Chapter Text
The on-call room was supposed to be a refuge.
A place to breathe. To reset. To sit down for five minutes and convince your body it wasn’t still running a code, still hearing the flatline, still feeling the weight of hands that had tried and failed.
But tonight, it felt like a trap.
Langdon shut the door behind him and leaned back against it, forehead tipping forward until it thudded softly against the wood. His chest rose too fast. Fell too fast. Like his lungs had forgotten the rhythm of normal.
In. Out. In—
Nothing.
His throat tightened like a fist closing. His palms were damp, fingers trembling as he pressed them to his sternum as if he could force his ribs to open wider.
“Come on,” he whispered, voice cracking. “Come on, breathe.”
The room was dim, lit only by the faint spill of hallway light under the door. A narrow bed. A couch. A sink that dripped once every few seconds. It should’ve been quiet.
But Langdon’s mind wasn’t.
It was full of noise—alarms, voices, the sharp snap of Abbot’s orders, the look on the patient’s face right before everything went wrong. The way Langdon’s hands had moved on instinct and still somehow hadn’t been enough.
And underneath it all, threaded through the panic like a live wire, was something else.
Need.
Not the kind he could talk himself out of. Not the kind he could bury under sarcasm or competence or sheer stubbornness.
The kind that made his body ache with it.
The kind that made his lungs refuse to work right unless he could feel Abbot close. Unless he could hear Abbot’s voice—steady, low, impossible to ignore—cutting through the chaos in his head.
Langdon slid down the door until he hit the floor. He curled in on himself, knees pulled tight to his chest, arms wrapped around them like he could hold himself together by force.
He tried to swallow. It felt like swallowing glass.
His breathing turned choppy, shallow, every inhale catching halfway like it was afraid to go deeper.
His eyes burned.
He squeezed them shut anyway, because the alternative was seeing Abbot’s face—calm, controlled, looking at Langdon like he expected more. Like he trusted him. Like he thought Langdon could carry the same weight he carried.
Langdon couldn’t.
Not alone.
A sob tore out of him before he could stop it, ugly and sharp, and it only made the air disappear faster.
He shook his head hard, pressing his forehead into his knees.
“I need you,” he whispered into the dark, the words falling out like a confession. Like a failure. “I— I can’t—”
His breath hitched.
The panic surged.
Langdon’s fingers clawed at his scrub top, tugging at the collar like it was choking him. He tried to drag in a full breath and couldn’t. His chest seized, tight and painful, and his body jolted with the desperate attempt.
His vision tunneled.
He was going to pass out right here, on the floor of an on-call room, like a rookie who couldn’t handle a bad outcome.
The thought made him laugh once—broken, breathless—before it turned into another sob.
The doorknob rattled.
Langdon froze, terror flashing through him so fast it made his stomach twist. He tried to scramble backward, tried to wipe his face with shaking hands, tried to become someone else in the span of a second.
The door opened.
Abbot stepped in.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there, taking in the room, the darkness, the shape of Langdon crumpled on the floor like something discarded.
Then Abbot moved.
Fast.
“Langdon.” His voice was low but urgent, like it had snapped into focus the second he saw him. “Hey—hey, look at me.”
Langdon tried. He really tried.
But his eyes were wet and his breathing was wrong and his chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself. He opened his mouth and nothing came out except a strangled sound that didn’t even qualify as a word.
Abbot was on the floor in front of him in an instant, knees hitting the tile without hesitation. His hands came to Langdon’s shoulders—firm, steady, grounding.
“Okay,” Abbot said, voice like an anchor. “Okay. I’ve got you.”
Langdon shook his head frantically, tears spilling over.
“I can’t breathe,” he rasped.
“I know.” Abbot didn’t look scared. He didn’t look annoyed. He didn’t look like Langdon was an inconvenience.
He looked like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Abbot shifted closer, blocking out the rest of the room, making it smaller. Safer. Like the world could only be the space between them.
“Listen to me,” Abbot said. “You’re going to breathe. Not all at once. Just one breath.”
Langdon’s hands fisted in Abbot’s sleeves, desperate.
Abbot brought one hand up, palm flat over Langdon’s sternum—not pressing, just there, a reminder that Langdon was real, that his body was still here.
“Match me,” Abbot murmured. “In through your nose.”
Abbot inhaled slowly, deliberately.
Langdon tried to follow. The breath came in ragged and broken, but it came.
“Good,” Abbot said immediately, like that small success mattered. Like Langdon mattered.
