Work Text:
Their behavior is becoming difficult to ignore. They sped right past unsubtle and hard to miss. They are holding hands in front of the lockers like middle schoolers. She has seen a variation of this before. Their cute little double high five after a good save, that evolved into Mel grasping Langdon's hands in excitement, and now, apparently, holding hands, gazing longingly into each other's eyes. Gross.
She can’t help herself; she has to break up this little love fest, plus she does actually need to get to her locker.
“Better get to class before the bell rings.” They jump apart.
“Good morning, Trinity,” Mel says, cheery as always, but with a slight blush rising on her cheeks.
Langdon grumbles, “Dr. Santos,” from behind her and averts his eyes.
Their whole relationship strikes Trinity as odd but not unexpected, given how easily they clicked on the first day working together, despite the fact that Langdon was in active addiction at the time. She has to admit that they worked well together. Almost telepathic when working to save patients' lives. But the way they orbit each other in between patients is the odd part. They carpool, often showing up together. Which isn’t the most uncommon thing, considering she is roommates with Whitaker and they often drive in together. However, sometimes Langdon gives Mel a ride even when they aren't working the same shift. They share snacks and take breaks with one another. They have numerous inside jokes, and they walk around the ED attached at the hip.
Despite Mel's attachment to Langdon, she enjoys Mel’s company both at work and outside of it. She and Trinity had started hanging out regularly after the Fourth of July trip to a karaoke bar. Since then, they've branched out to a couple of different bars and restaurants, but settled in as regulars at some shitty 24-hour diner that Mel loves.
She has to admit that Mel is a really good doctor. She has a no-bullshit approach, yet she somehow still comes off as a sweetheart instead of an asshole. Meticulous with her cases, yet comforting and attentive to her patients. Mel appreciates directness and returns it with honesty.
With that in mind, she decides why not just ask Mel?
Later that morning, Trinity has the perfect opportunity.
“So what’s going on there?” Trinity questions Mel, gesturing towards the exam room that Langdon and Mel had emerged from. She had just witnessed their double high five, Mel practically jumping into his arms as she grasped his hands. When they broke apart, Mel looked a little flustered, and Langdon looked pleased with himself as he walked behind her, giving her braid a light tug, and then turned to Central. And Mel found her way to the charting station where Trinity sat.
A little dazed and dreamy, Mel asks, “What?”
“Loverboy pulling your ponytail?”
Mel's brows furrowed.
“You and Langdon?” Trinity clarifies remembering to be direct.
Mel’s cheeks turn even redder. “We had a really interesting case and …”
Mel rants, but Trinity only half listens. Trinity catches something about a garden hose, a watermelon, and cheeseburgers, but honestly, Trinity might just be hungry. She could go for a sandwich right about now. The cafeteria should be past the lunch rush.
Distracted, she still catches the tail end of Mel's rant, “And then I had to tell Frank. We’re friends. Of course, we tell each other everything.”
She sounds absolutely enamored as she says Frank's name. This girl is so blind to how obvious her feelings for the man were. “Sure, Melanoma, you seem very friendly.”
At that, Mel looked down at her hands, which had been fidgeting with the seam of her scrub pants pocket. “Dr. Langdon and I are friends,” she said with certainty, like it had been supported by a peer-reviewed study. Trinity, however, found it interesting that she walked herself back from Frank to Dr. Langdon. Denial is a river in Egypt, and Mel was crushing on a married man.
As if summoned, Langdon appears beside Mel. “Central 8 is discharged, and I snagged us a lower abdominal pain patient off the board.” He gently checked her shoulder with his own, his hands in his scrub pockets. Mel grinned up at him and rocked onto her toes.
Trinity can't watch this train wreck any longer, so she interrupts, “Langdon, you've got something on your hands?”
“What?” He turned to Trinity. He hadn’t even noticed her until she spoke. He removed his hands from his scrub pockets and held them out in front of himself, palms up, then down, checking. Confused by his lack of findings, he looks to Mel to confirm. But Mel’s gaze is locked on his hands, lingering a little too long before she meets his eyes. Then their attention snaps back to Trinity, looking to her for clarity.
Not just idiots in love, gullible idiots in love.
“Oh, sorry, my bad, it's just your wedding ring.” His glare doesn’t feel as satisfying as it should.
Fleeing the scene, she gets up to check on her patients. “Later losers.” She hated middle school.
—
She knows she can’t be the only one seeing this shit. So she asks around.
