Work Text:
Today's the day!
Mel beams at her reflection as she brushes her teeth. An assortment of Post-It notes frame her smile, their scribbled messages of encouragement lifting the apples of her cheeks even higher, nearly crinkling the mole underneath her right eye. She borrowed most of the phrases from a hasty Internet search in an effort to breathe optimism into the suffocating, anxiety-riddled start of her days—handwritten reminders that if she perseveres, a lonely present doesn’t have to mean a lonely future!
She just needed to Seize the day!, according to Post-It note #8.
(She kind of hates that one, though. It makes her visualize the day as a tangible thing, something she can catch between her hands like a small bird before it can fly away, and that makes her sad.)
She makes a mental Post-It note to re-evaluate it later.
Despite the colorful display adorning her mirror, words of affirmation are only a band-aid fix for what she really wants.
Mel is more of a physical person, actually. So much so that if it didn’t sound so inappropriate, she might offer it up as a fun fact during an icebreaker. But she doesn’t even mean it that way; she just wishes society would be more open to friends holding each other’s hands sometimes.
And thus, sparked an idea. She threw her hand on a piece of paper, outlined it in Sharpie, and then taped the drawing at the corner of the mirror.
Now she can give herself a high five on her way out the door, just like she does today, because she needs to convince herself she can do big and scary things.
She reaches the Pitt minutes shy of the start of her shift. Her smile is much steadier than her heartbeat, and she would feel a little silly about it, but she knows there’s no way to control what makes her nervous. (Post-It #6: This feeling is temporary.)
She removes her backpack, rolls her shoulders, gives a thumbs up to the mirror in her locker, and then turns around to go find him.
Langdon sits—no, spins—by the nurse's station with a clipboard balancing in his lap. His chair whirls in a tiny circle, and somehow the clipboard stays, and he smiles down at it, pleased and proud. It’s taken awhile, especially after the announcement of his divorce, but he’s finally shed the droop in his shoulders and back to spreading bursts of his goofy, relentless energy around the hospital instead.
The sight of him, as it usually does for the first microsecond of their daily interactions, puts a pause in her step.
His blue eyes, as the perfect partners in crime that they are, steal her breath. But it’s quickly returned when the thieves blink, and she absorbs the words of Post-It #10: You are braver than you believe, and stronger than you think.
Mel tells herself it is perfectly okay to find your friends attractive. (She’d looked it up.) She didn’t write it on a Post-It, but maybe she’d have to one day if she didn’t learn how to ignore it.
He glances up, smiling. "Good morn—”
"Dr. Langdon," she says, "We need to talk."
He doesn’t look offended or annoyed that she’s interrupted him, something she wants to face palm over immediately, but his expression’s much worse than anger. His lips are curved like he’s amused by her faux-pas.
"Uh oh, are we breaking up?"
"Breaking up?" She repeats, horrified. “We're not—"
"Joke, Mel," he says.
He's almost thwarted her plans with the confusing joke—another thing she’ll need to get used to him doing, she supposes—but today, humor’s not getting the best of her, not even when it’s coming from her attractive work friend.
She puffs out her chest and tells him plainly, “I would like to go to the museum this Sunday. Would you like to go with me?"
Mel's pulse climbs into her ears as his eyes widen. Oh no, were they not good enough friends yet to do things outside of work? Has she been misreading the signals? He mentioned liking history, so wouldn’t he like the museum?
Maybe the problem in the equation is her, not the choice of hang out?
"Uh." His small cough returns her to the present, where his jaw hangs as he looks up at her. His jaw always hangs—she is waiting for the right time in their friendship to ask him about regular dentist visits and temporomandibular disorders—but somehow she can tell this instance is different. Something makes his jaw hang.
“Sure,” he says finally.
Sure! She wants to run home and give herself another high five!
"Great!"
And because this is the bulk of her plan, she has nothing more to say and goes back to work.
Langdon lingers in the chair a little longer, though. As she glances at him over her shoulder, he just stares at her. He also doesn’t resume his spinning either. Mel hopes she didn’t throw him off some sort of routine; she hates when people do that to her.