Langdon’s eyes squeezed shut again, another sob catching in his throat.
“Out,” Abbot said softly. “Slow.”
Abbot exhaled, long and steady.
Langdon’s exhale shook, but it released.
Again.
Abbot kept the rhythm, calm and relentless, like he wouldn’t stop until Langdon’s lungs remembered how to work.
And Langdon—Langdon clung to it like a lifeline.
Because it wasn’t just air he needed.
It was Abbot’s voice. Abbot’s hands. Abbot’s presence so close it rewrote the panic in Langdon’s blood.
Langdon’s breathing began to even out in painful increments. The sharp edge of terror dulled. The room stopped spinning.
But the tears didn’t stop.
If anything, they got worse.
Because now that he could breathe, he could feel everything else—the grief, the failure, the helplessness, the way he’d been carrying it alone until his body finally rebelled.
Abbot’s thumb brushed across Langdon’s cheek, wiping away tears without comment.
Langdon’s voice came out wrecked.
“I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
Abbot’s eyes didn’t leave his.
“Then you should’ve come to me sooner,” Abbot said, not unkindly. Just truth.
Langdon’s lips trembled.
“I didn’t know how,” he admitted. “I didn’t— I don’t—”
His throat tightened again, not panic this time. Something softer. More dangerous.
Need.
He looked at Abbot like he was starving.
“I can’t do this without you,” Langdon whispered, the words raw and shaking. “I swear to God, I can’t— it feels like I can’t breathe unless you’re here.”
Abbot’s expression shifted—something flickering behind his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition. Or the kind of quiet understanding that made Langdon’s chest ache worse.
Abbot didn’t pull away.
Instead, he leaned in and wrapped both arms around Langdon, pulling him fully against his chest.
Langdon made a sound that was half sob, half relief, and he collapsed into it immediately, like his body had been waiting for permission to stop fighting.
Abbot’s hand cradled the back of his head.
“Okay,” Abbot murmured. “Okay. I’m here.”
Langdon’s fingers curled into Abbot’s shirt again, but this time the grip wasn’t frantic.
It was trusting.
Abbot shifted them, rising carefully and guiding Langdon up with him. Langdon’s legs felt like they didn’t work right, but Abbot didn’t let him fall. Abbot never let him fall.
They moved to the couch, and Abbot sat first, pulling Langdon down with him.
Langdon ended up half in Abbot’s lap, turned inward, forehead pressed to Abbot’s shoulder, Abbot’s arms around him like a restraint made of warmth instead of force.
Langdon’s breathing finally slowed to something close to normal.
He still shook, though—aftershocks of panic and emotion, his body trying to figure out what to do with all the feeling it had been holding back.
Abbot rocked him gently, almost imperceptibly.
“You’re safe,” Abbot said. “You’re not alone.”
Langdon swallowed hard, eyes closing.
He hated how much he needed this. Hated how right it felt. Hated how it made everything else—every distraction, every shallow want—seem pointless.
Because this wasn’t want.
This was the thing his body reached for when it thought it might die.
Langdon’s voice was barely there.
“I don’t want to be like this,” he whispered. “Needing you.”
Abbot’s grip tightened slightly, firm but careful.
“You’re not weak for needing someone,” Abbot said.
Langdon let out a shaky breath, the sound catching on the edge of a sob.
“I feel pathetic,” he admitted.
Abbot pulled back just enough to look at him.
Langdon’s face was blotchy and wet, eyes red-rimmed, lips trembling. He looked wrecked.
Abbot looked at him like he was still worth holding.
“Listen to me,” Abbot said, voice low and absolute. “You’re not pathetic. You’re alive. You’re exhausted. And you’re carrying too much.”
Langdon blinked, a fresh tear sliding down.
Abbot brushed it away again, gentler this time.
“You don’t have to carry it alone,” Abbot added.
Langdon’s throat worked. He nodded once, small and broken.
Then he leaned forward again, curling into Abbot’s chest like it was the only place in the world that made sense.
Abbot held him there, steady as a heartbeat.
Outside the on-call room, the Pitt kept moving—monitors beeping, doors swinging open, footsteps passing in the hall.
Inside, Abbot stayed.
And Langdon breathed.
Not because the night had gotten easier.
Not because the loss hurt less.
But because Abbot was there, arms around him, refusing to let him disappear into the corner again.
Because sometimes, needing someone wasn’t the thing that broke you.
Sometimes it was the thing that kept you alive.