Work Text:
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears. - Kipling
*
"Thank you," Langdon said, so suddenly that Mel nearly dropped the clipboard she was holding.
She turned, glanced around the nurse's station, but he was definitely looking at her and she was definitely not doing anything to warrant gratitude. "For what?"
His gaze was so direct sometimes. It wasn't regular eye contact, which Mel had worked hard to master; it had a weight to it, like he was looking at her harder than he'd ever looked at anything in his life, though she suspected this had more to do with her memories of him having gone all rose-colored in his absence than it did with actual reality. It was a little embarrassing.
Still. He did sort of stare.
"Letting me treat Becca." He frowned, eyebrows drawing down. "Trusting me, I guess. I know you were anxious about it."
"I wasn't anxious about you," Mel said. "I trust you."
Langdon laughed, but it was one of those weird, disbelieving laughs, more like she'd punched him when he wasn't expecting it. "Maybe you shouldn't."
He looked forlorn: not just sad, but melancholic, resigned. He looked the way patients looked when Mel had to deliver bad news they were already expecting. Yep, kind of figured, same thing killed my dad.
"What happened to Becca being in good hands?" Mel asked, pulling up a smile so he'd know it was a joke. So he'd laugh again but in a way that didn't suck.
Langdon didn't laugh, though. He shuffled through some papers instead. It was worse when he didn't look at her than when he stared.
"You don't have to worry. Robby looked over everything. Twice. Might've been three times, even."
Mel's turn to frown. "Joke?"
"No, I saw him check the two, I could ask him though—"
"Mine was a joke," Mel cut him off, her belly twisting in on itself. She hadn't meant to make him defend himself. "To be clear. Becca told me she liked you when she left. And your hair, but I don't think that was really relevant to your care."
He still didn't smile.
Something was different. Changed. Of course, coming back to work after a long absence was always going to be hard, and especially under Langdon's circumstances—addiction, he'd said, and rehab, and Mel thought about his wife and his two kids, who were only little, about what it must've been like, putting his whole life on hold like that—but this morning he'd been different. More settled than he seemed now.
This morning, when she'd fallen and he'd shooed her into a bed for a once-over, there'd been no question of whether she ought to trust him. This morning, he'd trusted himself.
Mel couldn't just walk away from him, not like this.
She put a hand out, tentative, like she might touch him; she wasn't sure if he would like that or not. He was a much more tactile person than she was. "I was only anxious because I'm anxious about everything, with Becca, and because of the deposition. I knew you'd be good with her. You're a good doctor, Langdon."
"A good doctor," he repeated, and there was another of those horrible disbelieving laughs. "You know, I've wanted to be a doctor since I was like, six? That's what everything was for, all of it. And now—I don't know. I don't know."
That seemed like more of a crisis than ought to be happening at the charge desk. Mel said, "Okay," and closed the gap, put her hand on his elbow and steered him away from the boards and toward the break room. "Your turn to take ten, I think."
"No, Mel, I'm fine, really—"
"You're not."
"I'm just being dramatic."
"Well, I'm being reasonable. So I win."
Langdon didn't fight her as she pulled him through the ED. McKay caught her eye, making a face like she was asking if Mel needed help, to which Mel shook her head, as well as Perlah, who told her that her patient in twelve was asking for her, to which Mel said she'd be around in just a moment, and Santos, who also looked like she was asking whether Mel needed help but in a slightly threatening way. Mel ducked her head and pushed Langdon a little faster.
The break room was, thankfully, empty. She pushed Langdon in and shut the door behind them.
For all his protests, he fell into one of the chairs at the table like a puppet with cut strings. He ground the heels of his palms into his eyes.
There were no Red Bulls in the fridge. Not even a Diet Coke. Mel had to settle for a plastic cup and lukewarm water from the tap, but it was better than nothing. She set it by Langdon's elbow, touched his arm again briefly so he'd know it was there.
For a long minute, Langdon didn't say anything.
Mel thought about leaving him to it. Letting him work through it on his own. But that didn't feel right, it didn't feel like enough. Langdon had helped her with doubt once. She wanted desperately to help him in return.
She took a breath, mustered up the courage. "You didn't seem so, um, uncertain this morning."
He sighed. Rubbed his eyes some more, dragged his hands down his face to grind them into the corners of his mouth. She'd remember that right, at least—the unusual way his mouth sat on his face, flat and tucked inward a little at the corners. It made his speech compelling to watch.
