Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Mel never did get crushes on people very often—but when she did, they were bad.

What with all the familial death and crushing responsibility, she didn’t really have time for anything so pedestrian as romance. Not that she really missed it anyway. In her late teens she heard the term asexual for the first time and—so little was she troubled by the whole business—thought maybe that was her. But then she’d developed an all-consuming passion for her freshman year lab partner in college and thought maybe she wasn’t after all.

Either way, with her father’s unexpected passing at fourteen, her mom’s ensuing single parenthood left the burden of most of Becca’s caretaking to Mel, so her high school experience didn’t leave a lot of time to think about boys and dating and all that stuff anyway. And then later, with her mom’s less unexpected but infinitely more traumatizing, drawn-out passing—Mel just didn’t have time for puzzling out the elaborate courtship rituals which substituted for romance. What with trying to keep her sister happy and healthy in the face of unimaginable loss—and also, you know, the MCATs and everything—she never really bothered to question herself much further than asexual (question mark?).

It never stopped Becca asking when she was going to get a boyfriend, of course. Her sister always was a hopeless romantic—More so than Mel ever even realized, considering the whole secret life with a full-blown boyfriend of her own (and sex life) she never thought to mention.

But even as her sister campaigned relentlessly for Mel to find someone to kiss, she just never found herself having very much romantic or sexual attraction to other people. And on those rare occasions she did suddenly get accosted by an overwhelming crush, the feelings usually burned hot and fast—yes, sure, leaving her sick and flustered with longing sometimes—but ultimately they would go away and everything would be back to normal again after a few weeks.

Currently, she’s waiting extremely impatiently for this phase of the crush to happen. The fizzling out, that is. Because she does, in fact, have the most enormous, whopping great crush—the worst she might ever have had—on her married co-worker, and it’s so completely doomed and ridiculous she desperately needs to get this part over with.

Unfortunately, it’s taking rather longer than usual this time. Inconvenient, because Dr Langdon is not just her favorite colleague and super married, but he’s also the closest thing she has ever had to a real friend that isn’t related to her. And that’s the other thing Mel has never really had in her life—friends.

Which sounds so pathetic, but it’s true. There was always Becca. Becca and Mel, Becca and Mel. That was all she needed. Even at school Mel was always more preoccupied with rushing off to find her sister than befriending her classmates—not that the other kids really wanted to be her friend anyway. Mel knows she’s always been a bit odd, and though it took far too long to recognize the stifled laughter of the boys on show-and-tell day for what it was, the silent exchange of looks between Brittanys and Jessicas when she was assigned to their group, Mel caught on eventually. For some reason, they just didn’t like her. It wasn’t a very nice feeling but it hadn’t mattered so much at the time because she had her sister. Her twin.

Then there was college, which was a whole different beast. She remembers being utterly bemused at how easily everyone else seemed to find their people. One day they were all strangers at orientation, then she blinked and suddenly there are all these little groups and cliques hanging out on the weekends. Mel just couldn’t understand where that transition happened—where the line was that you jumped over from acquaintance to friend.

Not to say that she didn’t socialize with anyone at all, because there were a couple of people on her courses that became sort-of study companions. But they never really hung out without books and flash cards involved, so Mel was never sure if they were really friends.

But again it hadn’t mattered so much then, because her mom was dead now too and Becca needed her more than ever.

Then they moved to Pittsburgh. New city, new apartment. No ties to it, other than good Residency placements and excellent living facility options for her sister. They had family somewhere, she was pretty sure—some kind of Uncle, or cousins—but her parents hadn’t been close to them and so Mel and Becca weren’t either. And so it is just the two of them again, and Mel thought that the isolation of this new city wouldn’t matter because she still had her Becca…

…But then Middle Hill happened. And suddenly Becca has a whole new life that doesn’t include Mel very much at all.

(She is happy about it, really she is. It was always the goal, after all, Becca becoming more independent. She just didn’t realize it meant her becoming independent of Becca too…)

But then, just as she is suddenly staring down the long, lonely road ahead of her—because for whatever reason she never really made any friends at PTMC either in the past year, which was disappointing but not entirely unexpected—lost, and confused about where she goes from here… he is there.

Dr Langdon. Her friend. She thinks? She’s pretty sure…

Well, whatever it is, it doesn’t feel like any other relationship she’s ever had anyway—co-worker, study group, classmate, sibling. She and Dr Langdon are very different, in a way she can’t properly put into words.

Maybe it’s the way he notices her. That he seems genuinely glad to see her every morning, is sincerely interested in whatever rambling topic her brain decides to spew out. The way he has private jokes just for her, and he actually laughs when she ventures to make ones of her own. Her lonely soul didn’t know what to make of it at first. But now it’s been months since he came back and Mel can’t imagine what it was like not to have him in her life.

So whatever happens, she is trying to play it extremely cool with this whole silly crush thing. Disastrous really, because goodness knows she’s never been chill a day in her life (when Mel loves she loves wholeheartedly and loudly and probably quite smotheringly), but above all things she is a realist, so she knows nothing is ever going to happen with him in that way. Not anything real. And it isn’t just because he has a wife and two small children and a house and a dog, but it is  also because she is just Mel and he is Dr Langdon.

Literally, he is the most handsome person she thinks she has ever seen in real life. It’s sort of unnerving how good looking he is, and though she knows she’s not exactly ugly—when she actually has time to try, she can look quite pretty, she thinks, but it’s just she never really sees the point of trying when she only goes to the hospital and home and back again—she knows she is no way on the same level as Dr Langdon. He has the nickname ER Ken, for Pete’s sake.

And it's okay. Really, she is fine with it. It’s enough just to have a real friend at work. A person in her life who makes her laugh and looks out for her and notices when she’s not doing so great. And she doesn’t want—cannot have—anything to spoil it so she knows she needs to rein it in around him.

