Work Text:
Dr Robby called it crossing the Rubicon. Passing the point of no return.
For Mel King this moment happened on the 24th of June. It was steeped in confusion, in embarrassment, until the moment it wasn’t. Until the moment Frank Langdon – whom she called Langdon, because he seemed vitriolically opposed to being called Frank – confessed that he liked her. That he had feelings for her.
The moment happened when she kissed him and the whole world tilted on its axis. She felt dizzy, unsteady, but his light touch on her cheek, on her thigh, was ever so grounding. It brought her back down to Earth.
The moment happened when she grinned and he whispered Yeah, there’s the butterflies.
They could not go back from this point. The Rubicon was well and truly crossed.
And Mel, who had been labouring under the impression that Langdon was in love with someone else for the past nine months, couldn’t be happier.
BEFORE
In August, Mel was looking over the results of a patient’s EKG in their examination room when Mateo and McKay walked in.
“They were on the roof hugging,” McKay said, eyes wide and bangs a mess. Mel could tell just how frazzled McKay was depending on how messy her hair got; usually, from hours seven till one, they were perfectly neat. After two pm was anyone’s game.
“Why?” Mateo asked emphatically.
“Something about losing a patient and it being her fault.”
Mateo winced. “There was this guy in Trauma One not long ago. I think he coded for like thirty minutes. I thought I heard Jesse mention something about Santos. She must’ve been really messed up to let someone actually touch her.”
Mel frowned as she watched their conversation.
“Who was Santos hugging?” she asked, because she couldn’t help herself.
Their patient looked idly between them.
“Langdon,” McKay replied, waving a hand. “On the roof. It was—weird. Like they… I don’t know, cared about each other or something. Langdon was doing a decent job of comforting her.”
Mel, who knew Langdon quite well, and had been comforted by him several times, was not particularly surprised by that bit of information. Nor the Santos part necessarily. She’d noticed there to be less animosity between them since sometime in July, and even asked him about it. He’d shrugged and taken a bite of his protein bar. We worked our shit out. We get each other better now.
“Of course they care about each other,” Mateo said. “They’re dating.”
McKay rolled her eyes, but Mel simply frowned.
“They’re what?”
“Dating,” Mateo said. “It’s pretty obvious, I think.”
McKay looked like she was going to say something, but then the patient said, “Listen, I like a good medical drama as much as anyone else. Grey’s. New Amsterdam. Whatever. But I don’t actually need to see my doctors talking about their love lives when I’m in the hospital.”
McKay smiled at him. “Sorry about that Mr Rouse. Mel—the EKG results?”
Mel blinked, shaking her head and looking down at the results. “Uh, they’re clear,” she said. “No abnormalities present at all.”
Her head was somewhere else. She left as soon as it was appropriate for her to do so, and then squeezed herself into that one spot in the corner of the hall where no one really noticed you if they were walking past in a hurry. She spent a few moments in confused sadness.
Why was she—
Langdon and Santos are dating.
They didn’t get along, but now they did. Neither had mentioned it, although she was certainly closer to Langdon than she was to Santos – it must be a secret. Or, perhaps, they were taking it slow, figuring out the kinks before revealing it to their coworkers.
Langdon would tell her, surely.
Mel hated the idea. She blinked into the thought. Langdon telling her he was seeing someone. Langdon telling her he was seeing Santos. Perhaps they were into whatever fiery passion that arguing so often brought them. Perhaps their similarities were too stark to look away from.
Oh, she thought. It’s jealousy.
She had already known that Langdon was attractive, was funny, was kind and easy to talk to. He was a good teacher, an easy mentor, an attentive friend. He’d met Becca several times since they first accidentally ran into each other at the grocery store and now asked after her frequently. She’d met his kids when they happened across each other in the park near her house while she was on a walk and had seen them a few times since on afternoon excursions. Sometimes, in the mornings, he brought her coffee because he had remembered her explaining how she didn’t always have time in the mornings – but especially when Becca stayed over.
Of course she liked him.
Of fucking course.
AFTER
“I’m not sure what we do now,” Mel said, her face tucked into Langdon’s neck where they sprawled on her couch. They’d moved the nest of blankets and pillows and were now curled around each other. He was so warm – warmer than she’d realised. Heat radiated out, his arms wrapped around her, her fingertips finding purchase in his t-shirt, slipping carefully underneath the hem to touch against the skin of his hip.
Langdon hummed, cheek pressed against the top of her head. “We could make out some more.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I think we’ve made out more in the last half hour than I have in the last two years.”
He exhaled; she felt it against her skin. “Me too, probably.”
“Hm?” She was frowning, and maybe he could feel that. His hand smoothed a path along her upper arm, soft and repetitive. She felt like sinking beneath the touch. “You were married, though.”
“Couples who are getting a divorce don’t kiss much,” he replied. “But maybe let’s not talk about my former marriage within the hour of confessing our own feelings, huh?”
“Good point,” she said, and let herself press against him some more. She had thought about holding back, but there was no reason to. He was right: they had confessed their feelings, had kissed, had made out and let their hands wander – hers beneath his t-shirt, along the planes of his back; his across her waist, over her hips, one hand even exploring the span of her thigh all the way up to her underwear. The hands went no further, but they had made their point.
Langdon said, “We could do the sensible thing and talk.”
"I don’t want to be sensible just yet,” she replied. Perhaps too fast, too sure, but he didn’t seem to mind. She pulled back a little to see his face, his mouth a little redder than usual as she was sure hers was too. “Do you want pizza bagels?”
He snorted out a laugh, which made her grin.
“You have pizza bagels?”
“Yeah. And I’m hungry. Or snacky, perhaps. It’s like nine – it’s not too late for pizza bagels.”
He seemed to consider this seriously. “I’m actually not sure there’s a single hour in the day that pizza bagels wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Not even breakfast?”
“Bagels are appropriate at breakfast. And what is pizza if not tomato, cheese and a topping? I don’t think tomatoes and cheese would be criminal to be discovered at the breakfast table.”
Mel thought on this, then nodded decisively. “I think you’re right. Might depend on the topping. I think pepperoni is a noon-and-after food.”
“Bacon, though.”
She raised her eyebrows in agreement. “Bacon, though.” At his smile, she asked, “So, you hungry?”
“Starved.”
She climbed off the couch immediately, suddenly cold without him keeping her warm. He followed, however, socked feet padding through her apartment on her trail. In the kitchen, he moved around her easily, finding the tray and preheating the oven as she located her box of pizza bagels in the freezer. She emptied the entire thing on the tray, and said, “Seventeen minutes,” and he set the egg timer while she put them in the oven. By the time she’d turned around, intending to write pizza bagels on the shopping list stuck to her fridge, she found him already there, pen in hand, scrawling his messy hand over the list.
She felt incredibly, ridiculously known.
Mel was still staring when he turned around afterwards.
He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
She hopped up onto the counter where they met in a corner, held out a hand and watched as he grasped it, walking into the V of her legs.
“How’d you know to put them on the list?” she asked, as he laced their fingers together. With his free hand, he passed it along her thigh and up to her waist, heat following the path.
His eyebrows furrowed however, likely out of confusion. “You always have pizza bagels in the freezer because it’s Becca’s safe food,” he said. “Stands to reason you would need to restock.”
She drew in a breath. Incredibly, ridiculously known.
Mel leaned forward and kissed him. Like fireworks and bells and every metaphor she’d ever read in every romance book she’d ever devoured. She lit up from the inside out. Her heart raced. She had never felt so certain, so sure. The Rubicon had been crossed and she had no intention of turning around.
When he pulled away, he nudged his nose against hers.
“If we talked,” she said, low, “what would we talk about?”
He kissed her again, humming. His forehead pressed against hers after; he seemed to think about it.
“Would you like an agenda?”
“Yes, please.”
“Okay.”
Her arms were linked around his neck now, his hands soft at her waist. His hips were pressed up between her thighs, and it was hard not to kiss him again, to not interrupt him as he answered.
“One: we would have the requisite will you be my girlfriend? conversation. Usually also contains an addendum about exclusivity, labels, etcetera. Two: as we work together, we’d also have to discuss workplace etiquette and how long we would wait before telling Robby about us.”
“Is that entirely necessary?”
“For HR reasons, yeah. But it doesn’t have to be soon.”
“The third and final point on the agenda would likely include asking you on a date, so we can do this properly.”
“That’s all?”
He shrugged, easy. “You can add your own agenda items, if you wish.”
She pulled away, so she could see him properly. “Alright. Item one.”
He smiled, amused. “Mel King, will you be my girlfriend?”
“What does being your girlfriend contain?”
“It would be romantic in nature,” he said. “Dates, hand holding, kissing. All that good stuff.”
“I assume also sexual in nature,” she added, and watched how he contained his smile with effort.
“I would very much like it to be sexual in nature, too,” he agreed. She nodded.
“And exclusive? Because I’m not interested in seeing someone else, and I don’t think I would feel okay with you doing it either.”
Langdon nodded, kissed her, said, “Exclusive,” into her mouth. She slipped her fingers into his hair.
“Okay,” she said. “Ask me again.”
“Mel King,” he whispered, trailing kisses from her mouth to her jaw. She carefully contained the moan threatening to release. “Will you be my girlfriend? Go out with me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’d love to.”
His smile was bright when he slowly pulled back. She knew what he had said about her smile giving him butterflies, but she too felt the swoop when she saw his. Like her entire stomach flipped, like her heart clenched. She wanted to live in his smile.
“Item two,” he said.
“I think we should see where this goes before telling people.”
“Agreed. Not least because the nurses are very nosy. We act like we normally would when we’re there.” He tilted his head, slightly. “Addendum – I will probably tell Abby.”
“I don’t think I could not tell Becca.”
“Anyone else?”
Mel thought about it. Her friends at work were nice, were kind, were good colleagues – but she wasn’t exceptionally close to any of them bar Langdon. Whitaker was good and easy, she saw a kind boy in him and enjoyed his company, but they were mainly friends because she and Langdon were connected at the hip and so were Whitaker and Trinity. Trinity—she did not want to tell Trinity.
Not after today, and this week, and what happened last month. She was still a little confused about where their friendship was at.
So Mel shook her head. “Just Becca, for now. You?”
“Maybe Collins,” he said after a beat. “But not yet. And I figure we wait a month or two before bringing it up with Robby.”
“Sure. Item three?”
Langdon cleared his throat. “Mel,” he said. “Would you go to dinner with me?”
She grinned. She heard his breath catch. “Langdon,” she replied, “only if I get to choose the place.”
“Deal.” He moved in close again, forehead to forehead. “Any other agenda items?”
“Yes,” she said. “I am putting making out on the agenda.”
“Very forward of you, King.”
“We have until the pizza bagels are done,” she said. “Let’s not waste time with compliments.”
He laughed into her mouth and it tasted like promise.
BEFORE
Mel stared at the wall, gloved hands raised but idle.
“Santos,” Langdon bit, “if you’re not going to be helpful get out of my trauma room.”
“He needs to be intubated—”
“He does not need to be intubated,” Langdon retorted. “Not yet. Let the meds work—”
“And when they don’t?”
“Jesus Christ. Do you talk to all your senior residents like this?”
“You keep pulling rank,” Santos snapped, “like that means jack shit to me. It’s so petty—”
“Children,” Garcia said, entering. “Are we good in here?”
“They’re fighting again,” Mel said, plain.
Langdon’s face snapped to her, but she didn’t look at him to see his expression, just watched Garcia’s eyebrow raise and her eyes roll. Santos huffed where she stood near the patient’s head, intubation gear in hand.
“Well, we can’t have that,” Garcia replied mildly.
“Do you mind if I leave?” Mel asked.
Garcia’s face fluttered between amused and impressed and back again. “You’re good to go, King,” she said. “I’ve got Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber from here. An admirable attempt, though!” she called after Mel as she pulled off her gloves and threw them in the trash on the way out.
She carved a path straight out into the ambulance bay, where she ducked off to the side, pulling out her phone and opening her lava lamp app as she went. Langdon and Santos’ arguments may have been less frequent now they were dating, but they were still infamously terrible to be in the room for.
Sometimes, they were kind and took themselves off to an empty examination room or the stairwell to yell at each other. Sometimes, they were particularly mean and did it in the middle of the ED in front of everyone.
Mel had assumed their dating would calm them down – maybe provide them with some open affection for one another. And they were better in some ways; they had a lot of jokes now, and were regularly found by each other’s side, chatting and laughing. Langdon had even told her that on the nights he didn’t have his prescheduled dinners with Mel and Becca – which Becca required to be on a scheduled basis, and honestly, Mel liked the committed, repetitive nature of that – and he didn’t have the kids with him, he’d be at her place.
And Mel was totally fine with this, obviously. Totally.
It just meant that the times she wanted to ask Langdon’s opinions, or show up at work expecting to fall into rhythm with him immediately were sometimes sidetracked by Santos. He still gave his opinions, still found her later and fell into step with her, as if he had been seeking out their easy workplace dance too – but it just wasn’t same. It wasn’t bad, necessary.
It was fine.