"I know I fucked up," Langdon finally said. The words were choked, gritty, gravel in his throat. "I thought I had it figured out and I didn't, and I made, god, just the worst fucking choices, I know that."
"Langdon," Mel started, dismayed, but he shook his head.
"But I've tried—I've done everything they've asked of me. I did the three months inpatient, the six months outpatient, signed up for this stupid physician's program. I go to meetings four nights a week, I do the random drops, the random searches, I have a fucking therapist and a peer recovery coach and another fucking year of residency and like, twenty thousand dollars now in rehab debt, and I've looked my kids in the face and had to wrestle with the fact that yeah, sometimes, I'd chosen a fucking pill over them. My kids, Mel. My fucking kids."
Mel wondered how long this has been simmering underneath the surface, how long it's been bubbling up and up and up. Whether it was already starting to boil when he'd insisted that yeah, he had let her down.
Whether it's been boiling for months.
Langdon took another hitching breath, and another, before he finally dropped his hands to the table. He didn't look at her.
"But I did it, right? I did it. Sober ten months. All that so I could come back here and do the only thing I've ever been good at and be a goddamn doctor."
Mel doubted that was all he'd ever been good at. He was a good mentor. Probably a good friend. He was a good father—men who weren't good fathers didn't talk about my fucking kids like their hearts lived outside their chests. Hers certainly hadn't.
She extended a hand toward his again, stopping just short. It was unexpected, the need she felt to comfort him in that way—she normally veered away, rather than toward.
"And you did come back," she said gently. "You're here."
"I came back," Langdon agreed. "And I get here, and I'm trying to do it all right, you know, but every minute is like a replay of my greatest hits, oh, here's where I would've stolen some Librium, oh, here's the patient I'd have stolen it from. Did you know, by the way, I used to steal pills from Louie? Yeah, fucking Louie. And you know what he told me? That it was okay. That I must have needed them. And then he fucking died."
Her hand shot out before she could stop it this time, latching onto his wrist. She squeezed, hard, until he took a breath. "You did not kill Louie," she said, surprising even herself with how fierce she sounded. "Louie was sick for a long time."
"I didn't need them, though." Langdon exhaled long and shaky, swallowed, swallowed. "I'd never needed them."
Mel wished he'd look at her again, wished she could see what was happening behind his eyes. She wondered how many times he'd had to admit that to himself already. Whether it seemed to hurt like this every time.
When his wrist started to turn in her grip, she let him take her hand in his.
"I did everything they asked of me," he said again, quieter now. "I have been—killing myself trying to do it all, and it doesn't even matter. Robby doesn't even want me here."
"I'm sure that—"
"He told me," Langdon cut off. "About an hour ago. Said he was glad I got the help I needed, but he wasn't sure if he wanted me back in his ER, literally right as they were unloading that propeller trauma into our hands."
Mel's jaw actually dropped. Her heart contracted and stayed that way, stiff and aching in her chest. "He didn't."
"That's why he pushed so hard with that case. Just showing me why—only thing I'm fucking good at, but not good enough."
Anger was not an emotion Mel felt often. She just wasn't wired toward it—she felt it in nuances, in jealousy, annoyance, frustration, injustice, sure, of course she did. But not usually outright anger.
It felt very hot, she thought.
"That," Mel said, very carefully and very sure, sounding suddenly very much like her mother, "is such bullshit."
Langdon blinked at her. "I—what?"
Is that bullshit? Don't bullshit me, Mels, her mother used to say, when Mel started to spiral about something she couldn't or wouldn't or didn't want to do. Don't lie to me, and don't lie to yourself, either.
What she really meant was: you need to know the difference between what you can't do and what you're just afraid of.
Fear was what Mel was wired toward. The world had crashed in on her almost as soon as she'd been born, it felt like, and it had never stopped coming in all that time—relentless and overwhelming.
But it wasn't enough to just be afraid.
It wasn't enough when Mel was six and she was too afraid to sleep in bed by herself because their father had just disappeared and she was so sure everyone was going to follow. She could be scared, their mother had said, but that didn't mean Mel couldn't do it.
It wasn't enough when she was sixteen and too afraid to learn to drive or when she was twenty and too afraid to stand next to her mother's bedside as she died or when she was twenty-one and petitioning for Becca's legal guardianship or when she was twenty-four and betting both their futures and a couple hundred thousand dollars on her own selfish dreams.