She asks Huckleberry, but he's pretty much oblivious to the whole thing. She guesses all his attention is focused on being Robby's new golden boy, instead of worrying about the former’s relationship with Little Miss Sunshine. Thanks for nothing, roomie.
She thinks McKay might have some insight since she seems to talk to Langdon a fair amount. McKay gives her a shrug, “It's better if I don’t know,” acknowledging it, but she seemingly refuses to care. Trinity wishes she could have the same attitude about it. Claim not my circus, not my monkeys, and leave it alone. However, she knows that the longer it goes on, the worse it will end for Mel.
Mohan essentially tells her to stop poking around other people's business, but it was defensive, like maybe she had a few secrets of her own. Okay, Mohan, I see you.
Javadi just says, “It's Mel and Langdon,” giving her an isn’t it obvious look, like she needed no further explanation about her stance on the matter. Trinity even stalks her TikTok account to see if she's brought them up at all. Maybe she is becoming a little too fixated on them.
Even Princess and Perlah just tell her there's a bet going on. She puts $20 down on Langdon making a move, and Mel rejecting him. Langdon's a scumbag, and Mel would never mess around with a married man. Not in any serious way.
—
It only escalates from there, but at first, it is almost juvenile. Puppy love. Trinity can’t go a full shift without being forced to witness Mel and Langdon make awkward goo-goo eyes at each other. Every morning, waiting for rounds, they stand side by side, arms and shoulders fully pressed against each other at the nurse's station like they are waiting to be assigned as partners for a group project. There are always whispers and giggles coming from the pair.
They hug each other. Like all the time. Like not even a friendly side hug, but the kind where he is fully wrapped around her, her face in his shoulder as they slightly rock back and forth. The hugs stretch on for minutes, especially after a devastating case or when a patient doesn’t make it. And he never lets go first. It's practically 2nd base for middle schoolers.
Don’t even get Trinity started on the public displays of affection that take place at the charting station. They have this little game that they play. Trinity doesn’t care enough to figure out what the game is. But whatever it is, it involves the spinny chair. Mel says the spinning helps her regulate her nervous system. And Langdon, well, he is incapable of sitting still. Every time she sees them playing, she has to bite back a “recess is over, get back to class.” How they get any charting done, she has no idea.
Half the time when Mel is charting, Langdon's just sitting there watching her, his chair next to hers, his head resting on his crossed arms on the desk, looking up at her like they are playing Heads Up 7 Up, but he's not even trying not to cheat.
And when he's not watching her chart, he's distracting her from charting. On multiple occasions, Trinity has seen him sitting on her station, her head on his knee, both watching her stupid lava lamp app, sharing headphones as he kicks his legs back and forth to what she assumes is the beat of the music. Wired headphones like it's 2015.
It's seriously becoming a problem for her. She already hates charting. She is constantly behind, so what does the universe throw at her? An unwanted front row seat to one of the most disgustingly domestic public displays of affection she has seen in the workplace. Mel is standing behind Langdon while he is sitting at one of the stations. He leans back, his head resting on her chest with her arms wrapped around him. He's looking up at her like she hung the moon. Their conversation isn’t even quiet. Trinity is trying her best to block it out, but when even her voice recorder is picking up on Langdon calling Mel “sweetheart,” it's hard to ignore. This man has a wife and two children, yet here he is playing house with his work wife.
“So do you two want an egg or a sack of flour as your baby?”
Mel responds with a “huh?” But Trinity is not sure if that means she didn’t hear her clearly or didn’t get the joke.
Langdon takes it in stride, “An egg, of course,” he says. He looks back up at Mel for approval. He asks her, “Egg or sack of flour for a fake baby assignment?”
“Ohh, like the one from middle school health class,” she exclaims, now getting the joke, then she considers. She makes a face like she might disagree, her nose all scrunched, but then her features soften as she meets Langdon's gaze. “As long as I can name them.”
“Deal,” and Langdon holds out his pinky, and she locks hers with his.
“Deal.”
The next day, when Trinity goes to steal one of Langdon’s Red Bulls out of the fridge (she deserves it after the pain of watching him and Mel be disgustingly in love), she sees an egg sitting on top of one of the cans with a face drawn on it. A wide-eyed and dimpled smile. She's so tempted to throw it at the wall in the break room.
Later, Mel tells her that his name is Henry.
