Work Text:
“I don’t have a best friend.”
“What am I?”
“My best resident. There’s a difference.”
It started on their break, steam bleeding from Robby's pot noodle as they stood almost shoulder to shoulder, watching it boil.
Langdon took a sip of his energy drink, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "I genuinely just don't get it."
Robby groaned. "Then don't."
"Explain it to me."
Robby snapped to face the ceiling, taking a deep breath through his nose. Finally, he turned to Langdon with a straight face. "Seafood on pizza is not a crime."
Langdon shrugged, drink raised. "I just think that depends on who you ask."
"Oh my god. Grow a backbone."
Langdon arched a brow, choosing that moment to clutch his back.
Robby winced. Wrong idiom.
"It just isn't as weird as you think it is."
"Clams on cheese on bread,” Langdon said. “That's fucking odd."
Robby stabbed at his noodles with a roll of his eyes.
As with the most famous of conflicts between them, it would be easier to blame this on Santos if you knew nothing of their relationship. She'd been treating a patient who had come in with food poisoning, suspected to stem from the frozen pizza he and his girlfriend had shared the previous night. But that wasn't the issue. Oh no. The issue was that Santos and Langdon both found it criminal that the pizza included clams.
"It's big in the Mediterranean," Robby shrugged, blowing on his pot noodle. "Can't judge what we don't know ourselves. It's insensitive."
"Dunno. Sounds kinda ass."
Robby scoffed. "You sound kinda ass."
"How'd you know?" Langdon snapped back. "Can't judge what we don't know ourselves."
Robby blinked. "I do."
Langdon arched a brow, squinting. "You know ass?"
"Intimately."
"Because... what? You are one."
"No, because I work with one."
"Wow you suck."
"Thanks. Related to my knowledge of the ass."
Heat crept up Langdon's cheeks. "Okay— well, if seafood pizza is so cool, why have I never seen you eat it?"
"I eat it all the time," Robby lied.
"Oh yeah? When?"
"Fucking— yesterday."
Langdon tipped his head forward, stare flat. "You had seafood pizza yesterday."
"Yes," Robby said. "It was wonderful."
"And what did it taste of?"
"Fish. On pizza."
Langdon hummed. "My condolences."
Robby groaned. "You literally like fish! What's the issue!"
"I like fish as fish! Not fish on top of pizza!"
"Langdon you literally like Hawaiian, I don't get why—"
Langdon gasped, hand over his heart. "Do not bring Hawaiian pizza into this."
"You can't just deem one fine and not the other."
"Yes I can."
"Nope, that's unfair."
"Uh, no. There's a difference. Hawaiian pizza is fun. Seafood on top of pizza is literally the opposite of that."
"You’re such a child.”
Langdon flashed a sharp grin. "Yet here you are, still talking to me."
Good point, actually. Why the fuck was Robby still talking to him? He glanced at the clock and froze. "How long have we been here?"
Langdon drained the last of his energy drink with a shrug. "Long enough for you to recognise pizza and the ocean don't mix."
"Fuck—" Robby scowled down at his pot noodle. "Why do these take so long?"
"They're instant noodles. They're done in, like, seconds."
"Yeah, too many seconds."
Robby prodded at them again. Too hot. His eyes watered. He blinked it away and kept chewing.
Langdon unwrapped his oat bar slowly, eyes on Robby, thumb dragging along the plastic. "Alright.”
Robby powered through a couple of fast mouthfuls before freezing, chopsticks hovering. Langdon had leaned back now, phone in hand, chewing with infuriating patience.
Robby tipped his chin toward the bar. "That all you got?"
"Hm?" Langdon said, eyes still on his screen.
"You brought nothing else?"
Langdon shook his head. "Look here. Ninety-eight percent of the global population thinks seafood pizza sucks."
"Let me see that."
Langdon turned the screen. Wikipedia. The fluorescent lights smeared across it as Robby skimmed, frown deepening.
"Where's that statistic at?"
Langdon shrugged. "It's implied."
A laugh burst out of Robby. "Implied!"
Langdon grinned and tucked the phone away, chewing the last of the oat bar like he'd already won.
"How the hell is that implied?"
"It just is."
Robby snorted, leaning back. This whole interaction was far too dumb for a hospital. Langdon looked unbearably pleased with himself, too, which only made Robby want to smack him around the back of the head.
He chewed thoughtfully as Langdon continued to scroll through his phone.
If this was too dumb for a hospital, maybe it didn’t belong in one.
Not in the sense that this sort of thing should never happen. Community among staff was half the reason they survived this shit at all. No. Only that Robby could still hear the echo of Langdon’s laugh in his head, sharp and stupid and far too acrid beside the noticeboards and antiseptic air.
Some place moodier seemed more appropriate. Maybe a bar. Langdon seemed a bar guy. Robby pictured him playing pool, leaning over the green, knuckled chalked white as he lined up a shot he’d undoubtedly miss. His tongue would probably be stuck out, too. Or he’d be grinning. Something insufferable, no doubt. Robby hoped for a second Langdon could play darts. He’d be all talk.
Robby swallowed, the salty taste of his lunch clinging to his throat, and wondered why work was the only place they did this.
Finished, Langdon crumpled his oat-bar wrapper. "You done?"
Robby blinked. Along the way, he'd finished his noodles. A quick nod followed. He crossed the break room and dropped it into the bin. The plastic clattered, final.
They fell into step together, pushing through the door and back into the corridor. The hospital swallowed them immediately — overhead lights buzzing.
Their paths split at the junction near the ER doors.
Robby slowed. So did Langdon.
For a beat, they just stood there. Langdon rocked back on his heels, hands shoved into his pockets, eyes flicking briefly toward the doors before coming back to Robby. The break room was already a different world.
"Well," Langdon said. "Hope the Italian guy gets better."
"Been there. Food poisoning ain't fun, I'll tell you that."
"Gross. I meant from his bad taste in pizza."
Robby scoffed. "Please."
Langdon grinned, then gave Robby a firm slap to the shoulder.
"And for the record," Langdon added, already turning away, "you now stink."
Robby barked a laugh despite himself. "Stop slacking off!"
Langdon shot him a lazy salute and peeled off toward his next patient.
Robby stood there a second longer than necessary, staring after him. His back was still warm where Langdon's hand had been.
Oh yeah, he thought, mouth twitching as he finally turned the other way. They were gonna do darts.