Because Mel suspects people might be beginning to notice how much she likes him.

Not that it is entirely her fault—he’s the one who is always coming to find her, texting her articles and funny pictures he thinks she might like. He’s the one that fist bumps her after she’s done a good job and calls for her especially on cases he thinks she’ll find interesting. And she’s been happy—more than happy, ecstatic really—to go along with it. Flattered, and more than a little bemused at the attention and, yes, probably she let it go to her head a bit.

So when she starts to notice the exchange of glances at the charge desk, the not-quite hidden smirks of her colleagues behind computer screens and unconscious patients, Mel knows she probably went too far this time.

Was she supposed to go to a museum and not get a little souvenir for her only friend? 

Was she supposed to browse the gift shop and see the perfect trinket which reminded her of him and not buy it?

It’s the type of thing anybody might do for a friend, she tells herself. The thing barely cost five dollars. And she never would have actually given it to him if he hadn’t got her a pen from his own trip to Fort Pitt three weeks ago.

Well, she thinks he got her the pen intentionally. Either way, she’d been hunting for one by the computer's first thing and he’d swooped over from the lockers—just on the verge of being late for rounds—pulled it out of his breast pocket and handed it to her. Here, he’d said, this is for you, before he shuffled off after Shen and the rest of the huddle.

Not, you can borrow this or I have a spare.

This is for you. 

What was she supposed to make of that, except that he had really got it just for her?

Either way, she saw the stupid keychain in the gift shop at the History Centre and couldn’t resist. It’s just—it was a pickle! And there happens to be a running joke between them about pickles! So it just made logical sense to get the pickle for him (didn’t it?).

She didn’t have to give it to him, she reasoned as she dithered at the register and Becca loudly asked her to hurry up. She could decide later if it felt appropriate or not, and if not she’d just keep it for herself.

But he was so nice to her as they walked in together from the parking garage. Asked about her day off and if she’d done anything nice. Was genuinely delighted, it seemed, that she’d taken his suggestion of going to that museum.

And he hadn’t thought it was weird—at least, she didn’t think he did anyway—when she fished it out of her bag at the lockers and held it out for him. His lovely blue eyes had kind of sparkled when she dangled the pickle from her index finger, and he got that crooked grin on his face she likes so much.

So cool! He’d exclaimed, sliding it off her finger. Are you sure? Wow, thanks Mel, I love it, seriously! And he’d fished around in the front pocket of his backpack for his keys, cursed under his breath as he struggled to wrestle it onto the bunch right then and there.

And Mel had beamed, hot and cold all over as she shyly shut her locker door—catching eyes with Dr McKay a little way down the bank. She looked away too quickly when she caught Mel’s gaze and slammed her own locker too hard, hustling off just as Dr Santos and Whitaker appeared, bickering about something domestic as usual.

Langdon is still talking about the stupid pickle when they punch in their codes and take off their coats. He’s asking about the museum, whether Becca had enjoyed it at all, or loathed it as Mel thought she would (loathed, definitely loathed). Enthusiastically recommending the next place for her to go and see as he balls up his outside clothes none-too-neatly and shoves them out of sight—It’s not really the right time of year for the botanical gardens but they do some cool talks and things. They must have been to the Carnegie museums already, right? Only the Natural History one? Come on, Dr King, the art won’t look at itself…—And the whole time he talks, Mel is very, very aware of the sliding glances from Dr Santos burning into the back of her skull.

She clutches her stethoscope around her neck so tightly the rubber cuts in, raising friction against her skin and catching at the wispy hairs at the edge of her hairline. From the corner of her eye she sees the downturn of Santos’s mouth, the way her eyes narrow as she leans closer to Whitaker in order to mutter something in his ear, which has him craning around to look at Mel and Langdon in a way that earns an elbow to the ribs.

“Okay, well. I’ll see you at rounds!” Mel says, too loudly, ducking her head as she walks at speed in the wrong direction. Langdon is still digging around in his stuff, and he blinks after her, obviously confused at her sudden departure. Not surprising since he was literally half way through a sentence when she interrupted.

“Okay… see you?” He calls after her. Unfortunately, the memory of Santos and Whitaker’s curious stares don’t fade quite as fast.

Mel tries to dial it back, she really does, but she keeps forgetting.

She successfully stops herself from rushing toward him to high-five after a STEMI that very nearly breaks their balloon-time record. Swerves away when he studies a new chart at the Hub and looks up, her name on his lips—Mel, wanna get in on this?. Avoids the break room, the ambulance bay, the stairwell. This is pretty miserable in itself; all her usual places to decompress are out of bounds, because she knows he would find her there at some point or another. Instead she finds herself locked into the vaguely antiseptic/pee-smelling ADA bathroom when her skin begins to get that prickly feeling—riddled with guilt that she doesn’t fit the proper criteria to use an ADA bathroom, and what if there is someone waiting to use it while she hides away, trying desperately to regulate her nervous system?

Somehow, she manages to get through most of the day, all the way to three PM when Dana hands her a case with the sweetest little baby—minor ailment, mainly just new parents over-cautious and terrified of every sneeze and temperature change and blemish—and she has to stop herself half-way through running over to tell him all about it. Changes direction at the last second as she comes out of Pedes, and forces herself away from the familiar figure across the ED, joking with a teenage soccer player still in grass-stained shin pads in North 4.

And as she nearly crashes into the portable X-Ray machine because she’s looking back at him over her shoulder, Mel finally gets annoyed.

Why should she stop herself like this? Why does she have to deprive herself in this way? He’s her friend. Is she the only person in this hospital who isn’t allowed friends, just in case people get the wrong impression about her intentions? 

