulder out of its socket.
“Mel,” his voice was quiet, “I already told you-”
She didn’t answer him, but tugged on his hand again, pulling him reluctantly forward. The moment the door was closed behind them, she spoke, still in a whisper,
“I can tell you’re uncomfortable on the couch,” she spoke in a rush, so he couldn’t interrupt her, “And we can share the bed. I’ll build a pillow wall between us, but I- I just don’t want you to be- Be in pain here. I want you to be comfortable for as- As long as this is your home.”
In the yellow glow of the streetlights outside her window, she could see his face, the expression there, mingled somewhere between shame and a sort of fondness that made her chest feel tight.
“Okay,” he lifted his hands, “Okay. If it- If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” she opened her closet, reaching up to grab the extra pillows she said she kept for guests, but actually kept for those nights where she just needed to be cocooned in as much fabric as possible. At once, he was reaching above her head, helping her pull the stack down, and set to work with her to create a wall of pillows down the middle of her bed.
“See?” she slid under the covers, sitting up slightly to make sure he was doing the same, “It’s like we’re not even sharing.”
She thought she heard a little exhale of humor from the other side of the pillow wall, and smiled to herself that she could make him laugh a little.
“Good night, Mel,” she suppressed a shiver at the tone of his voice, telling herself sternly that he was strictly a friend, a coworker even, and that the pillow wall meant that they were, essentially, in two beds.
“Good night,” she said, “See you in the morning.”
Mel laid awake for a while, taking stock of the sound of his even breathing, of the strange sensation of someone in her room with her. She knew she was imagining that she could feel him next to her, that the pillows prevented them from feeling the heat of each other’s skin, but the fact that he was there, really there in the room with her, made her body buzz with a kind of restless energy.
Eventually, she matched their breathing together, and, with their chests rising and falling together, she drifted off.
She woke to her alarm in the morning, loud and jarring from her comfortable sleep. Her hand reached out, scrabbling for the place she knew her phone rested on her bedside table, and stabbed blindly until it turned off, before curling closer into the wall of pillows she had built for herself.
Suddenly, her wall of pillows moved, and she realized that they weren’t as soft as they usually were.
Slowly, she opened her eyes, looking at a sleeping Langdon, spread across the entire bed like a starfish, his mouth hanging open, and one hand curled around Mel’s forearm, like he had to make sure she didn’t go too far.
Immediately, she knew she had to get out of this situation. This is exactly why she had built the pillow wall! It was to prevent something like this, something that would surely scare him off!
She moved incrementally, inching her way out of his grip, and slipping out of the door and into the kitchen, where Becca was already waiting, fully dressed, with Biscuit by her side.
“He’s hungry,” she said, smiling brightly, “Where’s Frank?”
“Um,” she felt her face flushing, “In the bathroom, I think.”
“No he’s not,” Becca said, watching as Mel knocked around the kitchen, making breakfast, “I was just in there.”
Mel quirked her mouth to the side, unsure of what to tell her.
“He- His back hurts sometimes so- So he’s staying in my room for a while until- Until he finds his own place.”
“But he lives here,” she was petting Biscuit’s head, “So does Biscuit. He doesn’t need a new place. And anyway, you finally have a boy to kiss!”
“No!” she only just prevented herself from flailing her arms in panic, terrified that Langdon might hear her, “No we- He’s just a friend, Becca. You know that.”
Becca shrugged, like she didn’t believe her, and pulled her toast and jam towards her eagerly.
Only a moment later, Langdon rounded the corner, already in his scrubs, and Mel just had to hope against hope that he hadn’t heard what Becca had said.
“Morning,” he smiled at Becca, then Mel. Maybe she had gotten lucky, “I’ll take him out, be right back.”
While he was gone, Mel popped their toast in the toaster and went to get dressed for the day. She calmed herself in the bathroom, taking care to wash her face and carefully braid her hair, until she looked like Dr. Mel, and not just…regular Mel.
By the time she had emerged, he was back, buttering toast for each of them, and spreading jam on hers, peanut butter on his.
“We’re going to be late,” Becca pointed out as he passed Mel her plate, which she accepted with a murmured thanks, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Nah, we won’t,” Langdon stuffed most of one piece of toast in his mouth, “If we leave in ten minutes we’re good, I looked at traffic.”
“You need to add at least ten minutes to the maps app,” Becca said, “It’s not accurate.”
“Already did,” he swallowed painfully, chasing his toast with the coffee that Mel had made, and pushing hers toward her, already the perfect color, “I swear, ten minutes and we’re on the road.”
