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She’s fine, really: she’s always been good at compartmentalising and stuffing it down, always been good at hiding it behind a smooth braid and a uniform smile. She’s fine, really: there’s no reason for her to get upset, because it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything and she’s being silly, because the woman in front of her dead in a hospital bed is not her mother, she knows she’s being silly, and-
It’s Monday, and she’s weightless in the stretching purgatorial hours between her lunchbreak and the shift changeover. The fluorescent lights are impinging, humming in the back of her head like static, causing her sinuses to pound with bursts of dull pain. Samira’s off sick and it’s horribly overrun, there’s vomit on the floor somewhere and there’s blood on her scrubs, crimson from the wrists to the elbows, and the clock on the wall is tick tick ticking away like a bomb, and really, she should’ve known.
She’s heard it all before from shrinks and a string of psychiatrists who were all as unhelpful as the last, heard all of the unwarranted advice from colleagues and friends and her peers in medical school. She knows that it’s true, though, knows that there’s something to be said for the anniversary of a loved one’s death, and she can’t say that she loved her mother exactly, not really, but nevertheless-
How did she forget? She’s organised, punctual, neat to the point of obsessiveness at times. And yet when she passed by the calendar on her kitchen wall this morning, she didn’t see it. Didn’t even register it. And now she’s here, standing in the middle of the ER with her gloves covered in blood, blood of a woman’s chest cavity, a woman with honey blonde curls and sunken brown eyes and hollow cheeks who looked so much like her that it hurt, and she couldn’t save that woman- Ellery Sanders, she’d been called- the same way she was helpless to save her mother.
Mel feels her lungs squeeze, like a thread of chain winding around her ribs and locking them together. She knows the signs, the biology: the constriction of her airway, or what feels like it; the clamminess of her palms; the way the conundrum of the ER fades out into a heady buzz, muffled, like she’s sinking to the bottom of a pool she can’t swim her way out of. She’s having a panic attack, a bad one, and she’s caught in the claw of it.
Dizziness begins to pull at her, the hazard lights of hyperventilation, an alarm blaring in her head telling her to leave, to get out, to run. Before she knows it she’s making her way across the floor, not really registering anything that’s happening anymore: the lights are bright and she can feel all of her clothes touching her body and her mother is dead, dead dead dead, cold in the ground, and Ellery Sanders’s heart just stopped under the raw plastic of her gloves because she wasn’t fast enough to save her.
On autopilot, Mel finds herself walking into the locker room. She’s awarded one small mercy: it’s empty, deserted, so she’s got the place to herself to crumble in privacy- and yet, still, it doesn’t feel like enough. There’s blood on her hands, metaphorically and literally, blood on her sleeves and splatters of dark red arterial blood decorating her torso, and she needs to get it off, off, off-
She steps into the nearest shower cubicle and slams the door shut before her, not even bothering with the lock because she needs this absolution now. The water will wash it away, and maybe then she’ll feel better, like she can breathe, like her feet are rooted on the cold tile.
Once her scrub top is off, discarded in a sad pile, she steps under the spray. The water is hot, hot like fire against the puckered goosepimples of her electrified skin, and she watches through blurry eyes as the guilt and horror drips down her torso and dilutes to a harsh pink, swirling around the shower drain until she’s clean.
It doesn’t help. The feeling of dirtiness lingers. She squeezes her eyes shut and all she can see are two sets of brown irises, flitting between the dark ones of Ellery Sanders and the honey ones of her mother. The honey ones that aren’t quite the same colour as her own hazel ones, but close enough, the ones she sees staring back at her everyday when she gets ready for work, her cross to bear.
Again, she didn’t even love her mother. And yet.
Time stretches and blurs into an infinite second, space only existing between the drab four walls of the shower cubicle. The water seeps into her bones like a rot until it’s no longer hot anymore, and she thinks she’s shivering somewhere underneath the dozen other sensations she’s fighting through but she doesn’t have the energy to care. It’s all too much, and she still can’t breathe.
But then the door creaks open, and suddenly there’s the low rumble of a voice in her ear, deep in a way that hits her in the chest and makes her open her eyes. She finds blue: bright blue, clear and piercing and yet familiar, familiar like an ache.