She’s not stupid, after all. She knows what this is, and all it ever will be. And she’s fine with it. More than fine. Happy. Because after just a few hours without him, she’s jaggedly reminded of how cold, how empty it is without friendship. How it used to be like this all the time before he came, and she didn’t even notice how loneliness made her small, made her shrink down until she was nothing more than a ghost on the sidelines of her own life. She doesn’t deserve it. Jeez, she’s allowed to feel… connection.

Isn’t she?

So when she’s updating the baby's chart and he appears like magic—leans back onto the desk beside her and raps his knuckles against it as he scans the board beyond, Mel smiles and spins around on her chair, abandons her charting before she can second-guess herself. Who cares what everyone thinks?

“I just had the cutest patient…” She says and Langdon grins back at her, raises one eyebrow.

“Yeah? Flirting at work now, King?”

Mel furrows her brow. Thinks there must be a joke here somewhere, but can’t see it yet.

“What? Oh—!” Then she gets it. Huffs out a laugh as she shakes her head. “Nothing like that, obviously. It was a baby, she was so sweet!”

“Nice.” He turns, facing her. Crosses his arms over his chest as he leans against the desk, impossibly cool. As usual, Mel’s heart does something complicated and ticklish inside her chest at the sight of his biceps straining at the sleeve of his scrubs. “Nothing seriously wrong?”

“No, no…” she manages. “Nothing much wrong with her at all, unless you count excessive cuteness. Just anxious parents, you know.”

“Yeah, I do.” He smiles faintly. Looks her up and down like he’s assessing her. “Have you eaten yet?”

“Um, not really.” Not strange. Like everyone else in the ED, Mel forgets most of the time—and when she does remember there is usually some screaming emergency to interrupt. She had her standard overnight oats for breakfast and that usually tides her through to dinner, if she manages to get a hastily grabbed snack in the middle.

Today though she has not hastily grabbed this snack, because normally she does it with Langdon. And today she has been avoiding Langdon—or if not avoiding, at least trying to minimize the amount of time spent in his company. Which, yes, okay, sounds a lot like avoiding. So no snack as of yet, and her stomach is indeed beginning to cramp with annoying warning reminders about it.

He straightens. Stretches his arms right above his head as he groans and cracks his neck—Mel looks away so fast from the exposed stretch of skin above his waistband she might actually get whiplash. Stares idiotically at the ceiling tiles instead.

“Me either,” he says. “Wanna hit the vending machine and tell me about this cute baby? Or any of your other cases—didn’t you get a fasciotomy earlier? I feel like I haven’t seen you all day.”

It’s on the tip of her tongue to agree. Yes, she’s starving and yes she did help out on a fasciotomy earlier—only her second ever one!—and she would, of course, love to discuss it all. Her hands are already bracing against the desk, pushing herself half to her feet when she sees Princess behind him and falters. She is on the other side of the charge desk, seemingly engrossed in a sheaf of papers and very obviously listening to their conversation. Staring unashamedly at them as she blindly rifles the paper with a knowing expression she can’t quite contain. So Mel suppresses a sigh and sinks back on the stool. So much for not caring what anyone thinks. It turns out she cares a lot. Too much, probably.

“I’m okay,” she says. Hunches in on herself as she directs her attention back to the screen and clicks mindlessly around to look busy.

Langdon was already moving toward the break room, expecting her to follow, and that is humiliating enough in itself. Is she really that obvious and pathetic? Is she really like a duckling that imprinted on him, following him around with adoration in her eyes?

God. No wonder everyone is looking at her funny.

Langdon hesitates when he sees she isn’t following him. Frowns at her declining the invitation.

“Oh. Okay?” He says uncertainly, strands of dark hair falling over his eye. “Do you… want me to bring you anything?”

Mel makes herself smile in a normal way. Directs it at him, without directly looking at him. Lucky she’s had a lot of practice at that. Generally, she finds if you look at people’s hairline or nose or eyebrow they think you’re making eye contact even if you’re not. “No, I’m good. Thanks though.”

He frowns at her a moment more, possibly because her stomach chooses that exact moment to let out the most thunderous, audible growl of protest. He looks more confused than anything, but he smoothes his expression into something as unconvincingly airy as her own and gives a little one shouldered shrug.

“Okay. No worries.” He throws back, so nonchalant she knows it isn’t at all. Then he lopes off, in the complete wrong direction for the staff lounge where the vending machine lives.

“Drinks after shift tonight…”

Donnie announces it in a drive by fashion. Santos is already grinning and McKay leans back in the chair where she is charting. Stretches with a groan.

“Do we know the occasion?” She asks.

“Does it matter?” Santos replies, which McKay supposes it doesn’t.

Turns out to be a birthday, and since the shift has been miraculously drama free—relatively Q-word for an ER department—the turnout is pretty large. Several people who would normally decline—keys already in hand and mentally halfway to the parking garage—have claimed to be child-free, plan-free, tiredness-free. So it is a very crowded, sweaty pub that Mel squeezes into, in the wake of Santos and Whitaker and Emma.

She does not routinely go out like this to the occasional work socials that spring up at the last minute. Has never stopped for a beer in the park— not that anyone has ever explicitly actually invited her to. But since Becca started asserting her independence more, Mel has been pushing herself to try.

She has learned that she prefers smaller groups to the ones like this, where seemingly the whole hospital is crammed into the bar. Feels a little lost, awkward, stateless in these large gatherings and much prefers who she is in the intimacy of three or four people at most.

But she is pushing her comfort parameters, so she goes. Scuttles just a step behind her fellow Residents as they go through the practiced motions of getting drinks, removing bags and jackets, finding somewhere to settle.