Langdon didn’t mention the destruction of the pillow wall, and Mel followed his lead, grateful the moment they got to work and she could lose herself in the chaos of the emergency room, of following him from this room to that, seeing patients and not thinking about anything other than making them better.
She did catch Robby pulling Langdon off to the side, but wasn’t able to watch for more than a few seconds before Dana was sending her off to a chemical burn in south 15.
She saw little of him for the rest of the day, only catching glimpses of him across the room, or the occasional shoulder squeeze as she was charting and he was rushing off to another patient, so that she had no opportunity to talk to him about Robby and what he had said to him.
Even when they were safely ensconced in her apartment, she couldn’t bring herself to ask about it, but let Langdon and Becca get into a very long and seemingly very intense Mario Kart competition, while Mel read, curled up on the couch, with Langdon sitting on the floor, leaning against her feet.
“Mel, are you a secret savant at Mario Kart too?” he asked, when Becca won for the fourth time in a row. He was leaning his neck back to look at her, and she, in turn, looked down her glasses at him, smiling at Becca giggling, hiding her face behind her controller.
“No, Becca’s the talent in the family,” she looked at the screen, seeing that he finished in eighth place, “Or you’re just really bad.”
Becca burst out laughing, so that Biscuit lifted his head from next to Mel, and Langdon folded his arms, nearly pouting.
“He is really bad,” Becca said gleefully, tapping Langdon on the top of his head, “So bad.”
“Okay, maybe I’m not a Mario Kart genius like you, but I’ve had a bad run! That doesn’t mean-”
“The best finish I’ve seen you have was sixth,” Mel observed, smiling at him as he slowly turned his head, betrayal all over his face, “Not even on the podium.”
“I thought you were reading,” his eyes were narrowed, and he was pointedly ignoring the snickering from Becca.
“I can multitask,” she deadpanned, which earned her a surprised laugh from him.
“Well Becca,” he set down his controller, “Good game, maybe you can train me next time instead of just destroying me.”
Becca quirked her mouth to the side, which clearly said that she would rather destroy him than teach him anything, and he laughed, leaning back and propping an arm on Mel’s ankles, a warm weight that was impossible for her to ignore.
That night, he followed her into the bedroom, watching as she took the stack of pillows from the end of the bed and creating the wall between them.
“What?” she asked, standing back to admire her handiwork.
“Nothing,” he looked away from her, “Be right back.”
He disappeared into the bathroom, and Mel sat down on the edge of the bed, staring out the window, where she could see the shadows of the tree outside dancing across the window, its branches swaying in the early autumn breeze.
This was weird. It was weird to share a bed with Langdon. But it was even weirder that she liked it so much, that she felt a swoop in her stomach when she thought about it.
She could offer to sleep on the couch again, but she didn’t really want him to take her up on the offer.
Before Mel could really decide what to do, Langdon was back, in his soft shorts and ratty t shirt with the stretched out neckline that exposed his collarbone, seemingly surprised to see her still in her day clothes.
“You okay?” his voice was quiet again, like every time he entered the bedroom his volume turned down.
“Huh?” she blinked standing up, and hoping that the low light would hide the color that flooded her cheeks, “Oh. Oh, yes. Yes I- I’ll just-”
She ducked under his arm, disappearing into the bathroom, her pajamas under her arm.
Mel forced herself to do her evening routine, jumping in the shower and scrubbing the day away, the hot water beating on her shoulders, loosening the muscles in her neck and back.
She braided her wet hair back, and stepped out of the bathroom, shivering against the cool air, into the now dark bedroom, where she could see Langdon’s shape laying down on his side of the bed. Mel climbed into bed slowly, burrowing under the covers and pulling them up to her chin, and listening to his breathing.
She knew he was still awake, but she had no idea what, if anything, to say. Fortunately for her, he broke the silence first,
“Robby talked to me today.”
“I saw,” she kept her voice low, “What about?”
“He asked me if we were living together,” Mel felt her heart pick up speed, “I told him we were.”
“What did he say?”
“Just that I shouldn’t do anything to throw you off your game,” she could tell that he was smiling, “Because ‘Dr. King is one of our best and brightest.’”
“He didn’t say that,” she blushed.
“Yes he did,” he rolled on his side to face her, pushing down the pillow wall so they could look at each other, and she copied him, their faces only a couple of inches apart, “Scout’s honor.”
“You were a boy scout?”
“No, but I broke my arm trying to rescue a cat from a tree when I was ten, so I might as well be.”
“That was a good one.”
She thought she felt his hand brush her arm.
