Work Text:
The first time they sleep together, they have separate beds.
Frank stumbles into the on call room, head messy and clothes worse and veritably collapses into the nearest bed.
As he drifts he stares numbly, eyes adjusting to the half light and vaguely, slowly, she comes into focus. He had forgotten she was on shift, lost track of her in the chaos rhythm of the emergency room. He thought maybe her shift had ended while she was asleep, it had been hours since he had seen her.
He would never get over how beautiful she was. It was a gut punch, he hadn’t been looking, but she smiled at him and said her name was Mel and he felt like all the air left his body and he nodded back, winded and already hers.
He would look down at her, with her face shining as she smiled up at him and he would want to lean down to kiss her every time she said Good Morning, Dr. Landgon, and he wonders if she would still call him that balanced on his lap, his cock pressing teasingly against her heat, blocked by the sensible, full coverage cotton underwear he’d once gotten a look at when child dacked her while running loose around the emergency room while their supervising adult received stitches in trauma six.
Mel looked loose and tired and peaceful and he wanted to pull the blankets further up her body and lean down and kiss her cheek and maybe slide in beside her and hold her, just to make sure she stayed warm.
He drifts off to the shape of her face in the dark.
***
The next time they sleep together is more intentional, if not their own.
Langdon had changed his availability from Tuesday to Saturday to Sunday to Thursday to accommodate Tanner’s extracurriculars and Abby’s work and accidentally duplicated Mel’s roster. Someone in admin must have it out for him by also putting them both on the same day/night shift cycle.
It was a quiet Wednesday and the two of them were both struggling from being thrown from the night shift last week back to the day shift this week and Robby had grown tired of them yawning in front of the nurses’ station and sent them for a nap. No one was in the throes of death and there was nothing to teach Mel that she hadn’t seen before. Plus, Robby intoned sarcastically, closing the door behind them, Sleep saves lives! he looked murderous as he said it, as if he would have liked to be the one sent for a nap.
They shuffle towards empty beds, mercifully alone in the room. Langdon collapses into the nearest bed without bothering to take his shoes off. Mel sits on the end of hers, carefully unlacing her battered orthopaedic nightmare converses and lining them up at the foot of the bed. He watches her unclip her pager and place it by her pillow and spares a thought for his, which he is eighty-five percent sure is mashed under his left buttcheek and likely to remain there.
Closing his eyes, Langdon wishes he could watch her face as she falls asleep but was unwilling to appear before human resources to defend being a creep fostering a hostile sleep environment. He’s not ready when she speaks.
“Dr. Langdon?”
“Yeah, Mel?”
“You’re a really good doctor.”
She sighs the last part, and he opens his eyes to see hers closed, face relaxed. Her perfect pink lips just barely open, breath huffing gently out, fluttering her hair where it hung across her face. She looked too small all alone in her single, uncomfortable, inevitably blue bed and he wants so badly to cross the room and slide in behind her and wrap her in his arms and hold her and keep her warm, but he shouldn’t and he doesn’t and he hates that he hadn’t met her before Abby because maybe he could have got it right the first time.
It’s not his wedding ring, heavy on his finger, that stops him.
It’s her voice, you’re a really good doctor , and how he never wants to give her a reason to lose faith in him. How he would probably quit the hospital if she no longer thought that.
He was just a teacher to her, nothing more.
He lies there until Dana sticks her head in, framed by the violent fluorescents and says something about a multi car pile up incoming and looks at him with pity and he knew she could read his shame on his face as her eyes lingered pityingly on him before she shuts the door.
Something in her nurses’ intuition always let her read him more easily than he was comfortable with.
***
The next time, he’s asleep in his car, face mashed unattractively into the cold glass of the window.
He wakes to her tapping gently on the glass like he’s a flighty fish in an aquarium she’s trying to entice closer and his voice is low and growling and sleep thick as he rasps her name, Mel? and he prays she doesn’t hear the arousal thrumming through him from waking up to her. Prays his breath fogging the glass obscured his half mast morning? afternoon? evening? the fuck time was it anyway? wood and that she wouldn’t think less of him.
You’re a really good doctor.
He doesn’t deserve her.
He can’t bear to lose her.
She gets in and he drives her home and he saves her address in his phone’s GPS and stares at his ring as he drives home.
***
Sometime last month they had realised they actually lived quite close to each other after running into each other in the bread aisle of their local supermarket.
Rather, Mel had realised.
Langdon had been painfully aware ever since the first time he drove her home and the idea of running into her casually at the good pizza place or the post office or fuck it all the dive bar on the corner of her street one night when they had both had the kind of day which excused a lot of bad behaviour and maybe after enough drinks she would let him kiss her and it was too early in the morning for him pursue that train of thought.