There aren’t enough chairs at the table they manage to snag only thanks to Santos’ shark-like reflexes. Mel ends up standing awkwardly, just outside the circle but not quite far enough to be definitely excluded, with her can of ginger ale and her bag slipping off her shoulder. Finally, after what is only about ten minutes but feels more like an hour, someone notices her lurking and exclaims at her lack of a seat.

There ensues an excruciating performance where an empty chair is searched for at the neighboring tables—there are none, or at least none that their fairly hostile neighbors are willing to negotiate—and there’s a great shuffling on the booth side as all those people insist there is room for her to squeeze in if they all just move up.

(There definitely isn’t, everyone is already shoulder to shoulder, rubbing elbows, and Mel genuinely can’t think of anywhere she’d like to sit less…)

It is so mortifying, Mel very nearly tells them all not to worry, nearly flees back outside to the lonely chill of her car and drives back to her warm and waiting sofa like she actually wants to. But just as her face is getting hot, sweat is pricking at her back and pits with anxiety and embarrassment and uncertainty, suddenly a chair appears behind her.

With the problem apparently solved, the attention of the table turns abruptly from her, and Mel blinks at Langdon.

“Don’t tell me you don’t need it now. D’you know what I had to do to snag this?”

He smiles softly, secretly, crinkling the corners of his eyes. It’s already so familiar, and Mel’s chest performs a mournful flip.

The most annoying thing is how relieved she is.

How her entire body relaxes, softens. How her heart rate becomes normal, how her anxiety dissolves and disappears just at the sight of him—completely without her approval, by the way.

It’s also a little bit frightening, honestly, how quickly he has become this person for her. How only his presence is enough for her body to think oh, everything is okay, we can relax now.

Mel lets out a defeated sigh. Lets her work bag slip from her shoulder as she folds herself onto the chair.

“No, this is great. Thank you,” she says, curling her hands around her sweating ginger ale.

“No worries,” he replies casually, sipping at his own can of Coke. But even though his eyes are already darting around the bar, he doesn’t move away, doesn’t try to find a seat of his own. Instead he lingers next to Mel—even rests one hand on the very edge of the chair back, tapping his fingernail against the wood.

Mel doesn’t realize she is staring, until his eyes roam back to her, snag with hers. She turns away as quickly as she can—not fast enough to miss the grin that breaks across the planes of his face, wiping away the creases of something she doesn’t quite understand. Anxiety of his own, maybe? It is a bar, after all, and he is sober.

“Are you… okay?” She asks hesitantly, with this thought in mind. He frowns—laser-sharp blue studying her face, decoding her meaning like she’s a Da Vinci code puzzle or something—and she gestures to the bar as a whole. The drinks, the over-loud laughter and swearing and spilling and swaying of the mildly intoxicated. And he picks up her meaning instantly, as usual.

“Oh. Yeah. Drinking was never really my problem, my therapist just told me to keep off it in case it becomes a replacement or something. Unless someone is handing out opioids in the bathroom, I’m cool.”

He grins with the quirk of an eyebrow that clues her in this is a joke. However she doesn’t do much more than stretch a perfunctory smile across her mouth, because it’s her least favorite type of his jokes. At his expense, making fun of his trauma. She understands it’s some kind of defense mechanism, but it doesn’t mean she has to like it.

“Are you okay?” He counters and she blinks. Tightens her grip on her drink as she feels her shoulders contracting. Forces herself to relax.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you just seemed a little…off today, is all.”

Mel determinedly averts her gaze from the one she can feel leveled on her.

“No—I mean yes. Fine. Just… tired. I guess,” she says, and she can feel that he does not believe her. He does not push it however, knows her limits, when to toe the line. It’s still odd that their interactions go on long enough for there to be a line. For him to get anywhere in the vicinity of really knowing her. She can’t remember the last time someone bothered—maybe they never even have before? It probably doesn’t count if it’s your sister… but to be honest she’s even begun to doubt lately how well she and Becca actually do know each other. She’s begun to doubt whether she even knows herself.

Hence the bar and the night out. And Langdon—the only one, for whatever baffling, cosmic reason who can see she isn’t telling the truth and actually wants to find out why.

He’s still waiting for a real answer, but obviously she’s not going to tell him. How would she even word it?

Oh, sorry, only friend and coworker. I’m all out of sorts because everyone at our workplace has clocked the massive crush I have on you, and I’m trying to tone it down so you don’t find out and freak out and avoid me for the rest of time.

Too embarrassing, even for her.

So instead she asks him about his day. The patients she missed because she was avoiding picking up cases with him. The terrible tuna salad sandwich he had to get for lunch because it was the only one left apart from the egg and everyone knows you go hungry rather than get the egg. The call from his son at three thirty when he got out of kindergarten, to ask him whether he’d ever been to the moon (Langdon said he had been there, and it was very cold so he only rated it two stars on TripAdvisor. He laughed way more at this than Tanner did, since his son is six and doesn’t know what TripAdvisor is.)

Mel listens, smiles in all the right places and clutches her drink so hard her fingertips pressed grooves into the can. She wishes she were there to hear it all first hand—to direct him to a nicer lunch option, to be the one to help him realign a dislocated elbow instead of Donnie. To hear the cute story about his kid over tea in the staff lounge the moment he hit End Call, instead of here, hours later when half the details are forgotten and the joke is a little flat.

But as he talks, her wandering eyes remind her just why she wasn’t there for any of it today. Several people sneaking glances their way from the table just out of their orbit—they think she doesn’t notice them doing it—and pressing their lips together to contain their amusement. All of them are so carefully oblivious to Mel and Langdon’s sheltered conversation that it can only mean they are heavily intrigued.

Whitaker catches her eye and nearly breaks his neck trying to look away, milk-pale cheeks flushed scarlet with guilt. McKay smiles at her when she catches her staring—she probably thinks it is sympathetically, since there is a horrible sadness in the smile—but Mel knows this smile well, has seen it a hundred times in her life. She knows it is actually condescending masquerading as empathetic.