“Mel?” He says, and she almost breaks down all over again. He looks so kind, so concerned, so compassionate- all things she does not deserve, because she let a woman die.
Body wracking with sobs, she buries her head in her palms. He shouldn’t see her in this way, when she’s so vulnerable. He’s seen her wobble before, several times, and he’s always been so supportive and understanding and kind but- never like this. Not like this.
“I’m okay, Langdon,” she manages between heaves. Her whole body shakes. “I’m fine, you don’t have to-”
“You’re not okay, Mel,” he says. He’s crouched down in front of her- close enough for her to feel the warmth radiating off of his body in waves, but far enough so that they aren’t touching. “You’re shivering.”
She realises then that the water is still running and is now drenching him too. She reaches up to switch it off but he’s faster, and their hands meet on the metal dial. He hovers for a moment, and she can see the thought behind his eyes, the way he’s weighing it up, deciding whether she needs it or even wants it- so she decides to make the move for him, and takes his hand in her own.
He drops their joined hands to sit between them. Mel squeezes his fingers tight.
“You don’t need to tell me what happened,” he says quietly. “I just want you to be okay.”
“I’m,” a sob, “fine,” another sob, “Langdon.”
He regards her for a moment, and then shuffles closer to take her other hand. His hair is wet around his face, clinging to his cheeks, droplets of water cascading down his pale skin and running across the sharp rivets of his jaw. It’s all too much, and she wants to bury herself in his shoulder, but she can’t because she’s a professional and she doesn’t need him to be her crutch. She doesn't.
Instead she covers her face with a hand, not daring to look a moment longer. It’s safer if she can’t see him. Safer in the darkness.
Mel hears Langdon exhales heavily through his nose. “Oh, Mel…”
Carefully, slowly, he peels her hand away from her eyes. “You don’t have to hide from me,” he says. “Ever. You know that, right?”
Mel sniffles. Blinks away tears. He won’t stop looking at her. “I just…”
“It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone that Mel King secretly uses all of the hot water in the showers. Your secret is safe with me.”
It takes her a moment, and she frowns, but then she sees the half-smile at the corner of his crescent moon lips and registers it as a joke. A joke. He’s trying to make her feel better, damn him.
“Thanks,” she replies lightly, and wipes her eyes. The tears are gone now, but the indescribable weight of guilt still mantles her shoulders. “I…”
He squeezes her palm and waits, the softness in his eyes imploring her to go on.
“There was this patient,” she huffs out. “Ellery Sanders. She had two kids, and she was taking them to go Christmas shopping, and they’re at this junction and then-” she pauses, grimacing, feeling a fresh wave of tears building. “They get t-boned by this lorry. Both kids were killed on impact. She was conscious for the entire thing, Frank, but she was losing so much blood and her heart stopped on the table, and I tried everything to restart it, we even cut her open and I massaged it with my hands and- and-”
She chokes.
“She looked like my mother. My mother died on this day twelve years ago.”
Langdon’s face falls, eyes creasing with tangible pity, as Mel descends into an uncontrollable fit of sobs. Wordlessly he moves forward to encase her in his arms, because goddamn the consequences of holding his sopping wet, half-naked colleague in the shower.
Immediately Mel leans into him, burying her head in the crook of his neck. She inhales the scent of him, shameless. She doesn’t care anymore. She’s sitting on the floor of a shower in her bra and scrub pants. It can’t get more humiliating than this, and she needs him so badly that she knows there’s no use in denying it anymore.
Langdon joins his arms around her back, like he’s trying to coax some warmth back into her. She feels herself shivering violently, the sharp chill of the water making its way into her bones. He moves a hand in small circles, rubbing softly into her skin, and she burrows deeper into him.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs into her hair. “You’re going to be okay, baby. I’m here. I’m here for you.”
The pet name sends a flush of warmth running through her body. She shouldn’t like it as much as she does. Part of her wants him to say it again. Part of her wants to hear it everyday for the rest of her life.