She’s happy when the cases of the day fill her brain instead of her stress about it. It’s much more relaxing to think of diagnoses and treatment plans than how weird she’d probably looked when she approached him. Without the organized chaos of the ER, she might’ve cancelled the whole thing within the hour, and she doesn’t want to appear like a finicky friend. Mel is a dependable friend. (Her sister is an excellent reference if he wants to check.)
Luckily the few times she does run into Langdon, he doesn’t mention the conversation at all. He’s quieter, which is an adjective she’s never used for him before, but there is a new softness in the way he speaks to her, like he’s scared she’ll change her mind about Sunday if he reaches a decibel she doesn’t like.
Her ears strain to hear this new version of him in the midst of their insane shifts, but she thinks it’s a muscle worth exercising if it’s the voice he saves for a friend.
In the few times she doesn’t catch him staring, he’s mumbling things to himself, and there’s a part of her that’s terrified an invite to the museum is somehow a trigger for him to relapse. Certainly he’d warn her, though, right?
Over the next few days, her worry about the museum dwindles. Langdon’s quietness proves to be nothing more than a twenty-four hour affliction, and once he recovers, he strides about the PTMC barking orders and cracking jokes again like he’s the captain of a pirate ship. (That’s an inside joke.)
He stands close to her whenever he can, not put off by her at all, and Mel forces herself to endure it, even if it’s distracting. Maybe he’s been waiting for this new development in their friendship just as long as she has, and this is the only way he knows how to show his appreciation.
She can’t figure out how to return the favor as it feels awkward to purposefully find space beside him. He, on the other hand, makes it look effortless. The most she can offer is that sometimes when he brushes his arm against hers, she doesn’t pull back. (Infinitely more impressive than balancing a clipboard in her lap while spinning in a chair.)
“So, I looked at the website,” he says to her in the stairwell the Friday before, “And there’s a lot to cover in one day.”
Mel glances up from her lava lamp app. Another thing he keeps doing—popping up into her bubble like she’s given him a key to it. “You mean at the museum?”
He nods, folding his arms. The tip of his tongue pokes out from between his lips, which feels weirdly out of place. He usually only does this when he’s in a trauma, brows punched together in concentration.
“Oh,” she says. “Is that… a problem?”
“No,” he says. “Just figured we might want to go in with a plan, in the off chance I mess this up and scare you off from next time.”
Next time? Warmth tickles her chest and curves around the smile stretching across her lips. He’s already anticipating a second chance to hang out with her? Maybe the sticky notes have been working, and she’s been doing something right all along! She’ll have to leave a nice review on the blog where she’d found the idea!
“Hardly possible,” she tells him, “If anyone messes up anything, it’ll be me.”
“No way. You’re already so far ahead of me with this, it’s incredible.” She doesn’t know what that means, and she doesn’t get the opportunity to ask because he keeps going: “What time do you want me to pick you up, by the way?”
She blinks. “I have a car.”
“I know,” he says, grinning, “But, and I’m sorry if I haven’t given you the reason yet to believe it, my mother raised me to be a gentleman.”
The heat in her face migrates to her ears. Gentleman? Why is he using a word meant for a romance novel?
When she doesn’t respond, his upturned lips sag at the corners, and he says, “Though, it’s cool if you want to go all twenty-first century and drive us instead.”
What?
“No, no, you can… drive,” she says because truthfully, she’d been a little worried about the parking situation, and this seems like a viable solution. “Is ten a.m. too early?”
“Not at all,” he says, and she’s thankful that he brightens back up. He stands there for a moment, just staring at her like he has been all week, before adding, “I’m, uh, really excited by the way. Sorry if I’ve been… a lot. Just excited. Which I’m realizing I’ve now said twice.”
She giggles. The reason he’s been acting goofy is because he’s excited about their museum trip? She totally understands that!
“I’m excited, too! And, sorry, I didn’t answer your other question.” She navigates to the museum website on her phone. “Let me take a look, and I can text you? Oh! I guess I need your number!”
He kinda regresses back into that quiet version of him as they exchange phones. She doesn’t comment on it, though.
It’s kind of cute.
(She doesn’t say that either.)
The apartment door buzzes, and Mel almost screams. That sound is only used for deliveries, but even then, she anticipates it, watching out her window like a paranoid neighbor and always opening the door before they reach the buzzer.