The can crinkles in her fist and she quickly tips it up to her lips, drains the remaining ginger ale. Interrupts Langdon as she gets hastily to her feet. He is half-way through a story she’s completely lost the thread of and he has to flinch back lest she headbutt him.

“I’m just…” she begins lamely, well-aware her sudden movement is strange. Langdon stares at her, bemused, mouth still hanging open around what he was about to say. “I’ll be back…”

And she scurries off, still clutching her empty can. She doesn’t know what to do with it. Ends up ditching it halfway to the bathroom on a random table, and feels guilty about it. But what else is she supposed to do when there is no trash can?

The bathroom door swings open abruptly as she puts out her hand to push—she shrinks against the wall as a pair of cackling women about her age stumble out, clutching each other’s arms. They brush past her, hardly aware of her presence at all. The stalls are beyond gross—a tentative push at the first door with her pinky finger has her retreating in a hurry—so she decides against peeing and stands in front of the unpleasantly smudged mirrors instead. Leans over not-particularly-clean sinks and stares at her own reflection.

She’s dressed in the same shirt she wore under her scrubs today. Still has scrub pants on. Her hair is frizzing from the braid she always wears to keep it out of the way. Most other people changed before they left, she realizes. She’s one of the only ones who doesn’t bring other clothes in her backpack, or keep an extra outfit in her locker—the only one who never assumes she’s going to be going anywhere except straight home after shift.

She rips the hair tie out of the end of her braid. Savagely pushes her fingers through the loosened waves until it all sits heavy and wild around her face. It doesn’t really help. Her skin is still blotchy and red from the heat in the bar, sallow where it isn’t. Violet shadows sweep under her eyes and there is a stubborn zit on her chin.

Slowly she scrapes her hair back again. Smooths it down as best she can without a brush and re-braids it. Carefully settles it back between her shoulder blades where it belongs. The weight is like an old friend.

Mel sighs. Closes her eyes briefly behind her glasses, before she pulls herself together. Washes her hands, hunts in vain for a paper towel and wipes them on the hem of her t-shirt instead.

When she gets back, the table has shifted—seats swapped like they all played some kind of party game in her absence. Emma has gone—Mel is disappointed, she likes Emma, feels like there is a world in which they could become friends too—and a couple of the nurses have joined, squeezing themselves into the booth where Mel couldn’t.

Mel will never understand it—circulating.  As far as she is concerned, once she has allocated herself a seat, it is unbelievably uncomfortable and unnecessary to be changing it all about. Which is why there is a horrible squirmy feeling in her stomach when she gets back and her lone chair is completely gone.

“Oh…” she says in a dull voice, standing in the vacant spot where it used to be and twisting her fingers together until they hurt.

Langdon peels away from the fringes of the table, where he drifted in her absence, and his eyebrows go up.

“Fuck…” He says. “Sorry, I should have paid more attention, it’s cutthroat in here…” And he swings around, raking over their neighbors suspiciously in case he can spot her missing chair, but it is impossible to tell where the thief carried it off to.

“It’s okay,” Mel replies, even though it does not feel okay at all and in fact she now very much wants to go home. But before she can even suggest it, Langdon is squashing up coats and backpacks on the small table against the wall that is only out of use as a table—and instead a makeshift cloakroom—because all the seats belonging to it have been redistributed elsewhere.

He gestures to the square of cleared space. Mel does not understand, so he clarifies.

“It’s not much, but it's probably the best we’re gonna get without a fist-fight…”

Then Mel does understand. And even though she feels more awkward than she ever has in her whole life, and under any other circumstances she would never entertain the thought of hopping up on a table in a bar, she does it anyway, because he looks so pleased and it's so kind.

The table lurches—the feet are uneven, possibly another reason why it has been relegated to a cloakroom in the first place—and she nearly slides right off but Langdon steadies her shoulder. Props her back up.

Her face burns, as does the place he touched her. Even through her shirt she thinks his handprint might be left on her skin like a burn. Like a brand.

“So how was Becca’s performance thing?”

Mel starts. She’d been so focused on staring at his thigh, inches away from her own in rumpled denim, she forgot she was supposed to be socializing. So close, because of the crowded bar, one wrong shift of weight would have the outside of his brushing her knee…

Why he was still standing here, attempting to talk to her, she had no idea. Surely she must be the worst conversational partner in the room—alternating staring vacantly like an idiot and rambling about nonsense nobody cares about but herself.

But he doesn’t appear to be bored. Instead, he waits patiently for her to blink herself back to the present. Smiling encouragingly. Interestedly. Like her sister’s talent show is the most interesting thing on earth and he has been simply dying to ask her about it.

“Uh… It was fine. I think.”

“You didn’t go?”

“No, I did. Just got there late. Missed a bit of it. Becca was annoyed, but I made it in time for her part. Just missed some of the others. Apparently this prevented me from making an informed decision about her being the best one, though.”

Langdon laughs—a proper, wide smile cresting over his face and turning something inside Mel’s ribcage upside down.

“Well, I guess she’s not wrong,” he replies easily, leaning against the back of the booth. Arms crossed over chest. Biceps. Sigh. Behind him the table erupts in shrieks of laughter. “But she didn’t get stage fright after all?”

And Mel can feel the tension dissipating from her shoulders, her neck, her back muscles with each breath.

“No, not even a little bit. I knew she’d be okay.”

He gives her a look, which says he has been listening to her worry about Becca’s stage fright for nearly two weeks. And she laughs softly. Feels her cheeks turning pink.

“I did!” She insists. “I mean—deep down.”