He was dressing more carefully for errands, even styling his hair. Just in case.
Abby had surely noticed, but had spared him comment. She barely spoke to him at all these days.
Their marriage was fraying under the boulder weight of his failures and she hadn’t thrown him a parachute.
So, it’s a Wednesday morning when he knocks on Mel’s door.
They’re carpooling.
It’s good for the environment.
It’s bad for Langdon’s heart.
He knocks and Becca answers and they haven’t really ever had to talk to each other without Mel to mediate before and she says
“I think Mel slept through her alarm. Do you like cereal?”
Becca speaks with enough authority that these are statements, not questions.
She retreats and brings a bowl to the door and Langdon follows her in and he’s not really a breakfast guy but he might become one for the day just to sit and stare at Mel’s perfect, angelic sleeping face.
Passed out on the couch, mouth open, a spot of drool dried on her chin, neck bent at a truly satanic angle and he sits at her kitchen table as Becca piles several cereal boxes and at least four non-traditional breakfast condiments in front of him (no milk of any kind in sight) and chatters away as the sound of Mel’s alarm crashes through the walls. She must not have made it to her bed last night and she’s too out of it for the cacophony to wake her and he sits there in the chaos, captivated by the rise and fall of her chest beneath the oversized Type O Negative shirt, Peter Steele’s face between her breasts, right where he would have wanted to be. He memorises the shape of her legs in her worn tartan pyjama pants, curled up under her and braced on the side of the couch. She looked like heaven and he felt like hell in his jeans and t shirt and worn out university hoodie and the bastard ring on his finger.
He could never even dream of being good enough for her.
Becca said something he didn’t process and trundled off and shower noises overlaid the alarm and he tried really hard not to notice that Mel’s nipples were pert under her shirt.
She murmured and shifted slightly and he would have given his medical license to scoop her up and take her to bed and just hold her .
He didn’t have the heart to wake her.
Becca did. Fresh from the shower, she bellowed LAZYBONES! as she barreled into her bedroom, towel clad.
They were both late for work.
***
Langdon had fallen asleep at one of the computers near the nurses’ station, waking slowly to the sound of far off screaming from one of the trauma bays.
He remained feigning sleep for completely above board eavesdropping purposes.
Mel’s voice, definitely, he would been able to pick it out through twelve feet of concrete, he was so deeply attuned to noticing her. He guessed she was talking to Santos, based on her stressed undertone.
“He’s a very good doctor.”
“We have a lot of good doctors here, but most of them don’t look like they want to ask you to marry you every time you save a patient in their general vicinity.”
Santos, without question.
“He’s married, and . . . ”
“You knew exactly who I was talking about.”
Santos cuts Mel off and Langdon can picture the exact frustrated ‘dealing with Santos’ look Mel has on her face.
“He has a wife.”
Mel sounds defeated, as if Langdon actually considered his wedding ring a serious impediment. Half the reason he kept it on at work was to avoid questions and the other half was because they hadn’t technically signed any paperwork yet.
“He doesn’t look like he’s thinking about his wife when he looks at you. He looks like he wants to throw your legs over his shoulders and eat you out in the middle of the ER until that stupid fringe of his is wet with your come.”
Mel makes a sound like a toilet flushing and Santos cackles and as far as he can tell they both go and do their jobs or something.
Santos is right, Langdon has never looked at Mel and thought about the marriage rapidly dissolving around him. He doesn’t think about how the only time he sleeps in his marital bed are during the day on his night shift rotations while Abby is at work. He doesn’t think about how they live like roommates, pretending in front of the kids but largely learning to live separate lives.
He especially doesn’t think about how the last time he and Abby had sex, how he had to close his eyes and think about Mel. He’d thought about her tits, smaller than Abby’s at his estimation, bouncing as he fucked into her, wondering if she would like fast and hard, or the languid, rolling pace he preferred. He’d thought about her nipples, wondering whether they were the same delicate pink as her lips, or a seductive dusky brown. He’d wondered how they would feel in his hands as he rolled her nipples between his thumb and forefinger. He’d thought about how they would feel in his mouth and come to the question whether she would prefer him biting or sucking and how to make her cunt clench down on his cock and he’d explored that train of thought every time he had ten minutes alone in the bathroom without kids or wife or dog or responsibilities.
He hadn’t wanted ‘failure to perform’ to be added to his growing list of husbandly deficits, though after he felt unsatisfied, almost as if he hadn’t come. Abby seemed to pick up on his mood. Neither of them ever mentioned their bed death.