“I know it feels redundant for me to say, but it isn’t your fault.” The vibrato of his voice is low against her head, radiating into her temples and flushing away the pain. After a minute he pulls his head away a few inches to get a good look at her, and says: “Ellery Sanders didn’t die because of you, and neither did your mother. You don’t need forgiveness, Mel. There’s nothing to be forgiven, because none of it is your fault. None of it. It’s a rotten day and a horrible coincidence and I’m so, so, sorry. I should’ve noticed sooner.”
Mel shakes her head. “No, Langdon, you couldn’t have known. You didn’t know it was today. Like you said, it’s just-” a sniffle, “a horrible coincidence.”
“I know that.” He smiles gently, and tucks the loose strands of hair that have escaped her braid back behind her ears. “But you’re my friend, Mel. You were there for me when…” He trails off, and he doesn’t need to say the words because she remembers as well as he does. Remembers the hard months when he first returned after rehab, remembers the scornful looks of their colleagues. “You were there for me. You were my friend when nobody else wanted to be. So I should’ve known, I should’ve been there for you today. And I’m sorry I wasn’t. I’m sorry that I didn’t know.”
“Frank,” she says, and his first name should sound foreign on her tongue but it doesn’t, not anymore, not when she’s grown to know him so well. “You don’t need forgiveness. There’s nothing to be forgiven, because none of it is your fault.”
As she echoes his comforts back to him, his eyes visibly soften. They sheen with glass, reflective pools under the fluorescent light, and the only word that comes to mind is beautiful.
“Thank you, Mel.” His voice is soft, gentle, tinged with the edges of subtle emotion. And god, she thinks. Those eyes. So blue.
There’s a stuttering moment of a held gaze. His eyes are unwavering on hers, still. Something in her stomach shifts, something deep and monumental that moves pointedly to the crux of her heart. She has to look away, then. It’s too much. Too confusing.
Mel hears him take a sharp intake of breath.
“Do you want to go home?” He says. “I can take you.”
Yes, she thinks. Please. Take me anywhere but here.
“No, it’s fine-”
Langdon cuts her off. “I wasn’t asking, Mel. I’m not letting you carry on working like this, and I’m not letting you drive home either. I don’t want that on my conscience. I- I can’t have that on my conscience.”
Mel exhales. She really can’t continue working like this, and driving in this state is a death wish. And she really does want to go home.
Shakily, she nods. Langdon stands slowly, and pulls her up with him. “Okay. You just wait here and get changed. I’ll go explain everything to Robby.”
Mel stops him suddenly, tugging on his sleeve. “Langdon-” she says, perhaps a little pointedly. She knows that he and Robby no longer have the best relationship, not since The Incident, not since Robby sent a disgraced Langdon away to rehab, and-
“It’s okay, Mel. This isn’t about me. If he’s an ass about it to me then, by proxy, he’s being an ass to you, too,” he says, and extracts her hand from his arm, “and he likes you, so that won’t happen.”
Mel nods, slightly bashfully, and he vanishes.
The next hour passes by in a blur. One moment she’s sopping wet in scrubs and the next she’s in the passenger seat of Langdon’s car, which she’s been in before so it doesn’t really bother her except for the fact that it’s different because this is so much more personal and there’s a blanket draped over her lap and the heating is on blast, and she feels so at ease despite everything. He’s mostly focused on the road but keeps looking over at her, little surreptitious glances that send a wave of warmth through her body, unspoken reassurances that keep her grounded.
When they get close to her block, he turns the radio down and turns to her. “Is Becca home?” He asks. He’s met Becca before, so it’s no big deal if she is (and Becca even liked him, thought he was hilarious and handsome) but Mel remembers that no, her sister is not home tonight.
She shakes her head. “No, she’s- she’s at the care centre.”
He nods, and continues to drive. Soon they’re outside her apartments, parked in the road, engine humming. She suddenly feels out of place, unsure of what to do with herself. She wants to go inside but she also doesn’t want to leave him. Wants the privacy but doesn’t want to be alone.
Mel figures that he’s got better things to do with his night, no matter what her heart wants. “Thanks, Langdon. For everything.” She unclasps her seatbelt and passes him back the blanket. “I’ll see you to-”
“Not so fast,” he says. “You think I’d just leave you here like this? I may be an ass, Mel, but I’m a gentleman.”