He grins at her affectionately—she thinks it has to be affectionately, anyway, she can’t see what else would warm his whole expression like this. That secret smile is tucked away in the corner of his mouth again, creasing his eyes like it always does when she suspects she’s accidentally done something amusing.

“How about you?” She asks. “Was the, um… recital good?”

His whole expression softens at the mention of anything to do with his kids, as always.

“Yeah, she was great. I mean—she was objectively terrible but I thought she was the best ballerina that has ever lived.”

“Of course she was,” Mel replies, very seriously. “Kids always are the best in their Dad’s eyes.”

She knows this to be true. Her own father had cried the whole way through her band recital in 6th grade, even when the teacher politely suggested not long after that music might not be Melissa’s thing. The clarinet had been quickly retired after that, much to Becca and their mom’s relief, but her Dad had been genuinely crestfallen at packing it up with the Goodwill donations.

Langdon slips his phone out of his pocket, checks the time. There is a notification waiting for him, the box blurring the faces of the two small, dark-haired figures on his lock screen. Whatever it says makes his mouth tighten, his jaw set minutely as he shoves it back out of sight without replying. But when he turns his attention back to Mel, there is no trace of tension.

“I got time for another,” he says, shaking his empty can. “Want anything?”

She looks down at her empty hands.

“Oh, um. Yes, okay. Thank you.”

And without even waiting for her to specify what she wants (somehow, he already knows?) he squeezes past her toward the bar.

The room has become even more crowded. She didn’t realize that his body had become a breakwater between her and the crowd, keeping them at bay. But it means he has to brush right past her, denim catching at the polyester of her pants, tugging in the direction of his motion. His knee slips right between hers as he sidesteps out of their little corner, and he touches her shoulder to steady himself, murmurs a rueful apology as he squeezes past backs and shoulders. He gets so close she thinks she can feel his body heat as his soft grey shirt passes inches from her face, bringing with it a burst of hospital soap and laundry detergent and a slightly musky skin scent that has her seeing stars.

And then he’s gone and she’s staring at the back of another man’s flannel shirt—he immediately steps back into Langdon’s vacated space, bumping into her knees so she has to angle herself away—her face hot and a strange simmering low in her abdomen. She lets out a long, shaky breath.

For several moments, she can only replay those seven seconds over and over. Then the shock of Langdon’s casual proximity clears and she remembers she is alone. In a bar.

The noise of it rushes back, a great roaring wall of sound. Excitable chatter and cackling and confused snatches of music, all of which Mel hears from the outside. The flannel shirt man isn’t particularly tall but he is built like a refrigerator. It’s claustrophobic, being trapped by his perspiring bulk. The backs of his legs bumping at her knees.

She recoils from his touch, wondering if it would be too weird to sit criss-cross applesauce on a tabletop in this pub. Decides the risk of becoming an oddity is less than the crawling discomfort of this stranger touching her and draws her legs up anyway. The sea of backpacks and coats surrounding her slide back. A scarf slithers to the floor and there is a guy looking at her from a group about ten feet away. She wonders if he is mad at her, that some of the possessions she’s sitting on belong to him. Maybe it was his scarf on the floor.

Her phone is digging into her thigh in this new position so she fishes it out of her pocket, clutches it in sweaty hands.

Is she supposed to go back to the group at the table and try to join in with them again? Or circulate to one of the other quorums of hospital colleagues scattered around the bar?

This is why she hates socializing in big groups. With a smaller number, you know you’re supposed to be chatting with just those people the whole time. That’s the point. She understands the rules, more or less in a gathering like that, but in big ones like this the rules are different, the goalposts are moved, and she doesn’t quite see where she is supposed to be, what she is supposed to do.

So she gives up on trying to decide and brings up her Kindle app on her phone instead.

It’s a handy trick. Most people scroll their phones these days regardless of the event or occasion, and though she doesn’t use social media much herself, she’s found that if she brings up a reading app people generally tend to think that is what you are doing (for some reason they find it weird to be reading or looking at a lava lamp app at a social function, but it is okay to scroll? Just another of the rules she doesn’t really get…)

There is far too much going on to really concentrate on the text, but it is okay because it’s an old favorite she’s read five or six times before. So it’s no surprise that her attention is easily caught at the sound of her name, snatched out of the din.

She pauses with her thumb on the screen. Looks over at the table next to her.

“…Did she go with him to the bar?”

“Probably.”

“Poor Mel…”

“I feel bad. Should someone say something.”

“God no.”

“But it’s so painful to watch…”

The phone goes slack in her hand. The screen dims. She shuffles closer on the tabletop, backpacks thudding to the ground as she pushes closer. As it rocks on uneven legs, she has to cling to the edge, and she wishes that sudden lurch is the only reason her stomach is in her throat.

Several things are obvious.

One: they didn’t know she was sitting right there, in perfect hearing distance. Which was mildly insulting because she wasn’t even that hidden. Her table is pushed back against the wall and the way the booth is built out shields her a little. The walls are high enough that those on chairs squashed around the open side would only see her if they stood up; and there is the giant plaid man and his group too, providing some camouflage. But if any of them looked up, looked around even for one second, they would see her. But no one does see her.

Two: she had clearly been a subject for gossip between them all for some considerable amount of time. This is not the first occasion the topic had come up, it was clearly an update on an ongoing saga—which made her feel hot and cold all the way down to her toes. Mel ignored gossip, usually. Had to, for her own sanity. She might be a bit oblivious sometimes, might take a moment to catch up, but she’s not stupid. She knows what people think about her—she sees the eye rolls and the winces and the bemused, pained expressions. But she doesn’t normally have to hear at great length how everyone feels sorry for her.