And she was also very okay in a normal way about him bringing Trinity coffee too. She wasn’t reading into that at all.
Mel had been staring at her lava lamp app for about five minutes when a body appeared next to her. She knew it was Langdon without looking up, so she didn’t.
He blew out a long breath. “You okay?”
“Yep.”
“Wanna try that on me again? But more convincing this time?”
She pulled a face, looking up at him. “I’m good,” she said.
“Sorry you had to see that,” Langdon said after a beat of scrutinising her expression. His hand found the back of his neck, rubbing awkwardly. “I really do try not to do that in front of you.”
Maybe because he knew she hated watching fights. Maybe because it was actually some deep lover’s quarrel and not for Mel’s eyes.
She said, “I know,” because she did. “You two make up?”
“She’s taking some time to cool off with that unconscious spleen impalement patient.”
“And you?”
“I’m taking some time to cool off out here with you.”
She exhaled her amusement. “I really would’ve thought you two would be getting along better now that you—well, get along better,” she said, adding the end awkwardly. Could she reference the dating out loud? She wasn’t sure. If it was a secret, would Langdon even want her to know?
He winced, looking out at the road that led into the ambulance bay, the cars passing by.
“It’s slow progress,” he admitted. “I’d hoped all our issues would be magically fixed, but apparently it actually takes consistent work to do that kind of thing.”
“Who would’ve guessed?” Mel said, mild.
He smiled at her easily. “I continue to be thankful for your unproblematic nature and lack of instinctually hating me.”
“If I’m going to start hating you,” Mel said, although she couldn’t actually fathom herself ever doing so, “it wouldn’t be instinctual. Probably brought on by, like, a murder or something.”
He raised an amused eyebrow. “You’d hate me if I killed someone?”
“Seems like a reasonable line in the sand,” she replied. “Unless it was in self-defence or you had a really good reason to do it.”
“A really good reason.”
“Like—like, they had kidnapped someone and it was the only way. Or something.”
Langdon nodded like he was filing this information away. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “You good to go back in? I have a patient with a pencil stuck in her ear.”
“In her ear?”
“X-ray shows it a solid three centimetres into her skull.”
“And she’s just walking around?”
“Drove herself to the hospital and everything.”
Mel blinked, wide-eyed. “Can I join you?”
Langdon grinned, throwing an arm around her shoulder and guiding her back to the doors. She didn’t shake him off; it had been a long time since she had avoided Langdon’s touch. Probably not since the third hour of the first day they met.
“Dr King, I would love for you to join me.”
AFTER
Mel thought it would be different at work, but somehow, it was very much the same.
Langdon arrived five minutes before his shift started with coffee. His cup of espresso shots, her soy milk vanilla latte, and if Trinity had behaved herself recently, an iced mocha frappe. He chatted with her by the stations, bounded around by her side while they did rounds, tagged her in on whatever trauma first came through the door.
The only thing that was different now was that she knew what it was like to kiss him.
She knew that she was allowed to.
Mel didn’t, of course, because they had agreed to keep their burgeoning relationship quiet at work, but she knew that she could. She knew that if she was alone with him in the stairwell, or on the rooftop, she could press up onto her toes and kiss him and no one would be the wiser.
And he seemed to know that too, because he found excuses to get them alone. Returning from transporting a patient to the OR and letting the nurses go on ahead under the guise of an untied shoelace so he could tilt her face up to meet his in the elevator ride down. Tagging her in when the helicopter delivered an emergency trauma and stopping before the door to the roof, the kiss short and sweet and begging for more. Finding the hidden spot in the corner of the parking lot where there were no cameras and no eyes and he could press her up against the wall of the hospital and kiss her breathless.
She loved work for a totally new reason now.
Something else that was different was Trinity.
Langdon hadn’t told her in the week since they’d gotten together, as was their agreement, and July had now begun, and apparently she’d lost fifty bucks on a bet that was technically true but found herself to be unaware of it. She was apparently very interested in making up for the overzealous actions she’d performed in pursuit of her matchmaking scheme – which had only technically worked because it had prompted the beginning of their relationship, but more through her failure than her success – and had been actively trying to build bridges with Mel ever since.
Just as she had when they were first becoming friends, Trinity was offering to go grocery shopping with her, fitting herself into Mel’s packed schedule. She’d stopped the flirting entirely, but that meant that she stopped a lot of actions Mel had become used to over June: their ankles hooked together when they sat at the same table, the way Trinity looked at her with overt interest in whatever she was saying, the occasional playful tug of her braid. Mel knew now that these were not signs of friendship, but flirting too subtle for her to pick up on – but she missed them all the same.
As Langdon drove them both home from work – they did that sometimes now, carpooling, because it meant they got more time together on the days where they had alternate plans in the evening – she brought it up.
Langdon shrugged. “So be friends with her again.”
“It just feels—weird? I’m not sure how to explain it. I don’t like what she did.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “It was over the line. She apologised to you, right?”
Mel nodded. “She did. For both things. So now I know the ball’s in my court – that’s how it works. It’s up to me, but I just find it difficult to… understand, I guess.”
“Why she did it?”
“Yeah. Like, I know she was matchmaking or whatever you said. But I don’t get why.”
Langdon pulled a face, clearly in thought, and slowed for the red light. When they were at a stop, he turned his considering look on her.
“This might sound ridiculous coming from me,” he warned, “but it is the reason she gave.”
“Okay.”
“She thinks I’m sad and lonely.”
Mel raised her eyebrows.
“Are you?”
“No,” he replied. “But she seems to think I am. Or—at least, she seems to think I could stand to be happier. And she wants to provide that for me; wants to do something that’ll make me happy, because that’s how she shows her friends that she cares.”
Mel frowned, thinking this over.
Langdon added, “It’s different to how you show you care.” He said it like he was trying to provide a comparison point for her.
“How do I show that?”
“By helping,” he replied, and started the car back up as the light turned green. “You do things for people. All the time. And that’s how you tell them you care about them. You offer to help with Tanner and Kasey; you showed up when I was struggling with them by myself; hell, you took out the trash for me just last week because I was too tired to do it.”
“But you do the same things for me.”
“Sure,” he said easily. “That’s how we show each other we care. Trinity shows people she cares by doing insane things out of love and not telling them. She doesn’t charge Whitaker rent and actively refuses his money even when he’s trying to just buy the groceries. She bought a bunch of packs of underwear and socks and identical t-shirts in his sizes and sneaks them into his room every few weeks. I don’t know if he’s even noticed that one yet. And for me, she knew I liked you and therefore went out of her way to concoct terrible and unnecessary plans to try and get us together, so I would be happy.”
Mel drew in a breath. “Oh.”
“I will stress – they were terrible and unnecessary. I was working on it, you know. I had a long game in mind.”
“A long game?”
“A very long game. It was several years of slow courting. I was happy to hold your hand in about six years’ time, or maybe never. Whatever you wanted.”
She snorted, slipping her hand over his on the gear stick. His smile was wide. Her stomach swooped.
“So, all I’m saying,” he continued, “is that if you want to be friends with her again, you should be. She just might do totally insane things again in future, and you have to be prepared for that.”
“Are you prepared for that?”
He laughed. “Ah, well she’s still on her apology tour for the last insane thing she did,” he told her. “So I’ve got a while before she tries something new. Hopefully by then I will seem less sad and lonely to her and she’ll just, like, order me one of those meal planning kits or something.”
Mel nodded and thought it all over on the drive home.
That evening, she caught up on her reality TV shows and laid in her blanket nest, occasionally texting Langdon and receiving photos of his kids, grinning in their beds and clutching their comically large plushies in return.
The next day, she decided to say nothing to Santos about it at all. But at lunch, she sat down beside her and hooked their ankles together as she launched into a conversation about the show Naked Attraction.
The wide-eyed look Trinity gave her was only cut by the grin that appeared on her face when she put it together.
BEFORE
Mel was drunk.
Really, truly, fucking eviscerated. At least, that’s what Langdon said. Fucking eviscerated. The words sounded almost dirty out of his mouth, but maybe that was the alcohol. Maybe that was the way he was pressed up close to her, mouth to her ear so he could be heard over the loud music and shouting of the bar.
They had a timer for how long they would spend here – Mel’s own personal limit of forty-five minutes – but she didn’t mind it yet. The floor wasn’t as sticky as other places and the loud music was overwhelming, but somehow muted whenever Langdon came in close to talk to her, the two of them stood on the edge of the fray, Trinity and Whitaker lost to the dancing crowd.
She’d danced at the other places, that were less loud and thumping; she’d downed the shots and drank copious rum and cokes. Her eyes kept dropping to Langdon’s white t-shirt, ruined early on in the night with Trinity’s messy scrawl: SAD DIVORCED MAN: DO NOT INTERACT. Trinity, staking her claim, Whitaker had said. A warning for the masses, Trinity had replied.
He was so close to her, their bodies twisted to speak. His eyes were so blue in the neon. His jaw was lit a hundred bright colours.
Mel considered, for a brief moment, what he would do if she kissed him.
Probably nothing good. She wanted to anyway. Ached for it.
She thought it doubtful he hadn’t seen the way her gaze jumped to his mouth when he spoke, how she moved in so close to him that there was practically nothing between them. What if she closed the gap?
It was later in the night, Langdon and Trinity running off ahead, Trinity sprinting away with Langdon’s phone in hand, screaming for all the world to hear in the dead of night, that Whitaker, drunk and stumbling beside her, said, “I love ‘em but they’re so annoying together.”
Mel nodded. “Preach,” she said, pumping her fist in the air. Her limbs felt gangly, loose. Her head was pleasantly beyond buzzed. She felt like she could say or do anything and it wouldn’t matter; her steps were wavy; she grabbed Whitaker’s hand so she wouldn’t wander off.
“Don’t tell them I said this,” Whitaker continued, “but I changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“About them dating.”
“I don’t get what you mean,” Mel said, very seriously.
“I used to think they should date,” Whitaker explained, although his gaze was distant. At the end of the street, Langdon caught Trinity around the waist, picking her up. She screamed, laughter echoing. “Now I think they shouldn’t. I’ve changed my mind.”
Mel nodded, tugging on his hand so he faced her. “I don’t think they should date either.”
“Right?” he said. “I don’t mind that Francis comes over all the time, though. So they can stay friends.”
Mel pulled a face. “Francis?”
“Oh. Don’t tell him I told you. His name’s a secret.”
Mel mouthed his name again. Francis. She hadn’t known that. She would take it to the grave.
“Anyway, no dating for them. Nope. Nuh-uh,” Whitaker said, starting them back along the street again.
“I think Langdon should date me,” Mel told him.
Whitaker’s eyes widened, his mouth making an ‘o’. “No way,” he said, then he laughed.
Mel shrugged and swung their hands between them. “Yes way. But I don’t think he will. He likes Trinity too much for that.”
Whitaker frowned. Langdon’s voice echoed down the street.
“Mel!” he called. “Mellllllll! Come on! Hurry up! We gotta get the fries before the fry place closes!”
Mel had no idea they were getting fries, but she suddenly wanted them desperately. She let go of Whitaker’s hand and jogged forward, messy and uncoordinated. Whitaker wasn’t far behind. When she reached Langdon and Trinity, the two were far apart, Trinity spinning in the empty road, arms splayed wide.
“Where’s my sock?” she asked, before Whitaker appeared at her side and she grinned at him, wide and beautiful.
While she watched, Langdon’s arm landed around her shoulders.
“You wanna share some fries?” he asked, dipping his mouth to Mel’s ear, even though there was no music or shouting to be heard over.
She grinned up at him, and she looked away before she could see the way he stared.
The next morning, when she awoke on Trinity and Whitaker’s small sofa, Langdon stretched out across their big one, she watched him wake up to the morning light streaming in through the massive windows with no curtains.
She and Whitaker both would have a few blank spots from the night before, though Langdon and Trinity could remember most everything.
“There’s just a whole lot of nothing between the last bar and the fry place,” she said while they ate their McDonalds breakfasts, to which Whitaker pointed at her tiredly in agreement.
“I remember the fry place,” Langdon said. “You ate all my fries.”
AFTER
Three weeks into dating, Langdon got sucker punched by a patient. Mel, who was in the room and watched the way Langdon’s body was thrown backwards, crashing into the wall, screamed for security. She watched the nurses rush in, desperate to grab a hold of him, and rushed to the cart for a sedative. By the time she had administered it, Langdon was climbing to his feet, blood dripping out of his nose and hitting the floor in an array of red dots.
“Langdon,” she said, passing off the used syringe and rushing to his side. Perlah was there, too, with gauze to stem the bleeding. “Are you okay? We need to get you checked out.”
Her hand shook as she reached up to his face. There was already a red swelling along his cheek bones, towards the nose, and Langdon grasped her hand before she could touch the skin, his grip gentle.
“I’m okay,” he said, though he was bleeding. “Are you good?”
“I didn’t get punched.”
“You’re shaking, though.”
Mel didn’t respond, and instead tried to forcibly centre herself. She then gestured them out of the patient’s room, calling over Dr Robby when she saw him passing through the centre of the ED. His face twisted in concern at the sight of Langdon.