“You’re not an ass, Langdon.”
He smiles at that, and then follows her out of the car.
———————
The first impression he gets of Mel’s apartment is that it’s cosy and homely, well lived in and yet neat. It’s open plan with a little kitchen by the window that looks out over the city, and as he stares out of it he wonders if she ever stands here thinking of him the way he does of her, gazing in the general direction of the ER.
“Langdon?” Mel’s voice rouses him from his reverie, timid and rough with sleep. As soon as they’d gotten inside she’d fallen into an almost comatose state on her couch, dead to the world. He’d watched her sleep for a while, making sure she was at peace, focusing between her eyebrows for the tell-tale crease of a nightmare. But then he’d realised that it was probably creepy (was it? He wasn't sure, he was just being caring, and she looked so beautiful yet unaware of it in sleep that he couldn’t tear his eyes away), and had migrated to the kitchen to wait for her to wake up.
“Over here,” he calls out. Before he knows it she’s dragged herself into the kitchen, and he’s never seen such a sight. Never seen Mel King look so…almost undressed, with her hair loose and messy around her shoulders and her sweatpants bunched up around her ankles like pantaloons. Her face is puffy from the crying, undereyes swollen like purple grapes, and yet despite it all there’s not anyone else he’d rather be looking at.
He can’t say that, though. They’re just friends. That’s all. She doesn’t like him, not like that.
“How are you feeling?” He asks gently.
Mel shrugs. “Better, I guess.” She avoids his eyes and crosses over to the fridge, and starts rifling through the contents. “You want anything? I’m starving.”
“I can order us food, if you want-” Langdon offers.
“No, it’s okay. I’m a good cook.” Mel butts in, and starts extracting ingredients from the shelves. “Or so Becca says. And, besides, it takes my mind off of…things.”
Langdon nods. He gets it. When he was out of rehab, he couldn’t stop pinging one of Abby’s hair bands against his wrist to distract him from the urges. Even after the divorce.
“Sure, then. You want any help?”
“Well, that depends on what you want me to make. Right now, the options are looking like meatballs and pasta, chicken alfredo or…grilled cheese.”
In the end he decides on grilled cheese, and Mel gets to work. He doesn’t leave the kitchen, though, and stays to potter around her. He still feels too wound up, too worried, to walk more than five metres away from her.
Once the food is done, they settle onto the couch. At opposite ends, of course, no matter how much he wants to get close and run his fingers through her tangled tresses, no matter how much he wants to wipe breadcrumbs off of her face as she eats.
“Becca is right,” he says through bites. “You are a good cook.”
Mel shrugs. “Thanks, but it’s only a grilled cheese.”
“Don’t be so humble. This,” he says, exaggeratedly pointing down at his empty plate as he shoves the last corner of bread crust into his mouth, “is the goddamn best grilled cheese I’ve had in my entire life. You’re a superstar, Melissa King.”
She smiles at that. Wide, but shy. A slight colour to her cheeks. “Well, maybe next time I’ll make you some pasta.”
Next time.
“I’d like that,” Langdon says, and sets his plate down on the coffee table. “I’d like that a lot.”
They linger on the couch for a while before migrating back to the kitchen to wash up the mess. Mel stands by the sink, plastic yellow gloves all the way up to her elbows, while Langdon stands beside her and dries and stacks the dishes. But then it’s done, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore- doesn’t know if he should go, if she even wants him here. He’d basically invited himself in, anyways.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he says eventually, standing before her awkwardly. He doesn’t want to go, not really- he’s got nothing to go back to except for an underfurnished, lonely apartment. Here is warm, here is nice, but she doesn’t owe him that. She doesn’t owe him anything.
“Oh.” Mel frowns, and he notices her shuffling her weight between her feet. “I mean- I- if it’s okay with you, I was wondering if you’d stay for a while and watch a movie? I just- I don’t think I want to be alone.”
A wave of relief rushes through his body. He didn’t realise just how desperately much he wanted to stay here for longer.
“Of course I’ll stay,” he says, but she still looks unconvinced. A little shy, even. “Mel, seriously. I want to.”