Three: she can’t stand up, because then they really would see her and know she heard everything they were saying. Instead Mel just has to sit there, frozen to the spot with mortification as her colleagues dissect her sad, pathetic pining and the pity friendship Langdon has so generously bestowed upon her. Grows redder and redder as they laugh and sigh at the tragedy of her life. Poor Mel.

Poor Mel…

She isn’t sure how long she listens, and she can’t hear everything anyway, or always figure out who is saying what. At least Langdon isn’t there. That is the only relief, the only thing that keeps her heart and stomach contents from erupting out of her mouth. But then he is there, and it gets infinitely worse.

He must have offered to get some of the others a drink too. She sees him emerge from the slot between two strangers' elbows like an actor rejoining from the wings. His arms are crowded with drinks that slosh precariously as he navigates carefully to the table.

Not caring whether it makes her look like a lunatic, Mel slides off the table and crouches behind the booth. If anyone asks she can say she dropped something. Her keys, a contact lens (no not that, she is wearing glasses). Jeez, anything. But nobody will ask, so it doesn’t matter anyway.

“Here, Cass, take it, I’m gonna drop it… What are we talking about?”

The voice is so familiar, she would know it even after head-injury induced amnesia, probably. The table fell too-obviously silent at his appearance, then Dr McKay bravely jokes, “Just your shadow.”

Mel can see the furrows in his brow under the flop of dark hair, inside her mind. Can picture exactly how the space between his eyes would crease as he replies, “My what?”

There are some stifled titters from the table.

“You know. Mel, your shadow,” someone else says. Mel isn’t sure who it was. Javadi, maybe? Kim?

“I don’t know what you mean,” he replies stiffly. Mel’s heart rate is thundering in her ears. She should step out. She should make herself known, because then they will stop talking. She should do it before it's too late, no matter how humiliating it will be.

“Come on, Langdon.” McKay laughs. “You have to have noticed. The poor kid is crazy about you. Following you around the ED with hearts in her eyes.”

“Didn’t she bring you a gift today?“ Someone new chimes in. “That was kind of crazy…”

“It's so sad…”

“Guys. This isn’t cool,” he says, and she wonders if he looked up at the place he left her. Whether he saw it was empty and wondered where she went. “She’s my friend.”

And Mel has squeezed her eyes shut. Hot salty water worms out from the corners, tracks crazily down to her chin. She swipes at it so hard it will probably bruise.

“Yeah, we know. It’s just hard to watch sometimes…”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Her big stinkin’ crush on you, man.”

“She doesn’t have a crush on me. We’re just friends.”

“Sure, McDreamy. You should really be careful. You’re gonna break the poor girl's heart.”

“Whatever.” He says abruptly. “Here’s your drinks.” And Mel blindly gropes for her bag, her jacket on the table above her. Miraculously, her hand closes around them at once and she scrambles to a low crouch. Prays, prays, prays to a God she doesn’t really believe in that no one sees her leave. But Mel is not a lucky person. Never has been.

The large plaid man moves at just the wrong moment.

“Oh, shit!” He exclaims, grasping her arm to stop her catapulting onto her butt, propping her upright as she lets out an unintelligible noise of distress. “You okay? Sorry, didn’t see you there. Were you on the ground?”

Mel babbles a stream of placations. It’s okay. Sorry. No… Dropped something. Behind her, she hears Santos say oh, fuck, and she knows her luck really has run dry.

Mel squeezes her red, damp eyes shut behind her glasses. Turns slowly.

The table is a tableaux of mixed horror and mortification. Glassy-eyed guilt. She can’t bear to look at Langdon.

“Hey. Um. How long were you…?” Javadi begins. But she tails off, because they all know just by looking at her she was there the whole time.

“Mel…” Someone says, and she can already hear the pity. The spike of anger takes her by surprise, boiling up from the base of her so quickly she can’t contain it.

“Why is it so weird if I like someone?” She demands suddenly, cradling all her stuff in her arms, clutching it to her chest like armor. “Nobody said anything when Javadi liked Matteo, or when Dr McKay asked out a patient or when Trinity had a crush on Dr Garcia. How come it’s fine for everyone else to like someone, but if I do it’s sad and pathetic and weird and everyone feels sorry for me?”

Nobody dares to speak. The whole table is frozen apart from the awkward shifting and half-glances that they can't help but scatter even though none of them actually want to catch each other’s guilty eyes.

Except Langdon.

Langdon is looking directly at her, two pink spots dusted across his pale skin—shocked, yes, but also with a terrible… sadness. No, not sadness. Not pity either, she thinks, not quite. Something else. Something she can’t quite figure out yet.

“Mel…” Dr Mackay begins, clearing her throat. She always was brave, never shying away from an uncomfortable conversation. But Mel doesn’t really want to hear how sorry she is. How they didn’t mean it like that—which, of course they did, until she heard.

“Forget it.” She throws back roughly and pushes her way out of the bar.

“Mel!”

Her heart sinks. Desperately, her eyes start scanning for somewhere to hide on the street, but it's far too late for that. The bitter December chill cuts through her bones, enough that her teeth rattle in her head— but she can blame all the shaking on the temperature. She feels nauseous. Completely sick at the thought of going into work tomorrow and seeing them all there.

“Mel, wait!”

She tries to speed up, desperately trying to remember where she parked her car, but her foot catches on a patch of black ice and goes straight out from under her. She gasps, pinwheels. Jacket slithers from her grip. Manages to right herself, ankle twanging with a sharp warning pain just as a hand steadies under her elbow. She rips her arm away.

“That was really awful, I’m so sorry.” He begins, picking up her fallen jacket from the sidewalk. Mel squeezes her eyes shut. Wraps her arms tightly around herself as she shrinks back from him. Her skin is so goose-fleshed it hurts. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t— Are you sure?” He sighs at her silence and hands back her jacket. She practically snatches it, tucks it against her chest with her backpack. “Can I give you a ride home?”