Langdon is not a delivery, and so she does not anticipate him standing on the other side of her door.
What is he doing? Why isn’t he waiting in the car? Can he not trust her to walk outside unassisted?
She wishes she could rub a soothing balm over her skittish heart, but the best alternative she has are the Post-Its. She squints at her reflection, checking for anything gross between her teeth, and reads over the neon green square closest to the sink: #3: Focus on what’s in your control.
She high fives herself and buzzes him in.
Langdon is funny looking on her doorstep. Not bad or ha-ha funny, but the out of place kind. His hair shines like he’s applied more gel to it, and he’s wearing a white button-up paired with slacks, and Mel wonders if it’s because he went to church earlier in the morning or something. It doesn’t seem like a comfortable outfit choice for the museum.
“Hey,” he says, and even his voice sounds different, like he’s holding in a burp. The laugh dies in her throat, however, when she notices he's carrying... a bouquet?
"Sorry if they're ugly," he says, "I told the florist purple, and she ran with it."
Mel takes them out of his hands, but she doesn't stop blinking. "Um, thank you. But... why?"
He cringes. "Shit, it’s too much, isn’t it? It's been a while since I've been on a first date. I'm rusty."
Mel almost drops the flowers as she staggers backward. "What?"
“Yes, yes, very shocking,” he says in a deadpan, “Not every lady is as forthcoming as the Dr. King—”
“This is a date?” She squeaks.
The color drains from his complexion until he’s paler than a damn cadaver.
“Wait,” he says, and he takes a step away from her. “Is this—is this not?”
“N-No!”
She wants to do something more mobile with her hands, because squeezing the stems of the bouquet is not even a little bit satisfying—they feel wet and spiky and sharp, actually—and they might snap in half if she grips any harder.
He thought she asked him on a date? And, perhaps more concerning, he’d accepted?!
There are no Post-Its on her mirror for this situation. She’d barely scratched the surface on ways to build a friendship, but dating?
More specifically: dating Dr. Langdon? Where would she even begin her Internet search for something so insane—
“Oh, fuck,” he says, and at least his normal skin color returns, albeit it’s much redder than she remembers. “I’m—wow, okay. I don’t... I am… sorry?”
“We--you’re...” She sputters back, and then finally opts to place the flowers at their feet. Immediately her fingers fly to ends of her sweater sleeves to twist them. “You thought today was a date?”
“Is it too late to say no?”
“Yes,” she answers without meaning to.
Somehow, it’s like she’s deflated every bit of his ego, as his arms struggle to find their usual fold across his chest, instead dangling and twitching at his sides. She almost reaches out to reassure him, but if he mistook her friends outing as a date, who knows how he’d interpret her holding his hand, and oh my God, why is she even thinking about doing that—
“Okay then,” he says, seemingly settling on stuffing them into his pockets. “Well, you don’t happen to know anybody with a time machine, do you? Like, one that can go back to, preferably, last Wednesday?”
Of course it’s another joke, and she can barely handle them on the most normal of days, but now, when her brain is scrambling to make sense of how her one attempt at a social life has catapulted her into one that involves Dr. Langdon on her doorstep all dressed up with flowers he bought for her? Ones he said he consulted a florist for and not just quickly grabbed from the grocery store???
“We can also pretend this never happened,” he says. “Actually, yeah, let’s do that. I’m… going to leave now.”
He turns, and Mel can’t stop herself from grabbing for him this time. She snatches him by the sleeve on his elbow, and it should be an innocent thing, but it’s not in this context, not anymore, and she flies backward like she’s touched a hot plate, boots accidentally trampling over the flowers.
(Post-It #2: New experiences are coming my way, and I am ready to receive them.)
Mel’s actually not ready to receive the blue of his eyes, now that she knows they’re gazing at her as someone he’s willing to go on a first date with (the way he’s actually been looking at her all week, she realizes). But if he’s okay with dating her, certainly he’d be okay with starting on a lower rung of the ladder of their relationship?
Staying, not starting. Starting implies she wants to climb up that ladder further, and that thought forms a heart-shaped lump into her throat.
She’s just been kind of gawking at him, so she swallows, as if it will force her heart back down into her chest where it belongs.
“I don’t think the museum has a time machine,” she says, voice shaking, “But I’d still like to go, if you do.”