“Jesus,” he said. “What the hell happened?”
“Patient got punchy,” Langdon replied, hissing as Dr Robby removed the gauze to get a better look. Dr Robby winced at the sight of it, directing Langdon to a chair. Mel paced nearby as he checked him over, telling a nurse to put him at the top of the CT list and to grab him some ice.
“I think you got off easy,” Dr Robby said after a minute. “Doesn’t seem to be a fracture – I think you’ll just have some gnarly bruising for a while.”
“My ER Ken rep is gonna go in the toilet.”
“Nah,” Princess said, nearby, because they’d gathered a small crowd of hawk-eyed doctors and nurses. “Girls love a bad boy. The bruise is gonna make you more desirable, not less.”
Langdon went for a smile, but it collapsed under the amount of blood on his face. “Can always count on you, Princess,” he said.
Mel’s shaking fingers twisted into knots as she paced back and forth. Dr Robby looked up at her. “Dr King,” he said, and she glanced over, continuing the movement. “Why don’t you get Dr Langdon cleaned up and take him up to CT?”
“I don’t need CT, Robby—”
“It’s a precaution. Gloria’s gonna have my ass if I don’t give you one. We’ll get started on the incident report when you get back. King,” he added, “don’t leave his side, alright?”
Mel nodded, and Langdon sighed, heaving himself out of his chair and letting Mel guide him towards the elevator to take to CT.
“Do you have more scrubs in your locker?” she asked, stopping at the cart along the way to grab wipes.
“Yeah.” Jesse appeared with an ice pack, vanished again afterwards.
They got into the elevator. Just the two of them, Mel’s hands pressed together tightly, the pack of wipes between them.
“Mel,” Langdon said, soft. He put a hand over hers. “I’m okay.”
“I don’t know why I’m shaking.”
“Because it was scary, probably.”
Mel nodded, absently. She looked around the elevator; the buttons, the doors, the mirror along the back wall. Her reflection looked panicked.
“Mel,” Langdon whispered. “Sweetheart.”
She looked over. Sweetheart was new.
“I’m good,” he said. “You’re good. The patient is sedated, there’s no fracture, the head CT will be clear. While I’m in the CT, take a break, okay? A few minutes.” His smile was soft, and bloodstained. “I would hold your hand if I wouldn’t get blood on you,” he said.
Mel sniffed. “I thought handholding was for year six.”
Langdon barked out a surprised laugh, then winced, regretting it. “There’s no hard and fast rules here.”
They left the elevator, and waited outside the CT room, Mel cleaning Langdon’s face as gently as she could with the wipes until the pink skin appeared once more. She ran the wipes over his mouth, his chin, down his neck until the place where it soaked into his scrubs. Then she got a fresh one and cleaned his hands, finger by finger, with soft and slow and devotedly careful movements, until they were clean.
Langdon watched her do this in silence the whole time, eyes wide and imploring, mouth parted just a little. They were sat on those plasticky seats in the hall outside CT, the occasional person passing them by but giving them no notice.
His breath was shaky when he released it, her hands soft on his as she removed the last of the blood.
“Mel,” he said, and it was the first time she’d ever heard her name said with such reverence. “I—”
“Francis Langdon?” the CT tech said in the doorway.
The moment shattered, returning them to normality. He looked over.
“Let’s get you checked out,” the tech said. “We’ve got a wheelchair coming up to get you, too.”
“That’s not necessary,” Langdon said as he followed the tech inside, Mel following to stand in the tech booth.
“Oh, it’s very necessary,” the tech replied.
Later, when the CT was clear and Langdon was returned to the ED in a wheelchair, mad as hell about it, Mel sat next to him in a chair at the nurses’ station, spinning slowly. He would be fine, she would be fine; the shaking had stopped sometime between her opening the wipes to clean his hands and seeing his brain on the CT, perfectly uninjured.
They absently watched a trauma rush in through the doors, watched Dana go to see a patient, watched the ED move in perfect synchronicity. Mel placed her hand in Langdon’s and he squeezed gently.
Perlah approached, and said, “I will not charge you for this” and held out her phone for Langdon to see. Mel glanced at the screen, finding a text thread with the names blacked out. She didn’t bother to read it.
“As expected,” Langdon sighed.
Perlah smiled, eyes rolling. “You two are cute together,” she said, before leaving.
Mel looked at Langdon, and Langdon looked at Mel. “The night shift nurse rumour mill – which I’m starting to suspect is actually the day shift nurse rumour mill – is speculating on the nature of our relationship.”
Mel blew out a relieved breath, and Langdon cocked an eyebrow.
“That’s better than them thinking I punched you.”
Langdon’s smile was amused. “Mel, I’m not sure anyone would think you punched me.”
BEFORE
Langdon kissed Mel’s cheek at New Year. She desperately hoped she wasn’t as flushed as she felt.
“Happy New Year, Langdon,” she said, after he had said it to her. He returned to his patient shortly afterwards, and Mel had returned to hers, the phantom feeling of his mouth on her cheek following her the whole way.
It was hours later, around three am, when Mel stood in the cold, up on the roof, watching the city be silent and distant as always, that Trinity appeared beside her, yawning.
“You good, King?” she asked, leaning on the railing beside her.
New Year was usually busy; jam-packed with drunk accidents and overdoses. For some reason, they hadn’t rolled in as many this year as other years. There were multiple empty beds and a mostly empty sleepy waiting room.
Mel nodded. “Just kind of sucks,” she said.
“What does?”
“You make it through a whole year, through New Year, only to die three hours into the next one.”
Trinity winced, her face twisted into something sympathetic.
“Didn’t know you had a death tonight.”
“A woman,” Mel said. “Cancer but she was getting through it. Charts said she was reacting really well to chemo.”
“What happened?”
“Drunk driver happened,” Mel sighed. “He was dead on scene, she came to us. Her body was pretty weak, though. I guess it had taken a lot to get through the cancer, and she just—she didn’t hold on.”
Trinity hummed. “I’m not sure how much I believe in the idea that people can hold on by choice,” she said, “but that sucks.”
“It does suck,” Mel said. “New Years always sucks so I’m not sure why I hoped this one would be any different.”
Trinity leant back, hanging onto the railing, and then straightened again. She was fidgety, but Mel wasn’t surprised. She and Langdon had that in common; perpetual motion machines of people.
“It’s what people do,” Trinity said after a beat. “We hope something will go good even when all the evidence points to it going bad. Why is New Years such a shit show for you?”
Mel blew out a breath. “My Mom died on New Years Eve when I was a teenager. Kept saying she would make it through to the next year then never did. And my Dad—I don’t know. Always spent them with his girlfriend after that, left Becca and I to our own devices. And I tried, of course. I tried to make them fun. But Becca hates the fireworks so she’d cry. It just—it always sucked. And this year… I’ve never had to work New Years before. I just thought it would be different.”
Trinity nudged their arms together. “You got breakfast plans?”
Mel blinked over at her. “No?”
“Come out with me and Langdon,” she said. “We’re getting pancakes.”
“What about Whitaker?”
“He’s a sleepy little baby,” she sighed. “Declined the offer. Might still change his mind.”
Mel considered it: breakfast with Trinity and Langdon, breakfast where she would have to tamp down the kind of jealousy she didn’t know she was capable of, breakfast where she would feel the phantom touch of Langdon’s kiss on her cheek and watch him laugh with Trinity, knowing it to be more intimate and important than anything he’d done with her.
She absently pressed her fingertips to her cheek.
“Okay,” she said, because Mel needed a light at the end of the dark tunnel of this night nonetheless. “I’ll get breakfast with you.”
When they did, it wasn’t so bad. Langdon sat opposite the girls and paid for their breakfasts, talked extensively about anything but work and didn’t once bring up the patient she’d lost or the night she’d had or the New Years any of them had ever experienced. There was nothing much to feel jealous over at all, actually; their tired eyes never ignored her, their exhausted bodies never touching or reaching or doing anything all that affectionate.
When they left for their cars afterwards, Langdon stretched, his bones clicking, a strip of stomach revealed as his t-shirt rode up. Mel had to drag her gaze away and found Trinity’s not on him at all.
“This is gonna be a good year,” Langdon announced.
“How do you know?” Mel asked.
He sighed happily, arms dropping. “Easy. The sun is shining. I get to see my kids this afternoon. I got breakfast with two of my favourite people. All signs are pointing to a good year.”
Mel stared and let herself memorise his morning smile.
AFTER
Mel was in the kitchen checking on the chicken when Abby arrived. She heard the door open and Langdon greet her and the kids rush in, forever underfoot. Becca’s chirp of excitement meeting their delighted sequels as they found each other in the living room.
“Mel,” Abby greeted happily, appearing in the doorway of Langdon’s kitchen. Langdon was just behind her, shutting the door and calling the kids to come take their shoes off. “It’s so lovely to see you.”
“Hi, Abby,” she replied with a smile. Mel shut the oven door.
“I would hug you, but I’m not sure if you’re into hugs.” Her voice was easy, light, as she toed off her shoes and nudged them towards the pile being made by the front door – too many shoes and not enough space on the shoe rack.
“Not particularly,” Mel replied. “Would you like a drink?”
“I would love one.” Abby slotted herself into the kitchen, somehow finding a position perfectly out of the way as Mel went through her checklist of items to check on, finding Abby a glass and pouring her drink from her preferred bottle of wine. Through the hatch that looked into the living room of Langdon’s apartment, now decorated and fit with a new, larger table that could comfortably seat six, Mel could see the kids climbing onto the sofa, Becca watching them with giggles.
When Langdon joined them in the kitchen, Abby said, “This place looks so much nicer now it’s finished,” and Langdon rolled his eyes at the way she’d said it so pointed.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m bad at interior design,” he replied, reaching past her for his own glass of wine, which not at all the same type Abby liked. “You like the table? It’s a Skogsta.”
“I like the blackboard,” she said, gesturing vaguely to the hallway, where the blackboard was mounted on the wall. It was already covered in drawings from Tanner and Kasey’s previous stays, lumpy cats and squiggles and Tanner writing out the alphabet in a messy hand.
“Ah, that was all Mel. As was the very adult purchase of a fruit bowl.” He pointed towards it.
“Your fruit was just on the counter,” Mel said. “It was in the way.”
“And now it’s not,” he agreed, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Is the chicken ready?”
“Nearly. A few more minutes, I think.”
Abby was smiling, but there was something wrong with her eyes. It took until the look had vanished, Langdon asking her how about her job firmly distracting her, for Mel to pinpoint the look as sad. She felt itchy at the thought.
There wasn’t much time to dwell on it. Minutes later, they were laying the table, serving up, getting the kids to stop trying to bounce out of their seats, and finally sitting down to eat. Becca sat at one head of the table and Tanner at the other; the food was good and tasted even better with the knowledge that she and Langdon had cooked it together.
Tanner told loud stories and Becca told louder ones. Abby laughed at all of them, asked questions about work, about Trinity and Dennis and how Robby was doing.
“How’d they react, by the way?” she asked near the end of the meal, Kasey and Tanner stuffed and lounging back on their chairs, Becca still picking her way through. “To this, I mean.” She pointed her fork between Mel and Langdon.
“Haven’t mentioned it yet,” Langdon said.
Abby’s eyebrows shot up. “You haven’t?”
He shrugged. “Hasn’t come up.”
Mel rolled her eyes, but she was smiling all the same. “He doesn’t want Trinity to win the betting pool, so he’s going to lie to her about when we got together.”
“Oh, my God,” Abby said. “And, as of right now, your best friend doesn’t know you two are…”
Langdon placed his knife and fork together on his plate, reaching for his glass. “My best friend is a meddling lunatic,” he said. “But hey, don’t sell yourself short – I know you can beat her out for the title.”
“Ha,” Abby said, dry. Then her face changed. “Was I the first one to know?”
“Mm, Becca,” Mel said. Becca blinked over at her. “Becca was first to know.”
“Then you,” Langdon said. “And I told Collins last week because she looked like she needed a pick-me-up.”
Abby scoffed. “And your love life is the perfect thing to make her mood better.”
“Oh, she’s the only person in the ED not invested in it,” he replied, “but it worked as a distraction. She spent like twenty minutes lecturing me about not fuc—messing it up.” Tanner and Kasey didn’t even seem to notice the almost swear.
When Langdon looked at her, though, Kasey said, “Can we have dessert now?”
“You barely finished your dinner,” he replied. “Aren’t you too full up for dessert?”
Kasey shook her head, though it was languid, like the food had made her tired. “Different tummy,” she said. “Dessert tummy’s empty.”
They cleared away the plates soon after, let Kasey nap off her meal before she woke up again after thirty minutes and could actually have her dessert. It was a cheesecake they’d bought from the bakery around the corner, and while Mel ate her slice on the sofa with Abby, the kids and Becca ate theirs at the table while Langdon got a head start on the dishes. Mel watched him idly through the serving hatch, until she realised Abby was watching her.