“No.”

“Please. It’s freezing and you’re upset—“

“No. I’m not upset, I’m angry.

And she does look at him then, even though her body is doing that unbelievably annoying thing where it starts to cry because she’s so frustrated. Blinks back hot tears as his face swims.

He sighs. Pushes a hand through his hair, fingers tracking down to his temple where they rest like he has a headache.

“We should… talk about it, I guess.”

“Oh Jesus,” she says savagely. “I do not want to talk about it.”

His gaze is shockingly level when he pins her with a doctor look. “Me either, honestly, but we should.” Ruefully, he adds, “You can blame my therapist. She’s all about healthy communication…”

When Mel doesn’t laugh, he sighs again.

“Look—I don’t care about all that stuff they were saying back there. It was just mean—“

“It was humiliating.”

“I don’t think so. It said more about them than you. Mel, believe me, I know what it’s like to have people talking about you behind your back. I completely get it, it is not a nice feeling, and you have every right to be upset. But I just wanted to be clear, whatever they were saying about—about—“

She pulls off the band aid. “Me having a crush on you?”

To his credit he doesn’t wince, or pull a face. But his eyelids flicker, nearly unnoticeably in the weak light.

“Yeah. That. I mean, I really don’t pay attention to any of that stuff. It doesn’t matter and it doesn’t have to make anything weird—”

A harsh bark of something like laughter huffs out of her.

“Sure it does. It always does. This isn’t my first rodeo, Langdon.”

And her face burns as hot as her eyes and the furious tears she is keeping back only through sheer force of will.

He frowns at her, scanning her face like a laser, as always. Detecting, computing, assessing her emotions. Diagnosing. She presses her knuckles into her eye sockets, under her glasses, just so she doesn’t have to see him doing it.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m just… sad. Because you’re basically my only friend in Pittsburgh and it always gets weird, even if you promise it won’t, it will and you’ll stop talking to me and I just don’t know if I can deal with it again, not with you and that’s why I never wanted this to happen— .”

“For what to happen?”

“For you to find out. It’s just a stupid crush, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Right…” She takes her hands away, sparks dancing behind her lids and risks a glance at him through wonky lenses. Adjusts them properly on her nose. He looks… thoughtful? Has stuffed his hands deep into his coat pockets. “So… you do actually…?”

“Well… Yeah. Obviously?”

“Huh. Okay.”

“I don’t understand?”

“I thought they were just… saying stuff. You know—Being assholes. I didn’t know you actually felt…”

Mel didn’t think it was possible for her stomach to drop any further, but here she is. A sickly, swooping sensation hurtling decisively toward the centre of the earth.

Too late she figures out she could have denied it. Could have laughed it off as a load of garbage if she wasn’t such a neurotic mess and actually thought for once, instead of jumping straight into disaster mode.

“Mel, it’s okay—“ he says hastily, reaching out in a weird abortive gesture like he was going to take her arm but thought better of it. His hand hangs awkwardly in the air between them, stupid wedding ring catching the light, before he plunges the hand back into his pocket. “I really don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me, you’re my friend and I don’t want you to worry about things being weird or awkward. It’s just, I’m married, you know—“

“Yes, I know,” she snaps and he visibly winces. “Of course I know that. This is exactly why I never wanted this to come up. I’m not an idiot, I know nothing was ever going to happen.”

“I mean, you’re really great Mel. So great. If I wasn’t married, of course I—“

“No! God, no, stop—“ She practically throws her hands over her ears. Would have if her arms weren’t full. “Don’t do that. Fuck—”

She’s not sure if she’s ever actually cursed in front of him before. Maybe that’s why he recoils, looks totally thrown.

“Do not hide behind the safety of being married—pretend that there is some world you could ever have feelings for me, because you’ll never have to prove it. It is so patronizing. I’m not a child.”

“Of course you’re not—I didn’t mean—“

“You’re just trying to be nice, I know—I know—but it isn’t kind. I hate liars, even if you’re lying to be nice. Even worse if you’re lying to be nice. Just be honest.”

“Why would you assume I’m lying?”

Mel laughs again, short and mirthless. The tears are drying on her cheeks, razor sharp on her freezing skin. “Everyone thinks I must be some clueless, naive kid, but I’m not. I’ve handled stuff most people wouldn’t even have to think about in their worst nightmares, and I did it all by myself. I know how the world works. I see everything, I hear everything, even if I pretend like I don’t, and I know that I’m me and you’re you and that alone is enough for all those people inside to laugh their butts off at the thought of me liking you. So you don’t have to pretend or lie to me. It’s okay. I already know.”

Langdon shakes his head helplessly. His mouth has fallen open, but nothing comes out.

“Mel—“ he manages, but she swipes at her cheeks roughly and pulls herself together. Tries to anyway.

“Don’t,” she says, low and scratchy. “Please. I just… I’ll see you at work.” And she escapes before he can say anything else.

She does not look back at him. Doesn’t want to see his pitying face bathed in wintery streetlight, watching her go. But if she did—if she waited, or changed her mind and took him up on that ride after all—she wouldn’t have seen pity.

Instead, she would have seen him standing motionless for the longest time, breath misting in the night air. She would have seen him push his hand through his hair again, seen his eyes snag on the gold ring and hesitate. Seen his fist curl around it and the deep, ragged sigh that escapes out his throat. The way his thumb worries relentlessly against the cold metal as her figure shrinks in the distance and eventually disappears. Spinning it and spinning it until it slips clean over the knuckle and nearly falls on the dirty sidewalk, perhaps even skitters off down the drain. He catches it just in time. Stares at the gold circle in his palm until finally he pushes it back on. Roughly, like it’s a penance. Only then would she have seen him walk away.