His jaw clenches back and forth like he’s in physical pain. “Yeah, I don’t know, Mel.”
“Please?” she says it before she thinks it. “I’m still—I’ve been so excited.”
Langdon’s stare moves to her fingers still clutched onto his arm, so reminiscent of the way she grabbed him when he first returned to the Pitt months back in July. Worried he’s thinking she’s touching him for other reasons, she blushes and unlatches from him.
“So, what, we go and just pretend I never thought it was a date?”
“Sure,” she says, “I mean, unless you only wanted to go because you thought it was a date—”
“No,” he interrupts, which is great, because what she’d said had horrified her. It would imply he liked her, not just that she was a viable dating candidate.
Oh my, her pulse does not know what to do with that idea.
“Mel, this is--this is humiliating,” he gets out with a groan, “I mean, I should have figured you weren’t actually asking me out in the middle of work in front of everyone.”
More horrors. She cannot escape them.
“Do others think we’re going on a date?!”
“Maybe.” He grits his teeth and scrunches his face as he answers.
Mel’s going to die. She’s going to collapse on her doorstep on top of a bouquet of once beautiful flowers and die. At least Langdon is a doctor and can maybe get her organs delivered promptly to the hospital, because she’s told him she’s an organ donor, and—
“Wait, and they were okay with it?” She asks.
“I mean, yeah, Mel.” He sounds less embarrassed now, and more frustrated. “We—we get along pretty well at work.”
“So that means we should date?”
“Yeah—I mean, no.” He’s flustered, somehow redder than before. “But is it really that unbelievable if you think about it?”
She has thought about it, she wants to tell him, but every time she has, it is unbelievable. He is Langdon, and she is Mel. He is conventionally attractive, and she is…
Post-It #4: My body is always worthy of love and respect.
Mel edits out the ugly thoughts in her mind. She is beautiful. And if she’s beautiful, maybe there is a world where they’re not such a mismatch. She just hadn’t considered she lived in it.
“I guess not,” she admits quietly. The words are heavier outside of her mind than in them, and the weight of them causes a shift in the air.
Langdon’s eyes darken, a blink and you miss it moment, but she’s been carefully watching his expressions and reactions to everything. She notices. She notices and wonders what that’s all about.
He shakes his head.
“Look,” he says, “We can—we can still go, I guess. And I promise, we will never talk about this again. I won’t make it weird. If anyone asks, we decided we’re better off as friends at the end of it. How’s that sound?”
It sounds complicated, but she’s got no better ideas, so she nods.
“Great. Well, this takes the cake for most interesting start to my week in awhile.” He smiles, but there’s something kinda tragic about it, like it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
She decides then she has to fix this. She has no idea how, but she’s going to.
“If it helps,” she says, leaning down for the bouquet, “I did think the flowers were pretty before I… stepped on them.”
He laughs, and her heart begins to race. His laughter has never done this to her before. Does he find her funny? Why is that important?
(Post-It #9: I conquer the world, one laugh at a time.)
Langdon is certainly not the world, and she doesn’t want to conquer him—oh my God, there has to be a more appropriate verb for that—but it does feel good that she’s said something to make him look lighter and more at ease.
“I’ll buy you some new ones,” he says. “Ready to go?”
More flowers? If they’re going to the museum as friends, and staying as friends at the end of it, why would he get her replacement flowers?
But, she does like the sentiment, and selfishly the idea of him consulting another florist for her, so she says, “Yes please.”
Langdon’s car is the cleanest car Mel has ever been in.
She swears she’s overheard him complaining about his children’s tendencies to leave a trail of crumbs wherever they go, especially in his convertible, but she would never guess that from the state it’s in now. It almost has a new car smell, and she has the insane thought that he might have bought a brand new car or rented one just to take her out on a date.
It’s not a date, though. He still opens the car door for her, but it’s not a date. She supposes friends can open car doors for each other, but she’s not sure she ever has.
She is wondering what would be happening if he hadn’t said the first date thing. How long would it have taken her to realize?
The museum is only ten minutes away, but the ride feels much longer.
“Did you think I liked you?” She blurts. “Romantically, I mean?”