“I do my best.”
The next morning, when their alarms went off at the same time, the pillows were once again at the end of the bed, several of them halfway across the bright Ikea rug that Mel had picked up in medical school, and Langdon’s arm was draped across her stomach, his face buried in her shoulder.
They continued this way, Mel meticulously building the pillow wall every night, and every morning waking up to the pillows thrown across the floor, and she and Langdon touching each other in one way or another. Mel liked it, she liked it more than she could put into words, she was only terrified that it didn’t mean to him what it meant to her.
Outside of their sharing a bed, nothing in life was different. They still ate dinner together nearly every night, they still carpooled, they still took Biscuit on long walks on the weekends, sometimes going all the way to the park that was about a mile from their apartment, chatting idly while Becca and Biscuit chased each other around on the endless expanse of grass, long dead from the height of summer.
They still worked cases together at the hospital, and if Robby had any opinions about it, he never said a word, only offering quiet praises when warranted.
Langdon stretched less in the evenings, and looked more comfortable during the day, and while neither of them ever said it, they both knew it was because of the bed.
Mel loved her new routine too much to try and alter it, and she was afraid that, if she pushed too far, that she would scare him off, and her bed and her apartment would be quiet and empty once again.
So, she resolved to keep on as they were, to not worry so much about how his hands felt on her when she woke up in the morning, and to pretend that she didn’t feel a stutter in her heart when he told her goodnight.
Her resolution was going well. Very well, as a matter of fact. Until, of course, Langdon had to throw a wrench into things, as he almost always did.
“The pillow wall is stupid,” Langdon said, picking up the pillows from their place at the end of the bed, where Mel had neatly stacked them that morning. It was cold, the first real cold snap of the season, so that Mel was dressed in a too-large sweatshirt she was pretty sure was Langdon’s at one point, and shivering as she stood near the window, “I say we ditch it.”
“Okay,” Mel pushed her hair out of her face, “I really don’t mind the couch-”
“I don’t mind sharing,” Langdon laid down easily, his hands thrown behind his head, an easy smile on his face.
She blinked, matching his smile with her own, feeling it pull at the corners of her cheeks, creating dimples.
“Okay.”
They laid next to each other, and this time Mel really could feel the heat of his skin next to her, and she had to suppress a shiver every time one of them moved.
Mel watched him that night, after he had fallen asleep, taking in his side profile. The curve of his nose, the shape of his lips, the way his eyes crinkled when he was dreaming about something. She wanted to reach forward and push the loose strands of hair out of his face.
She fell asleep facing him, still thinking about those loose strands of hair, and how they would feel under her fingers.
She woke the next morning, not to the sound of her alarm, as it was a blessed Saturday, but to the feeling of limbs tangled with hers, and the warm feeling of skin under her cheek. Blinking slowly, completely relaxed, she opened her eyes, the world blurry without her glasses.
With a dawning horror, she realized that she and Langdon were more thoroughly tangled together in her bed than they had ever been before, no pillows in sight, arms all wrapped around each other, her face in his chest, his in her hair, their legs on top of each other. Slotted together like they were meant to be that way.
She knew she couldn’t escape this time, not without waking him up. She tried to move away from him experimentally, but that only served for him to pull her closer, grumbling slightly, like he couldn’t stand to be away from her for even one second.
Mel found that she liked that idea.
She knew that Becca would be awake soon. She never slept in much, even on weekends, and that Biscuit needed to go out and she had to make breakfast and get dressed. But she just couldn’t manage to break this bubble, this little bubble of pure bliss that she wasn’t sure she would ever get again.
So she stayed there, in his arms, soaking in the morning sun as it crawled across her bedroom, thick shafts of light warming her back.
“Ugh,” she heard him groan, probably when one of those pretty shafts of light hit him right in the face.
“Good morning,” she whispered, her voice very small, face still tucked into his chest, afraid of looking him in the face.
“Yeah, it is,” he stretched, not letting her move even an inch, and pressing his lips into her hair, “Really good.”
Her heart was racing, banging against her ribcage like it wanted to escape.
Every time she tried to move, he held her fast, until he was the one that pulled back, so that their eyes met.
“Why are you running away from me?”
“I’m not,” she said, nearly indignant, “I just- Don’t want to ruin anything.”
“How would you ruin anything? Other than by leaving?”
“I just- I don’t know. I think it means something different to you than it does to me.”
He stared at her for one second, two seconds, before snorting an undignified laugh.
“You really just can’t see how I look at you?”
Her heart stuttered in her chest.
“How do- How do you look at me?”