Just because she was scared of all those things didn't mean she couldn't do them.
Mel knew fear was meaningful in a lot of ways. Self-preservation. Risk assessments. Planning and preparation and appropriate caution and even, to some extent, motivation.
But when fear said, you can't, well. Mostly Mel knew that was bullshit.
And right now, looking at Langdon across the table in the break room, his mouth slightly open in disbelief and his eyes exhausted and rimmed with red, she was pretty sure she knew what he was thinking.
And she knew it was bullshit, because he'd taught her that.
"You're thinking you're not cut out for this anymore," she said. "And that's bullshit. You're a good doctor. It's like—you hit a detour, not the end of the road. You're finding your way around it. Good. Okay? Keep going and don't think about what Robby thinks."
"It does matter, though, what Robby thinks. He's the department chief. If he doesn't want me here—"
"He's going to be gone for three months. By the time he comes back, you'll be so settled in no one will give a second thought to whatever his hang-ups are. And you'll have other attendings to write your recommendations."
"I betrayed him, Mel, it's more than a little hang-up."
Mel scrunched her nose. "I think that's probably giving him a bit too much of a starring role in what was happening."
He snorted, which was not the horrible laugh, not exactly. "I don't know, maybe. Probably. But I also didn't want him to know I was struggling. I didn't want him to think I couldn't do this, and now that's exactly what he thinks."
"Can you do this, though? That's a different question."
Langdon studied their hands for a long moment, where they were still clasped together. His fingers were long, angular; his palm wasn't as sweaty as she might have expected. It was comfortable. Like they'd done this before, even though they hadn't.
Mel hadn't held someone's hand like this since her mother died.
"I'm trying," he finally said. "I can keep trying."
His thumb stroked slowly across her skin. When he looked up, his gaze on hers felt physical, like he was touching her cheek just by looking at her.
"Good."
"Good enough, though?"
She nodded, no hesitation. I think—you're a different kind of sensitive now. Someone once told me we need sensitive people here."
"Sounds like kind of an ass."
Mel huffed a little, but his mouth had raised a little to one side—his mouth wasn't built for asymmetry, not really, not unless he twisted the whole thing out of place, but she knew the look—and she squeezed his hand once. He squeezed back. "That's why I wanted you to take Becca's case, you know."
"Because I'm an ass?"
"Because," she plowed on, because she still had this one earnest thing she had to say, "I knew you'd do it right, the way Becca needed. Because you did it for me this morning. You saw what I needed, so I knew I could trust you to see what she needed too. You're good at that."
"Mel." His voice cracked a little. "It was just a UTI. Even Ogilvie couldn't fuck up a UTI."
"Let's not underestimate Ogilvie," Mel said delicately.
This time Langdon laughed in the real way, unguarded, the sound of it a little wet but relieved too. He squeezed her hand one more time, but just as she started to loosen her hold, he pulled it closer, raised it to his mouth so the back of her hand pressed against one of those unusual corners, half-cheek, half-bottom lip. It wasn't really like a kiss—it was more like holding, more like feeling, more instinct than deliberation, almost nuzzling into her skin, she could feel the start of his stubble—but it wasn't not a kiss, either, and Mel's stomach flipped.
Her face must be flushing. She didn't think anyone had ever done anything like that to her before. It felt, somehow, more intimate than if he'd just kissed her outright.
"Sorry," he said suddenly, letting her go. The tips of his ears had gone all red.
"It's fine."
"Please don't tell people at work that it's fine to hold your hand hostage."
He was sort of laughing again though. He didn't really sound especially sorry, and Mel was glad for it, because she didn't really want him to be. It had been nice. Confirmation, in its way, that this conversation held as much weight for him as it had for her. It felt important, and now it felt like he'd felt like it was important too.
"The emotional, um, release? It's perfectly natural to have a—" Okay, maybe don't say physical right now— "response. To respond. Spontaneously. Stop laughing!"
But she was laughing too now, and she thought they'd needed this as much as they'd needed—whatever that was, with her hand. Langdon had gone all loose in his chair, leaning back as the tension drained out of him, and something in Mel's chest that had been knotted for the last ten months finally came undone.
"Mel," he said, swinging that heavyweight gaze back to her, studying the blush on her cheeks, down her neck. "That is such bullshit."