Langdon’s clutch on the wheel tightens. “I thought we were never going to talk about this again.”
“Right,” she says, forcing a laugh that sounds as painful as it feels. It prompts another lift of his eyebrows.
“Sorry,” he says. “We can… talk about it. If you need to.”
“That’s okay.” She rubs over her thighs.
He sighs. “No, Mel, I can tell you’re not gonna relax until we do. So, yes, I did think you liked me. Romantically. At least for the past several days.”
She briefly wonders what he’s been thinking about that, until she remembers he already told her that day in the stairwell.
He’s been excited.
Oh my.
“It’s okay if you don’t,” he adds.
Mel is not the best with social cues, but it sounds an awful lot like he’s wanting her to challenge him. Like he wants her to tell him that she does like him that way.
But she can’t. That would be lying. Kind of. Maybe. She isn’t actually sure, which feels as good as reason as any not to fight him on it.
“Thank you,” she says, and she might as well have stolen the last Red Bull out of the break room fridge with how deeply he frowns.
They fall quiet again, and Mel is suddenly not sure she can handle the museum with him. She pictured animated discussions over historical artifacts, not avoiding eye contact and pretending the other doesn’t exist.
“You sure you want to still go?” He asks, as if reading her mind.
“Yes,” she lies.
He exhales dramatically. “Great.”
It’s going to be a long day.
They haven’t even entered the museum before an argument begins.
Mel does not argue with Langdon. She’s not sure if they’ve ever disagreed on anything, the more she thinks about it, and she didn’t anticipate that to change today. They were supposed to find more things to agree with actually, like friends are supposed to.
But now they’re on this weird not-date-but-kind-of-a-date-vibe-still-thing, and so that hope is all but smashed under her boots like the flowers.
“I’m paying for myself,” she tells him, but he’s got one of his stupidly big arms out to block her from getting to the front of the ticket counter.
“No,” he says simply.
She almost says but it’s not a date and this feels like something that’s only permissible on a date.
The only reason she doesn’t is because she doesn’t want to say the d-word anymore than it’s already been said. She’s supposed to never mention it again, even if it’s the only thing she can think of when she looks at him.
Because they could be on a d-word right now. If she wanted to, she could have gone along with it and said, yes, she did ask him on a date, and it would be just that.
She could be someone Langdon went on a date with. They could have a dating history.
She’s still blushing about it, especially now that he’s paid for all of these things and drove her here, when he hands her a pamphlet.
“Still wanna start with the Egypt exhibit?” He asks, and she looks up at him, feeling sick, and his expression softens. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure I can do this,” she says, which is humiliating after he just paid for their tickets. They’re not ten feet from the desk.
He’s probably going to be angry, especially with the no-refund policy for day-of purchases, and maybe he’ll yell at her the way Trinity always says he’s capable of doing. Maybe it won’t be such a bad thing if he does, either, because then he’ll look less handsome, less approachable, less like a friend and also a lot less like someone she’d want to date, and if he’s yelling at her, then she’s not someone he’d want to date, and—
“Oh,” he says, and she braces for impact, cramming her eyes shut and trying not to shake. “That’s okay.”
She cracks an eye open. “It is?”
“Of course.” He gives her a soft smile. “I’m not gonna force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“It’s not that,” she says, avoiding his stare. “I do want to do this with you. I’m just... nervous.”
He looks at her for a long time, and then says quietly, “I’m nervous, too.”
Mel snaps her eyes back to him. Nothing about him screams anxiety—he’s standing just as tall as ever, not a hair out of place, and he isn’t twisting his shirt between his fingers the way she’s doing to hers now.
“No you’re not.”
He laughs, but it’s somehow lacking his usual delight. “Mel. I’m… barely holding it together. But I am because you still wanted to go, so…”
She studies him more closely. There does seem to be a small tremor in the hand clutched around his own pamphlet, and a faint rosy color blooming in the balls of his cheeks. If she watches his chest rise and fall for a minute—which she does, despite how weird it probably is to do so—she sees how he’s inhaling and exhaling like he’s just finished a workout.
Maybe he is nervous.
And she can’t let him be that. She has to fix this, and the only way she knows how are through the neon squares over her bathroom mirror.
Post-It #7.