Abby Piper – neé Langdon – had always been kind in Mel’s experience. When they’d first met, she was just Langdon’s friend from work, and Abby was the sad, separated wife, sceptical of the friend tagging along with her sad, separated husband. They’d gotten to know each other fast, however, and after they finally signed the divorce papers in early July – Mel and Langdon had gotten together only ten days or so short of the year anniversary – Abby had become a lot more easy-going around Mel.
Mel thought her pleasant, funny, with large reserves of patience and an uncanny ability to talk about almost anything. Mel had been studying it for about a year, and she found it came down to Abby’s ease with which she could turn a conversation around, ask deeper questions, and continue to have Mel talk longer about the topic at hand from this new slant.
Now, on the sofa, Abby’s voice was quiet.
“You two seem really happy.”
Mel smiled. “We are. I think. Well, I am and he seems happy also.”
Abby’s laugh was soft. “Trust me, he’s happy. He looks alive again.”
Mel’s smile faded a little. There would always be a bond between Langdon and his ex-wife; there would always been years of information that they gathered and stored; tells and tricks and pieces of each other that Mel would never be privy to, would never even have the opportunity to see. A lot of who Langdon used to be, before rehab and the divorce, was gone from who Langdon was now. A different man had filled the space he used to be; someone happier and more confident, someone who didn’t lie so easily and found his priorities to be clearer.
Mel was hesitant when she asked, “Are you okay?”
Abby waved the hand with the teaspoon vaguely. “Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “It’s nice. I like that he’s happy. I like that you’re happy. It’s just—also quite sad. For me, I think. For who we used to be.”
Mel considered this carefully. “You’re sad you two weren’t happy?”
“Oh, Mel. I’m always sad we weren’t happy. If we had been, we’d still be married. I think this sadness – and trust me, it’s nothing bad, I am genuinely happy that you two are together – is coming from the confirmation that it was possible all along for him to be that happy, that sure, you know?”
Mel didn’t think she knew.
“We spent our whole relationship in a whirlwind of well I guess we’re doing this now and hoping that our love for each other would carry us through. With you, every moment looks like a choice.”
“Oh,” Mel said. “Yes, I think it is.”
Abby nodded. She scooped up a chunk of cheesecake and chewed it thoughtfully. “I’m still very thankful,” she said after swallowing, “that I can be such good friends with him now. That he told me you were together without any awkwardness. That he could tell me, all those months ago, that he liked you in the first place. Not many exes get to have that.”
Mel certainly didn’t have with any of hers. She smiled, and she ate her cheesecake, and Abby wheeled the conversation into less sombre topics.
When Mel took their plates to the kitchen, she set them down beside the sink, and then wrapped her arms around Langdon’s waist from behind. His hands stilled in the soapy water.
“Hi,” he said.
Mel pressed a kiss against his shoulder blade. “Hi.”
“You good?”
“I’m very good.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Glad to hear it.”
“You’re good, right?” she asked. “Happy?”
His face softened, mouth smiling something quiet, something just for her.
“I’m very happy,” he said.
Mel nodded, pressed another kiss to his spine, and then let go. “Good,” she said. “Glad to hear it.”
BEFORE
Mel didn’t realise she was hanging out with Langdon on Valentine’s Day until the waitress at the café put little heart cookies on the saucer of her latte.
She blinked at them, unsure, as the waitress placed down Tanner and Kasey’s smoothies, followed by Langdon’s black coffee.
“Oh,” she said, once she was gone. Kasey already seemed dangerously close to knocking over her drink, so Langdon lifted her onto his lap and held her cup steady while she drank from the straw. Mel passed over the napkins without even thinking about it, which Langdon took gratefully to wipe at her face. Kasey had a tendency to simply open her mouth before swallowing, you see. Not all the time, but enough.
“What’s up?” Langdon asked. Mel absently lifted the heart-shaped cookie.
“I hadn’t realised the date.”
Langdon nodded. “Working the ED will do that to you,” he said.
Mel handed one of her cookies over to Tanner, who took is gleefully. He had a book open in his lap which he had been reading since they arrived at the café: something about Wonder Woman she figured from the pictures.
“The days just blur together, eventually,” Langdon added. “Before you know it, it’ll be Christmas again.”
She nodded, and bit into her second cookie, mind elsewhere.
Before she could even stop herself, she asked, “Isn’t Trinity free today?”
Langdon shook his head. “She’s on shift. Think Whitaker is, too, though Collins got the day off. It was pretty funny, actually. Mohan was complaining so loudly about all the single people getting Valentine’s Day off, while she, someone in a relationship, had to work.”
Mel hummed. She was about to mention it for the first time, really. She was going to say Are you doing anything nice with Trinity tonight, then? or maybe It’s a shame that Robby let you have the day off but not Trinity – but instead, she blinked, shook her head, and said, “Who’s Samira dating?”
Langdon grinned a little, holding Kasey steady while he took a sip of his coffee. Kasey’s knees were scuffed with grass stains from the park; her hair had a loose leaf caught in the mess.
“Won’t say,” Langdon said after he put the mug back down. He offered one of his cookies to Kasey, who took it with big blue eyes and two grabby little hands. “Though the implication is some older man.”
Mel raised her eyebrows. “I had no idea.”
“Yeah, she’s an interesting one. Gives off the impression that she’s an open book but she’s definitely not. Tells you just enough. Very impressive with diversion tactics.”
Mel scoffed. “You’re not much of an open book yourself.”
“That’s because everyone’s already read me,” he replied, holding Kasey’s drink for her again. “They already know everything there is to know about me, so now they don’t even bother asking, they just put all the pieces together themselves and assume its correct. You wouldn’t believe the rumours about me.”
“I’m really not sure how people are hearing rumours,” Mel said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard one about anybody.”
“Consider it a blessing,” he replied, before saying, “Close your mouth, sweetie. Come on.”
Kasey followed instructions, swallowing and looking up at her dad with a wide smile.
Mel’s stomach did that silly swoop again when he pressed a kiss her to nose.
“Good girl,” he said, then looked over at Mel again. “I hope you don’t mind, by the way, about hanging out on Valentine’s Day. Dana chooses the days off and Abby chooses my days with the kids – it kind of just fell like this.”
“Not at all,” Mel replied. She finally took a sip of her latte, finding it just the right temperature. The barista had even made a love heart with the foam. “It would be a bit silly to mind.”
And it would be a bit sillier to pretend, for just a few minutes, that this was her life, that this was something more, that Langdon might like her and want to take her somewhere on Valentine’s Day. She did it anyway, though she’d never tell.
It just merged with all the fantasies in her head, making them all feel a little more real, and a little bit more terrible, in her mind.
AFTER
So here was the thing. August was bearing down on them, all burning heat and no relief. Mel had been dating Langdon for six weeks. His bruising from the patient’s punch was almost gone, and McKay was the only person at work who’d figured them out. She’d put several pieces together, including Langdon’s apparent confession to liking Mel on the roof in May, and Langdon’s staring problem, in which his gaze almost never left Mel if they were in the same room. Mel was honestly surprised she was the only one to figure it out.
She’d sworn herself to secrecy, lest her own secrets be revealed, and Collins too, whom Langdon had told the truth to, had agreed to keep it quiet, with a pleased smile and a soft This is good for you, I think after the lecturing.
Anyway, here was the thing.
Or—maybe there was more than one thing.
Because one thing was that no one else knew and Mel was getting a little tired of maintaining distance, of not getting to hold his hand until they were out of the building and out of sight, of holding her breath and saying nothing directly hostile when the third patient of the week flirted with Langdon.
The other thing was that they hadn’t had sex yet.
Which wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but a big enough deal that Mel was thinking about it almost nightly.
She was dating him now. She shouldn’t still have to use her imagination.
They were good at making out: they did it voraciously, for hours, until Mel would be moaning into his mouth and grinding against his thigh – but they would also slow down, stop before they got so hot as to take off their clothes, and Langdon was always the one directing this.
She wasn’t totally sure what to do about it.
Mel toyed with asking Collins or McKay, but both options sounded embarrassing and terrible. She thought about biting the bullet and asking Trinity, but that would involve telling her more than she wanted to (and they were friends again now, but Langdon wanted her to be in the dark about their relationship for a little longer). She even considered asking Abby and immediately decided not to. Nothing good could come from that.
So instead, she realised she would have to go to the source. Mel and Langdon were good at communication, you see. They were good at a lot of things with each other – good at scheduling, at helping, at working together in the hospital and outside of it. They had synced calendars and clear interest in each other’s dependents – Mel made an effort with Tanner and Kasey in the exact same way Langdon made an effort with Becca. And they were good at talking. They always had been. Mel had always been blunt and forward with her words, and Langdon had told her more than once that it was refreshing to know exactly what was going on inside her head. He wasn’t a mind reader, and she couldn’t expect him to be, and it quietened the anxiety he sometimes felt about not knowing what someone thought.
Which was really what pushed her to speak to him – did he know she wanted to have sex with him? How could he know if she had never said?
She waited to bring it up until an evening they were both spending at her place, the two of them sprawled on the sofa, dinner already eaten and the TV playing something neither of them were watching. The windows were open, letting in the night, and her desk fan rotated on the coffee table, desperately needed cool air.
Mel rolled her head to the side to take him in. Despite it being late, they were both still sweaty from the day, from the summer heat. Langdon’s tank top had ridden up, letting the cold air hit his stomach, and his feet were propped up on her coffee table, showing off the muscle of his long legs, vanishing beneath his shorts. He looked too hot and tired and like he would have to rally himself to drive home, as he did more often than not.
She said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Mhm.” He didn’t take his eyes off the television, though she could tell he wasn’t paying any attention.
“Do you want to have sex?”
He blinked, turned to look at her. “With you?”
“Yes, with me.”
“Now?”
“Well, in general, but also now, yes.”
Langdon blinked a few more times, seemingly needing a moment to process this line of inquiry.
“May I ask what’s prompting this now?” he asked.
“Will it provide necessary context to help your answer?”
“Yes.”
Mel nodded. They were not touching – it was too hot for that – but she allowed her hand to rest close to his on the cushion between them. “We’ve been together six weeks and we haven’t yet,” she said, “so I’m checking to see if that’s of interest to you in case it’s not. We agreed the parameters of dating would include activities that were sexual in nature – but now I think about it, that might’ve extended to kissing and no further, we didn’t clarify. If it doesn’t extend to sex, we should probably renegotiate the parameters to reflect that.”
He smiled at her; his amused look. His finger stretched out to tap against hers.
“And right now?”
“Right now I’d like to have sex with you,” she said. “Which is something I would’ve also liked at many points running up to this moment, in case you were worried about that.”
He blew out an amused breath.
“Well, that’s good to know,” he said. “So, I suppose to answer your original question, yes, in general, I would like to have sex with you, Mel. Trust me, I would. I just think I’m…” he trailed off in thought. This was something Mel appreciated; that he took the time to think about the answers to her questions. It’s how she always knew to trust his word – she was straightforward and he was thoughtful and so rarely was there miscommunication.
You know, other than the dating Trinity thing. But that was an outlier.
“I think I get so unsteady when I’m around you,” he decided on at last. “It’s a weird feeling because, at the same time, you’re very settling. I feel grounded when I’m with you. I feel at home, and comfortable, and like I’m where I’m supposed to be. And I love—that feeling. Being with you.”
He reached out with his finger again, hooking it around hers.
“But I also feel like I might shatter this at any moment.”
Mel frowned. “I don’t think you will.”
“I know you don’t,” he said, light. “But I’m afraid of that anyway. It’s a testament to how much I trust you that I’m able to even say it, but I’m scared of ruining this. I’m scared of going too fast or ending up somewhere we didn’t see coming. I’m scared of falling into it instead of choosing to walk in.”
She thought of what Abby said – With you, every moment looks like a choice. She was a choice he was making, time and time again.
“I see,” she said, nodding. She laced more of her fingers through his, squeezing gently. The fan went around and around, blowing cool air. The TV was on low, someone arguing with someone on the screen. Outside, Pittsburgh was alive and loud. But she only saw Langdon. She saw his exhaustion and his vulnerability and his history stretched out behind him, shading every move he made. She knew that he had given her something, so she gave him something in return. “I think I’m afraid of messing up in the opposite direction.”
He raised his eyebrows in a silent question.
“I’ve always been… too much.” She twisted her mouth around the word. “Too much to handle, too much to deal with – especially long term. Every boyfriend I’ve ever had has left me because he couldn’t handle me, couldn’t handle my responsibility to Becca, couldn’t handle the way I live my life so I can live it successfully. I’m a very particular person, and I know that. I’m fairly rigid with scheduling and time keeping, and most of the time, if I can keep everything in an orderly fashion, then other things don’t worry me as much. Like, I can deal with mess on the floor if everything else is running smoothly. I can cope with sensory issue that otherwise might take me out at the knees if everything else is on time.”
She sighed, though she didn’t mean to. “I’m a lot to handle, and so I don’t fear falling into this too fast. I’m scared of what happens when we get to being in it, when we’re really in it, and you find out just how much I am.”
For a moment, Langdon just looked at her. Then he said, “Do you know why I wanted to go slow? Originally?”
She hummed. “Mm, because I looked like a deer in the headlights every time you came close out of a concerted effort not to get in the way of you and Trinity and to also keep both my jealousy and desire in check?”