That was almost eight weeks ago and now she was avoiding him seeing her naked, running into the ensuite bathroom if he walked in while she was changing as if he hadn’t seen her body more times than either of them could count.
Langdon was pretty sure she was sleeping with someone in her parent’s group.
He hadn’t really cared enough to investigate.
Two months ago, Abby had floated the idea of separating, and he hadn’t fought her on it. He acquiesced quietly, knowing it would be the final nail in the coffin. Several rounds of rehab and a minor relapse had tested the fortitude of his marriage and exposed their decision to use non-traditional vows for weakness rather than progressiveness - no ‘in sickness or in health’ for them.
He was meant to be finding a new place, close by of course, for the kids, but had been using his majority night shift roster as an excuse. He figured he had about two weeks before Abby’s guilt about being the one to bring up divorce first, or annulment, as her parents would undoubtedly push for, ran through and he would have to get serious.
Vaguely, he wondered if he could convince Mel to come apartment hunting with him as an excuse to spend more time with her. They would get coffee and discuss merits of separate bedrooms for the kids vs the ability to afford food for them when they visited and he would convince her to move in and they would surely live happily ever after because he knew he would never find anyone who made him feel like he did when she smiled at him.
Some days she was the next best thing to the drugs he couldn’t even prescribe anymore and he knew that was unhealthy, the kind of thinking which he himself would order a psych consult for were he a patient, but he hadn’t done anything and he wouldn’t because she was too important but he would do absolutely anything to keep her in his life.
Gingerly, he opened one eye to Dana looking at him like he was a patient who said they didn’t believe in vaccination.
“You’re an idiot, Frank Langdon.”
***
Another three weeks pass before they sleep together.
The on call room was darker and colder than usual.
There was a bad storm, the kind you only see once or twice every couple years and the hospital was running on backup power, with most things functional with a few compromises, such as heating to non-critical areas.
It was freezing, cold enough for the air to fog in front of Langdon’s face as he breathed, thinking mutinous thoughts about how if he worked for a private hospital he would probably be warm right now. The storm was bad enough that there were staffing shortages, with roads blocked by minor floods or fallen trees so he and Mel, who were already there for the day shift, were sharing a split shift and Robby or Dana or someone in charge had designated the split as sleeping time.
The air was almost painfully cold on his skin as he shuffled into the dark room, shoulders hunched and his body curling in on itself to conserve heat.
Mel was already installed in one of the low beds, knees tucked up to her chest and hands bundled up around her face.
Langdon could hear from the faint rustling that she was shivering. Her lips were white, blending in with her skin and he missed the familiar rosiness of her cheeks, sallow as they were with the cold air.
He didn’t say anything.
Just looked at her, all wrapped up under three blankets like the goddamn cutest eskimo he had ever seen in his life and he wanted to help, to make even just one thing in her life easier.
Grabbing the blanket off his designated bed, he climbed over her, toeing his shoes onto the floor before settling in behind her. He draped the blanket over the two of them, her triple layer still between them, and pulled her closer.
She started to say something that sounded like you’re married and he liked that a lot less than you’re a good doctor so he replied,
“Only on paper.”
His tone was as emphatic as a cancer diagnosis and he stroked her back, hoping she would feel the absence of the ring he’d left in his car’s center console a week ago and had forgotten about until now.
Gradually, she relaxed against him, legs extending down, pressing into his heat. She shuffled back until she was mashed against him, tucked under one of his arms, body fitted exactly to his, accepting his warmth.
“Maybe,”
He heard her wet her lips, knowing what she wanted to say, but needing her to say it;
“Maybe, under the blanket? ”
As if he had ever had the power to deny her anything.
They rearrange, and as they settle he presses the kiss he’s held for her for so long to the nape of her neck.
She sighs into it, shivering lightly and leans back against him, hips pressing back in a way that makes him want to violate hospital policy.
He holds her, head tucked into her neck, arms tight around her, until she starts to feel less like an iceblock, restraining himself to kissing her neck softly every couple of minutes, sharing the closeness with her. He breathes her in and memorises her particular combination of deodorant, shampoo, light sweat and the barest ghost of some kind of floral perfume, barely hanging on after so many hours on shift.
She’s soft and relaxed and warm and he never felt like this holding Abby.
And, so, she sleeps while he floats and at some point the rise and fall of her breathing becomes the centre of his universe and all the beeping and screaming and noise of the ER falls away and he would have sworn under oath it had only been fifteen minutes but allegedly it’s two hours later and Dana comes to wake them. She looks at him like he’s a fool and shakes her head, holds up ten fingers for ten more minutes before backing out silently, off to bark orders at someone.
When his phone vibrates in his pocket he knows who it’s from.
Dana: You’re an idiot, Frank Langdon.