“A feeling may be uncomfortable,” she rehearses from her mind, “but it is not dangerous to feel.”
“What?”
“It’s okay to be nervous,” she says, braving a step forward, and she watches his Adam’s apple bob with heightened focus.
“O-Okay,” she hears the slight shake in his voice, wants to stabilize it, like she’s working to stop the bleeding in a trauma.
She peers up at him for a moment, and then takes her own advice and reaches for his free hand.
Her heart is beating so fast, but it is not dangerous to feel. She reminds herself of it again when she laces their fingers together up in the air between them.
“Mel,” he says in a strangled voice, “You don’t have to—”
She squeezes his hand, smiling at him. Langdon looks like the air’s been knocked out of him, and it kind of breathes a spark of courage into her that she’s the one to make him feel like that. She lowers their joined hands to their sides and tries her best to naturally sidle up into the space next to him, in that effortless way he’s been doing at work all week.
“Um.” The rosy color crawls down his neck. “Not that I don’t… appreciate this, but this might be having the opposite affect.”
“We can be nervous together,” she says shyly. “Group therapy showed me that it can be helpful to be around people experiencing the same feelings.”
He blinks at her, eyes shining like she’s something he’s never seen before. “Actually… yeah. Yeah, I do know about that.”
Without meaning to, she swings their hands, and she thinks he might be smiling brighter than the sun.
Mel cannot believe she’s actually walking through a museum with Langdon, hand in hand, like this is something they’ve always done. She wonders if she’s crossed a line, or perhaps forced him over it along with her, but then, when she briefly lets go of him to take a closer look at the pamphlet, he reaches for her hand again the very first second he can once they start walking.
She is so, so overwhelmed with how gentle he is, how his large fingers feel so safe around her small ones. She wonders what he feels, if she’s providing some kind of new, pleasant thrill inside of him the way he does to her.
Her chest is warm as they pause by displays and read the corresponding plaques. And God, she wants to remember all the words and dates and historical figures, but she thinks his hand should be the thing behind a glass case by how much more she prefers to stare at it instead. She’s memorizing its shape, beginning to wonder if he’s conscious of the way his thumb strokes hers when they’re just standing still.
They’re mostly quiet as they explore, another surprise of the day, but she doesn’t mind it. A little zip shoots through her spine when she watches his lips silently mouth the descriptions of artifacts, and especially when she catches the flick of his tongue on words like Latin and Nefertiti. She probably wouldn’t mind if he started reading aloud to her. Maybe then she’d pay better attention.
“Hmm, coffee table,” he says under his breath as they stop in front of a crumbled statue of a cat with a comically big head.
Mel gives him a wild look. It’s not a coffee table; it’s a cat. Is he having a medical episode?
He catches her worried face and snorts. “Sorry. Tanner and I sometimes play this game where—never mind. It’s stupid.”
“I like games,” she replies, and a giant smile slowly stretches across his face.
“Okay, so!” His voice is animated and quick, like he’s been dying to do this all day. “You look at something weird or strange, like something you wouldn’t normally like, and you think, if someone made you take it home, where would you put it?”
Mel stares back into the cat’s terrifyingly large eyes. “You want that on your coffee table?”
“Where else? Definitely not putting it in my bedroom.”
She laughs, and it’s so quiet in the museum that the sound bounces loudly off the walls. She throws her unoccupied hand over her lips to cover it.
Langdon’s grinning, looking as proud of himself as he was when he balanced that clipboard in his lap. “Your turn.”
“Oh! Um.” Mel glances down at the line of scarab amulets in the case in front of them. Her apartment is not very big, and she really doesn’t like the idea of an insect-looking anything being anywhere near her, so her choices are very limited. “I guess… in the back of my coat closet. Preferably in some kind of box with a lock.”
He laughs this time, and though it’s not as loud as hers, it’s still enough that it echoes. “Guess I should have explained the only rule. It has to go somewhere not hidden.”
“But I don’t want a scarab in my apartment.”
“Too bad,” he says, and the squeeze of his hand clues her in that he’s teasing. “It has to go somewhere. Where’s it going, King?”
King. Oh, she likes that.
“Fine.” She make a face, despite the twitch in her lips to keep from grinning like an idiot. “Becca’s room.”