Her face splits into a grin, the corners of her eyes perking up. “Great. I’ll just- I’m going to go and get changed into something comfier. You can- pick the movie, if you want? They’re all in the cupboard under the TV. They’re organised by genre, too!”
He nods and watches her scurry away into her bedroom, eyes lingering on the door even after it closes. She’s such an enigma, and he finds himself endlessly fascinated by her in a way that his colleagues aren’t. Where Robby or Santos would label her as weird or offputting, he just sees intriguing and wonderful. He doesn’t know how they don’t see it, too.
He delves into the wide selection of DVDs that she owns. It’s cute that she even owns them, he thinks, in the modern age. Some of the boxes are so battered and worn that he surmises they must be relics from her childhood, memories of happier times.
When she emerges from her bedroom he’s fighting an internal battle to decide between The Empire Strikes Back and The Matrix. He hears the soft pad of her feet on the wooden floor and looks up. Immediately, his face flushes with warmth.
She isn’t wearing anything skimpy. She’s barely showing any skin. She’s not in one of those silky matching pyjama sets that Abby used to wear to bed. And yet.
She’s wearing a massively oversized Star Wars t-shirt, the graphic half rubbed away with age, but there. So oversized that it falls to her knees, skimming just above them. They’re scarred, he sees. His own knees are scarred like that.
And then her hair. Her hair. God, he loves her hair. It always looks so soft and shiny. But it’s not in its usual braid, and it isn’t loose like earlier. Instead, she’s bunched it back into a wild, scraggly bun. Baby hairs and loose pieces fall around her face, framing the shadows of her cheekbones. The only word that comes to mind is beautiful.
“Hey,” he chokes out. “I didn’t know you liked Star Wars. How didn’t I know that?”
Mel shrugs. “You like it too?”
“Well, yes!” He says, and picks up The Empire Strikes Back from the floor. “As a matter of fact, I was debating between this or The Matrix. But I guess your shirt just settled it.”
She smiles lightly. “I didn’t have you pinned for a nerd.”
Langdon smiles as he clicks the disc into her old-fashioned DVD player. “I would say the same for you.” He turns back to her, flashes a grin. “But I’d be lying.”
They watch the movie in a companionable silence. Halfway through, Mel gets up to retrieve a bag of peanut M&Ms from her pantry. Frank spends the next hour trying not to accidentally brush her hand when he reaches his fingers into the bag. He does, anyway.
They’re approaching the end of the film when he feels a sudden weight drop onto his shoulder, and an intoxicating scent of shea butter and aloe filling his nostrils. Clean. She smells clean. And she’s fallen fast asleep on his shoulder.
Mel King is fast asleep on his shoulder.
He tries to stay very still. Tries to keep his cool. But try as he might, he can’t stop the uncontrollable way his heart starts to race. She’s asleep on his shoulder, and he can’t quite wrap his head around it without feeling giddy. She’s warm and real and beautiful and there.
Really, he knows that he should get up and go. Or take her in his arms and deposit her in her bed. But one option feels detached and the other feels overly-personal. Both are things that he doesn’t want to do, because ultimately it means one thing: Mel King being asleep, but not on his shoulder.
Only a beat later, Frank comes to a decision and reaches for the fleece blanket that sits draped over the back of the couch. Slowly, he stretches it over the both of them. Swears to himself that this is only for twenty minutes, twenty minutes at most, until the movie ends. Then he’ll get up and go.
For now, though, he’ll allow himself the indulgence. What harm could it possibly do? They’re friends. That’s all this is. Friends do this. And even if he does like her like that (which by now, he knows he does) there’s no way she’d ever reciprocate. So this can’t hurt anyone but him.
———————
When Mel awakens, there’s a crick in her neck and her back is cramping but she feels positively sleep-sated. And she’s warm, so warm, enveloped in a cloud of softness, a cosy heat under her cheek. The steady beating of a heart. The weight of heavy arms around her body.
Oh.
Oh.
It’s Frank.
Slowly, she blinks her eyes open.
It’s morning.