He laughed, cracking through the seriousness of the moment. “No,” he said, “though you really should tell me about those fantasies of yours some time.”
She rolled her eyes, hoping the redness on her face was from the heat.
“I wanted to go slow because I wanted you to see how much I am to handle before you got involved with me. I mean—I hoped you’d choose me. But I didn’t want you to go in blind. I wanted you to see everything I was and want me anyway.”
She exhaled. “That’s what I want,” she said. “For you to know all of it and want me anyway.”
“Then tell me,” he said, “and I’ll tell you. It’s not—it’s not gonna be the same as seeing it when it happens, but then we’ll know. We’ll know all of it, and it won’t feel like there’s another shoe waiting to drop for either of us.”
Mel considered this, and then nodded, and somehow she felt less afraid than she did before. Because he wanted to know. He wasn’t going to let the truth of her loose and stumble across it – and he wasn’t even asking so he could send her away when she explained herself and how she worked. He wanted to know her, and he wanted to choose her.
And Mel wanted to choose him.
So they talked for hours, and the moon rose high and the city finally settled into night. They ended up tangled at the legs despite the heat, meeting on the central sofa cushion, their heads close together as they explained the parts of themselves they felt were too heavy to hold.
Langdon told her the things he hadn’t before: about his back injury, about his addiction. He told her how the pain in his back had been fixed, but his withdrawal had been too hard to handle. When he felt pain now, it was usually psychosomatic. Sleeping on bad beds and sofas and getting stressed made the pain flare up, but it wasn’t in his back, it was in his head. No back rub or massage or ibuprofen could fix it, because the doctors had checked and there was nothing there to fix. It was him, and his addiction, and the fact that this was something he would face for the rest of his life.
He told her about rehab.
About the dark of it, the only bright spots being the visits from Abby and the kids – who he hadn’t let visit him for the first two weeks, until he could stand without vomiting, until he could shower and feel presentable, even though he was skinny and sad and there were bags under his eyes that had never been there before. He told her about the divorce and the crying. About the quiet of the house, of the conversation. About Abby, we can’t keep doing this and Frank, you don’t know we won’t fall in love again. About the pain of moving out, of being apart from them, about the difficulty of having to return and leave again when Abby got injured.
Then Langdon told her about anger, and how restless he was since the withdrawal first began, and how it hadn’t left him for a long time. About how only in the last six months or so he had started to quieten, to soften, to feel a little more like himself again as everything else settled around him. He told her about Trinity at that point, about July and November, about how they couldn’t make themselves be vulnerable enough to face each other without communicating through a different language the two of them knew how to speak better, about how he didn’t regret it and how it brought them to the point they were at now, all the while skimming over the details that she didn’t need to know.
Mel asked, quiet as anything, “Do you think you’d do it again?”
Langdon shrugged, but he said, “I don’t think so. I don’t think we need it anymore. I think we’re capable of talking now.”
So Mel told him about herself and her baggage, about the burden she was tired of carrying alone but had found no one willing to help with. She told him about Becca, about how difficult she found the world as a child, about how Mel had to quieten with her struggles because Becca’s struggles needed more help. She learnt to cope, and get along, and muscle through, because Becca had bigger needs and she didn’t feel like she could complain. And she loved her sister, she stressed, though Langdon already knew, but it was hard, and she was young, and her parents couldn’t handle either of them – not Becca’s autism nor Mel’s.
When she was fifteen, her mother died on New Year’s Eve, and Becca spent weeks crying. On the sixteenth of January, her father disappeared for three months and returned with a girlfriend who couldn’t handle them either. You’re too much, they’d say. Why can’t you pull yourself together?
She was eighteen when her father and his new wife moved away with no intention of taking his daughters with them. And from then on, she was a carer: she was a parent and a sister and a best friend all rolled into one. She got a degree and worked two jobs and found day centres and short-term home nurses and trusted her neighbours far too much everywhere they moved. She got into med school and the cycle continued, and they all suffered, and nothing ever got easier nor better, so Mel put herself into her little boxes of coping mechanisms and ways to get through, fully aware that one day she would crack, and it would all come out.
Her boyfriends were all the same as each other, she explained. Each one was sweet but too sweet. Kind but not kind enough. They liked her, and they were gentle with her like she might break, and they couldn’t see that under her softness was a skeleton made of pure steel, strong enough to withstand the weight of everything that she had to carry. They were all so impressed when they found out about Becca. They were all so moved by their plight. They were all so ready to run the moment she asked them for anything of substance.
Can you watch Becca tonight? Could you pick her up because my shift’s running late? Would you mind leaving because you’re distressing her?
“They sound like assholes,” Langdon mused.
“But they weren’t,” she sighed. “They were just not interested in how my life functions. They refused to find a place in it.” But she knew, because she had seen how he had slipped into her routine in order to bridge the gap and earn her friendship in the first place, that he wouldn’t have that problem.
He smiled faintly, lifting their linked hands to his mouth. He kissed her knuckles.
“You are a lot,” he said, “and I am all in.”
“Frank.”
He blinked.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—” The name had just come out.
“It’s okay,” he replied. “From you, I’ll allow it. Sometimes. Within reason.”
She felt light, felt airborne. “You’re all in?”
“Mel, I don’t want to drag you out of your life to fit you into mine. I want us to fit with each other. I’m not scared of your mess.”
“I’m not scared of yours,” she replied. “I want—I want to be there in it with you. One mess, a shared mess. You and me.”
His smile made her heart clench. “You and me,” he said. Then he blinked, and there was something like awe in his eyes. “You’re choosing me, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” Mel replied. “I want to. I want to care about you. I want be there for you, and love you, on purpose.”
When his mouth met hers, she sighed into it.
“I do,” he said, into her mouth. “I already do love you on purpose.”
His hand held her cheek, thumb brushing along the curve of her cheekbone. He pulled back just enough to meet her eye.
“I knew when you cleaned the blood off my hands,” he said, “and I have known every moment since.”
They didn’t have sex that night. It was incredibly late when they finally dragged themselves into Mel’s room, when they set up the fan again, and dressed in practically nothing, and yet still spooned, Langdon some kind of furnace against her back, holding all the heat in between them. She didn’t care that they were sticky and gross, she didn’t care that they were late to bed when they had an early morning, that they’d have to have quick showers, one after the other, and maybe even miss grabbing a coffee on the way.
She cared that he loved her, that he chose her, that he wanted all of it with her even when he knew how much work it would be.
As she drifted off to sleep, she heard his voice, the words spoken into the skin of her neck.
“You and me,” he whispered, and then she was gone.
BEFORE
Mel opened the trunk of the Jeep and loaded the items one by one. A traybake of chicken fajita from Garcia, spare clothes from Dr Robby, a collection of DVDs and toys to entertain the kids from Collins. McKay handed her a bag of books for Abby which she’d scrounged from across the entire ED team, having heard that two weeks into Abby’s bedrest, she’d already finished her entire to-read list.
Afterwards, she slammed the door shut and looked out at the assorted group of Langdon’s friends.
“He’ll really appreciate it,” she said.
“How’s he been?” Garcia asked, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets.
“Uh… frazzled is perhaps the word I would use,” Mel replied.
“So kind, King,” Garcia replied. “He’s losing his mind, huh?”
“It’s very hard. The kids have only just gone back to school, so at least now he has some time in the day to clear the house up and spend time with Abby. I think the home aide is starting this weekend too, so that’ll help a lot.”
McKay’s face twisted. “He knows that if he wants us there, all he has to do is say, right? Like, if he needs any help.”
“He’s not going to do that,” Mel replied. They had yet to go to the community race of Becca’s that was coming up, but she still knew what he would tell her then: “He’s not the type of person to ask for help.”
Dr Robby gestured towards her. “Seems to have asked you. Which is smart of him.”
Mel shook her head. “No, I just keep showing up,” she said with a shrug. “He won’t turn you away if you come to his door. Maybe you guys should on your next free day. I think he’d appreciate seeing you all a lot.”
Mel didn’t really take in their expressions, just smiled and said goodbye and drove over to Langdon’s to drop off the gifts she was delivering. He persuaded her to stay for dinner, and afterwards she said goodnight to the kids and then slipped into Abby’s room, where she had the bag of books sideways on the mattress beside her, reading through the blurbs.
They chatted for a short while, going through the books and Mel trying to remember who had donated which one. Abby seemed very heart-warmed by the fact that they’d thought to do it at all.
“My firm sent me a gift basket and a get well soon card,” she said. “Frank’s… they must really care about him to care so much about me.”
“I think it’s a bit of both,” Mel said with a shrug. “You knew them, didn’t you? Dr Robby and Dana and Collins—”
“Yeah, of course. I just… usually, you get only your friends in the break up.” She laughed, despite it all. “Thanks for all your help, Mel. I hope he’s thanking you too, but if he’s not – I know he really appreciates everything you’re doing for us. We all do.”
It was a few days later, on her day off, when she visited again. She came with nothing but time and a texted heads up, and Langdon opened the door for her freshly showered in a comfy pale blue hoodie. He didn’t look so tired today, which she noted but didn’t comment on, as she stepped into the house.
“Everyone’s in the living room,” he said, prompting a frown. “You want a coffee? I just put the pot on.”
“Yes, please,” she said, slipping off her shoes and watching him vanish into the kitchen. She hesitated before stepping into the living room, and then tipped her head, a little astonished.
“Mel,” Dr Robby said, surprised. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”
“Neither did I,” she replied. “I mean – I didn’t know you were coming. Any of you.”
Abby smiled from her place in the armchair, leg casted and propped up, bruises slowly turning a sickly green as they healed. “They came to surprise us,” she said.
Dr Robby was on the sofa beside Collins, who sat next to Garcia. They all had coffees in their hands. On the floor, with Harrison, Tanner and Kasey was McKay, helping the kids build a block tower.
Langdon appeared at her side, two mugs in hand. He held out the bright yellow one to her – her favourite mug, in fact – and smiled softly at the room, all there to visit him.
“We probably should’ve co-ordinated better,” Collins said easily. “None of us told each other and we all showed up within the same half hour.”
“Let the record show I was first,” Garcia said, “and that means I care the most.”
Langdon snorted. “Yoyo, care? I thought your heart was a cold, black rock.”
He nudged Mel and the two sat on the floor, backs against the bookcase.
“Just for you, baby,” Garcia said. “I’m here for Abby, you see.” Tanner glanced up at her, and she rolled her eyes. “And the babies. Gotta keep my eye on Tanner’s handstand progress.”
“I can do a cartwheel now,” he announced. Langdon pulled a face behind his back, tipping his hand from side to side, like, he can sort of do a cartwheel.
“That’s sick, kid,” Garcia told Tanner anyway. “You’ll have to show me before I go, alright?”
The room filled with comfortable chatter and Abby looked happier than Mel had seen her in weeks. Tanner and Kasey ran around, collecting more toys and showing off for their grand audience, while Collins and Garcia talked easily with Abby, and Dr Robby – although perhaps he was just Robby, now they were outside of the hospital – spoke with Mel and Langdon. She’d known, intellectually, that Robby and Langdon had managed to bury the hatchet – they were building something back up at work – but it was all the more obvious to her here, in Langdon’s old home, as they talked the same way they had on Mel’s first day. All familiarity.
At one point, Tanner came to sit with Mel so he could show her his Transformers toy, which clicked between car and robot and back again. At another point, Kasey climbed herself into McKay’s lap so she could better build her stack of blocks. The face McKay made as it happened, trying to hold in her excitement and utter adoration, made Langdon smile with his whole body, in that one specific way that made Mel’s own body warm. Collins took a photo of McKay, and Tanner later climbed up into Garcia’s lap on the couch just the same, in order to explain to her everything he knew about Sonic the Hedgehog, his newest interest, and Mel took that photo, in case no one else could.
When they were all distracted with talking and laughing and Abby explaining this one disastrous road trip from three years before, Langdon whispered to Mel, “Thanks for this.”
She looked over, frowning. “I didn’t know they would be here.”
“No, but I know they’re only here because you said something.”
She hesitated. “Did one of them say?”
“Nope.” He shook his head, and placed his mug aside so when Kasey came crashing into his arms, she didn’t spill his coffee. Langdon placed a kiss against her hair. “I just know you,” he continued, “and I know them. It wouldn’t have occurred to them to come and visit without an invite, and you don’t let sleeping dogs lie.”
She watched him for a moment, Kasey standing between his bent legs, bouncing on the spot and holding his hands in her tiny ones. He didn’t seem to mind at all that they took some prompting to come here. It mattered to him that the cared enough to come at all.
Mel said, “You’re very important to them.”
He smiled, his eyes never once leaving his daughter. “I don’t know if you ever felt like this,” he said, “but I remember starting my intern year at PTMC and just hoping that I would find somewhere I’d want to stay forever, with people I could count on. Abby has this theory that we’re all looking for family.” He shrugged, and Kasey giggled, and he finally looked at Mel. “Just feels good, is all, after the year I’ve had, to know that I’m on the right track.”