“Mel,” he sighed, pressing his lips into her hair again, “Why do you think Robby pulled me aside to talk about you?”
“I just-” she thought it had been obvious, “I just thought he knew that we were- That we were roommates and you were staying here while- While you found a place.”
“I haven’t been looking for a place,” he said, “Not for weeks. I thought that you knew that.”
“No,” she felt stupid, and Mel very rarely felt stupid, “I didn’t know that.”
“I realized about three days in that I didn’t want to go anywhere,” he looked at her, nearly incredulous, “I thought that you were okay with it, that’s why you hadn’t kicked me out yet.”
“I’m not going to kick you out,” it was her turn to be indignant, “I wouldn’t do that to you. I don’t want you to go anywhere either.”
He stared at her, his eyes wandering down her face, settling on her lips.
“You’re something else,” he said, his voice low, quiet, “I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m around you.”
Before she could say that he had no idea the effect that he had on her, he was leaning down, getting into her space, and kissing her.
Look, Mel had been kissed in her life, she wasn’t very experienced, but some experience wasn’t no experience. However, she was more than a little out of practice with the whole thing, so maybe that was why she was one hundred percent certain that Langdon was the best kisser she had ever encountered.
He was slow, assured, taking pauses to check in with her, make sure she was alright, before kissing her deeply again, tongue sliding in her mouth, making her breath hitch and her hand scrabble for purchase along his back, tracing the notches of his spine.
He smiled against her mouth, his hands wrapping around her body, pulling her flush against him, so that they were one long line.
“You okay?” he broke their kiss again, his lips sliding along her jaw, along the column of her neck, his hands moving down her back, to her hips and oh-
“Yes,” she said, too loudly, so that her voice echoed across the room, and he laughed against her neck, “Don’t- I don’t want you to stop.”
“I won’t, then,” he murmured, drawing her mouth back to his.
It was warm and easy and felt so beyond anything Mel had ever felt before, the friction between them, controlled by him, made her never want to leave this bed, this room, this moment ever again. She would stay here forever if he let her, ignoring every other responsibility she had, because nothing could compare to this.
“Fuck, Mel,” his voice was rough, hoarse almost as he looked at her, “You’re so fucking perfect.”
She preened at that, wanting to live in the feeling of having him like this, of him being hers, even just for a second.
They stayed that way, wrapped up in one another, kissing and learning the shape of each other, so that Mel wasn’t sure whether the sun was warming her bedroom or it was just the feeling of Langdon rolling on top of her, pushing her down into the mattress and staring at her with wide eyes, pupils so large that the blue of his irises almost fully disappeared.
Slowly, she reached up, touching the side of his face, drinking him in. She decided that she loved the way his hair looked in the morning, all stuck up on end and in his face, without the hair gel that she knew he reapplied throughout their shift. It was soft under her fingertips, and the quiet hum of pleasure that her touch elicited from him was even better.
“What’s the plan for today?” he asked, leaning down to kiss her again, so that she wasn’t able to answer him at all for a few blissful seconds.
“I think Becca wanted to just stay home, watch movies,” she murmured, still running her hands through his hair, “Since it’s starting to get cold.”
“That sounds nice,” his voice was muffled, as his lips were now against her neck, moving downward, “We could order delivery.”
“It’s a Saturday,” she watched him as he kept moving down, “We’re supposed to cook on Saturdays.”
“We could always…not,” his head was bracketed between her thighs now, and she couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe, she could barely even remember her own name, “No rule saying we can’t get delivery on a Saturday.”
She let out a shaky breath, trying to get a handle on herself, her entire body coiled like a spring, waiting for what was next.
“Mel!” Becca banged on the bedroom door, and they both jumped, “Get up!”
Mel’s head fell back on her pillow, letting out a long, slow breath and staring up at the ceiling, her body thrumming finely. She felt Langdon laugh, and he swayed across her vision, a smile on his face.
“This is not funny.”
“I think it’s very funny, but duty calls for both of us, I think,” he kissed her languidly, and her hand fisted in his hair, “We’ll come back to this later.”
“We will?” she asked hopefully, even as she rolled out of bed, her feet hitting the cool wood of the floor.
“Oh yes we will,” there was an edge to his eyes that she had never seen there before, something almost dangerous that she wanted to know more about, “That’s a promise.”
“Okay,” she smiled up at him, and he leaned down to kiss her forehead, “And I guess we can order takeout tonight, even though it’s a Saturday.”
He looped his arm around her shoulders, pulling open the door to the beautiful chaos that awaited them outside.
“That’s my girl.”