This time his laughter ricochets, sharp and sudden enough to capture the annoyance of a staff member. Langdon apologizes through his chuckles as they scurry out of the room, and Mel’s chest feels so light and airy, she thinks her heart might have escaped out of it. (Maybe she’ll check the lost and found later?)
The next room is barely lit. Small diamond-shaped lights flicker over an enormous sarcophagus.
“Front porch,” Mel says at the same time as Langdon says, “Home office,” and now they’re laughing even harder.
Their shaking shoulders bump into each other in the dark, and the touch of him is so electrifying that she almost drops his hand to do something silly like hug him so that the pleasant feeling can fill her entire body, but even she knows that would be too much for a non-date.
Friends do eventually hug, but it seems too soon with him.
And also, not soon enough somehow?
After another hour of jokes about where they’d fit a mummy into their homes, they’re walking down a long hallway, and the panic spikes through her at the sight of the exit sign. They hadn’t seen much of the museum yet, but Langdon’s feet are propelling forward like he’s ready to be done with it.
Is it already over? Is he going to drop her hand and never pick it back up?
Post-It #5: I am not afraid to take risks.
“Dr. Langdon,” she says.
“Please, Mel. Frank.” He grins at her crookedly. “C’mon, say it with me. Fuh-rank.”
She giggles. It’s not the first time he’s requested this today, and she might purposefully be avoiding saying it just to get under his skin. (He’s under hers, she might as well return the favor.)
“Frank.” She hopes it’s not only something she can do in this little private world they’ve created and tries to commit the sound of it to her memory. “This has been… very nice.”
His thumb does that thing again over hers, and she shivers.
“I agree.”
“If this…” she’s never understood the ‘frog in a throat’ expression until now because it definitely feels like some little creature lives there now. “If this was a date, would you go on another?”
He stills. Oh no. Maybe Post-It #5 should be torn off her mirror.
“I just mean,” she goes on, “I don’t have a lot of dating experience, and so it would be nice to know if my company is… acceptable.”
“Acceptable,” he repeats, almost in a huff, and she cringes.
“Desirable?” She tries to correct, which, okay, is obviously also not the correct word because it’s too close to desire. She doesn’t want him to find her desirable.
Does she?
She’s blushing again.
“You know what I mean,” she says dismissively. “I just want to know if there’s anything I did wrong or maybe could do better for next time.”
“Mel,” he says her name in that way that forces her to meet his eyes. She’s not sure how or when he claimed this power, or if he even know he has it.
He raises her hand to his lips and presses them to her knuckles. It’s not a kiss, but her stomach does not know the difference and flips over violently.
If she changes her mind and tells him this was a date, would he press his lips harder? Would he press them… elsewhere?
Her heart hammers as his smile peeks over their hands, and he’s so devastatingly handsome, she wonders who the Mel was at the beginning of the day that was horrified about the idea of dating him. Some kind of stupid person certainly. Someone she no longer knows at the very least.
“Are you asking for an… assessment of our time together?”
“I think so,” she says and barks out a surprised laugh. She really is ridiculous—
He brushes his lips over her knuckles again, and her mind blanks out. They run back and forth, back and forth, and she’s going to tackle him—
“Hmm.” His eyes roll back in a dramatic thinking expression. “I’ll need more data before I can answer. Since, you know, this wasn’t a date.”
She’s just maybe gained control of her breathing when his eyes fix back to hers.
“Melissa King, how about we go on a real—mmph!”
She flings her arms around him at once, crushing him in a hug she forgets to ask his consent for, but it doesn’t matter because he wraps around her, and the breaths from his chuckle tickle into her neck. It’s so much better than any high five, and so much better than holding hands.
“Yes please,” she tells him.
“Finally,” he sighs into her hair.
She pulls back to look up at him, and his face is so close, she might kiss him.
But it’s not even their first date. Not really.
A few weeks later, Langdon peers back at his reflection, alarmed by how the pink sticky notes only bring more attention to the blush in his cheeks.
He can do this. It’s only been a year and a half. It’s like riding a bike. Only he might be the bike this time, and Mel—
He splashes water up onto his face, rereads the scribble in the far left corner, and fist bumps the outline of her hand before rushing out of the room.
Post-It #1: You can do big and scary things.