AFTER
They told Dr Robby during their first shift in September in the breakroom, door closed.
Dr Robby blinked, looked between the two of them, and said, “What?”
“Dating,” Langdon repeated. “Me and Mel. Two months.”
“Jesus.” Dr Robby rubbed his hand across his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” Mel said, “is this particularly distressing for you?”
“Most thing’s Langdon does are,” Dr Robby replied. Then he nodded. “This is fine, this is fine. I’m very happy for you both. I’m assuming you’re telling me for—”
“HR forms,” Langdon agreed. “In case we, like, do fraud against the hospital or something. So you can sue us properly.”
Dr Robby snorted. “That’s great,” he said. “We’ll appreciate that when you do the fraud. I’ll get the forms for you. Jesus.” He shook his head, started for the door.
Mel watched Langdon’s eyes narrow. “You just lost the betting pool, didn’t you?”
Dr Robby stopped in front of the door. He blew out a breath. “Thirty bucks,” he said. “Would you mind telling Donnie about you and Trinity’s deal, though? Dana and I can split the grand when you do.”
BEFORE
Mel left the cupboard that Trinity had potentially trapped them in. Later, Trinity sidled up beside her.
“Anything interesting happen in there?” she asked.
“Uh.” Mel looked up from her monitor. “In the cupboard?”
Trinity nodded.
“We talked about cannibalism.”
Trinity pursed her lips. “And you don’t feel any… stirrings or inclinations towards him after that?”
Mel was very confused. She felt… stirrings and inclinations towards Langdon all the time. Had Trinity picked up on it and was marking her territory, giving Mel a chance to step back? Or was she referring to something else entirely.
Mel chose to play dumb, because that was the most honest route. “I do not understand what you’re saying,” she said.
Trinity sighed, overdramatic, and flounced away. They did not revisit the conversation.
AFTER
“Langdon,” Dana said, finding the two of them outside a patient’s room. They were discussing the diagnosis. Worm larvae graveyard in the brain. Langdon seemed very perturbed by it not being his first time delivering that diagnosis. “Can you stay on a bit longer tonight? We need someone to help cover the crossover because Ellis is gonna be late.”
“No can do, I’m afraid,” he replied. “It’s date night.”
Dana raised her eyebrows. “Who would be stupid enough to go on a date with you?”
Mel raised her hand at the same time as Langdon pointed at her. Dana looked between them, blinked, like she was bluescreening and manually restarting herself.
“I guess Mel can’t do the crossover, either, then,” she said. “Alright. Have fun, you two. Tell me—was it March?”
“Nope,” Langdon said, returning his gaze to the tablet in his hands.
“Damnit.”
BEFORE
Mel splashed her face with water in the diner bathroom. There was a checkerboard print floor in here too, and the mirrors were lined with neon. The soap dispensers were tiny jukeboxes.
Langdon’s voice rolled around her head. I always want you there.
Was he testing her? Was the universe testing her?
For a moment, it felt like—
“No,” she said to herself, staring at her reflection. It was not flirty, because he wasn’t that kind of guy. He’d told her about he and Abby, about how when he was in, he was in. So he wouldn’t be doing this now, when he was with Trinity.
She had to take it at face value. He was saying something nice. They were good friends, close friends, and that’s all he meant. That she couldn’t intrude because he liked her a lot, very platonically. That’s what he must’ve meant, and it was on her for reacting the way she did.
“You’re gonna go back out there and be so normal,” she told her reflection. “Like you really did just need the bathroom and it happened to occur midway through that conversation. It happens every day of the year – as long as you don’t act awkward, it won’t be awkward.”
She steeled herself and returned to the table.
Otherwise, it was a very nice dinner.
AFTER
“Perlah,” Langdon said, finding her alone at the nurses’ station, Mel on his heels. “I am going to tell you this, because you will not charge me for gossip you put in the chat.”
Perlah raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
Langdon rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, there’s totally no day shift nurses spreading gossip in the group chat.”
“Absolutely not,” she replied. Mel could tell this was a lie, even though Perlah was very convincing about it.
“Whatever. Mel and I are dating. Confirmed, you heard it from the source.”
There was a sneaky smile growing on Perlah’s face. “I knew it,” she said, gleeful. “I fucking knew it. When did you two start?”
“July,” Langdon lied.
“Got an exact date? We have a few July guesses.” She was opening up her phone, clicking through to a groupchat. From there, she opened a spreadsheet; there were many, many pages to it. When she found the right one, she said, “We’ve got Collins for July one through seven, Jesse for July fourteen to twenty-one. Now, Alexis said July in general, as a month, so she would get a smaller cut of the prize.”
Langdon said, “July first. Don’t let Santos find out yet.”
Perlah looked a little surprised, fingers poised over her phone’s keyboard. “That’s gonna cause a stir.”
“Nothing like that,” Langdon said. “She’s on my shit list – I want to tell her myself. I didn’t lie to you – we never dated.”
“Can we confirm that for the chat, too?”
“No, we cannot,” he replied, sauntering away. Mel watched him go, then looked back at Perlah.
She hesitated, then said, “Does your gossip groupchat say nice things about me?” because she really hadn’t heard many rumours at all, but she absolutely did want to know.
“We celebrate Mel King Monday,” Perlah replied, light. “Every Monday we all type Thank God for Mel King into the chat and it brings us good luck.”
Mel found herself lighting up. “Really?”
Perlah scrolled up, tilted the screen to face her. There, five in a row: Thank God for Mel King.
“Oh,” she said, pleased. “That’s really nice. Tell them thank you for me.”
When she left, there was a skip in her step.
BEFORE
Trinity knew that Mel liked Langdon. That was the only reason she would tell her about their sex life.
It felt… dirty, to know it. To know the details behind the very secretive front.
It made her skin itch, her muscles tighten. Her hands knotted, pressed hard against her sternum, trying to hold herself together.
He liked performing oral, Trinity had told her. Liked receiving it too. Was good at eating her out and making her orgasm multiple times in a row. He liked biting, liked being bitten. Liked being choked. Didn’t know if he liked doing the choking, too, but she wouldn’t put it past him.
He would be down for something more vanilla, Trinity was saying, which confused her now because she was sure that Trinity was marking her territory, pissing all over the concept of Langdon because she knew what Mel thought, that she liked him, maybe that she even fantasised about him when she was alone in her room.
Porn didn’t work for her; she always got too turned off by the overblown moans. She hated audio, too – ASMR men whispering turned her spine to glass and the wet sounds made her cringe. Reading erotica was difficult because she got too into the touching and would keep losing her place.
But her imagination – she could do wonders with that. And it had been easy to replace whatever celebrity she was into that month with Langdon, had actually pushed her over the edge quicker to think about the span of his hands on her thighs, his mouth on her breasts.
She could’ve sworn Trinity had known, but—
“I’m—I’m bigging you up, like a pitch, you know?”
Langdon’s jaw was working; he had a special type of pissed expression seemingly reserved just for her.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“She should know what the deal is!”
As they argued, Mel realised what this was: Trinity was propositioning her. She wanted a threesome. With Mel. With Langdon. She had to get out of there, she had to leave.
The only saving grace was that Langdon seemed as surprised about the threesome as Mel did; even angrier about it, too. Maybe he wasn’t into sharing, or maybe he wasn’t into Mel, or maybe he just wasn’t into Trinity asking her without discussing it with him first.
She knew Trinity had a lot of good traits, but it was becoming increasingly hard to see them, after that.
AFTER
Dennis was at Langdon’s apartment when Mel arrived. She knew the door’s code and had a key. Dennis did not question this however, so she didn’t bring it up. Mel had taken Becca out for dinner, so arrived after the pizza was already eaten and the boys were half way through something that Langdon called over text PVP Civilisation, which she had never heard of.
They paused it when she came in.
“Hey, Mel,” Langdon said, his feet kicked up on the coffee table. Dennis blinked at her.
“Is that Minecraft?” Mel asked.
“Yes,” they both said.
“Did Minecraft make the movie?”
“No, thank God,” Dennis replied.
“Is it good?” She took her shoes off, and when Langdon pointed at the two-litre bottle of Pepsi (her weakness) she went and found herself a cup from the kitchen. She chose Tanner’s Sonic the Hedgehog cup because it was both the perfect size for how much Pepsi she wanted to drink, and wouldn’t break if it got knocked over.
“It shouldn’t be good,” Langdon said. “Like, all signs point to it being bad. But I can’t stop watching. It’s like a car crash in slow motion but the narrative might be… good?”
“That sounds confusing,” she replied, crouching by the coffee table to pour herself a drink.
Langdon and Dennis were stretched out at opposite ends of the sofa. Dennis shrugged.
“It’s strange and repetitive but very funny and I’ve watched it three times now.”
“God, you’re weird,” Langdon said, but he seemed to like it, so Dennis smiled. Mel sometimes thought about the odd friendship they had in relation to Dennis’ stories about his brothers. Three older ones who tortured him for his entire upbringing, and still did even now over facetime, but loved him all the same. She thought maybe it was something like that.
Mel screwed the lid back on the Pepsi and straightened. She could go to the armchair, but she actually hated the feeling of the leather with a passion, so instead she stepped over Dennis’ legs and collapsed into the central cushion, Langdon’s arm immediately pulling her into his side.
Langdon pressed a quick kiss to her mouth. “Hi,” he said. “How’s Becca?”
“She’s good. Getting into Sex and the City, so that’s all she talked about for an hour.”
Mel made herself comfortable, curled up against Langdon, and then looked over at Dennis, who was glaring at them.
“What?” Langdon asked.
“Seriously?” Dennis huffed. “I’m getting third wheeled watching fan-made Minecraft movies?”
Langdon snorted, and Mel grinned, prodding Dennis with her foot.
“Sorry to interrupt your bro time or whatever,” she said. “I’ll be super quiet. You won’t even know I’m here.”
Dennis rolled his eyes, and the movie played, and Mel unfortunately found herself getting very invested in the plight of the swords or whoever, and this main guy who just kept wasting all of his money on useless things. But true to promise, she said nothing, and at the end of the movie, Langdon and Dennis talked for like forty-five minutes about it and the differences between it and another movie by the same guy.
When Dennis made to leave, he stood and looked down at them, still curled together.
“You haven’t told Trinity yet, have you?”
Langdon scoffed. “She gets to find out last.”
“She’s gonna be mad at you.”
“She’ll get over it. Don’t tell her, yeah?”
Dennis rolled his eyes. “Obviously. You still on for girl’s night on Friday?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Mel watched him go, then peered up at Langdon.
“You know your rep would be destroyed if the other doctors knew you liked Minecraft movies.”
Langdon grinned down at her. “And that’s why we’ll never tell them.”
BEFORE
Mel didn’t say that Trinity could come grocery shopping with her, so Trinity just showed up. Mel’s life moved on a perfectly timed schedule, so it wasn’t like it was hard to find her, if someone was dedicated.
Trinity was dedicated.
She was waiting outside the front door when Mel arrived, pushing her cart and frowning at the sight of her.
Trinity waved a booklet of coupons. “I stole them from Huckleberry,” she said. “I remember you liked mangoes, and there’s an offer.”
Mel stared at her, and then saw this for the olive branch it was intended to be, and nodded.
“Alright then,” she said, “but you can’t complain about the other shoppers.”
Trinity mimed zipping her mouth shut, a flattened smile on her face.
They grocery shopped together, and Mel let the past month slip away.
AFTER
“Trinity Santos,” Langdon said loudly, entering their apartment ahead of Mel. She’d been there several times – it had high ceilings and no temperature control.
“Francis Langdon,” Trinity replied from the couch. “Oh, and Melissa King. You’re a surprise. This is girl’s night. There’s never been so many girls at it before.”
Dennis was on the other sofa, shuffling Uno cards back into a deck.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Mel said. “Langdon invited me to join.”
Trinity raised her eyebrows. “That’s fine by me. Do you like nail polish? And facemasks?”
“Facemasks no, nail polish yes.”
Trinity eyed her for a moment. “What do you think about green?”
“Oh, before we get started,” Langdon interrupted as he poured two cups from the box of wine. Mel was surprised; he hadn’t been kidding about the boxed wine, nor about the bottle of Sourz that supposedly had been opened over a year ago and they were still powering through, one vile sip at a time, “we should tell you.”
“Hm?” Trinity asked. “Tell me what?”
“Mel and I are dating.”
The room went carefully silent as everyone watched Trinity’s expression. She took about four seconds to process the words, and then slowly looked from Langdon to Mel and back again.
She said, very slowly, “Dating. As in… romantically.”
“Yes,” Mel said.
“Hm. Right. Yes, okay. I can alter my worldview to accommodate this. Sure. Dating.” She nodded, more to herself than to anyone else. Then: “I need to know, actually. When? And did my hard work have anything to do with it?”
Mel watched Langdon’s mouth curl into a smile.
“July,” he said, and she immediately swore. “And I would say it was more in spite of your work than because of it.”
She nodded, kept nodding. “I can deal with that,” she said. Then her face cracked into a smile, and she grinned at Langdon, who grinned back, and Mel took her seat on the sofa and watched Trinity punch him in the shoulder.