—
It all seems to be fun and games to everyone else. They are just really close coworkers. Work husband and wife, but no one seems outright concerned that there isn’t more going on. Sure, there is gossip and bets placed about them, but it's gotten to the point where it is so normalized that their PDA is just background noise. She feels like she is going a little crazy. Like maybe she's paying too much attention to them, but she can’t avoid this shit.
His yearning is just pathetic. Langdon has no shame and the audacity of a straight white man. If any woman were messing around on her spouse with a coworker as blatantly as he was, there would be so much backlash. But for him, no one even bats an eye.
The next time she is forced to bear witness, she decides she has to draw a line. They are right in front of her. Mel sat on the high-top chair that accompanies one of the ultrasound carts. Langdon is standing between her spread legs, gazing down to meet her eyes. She's talking animatedly, gesturing with her hands as she speaks.
Okay, so too close for coworkers, right? But not straight-up HR sexual harassment. She tries to reason with herself.
That is, until Mel gestures so wildly that she loses her balance a little on the stool, Langdon steps forward and places his hand on her thigh to steady her. His hand stays on her thigh high enough that his left hand fingers fiddle with the seam of her scrub pants pocket, wedding ring stark against the black fabric. She was so disgusted by him that she barely even registered that his thumb was pressed against her inner thigh.
Jesus fucking Christ. She wants to shove Langdon off of her, to tell him to get his hands off of her and keep them to himself. Whatever this is, Mel deserves better than being felt up by a married man in the middle of her workplace.
They are in the middle of the ED, where anyone can see. Yet no one cares. Javadi is literally next to her at the charting station with the same view and somehow does not give a fuck? She surveys the room to see if anyone else is concerned about the affair happening right in front of them, yet nobody but her is watching.
Well, she is about to make someone care. Langdon’s behavior yet again is wildly inappropriate. Trinity refuses to let his actions be written off. He needs to back off from Mel.
Trinity spots Dana at the charge desk, then glances back at the couple to make sure she didn’t hallucinate the whole thing. She gets up to talk to Dana.
“Dana, do you see them?”
Her attention is focused on a chart on the desk, but she responds, “Who kid?”
“Mel and Langdon?” Trinity exclaims a little incredulously.
“No, but last I heard, Mel was waiting for an ultrasound for one of her patients." The 'so that's where Langdon is' is implied.
"No, Dana, look at them!" She tries to express, her tone serious.
That catches Dana's attention. She finally looks up from her paperwork and follows Trinity’s gaze to the couple still intertwined on the stool.
“I see," Dana says, readers sitting low on her nose. "Jesus, it just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?”
Trinity is relieved, “So I'm not crazy? You see it too?”
“Everyone sees it.” Yet no one wants to say anything, just like the drugs.
“Why hasn’t Robby said anything to them?”
“That's not a conversation Robby wants to have.”
“Well, someone needs to say something." She wishes she had the privilege to be able to stand up for Mel without repercussions, but she's already upset the apple cart once before, and it didn't go well for her.
“I got this, but you probably want to make yourself scarce,” she shoos her away from the desk.
There's not a chance Trinity's going to miss this, so she tucks herself behind a desk, but close enough to eavesdrop.
“Langdon!” Dana calls across the room. Her air of authority gets his attention. He takes a step back, but he doesn’t immediately move his hand from Mel's thigh.
“Come here,” Dana’s voice is stern.
This man fucking squeezes Mel’s thigh before making his way to Dana at Central. And she smiles at him before turning her attention back toward the ultrasound cart, unfazed.
“Kid, you gotta stop.”
“What?”
Dana glares, giving him a look that says don't play dumb.
“Oh, Mel and I?” He rubs the back of his neck, then explains, "She just wanted another set of eyes on her patient's ultrasound.” He didn’t even lower his voice, that cocky son of a bitch.
“Sure, another set of eyes. And what did you want from her?”
He shifted his weight and tucked his hands under his crossed arms, hiding his wedding ring. He hesitates before attempting to answer the question, but the hesitation is enough of an answer for Dana.
“Look, Kid, Mel is the best of us, okay? Don't be messing around with her.”
“I'm not, we are just friends.”
“You're practically groping her in the middle of the ED? Haven’t you had enough of HR? What would the misses say if she saw you touching another woman like that?"
He visibly winces. “It's complicated.”
“Well, make it uncomplicated before you hurt Mel. Got it. Good, now go check on your patients."
Dana spots her in her hiding spot. "You too, Santos.”
Busted. She'd better get the hell out of dodge before she gets detention.