A hazy sunlight peeks through a slit in her curtains, illuminating her apartment in an amber glow. The dust glitters in the air. The scientist in her knows that it’s mostly an accumulation of dead skin, but nevertheless- it’s wonderful.
It must be early, she surmises. Just past dawn.
Mel turns her gaze to the man beneath her, and feels her heart lurch. That feeling emerges again. That feeling. The one in the crux of her heart. She thinks it has been building for a while.
It’s no surprise that it’s surfacing now, though. Not when he’s lying there with his arms bunched around her and his lips slightly parted in the reprieve of sleep. Not when he looks so beautiful, so beautiful that she doesn’t even mind admitting it to herself. Not this time.
She assumes that they must’ve fallen asleep while watching the movie last night. She doesn’t really remember the previous day, a haze of emotion. But now that they’re here she doesn’t want to move, ever.
She knows, though, that they’ll have to. They both have a shift today.
Bravely, Mel reaches down to brush an awry lock of his floppy dark hair off of his forehead.
Then:
“Frank?”
Silence.
Mel tries again, this time tapping him a little on the cheek.
“Frank.”
She watches attentively as he blinks his eyes open. Blue on hazel. She thinks she wants to kiss him. He’s her best friend, and she realises that she finally knows it: she likes him. Fuck, perhaps more than that. Could she love him? Could she?
After a moment, his eyebrows crease together. “Mel?” He croaks out, groggy. “Where am I?”
Mel smiles. “On my couch. We fell asleep watching the movie.”
His face falls a little. “Oh.” He extracts one arm from her to rub the remnants of sleep from his eyes, but then to her surprise, drops it back down. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Neither did I,” she agrees. “But, here we are. I guess.”
“I guess.”
There’s a moment of silence that stretches. She can’t be how long for, because the only thing she’s aware of are his eyes on hers and the warmth of his body and the weight of his hands on her back, and most of all, the overwhelming urge to kiss him.
“Frank…” she starts. “I…”
Langdon shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, Mel, I’m sorry.”
Mel furrows her brow. “What? No, it’s okay. I- I liked it. I like it.”
His eyes widen, and she wonders if she’s made a mistake in her honesty. “You do?”
Mel swallows. “Yes. I do. I wanted you to stay, but I was too afraid to ask. I’m glad you did. It made me sleep better. And…”
She can’t say it. The words get caught in her throat. So she trails off and all she can do is look down at his lips, hoping he gets the message.
“Oh, Mel…” he coos.
Before she can say another word his hand is on her jaw and his mouth is on hers, gentle but firm all at the same time. At first she’s stiff, disbelieving that this is really happening, but then she relaxes into it, moving her lips with his. He’s soft and pliant and wonderful, and their mouths slot together like puzzle pieces, and this is happening.
“Langdon,” she breathes out after what feels like an eternity, drawing back for air. His hands are in her hair and her bun has come loose and her lips feel swollen and his look kiss-dark.
He smiles up at her, wider than she’s ever seen. “Hi.”
Mel smiles back. “Hi.”
His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while.”
Mel furrows her brow. “You have? I had- I had no idea.” God, she thinks. I’m so oblivious.
“Yeah.” He says. “Somewhere between me coming back from rehab and finding you in that shower yesterday, I realised that I wanted to kiss you.”
The words are simple yet charged, light yet heavy. Mel can’t help but dive back down to his mouth, this time fiercer. She gasps into him as his tongue slips past the guard of her lips and enters her mouth, exploratory and arousing. Nothing has ever felt so perfect.
Another lifetime later and he’s pulling back. By now, the sun is high in the grey winter sky. Mel frowns at the sight of it.
“I have to go to work,” he says sadly, and presses another kiss to her mouth.
“I?” Mel questions. “I have to go too, Frank.”
He shakes his head. She knows what he’s getting at. She knows it’s because he cares.
She places a hand on his cheek and massages a thumb against his temple. “I’ll be fine, I promise. I feel…a lot better now.” Another kiss. “But…will you join me for another movie night after our shift? Finish what you started, maybe?”
Langdon grins from ear to ear at that. “Melissa King.” He threads his fingers through her hair. “Now when did you become such a flirt?”