“Isn’t that cool, Huckleberry?” she asked. “Aren’t you gonna congratulate them?”
Dennis didn’t look up from his shuffling the Uno cards. “Oh, I’ve known for like a week.”
Trinity abruptly stopped smiling. “You what?”
Later, after the yelling had stopped and Langdon had laughed so hard he cried, and Trinity had tried to physically tackle him to the floor, Dennis idly commenting, “That’s not Krav Maga,” Mel saw Trinity hug Langdon in the kitchen.
She probably wasn’t supposed to overhear, but Dennis was in the bathroom and Mel was nothing if not perceptive.
“You’re happy?” Trinity asked when they pulled apart.
“I am,” Langdon replied. Mel smiled.
“Good,” Trinity said. “Good. That’s—God, I’m sorry I fucked up the road to it, but I’m really happy you got there. And, like, way ahead of schedule too. All I wanted was for you to be happy.”
“I know,” Langdon replied, voice low. “And I am. So we got there in the end anyway. Just no more meddling with us, okay? Turn your attention to Whitaker or something. He hasn’t dated anyone for as long as I’ve known him.”
Trinity laughed. “I’m trying to arrange two weeks straight of blind dates for him.”
They both seemed to find this the funniest thing in the world. Mel was happy for them. She’d had her best friend in Becca for as long as she could remember; she liked that they’d found each other.
BEFORE
“You’re making a really good first impression,” Dr Langdon said in the ambulance bay on the first day they met.
Mel smiled, and felt relief all the way through her body. She was making a really good first impression.
AFTER
“Alright,” Dr Robby said, clapping his hands together. “Anything else before we get moving on rounds?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Donnie said, holding up his hand. Dr Robby raised his eyebrows. “Not medicine related but the easiest way to disseminate information. The, uh, the Mel and Langdon betting pool has reached its conclusion. Dr Collins, as the winner, you can come collect your prize any time from the security office.”
Laughter rippled out across the crowded of doctors and nurses, bright and early at seven am. Mel felt Langdon’s arm press against hers.
“Sometimes we forget this is a hospital,” Dr Robby sighed.
“What was the winning bet?” a nurse called out.
“July first to seventh,” Donnie replied. Princess whistled.
“Wow, over two whole months and Langdon hasn’t screwed it up yet.”
Langdon lifted a hand and let it drop to his side. “It’s like we all forget I had, like, five years of successful marriage once.”
“Then you divorced,” Dana said, and everyone laughed. Langdon didn’t seem to mind this at all.
“Anything else?” Dr Robby asked, though he was shaking his head.
Mel looked up at Langdon. They had discussed it. Trinity had talked about it, too. They kind of just wanted it out of the way.
Langdon said, “We’re also closing the Santos and me betting pool while we’re at it.”
Numerous eyebrows raised.
“You’re gonna tell us what the hell was going on there?” Princess asked.
“Not on your life,” he said. He glanced over at Trinity.
She said, “We will be taking the money from Donnie, looking at the bets and giving the money to the winner privately, so only the person who got it right gets to know the answer.”
“If I could put you all on night shift,” Dr Robby said, “I would. Go forth and heal. Betting pools are not PTMC-approved official meeting topics.”
Mel didn’t go with them to sort the betting pool; she instead tried to get through as many triages and waiting room cases as she could, so Dr Robby wouldn’t associate her all day with the betting pool, rather than her very good work. But by lunch time, she knew that Robby and Dana had been given their splits of the prize money, despite the fact that they both cheated, and finally, the PTMC Emergency Department could move onto bigger and better rumours.
Such as who the hell was Samira dating?
BEFORE
Mel slid her hand into her underwear, fingers gently grazing through the hair and slipping between the folds. She closed her eyes, and allowed herself to imagine. A bigger hand, longer fingers, a body crowding over her like a bridge.
She thought of blue eyes and dark hair, of pale skin pulled taught over shoulders, biceps, down to his hips. She thought of the way he said Mel like he knew her.
She let herself come undone, thinking of Frank Langdon.
AFTER
They had sex for the first time in September, weeks after they’d let themselves be vulnerable. Sex was its own type of vulnerability, but Mel was glad they had done it this way around; she didn’t want the sex to be a distraction from how they felt.
It started on her couch, the two of them making out as they were wont to do. Langdon was on top of her, pressing down her entire length, one hand exploring the span of her waist. Mel’s fingers mainly adventured along his shoulders, up his neck, into his hair and back again. Langdon was very good at kissing; he knew when to push and when to pull, reacted enthusiastically every time Mel moaned into his mouth, occasionally bit gently at her lip in a way that made her shudder happily.
As they kissed, she could feel the heat of him in more ways than one. His arousal was firm against her thigh, and Mel let herself grind into it, smiling at his groan. Slowly, she slipped one hand down, running it down the length of his chest, of his torso, until she reached the waistband of his sweats. She ran her finger along the edge of it, dipping casually underneath and back out again as he breathed, harsh, into her mouth.
“Mel,” he moaned, as she dragged her thigh across his crotch once more.
She hummed happily, in question. His mouth moved from hers, breathing against her jaw.
“Mel.”
“What do you want, Langdon?” she asked, softly.
He laughed shortly into her shoulder, before pressing a kiss to the side of her neck.
“Tell me what you want,” she said, slipping her hand under his waistband.
“Fuck,” he said. He rose up, so he could see her face, where she waited for him expectantly. “I really want to fuck you.”
She drew in a deep breath, smiled, watched his eyes widen just a fraction.
“That’s good,” she said, “because I really want you to fuck me, too.”
He dipped his head when he smiled, then hissed when she slipped her hand lower, only the fabric of his underwear between her and his cock. As she cupped it, he pressed his forehead to her shoulder, his breathing unsteady where she felt it pass over her skin.
“I don’t know what you’re into,” Mel said, her hand slowly rubbing down the length of him and back up. “It’d be good to know.”
“I’m—Oh.” She squeezed again. She could feel him hardening in her grasp.
“Use your words,” she said, lightly.
“Jesus Christ, Mel.”
“I’m very vocal, you see,” Mel explained. “I kind of like telling my partner what to do, but I also really like receiving praise, so it’s not a traditional role scenario.”
“Uh huh.” She didn’t know if he was taking the information in as he pressed down on her hand, eyes tightly shut. One of his hands was clenched around the cushion she laid against, the other kneading the flesh of her waist.
“Now you tell me something,” she prompted.
“Ah, God,” he sighed, pressing another kiss to her neck, this one open-mouthed. He sucked there, and Mel exhaled, eyes rolling back. Her free hand was still in his hair, nails scraping against his scalp.
“Langdon,” she said, hand on his cock abruptly stopping. “Talk to me.”
He groaned into her neck, but pulled away anyway. “Mel,” he said, “I am into anything you want to do to me.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you have your limits.”
“I’m failing to remember them with your hand on my dick.”
She snorted, and slipped her hand out of his pants. Langdon whined; she felt the rush of arousal in her stomach.
“I don’t know,” he sighed.
“Well, what do you want to do?” she asked.
“Mm. I want to undress you,” he said, pressing a kiss to her jaw. “I want to eat you out.” He kissed her cheek. “And I want to be inside you.” His mouth was on hers, hot and wet and she moaned as his tongue slipped inside. A moment later, she felt the grind of his dick against her thigh. Her hand still in his hair, she pulled him away. He whined again. She wanted to eat the sound.
“What do you want to do?” Langdon asked, before she could say anything. He knew the game he was playing, following Mel along.
“Can I get out my checklist?”
He huffed out a laugh. “Sure,” he allowed, and eased back to let Mel to grab her phone from the coffee table. As she scrolled through her notes app, Langdon settled himself back onto the sofa, half beside her, half on top of her, head on the cushion beside her own so he could see the screen.
His fingers still rubbed at her waist, his dick still pressing against her thigh.
She said, “I’m very thorough.”
“I know.”
Mel presented the checklist.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “There’s like thirty things on there. You want to do all of them?”
She would’ve shrugged if she could move her shoulders. “Not all at the same time. That would probably be incredibly overstimulating. And I’ve tried some of them before, so would again – while others I’ve never done.”
“Do you usually tick them off when you’ve done them?”
“When I’ve done them and I’m satisfied with the results.”
“Of course. Please, if you will, tell me about scissoring.”
Mel snorted, glancing over at him. “I’ve been keeping this list for years.”
“As I would expect.”
“I had to know if I would feel attraction to someone with a vagina, and so I asked a friend, and—”
“Oh, my God,” he said into her neck. His dick twitched against her thigh and she laughed.
“It was fine,” she told him. “Fun, but not—exciting.”
“Mhm. And double penetration.”
“Never tried. Would like to. I think it’d feel good.”
“Fucking hell. You crossed off anal.”
“Oh, I liked anal,” she said. “I enjoyed that.”
Langdon drew in a deep breath, stared up at the ceiling, and said, “Bedroom. Now.”
Mel laughed as he all but pushed her off the sofa, climbing up after her and taking her hand in his, dragging her to her own room. He kicked the door shut behind him, pulled her in close and kissed her hard and messy, fingers scrabbling at the fabric of her t-shirt. He moved away from her mouth and she followed, but a moment later, she had to dart back as he pulled her t-shirt off, followed by his own only a second later.
“Eager, are we?” she asked, and he rolled his eyes, groaning out a laugh as he pressed kisses down from her collar bones, over the swell of her breasts in her nicest, laciest bra, which she was very thankful to be wearing today. He moved on quickly, down her stomach, lowering to his knees as his fingers hooked into her shorts and underwear at once. He looked up at her, permission in his eyes, and at her nod, he pulled both down, mouth immediately kissing a path over her pubic mound, and to her thighs.
Mel released a shaky breath as his hands slid up the length of her legs, calves to knees to thighs, one slipping up to her slit and gently pushing through.
“Oh,” he said, looking up at her. “Mel, baby, you’re so wet already.”
She reached behind her and unhooked her bra, letting it fall to the floor. Langdon swore, and she placed a hand in his hair, stark naked, so turned on.
“Can I ride your face?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted to try that.”
His pupils dilated as he stared up at her. “I love you,” he said, and Mel laughed.
“I know. Can I?”
They were on her bed only a moment later, Langdon laying down and Mel climbing over him, straddling his face. His hands were on her thighs immediately, pulling her down onto his mouth.
“Ah—oh,” she breathed, tipping her head back as his tongue ran up the length of her slit, circling the clit with speed and pressure. Mel gripped at her headboard as Langdon moaned into her pussy, his tongue moving to her hole and fucking into her.
“Fuck, fuck,” Mel muttered, rocking into him.
His hands kneaded her thighs, his moans vibrating through her body. She’d known it would feel good, but she just hadn’t known how good. Desire spasmed through her, her thighs twitching, toes curling. When she ground down onto his face, she gasped. He removed one hand from her thigh, fingers immediately slipping inside her, as he started sucking her clit with a ruthless pressure.
“Oh, oh—God, Langdon. Right there, right there.” His fingers twisted inside her, crooked, curled. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead into the wall. She didn’t know how long he moved inside her, how long she drowned in the pleasure of his mouth on her. Her knuckles were white around the headboard, eyes squeezed tightly shut, muscles down the length of her body tensing when she came without warning. Some sort of noise was torn from her; one she didn’t know she could make.
Langdon’s fingers slowed inside of her, vanished. His tongue lapped at her hole, licking her through her orgasm. Slowly, she lifted herself away from his mouth, and she felt the bed shift as he slipped out from underneath her.
Only a moment later, his mouth was on her back, kissing his way up her spine.
“You are so hot,” he said, guiding her back into his grasp, knelt behind her. His hands smoothed along her hips, up her stomach, to her breasts. He mouthed against the side of her neck as she sighed, her body relaxing. “You taste so fucking good, Mel.” His fingers tweaked her nipples as he spoke, and Mel tipped her head back onto his shoulder, relishing in the sparks of pleasure.
His mouth kissed a line up her neck, before nipping lightly at her jaw.
She felt his erection pressing at her ass, and shifted into it, enjoying the way Langdon’s breath hitched.
She’d had good sex before. Numerous times. But she’d never had sex with someone she implicitly trusted, with someone she loved. It felt different, felt heightened, felt special and caring and kind in every movement, in every touch.
She hissed when he bit into her neck, but the pain rolled out into pleasure and the hiss turned into a stuttered moan.
“Mel,” Langdon said, before licking soothingly over the mark he’d just made, “I think I will die if I’m not inside you in the next sixty seconds.”
She laughed and he tightened his pinch on her nipples; she rolled back into his erection. When he loosened his grasp, she turned her body, and his hands fell to his lap. Mel experimentally placed her hand over his cock again, the sweats still the only thing between them, and squeezed until his eyes rolled back.
Mel asked, “Do you need a condom?”
She softened her grip so he could find himself to answer. “Your choice,” he said after a beat, breathing shallow. “Tests came back clean.”
“Mine too. And I have the implant.”
His eyes darkened with desire.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, and she wondered if he liked that. Liked being told what to do, liked following her lead and her command. More than once she’d heard him be compared to a dog in the ED – a hyperactive puppy when he was in a good mood, or a lapdog following Dr Robby around, or a guard dog, biting and hostile when a patient got too close or too handsy in her vicinity. She thought perhaps it was like that; Langdon liked the master who told him what to do, liked being the good boy who did as he was told.
“Off the bed,” she said.
He climbed off, and she propped up the pillows, settling back into them.
“Clothes off.”
Langdon pushed down his sweats, then his underwear, kicking them off onto her floor.
She had never seen his cock before, and swallowed at the sight of it. Long, thick, fucking manscaped, because this was Frank Langdon she was talking about, of course he would. She bit her lip, finally dragging her gaze up to his face, where he seemed to be drowning in want, watching her expression.
She leant forward, patting the bedsheet. “Kneel here, please.”
He did what he was told, no complaints, and she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to all sorts of things. Wanted his dick in her mouth, in her pussy, in her ass, even. Wanted to do everything she could, wanted it all now.
Mel restrained herself, sitting back against the pillows once more. Then she opened her legs, watched his jaw clench, throat swallow.
“I want to watch you touch yourself.”
He groaned, but he was smiling, and his hand immediately moved to his cock, running up the length of it. Langdon sat back on his heels, eyes on her and unmoving as he touched himself, thumb swiping over the tip where pre-come gathered, dick jerking into his hand at the feeling.
Mel watched, widened her legs further, and then slipped her fingers down into her own wetness.
“Oh, Jesus, Mel,” Langdon complained. “I’m gonna come before I even get inside you if you do that.”
She kept going anyway, ever so slowly, fingers dipping into the soaking wetness of her pussy and drawing them up to her clit. It was so slippery she barely felt the friction, and so didn’t mind, settling in to watch him masturbate to the view of her.
She said, “Sometimes I think about exactly this when I touch myself.”
Langdon groaned. “Mel.”
“Ten weeks,” she said. “Ten weeks of being together and waiting for this. Not to mention all those months beforehand. I have pictured you naked so many times and my imagination didn’t do you justice.” She reached up a lazy hand to tweak at her nipple and watched his cock twitch.
“Fuck, Mel. Mel, please. I want you so bad, come on.”
She abruptly stopped her movements, wide eyed. “Oh,” she said. “That’s new.”
“What?”
She sat forward, crossing her legs. “I didn’t know I’d like that.”
He laughed, but it was half a groan. “Me begging?”
“You begging. That wasn’t even on the list.”
He tipped his head back, hand slowing. “You’re gonna be the death of me, you know that?”
“So long as it happens after you fuck me,” she retorted. His laugh was electricity down her spine. “You can fuck me if you beg for it.”
He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath. “Oh, the things I do for you, Mel.”
“You love me,” she said simply.
“I love you,” he confirmed. He opened his eyes and returned his gaze to her. She leant back on her hands, stretching out her legs before returning them wide open. She smiled innocently at him, until he moaned, hand on his cock, and said, “Please, Mel. Please let me fuck you. I want to be inside you so bad. I’ll make you feel so good, I promise. I wanna make you feel so good.”
“Please?” she asked.
“Pretty please,” he amended. She tipped her head to the side. “With sprinkles and cherries and all that shit on top.”
She reached up and pulled the hairband from her braid. With quick fingers, she released the hair until it was loose around her shoulders, kinky in that wavy way she knew he liked.
“I’ll be so good for you, baby,” Langdon breathed, eyes dark, hand stuttering on his cock. “I promise I’ll be so good for you.”
Her own chest was tight with want. She heaved in her breath, fingers tightening around her bedsheets.
“You’re already so good for me,” she said. “Come here.”
Langdon leaned forward, crawled the distance between them, until he was positioned over her, hands pressed into the mattress behind her. He kissed her and she loved him. She said it into his mouth, and bit gently at her lower lip.
“Okay,” she whispered into his mouth. “You can fuck me.”
He pressed his mouth back into hers, and lowered her only to bed, back against the sheets, Langdon over top of her. One hand drifted over her thigh, angling her leg just so, before she felt his cock slip against the wetness at her cunt. She was soaking, and so it glided easily over her clit, making her moan into his kiss and jerk her hips up towards him. He made the movement a few more times, letting her chase the pleasure of his cock against her clit, until finally the tip sat at her entrance, and Langdon slowly pushed in.
All the air left her body.
Her eyes fluttered shut. A long moan tore from her throat.
“Oh, fuck,” Langdon breathed. His head was tipped forward, eyes closed in some sort of revelation.
She was wet, but tight. The stinging feeling of Langdon slowly moving inside her soothed out into pleasure, his hips angling forward, down, until he was at last fully sheathed inside her, pelvis to pelvis.
Mel stared at the ceiling, mouth open. She was all sensation. All feel. Langdon’s hands holding her thighs open, his cock buried deep inside her. The fullness, whole in a new way she hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever. Her hand moved down to her thigh, found his, and his squeezed her fingers.
“You feel so good, Mel,” he said. “Jesus. You look so hot like this.”
She exhaled raggedly as he moved her leg, hooking it over his shoulder. The angle of him inside her shifted, deepened, and she groaned.
“I love all your pretty noises,” Langdon said, pressing a kiss to the inside of her knee.
She squeezed his fingers, and then released, throwing her arms above her head and twisting her grip into the pillows.
“Move for me,” she said, rolling her hips up into his.
Langdon started slow, dragging himself out and pushing back in, her pussy clenching down at every shoot of pleasure that sparked in her. He held her leg high at the angle he wanted, the other hand pressing down on her hip, on her stomach, feeling the movement of his cock inside her. When she looked down, she could see the bulge of it in the skin of her stomach, could see the movement beneath the flesh. She released an unholy kind of noise at the sight of it, almost coming on the spot.
Langdon, forever in tune with Mel, dragged the hand down until his thumb was pressed against her clit, and she was whimpering, even through his dangerously slow pace.
“You look so pretty, baby,” he whispered. “You’re so tight and wet. I have thought about being inside you for so long. You’re so good, Mel. Let me take care of you.”
Mel squeezed her eyes shut, bucking up into his cock faster than he was fucking into her. Still, he kept up the steady stream of praise, of compliments, as her muscles tensed and her fingers locked around the pillow, the orgasm rolling out of her like a wave.
“That’s so good, Mel,” he said, gently lowering her leg. He didn’t pull out of her, just pressed in deep as he leaned over her body, still shaking, and pressed kisses across her chest, shoulders, throat. He moved slow and sweet and deep, tongue flicking over her nipple and a hand tangling in her hair.
“Tell me what you want,” he murmured.
“Faster,” she replied, though her voice was choked with pleasure, with effort. “I want you to come inside me.”
Langdon’s inhale was sharp.
He abandoned her nipple to kiss her, hot and heavy and dirty. Only a second later did he start moving again, in and out at a faster pace. Langdon must’ve been some sort of master of angles in a way Mel hadn’t known about; he drove his cock into her deep and purposeful, dragging back along her g-spot on the way out. She jerked her hips into him, mouth open and able to do little more than just make soft ahs with each push inside. Langdon kissed a path back down to her neck, then across to her shoulder. He pressed his forehead against her, hands firm on her hips, as Mel’s breath caught in her throat.
She didn’t breathe as she came, her whole body stuck on it. The pleasure was intense as it lit up inside her, travelling through every shaking limb. She felt so, so fucking good.
When it passed, she heaved in air, hands finally loose enough to slip into Langdon’s hair, hold him against her as he kept relentlessly fucking into her.
“Please, please, please, please,” she whispered. She drew his mouth back to hers, muttering words straight into his breath. Her legs lifted, locking behind him at the ankles. “Look at me,” she said. “Look at me, baby.”
He pulled away from her mouth just enough to see her. His forearms were propped up now on either side of her head, no doubt fingers curled around her hair.
“Mel.”
She met his gaze. It had been a long time since she struggled to make eye contact with him. There was something so mesmerising in how his eyes laid all his feelings bare. She could see them: want, desire, love.
“Come for me,” she said. “Come inside me.”
It was only a second before he tumbled over the edge. She held him in place with her hands, so he couldn’t look away, so she wouldn’t miss the intake of breath, the open mouth, the eyelashes flickering. Something low and relieved tore out of him as she tightened her legs around his hips, holding him inside her as he came.
“That’s it,” she whispered.
He lowered his forehead to hers, spent. She felt his cock pulse inside her, the little jerks of his hips as he finished. She didn’t let go, simply held him in place, and let herself relax into the feeling.
“I love you,” she said, soft. His eyes were closed. “I don’t say it enough,” she added. “But I do.”
His mouth pulled into an exhausted smile. He kissed her short, soft, sweet, blinking his eyes open after.
“I love you, too.”
“You say it all the time,” Mel replied, “so I know.”
He shook his head with a laugh, moving to get up.
“Not yet,” she said. “Just—stay a little longer?”
Langdon sighed happily, nodded. “I don’t want to crush you,” he said, and she noticed the way his arms were shaking.
“You should,” she said. “You’ll be like a weighted blanket.”
He let out a single bark of laughter, but did as she said anyway, laying heavy directly on top of her, dick still deep inside her pussy. Mel let her legs relax back onto the bed, and wrapped her arms around his torso as he rested his head on her chest.
She was right. Exactly like a weighted blanket. Just warmer.
She’d always liked consistent pressure to help her deal with overwhelming emotions, and Langdon worked perfectly, resting with his body directly over hers.
Eventually, she said, “Mind if I check my list?”
He laughed, and she reached a hand out for her phone, barely managing to grasp it from her bedside table where she’d left it. She held it out so they could both see as she scrolled down, looking for ride someone’s face, and satisfactorily crossing it off.
Langdon mused, “Gimme a minute and I can go again.”
“No rush,” she hummed, grazing her fingers along the planes of his back, following the patterns of muscle. “My body might shake apart entirely if I orgasm again in the next twenty minutes.”
He laughed into her skin.
“I don’t think I’m a fan of blow jobs,” she admitted, “and I honestly think you’re going to be too big for my mouth anyway, but I’m happy to try.”
She felt Langdon exhale into her. Inside her, his dick twitched. He didn’t reply, and Mel kept scrolling idly.
Langdon pulled out a moment later, and she felt decidedly empty. They both glanced down at his dick, come slick and flaccid, and Mel said, “I’ll clean the sheets later,” as if she didn’t notice her mouth water at the sight.
Langdon blew out a breath and shifted, lying half on top of her, half at her side. He sprawled over her, and she sank into the embrace, one arm still wrapped around him.
She scrolled down to do I have a breeding kink? and checked it off the list.
Langdon said, “Jesus Christ, Mel.”
“I don’t think it’s a kink,” she clarified, “I think it’s just a thing I enjoyed.”
He made a noise anyway, head right beside hers on the pillow. He watched her type partner begs onto the list and cross it off immediately.
“Glad to be of some help,” he said, dry.
She looked over at him with a grin. “You’re going to be a lot of help. You always are – I’m not surprised you’re helpful in this aspect of our lives too.”
She watched his pupils dilate then his eyes close. His grip around her, over her, tightened, pulling her in closer. She felt the sticky wetness of his cock against her thigh, felt his come slowly leaking out of her.
Twenty minutes, she thought, then we go again.
When he’d taken a deep breath, grounding, he returned to her, and nodded back to the checklist. She knew what that meant. I’ll help however you want me to. He always would, she knew. He would help her and she would help him, and the two of them would find the love in the places where they met in the middle, intersecting.
She drew patterns along the curve of his shoulder, felt his kiss against her neck.
She scrolled the list, thinking, cowgirl and sex while spooning and I’d be willing to try a sixty-nine just the once.
Langdon said, “You have choking on your list.” She remembered, vaguely, something Trinity had said.
“I haven’t done it before,” she told him. “There’s a lot of trust involved so no one’s met the criteria for it before.”
“Oh?”
She glanced over at him, considering. “I’d be willing to do it with you.”
Langdon’s smile made her stomach swoop and her heart clench. She thought, butterflies.
Mel said, “I think I’d like to try being choked,” and he blinked.
“Mel, you’re the perfect person,” Langdon said, “did you know that?”
She didn’t actually. She’d never been the perfect person. But maybe—she was perfect for him. Mel allowed herself to think this, as they laid there, because it went both ways. She was perfect for him, and in return, Langdon was perfect for her.
BEFORE
She asked to clarify: “You like me.”
“I like you.”
“On a scale of one to ten—”
“Ten.”
A rush of joy passed through her, but she had to be sure: “If you were to pick a Step Up movie that encapsulates your feelings—”
“The first one.”
“Why?”
“It’s the best one.” He was right; it was. They’d watched all five with Becca and he’d complained one after the next about them not living up to the original.
Mel’s eyes narrowed; her smile grew a little wider. This was the perhaps the best day of her life so far. “You like me.”
He exhaled out his amusement. “I like you, Dr King.”
She felt like she was flying.
AFTER
Langdon took the phone from her hand and put it back on the bedside table.
“No experiments,” he said, dropping a kiss to her mouth. “Just enjoy it.”
She would, Mel knew. She’d enjoy it all.