#er!barbie!reader

You have a deep love for your office. It’s not far from the pit itself, just a left turn down the hallway, and it’s not necessarily impressive, a shoebox filled with paperwork, cute pens, and arranged trinkets.

However, it might as well be Nirvana in the way it shelters you from the fluorescent lighting that makes your temples throb. From the metal-on-metal shriek of trauma carts. From the constant, looming threat of someone bleeding out within splatter range of your vintage suede ballet flats.

And you really hate blood. It hates you back, with passion.

An unfortunate dynamic for someone working as an administrative assistant in one of the busiest emergency departments on the eastern seaboard. But fate has always struck you as the kind of entity that laughs after delivering the punchline.

Today, the pit is practically foaming at the mouth. Before noon, someone’s child launched a juice box at you, the phone has been ringing off the hook with people demanding to speak to someone with actual authority (rude), and the discharge paperwork that you printed, you stapled (with a bow sticker, for morale), and you left in the outbox is apparently missing.

Which is how you find yourself back in the belly of the beast, bracing yourself as the noise and motion crash over you all at once.

You spot Dana’s blonde ponytail across the sea of moving heads. Your girl. Your one-woman who once stitched up a guy with a fork sticking out of his thigh while telling you your blouse looked cute and asking if you brought cupcakes again.

If anyone will know where your papers went, it’s her.

You take two steps toward salvation.

You do not make it to her.

“Hey there. You just gonna walk past without saying hi?”

You turn around with your usual default smile (the one you save for lost visitors and mildly terrifying surgeons), expecting someone familiar, or semi-familiar, or at least someone you’ve exchanged passive aggressive breakroom eye contact with once or twice.

But the man’s face that greets you doesn’t ring a bell. He’s got that aggressively forgettable look, like if you asked someone to draw a generic white guy from memory using only vague guesses and sad lighting. Pale. Tired-looking. Baseball cap pulled low over dull eyes. He could be someone’s uncle. He could be someone’s tax accountant. He could be a ghost. 

You blink at him, brows drawing together. 

“Sorry — do I… know you?” you ask, like maybe you forgot a name or an appointment or an entire conversation, which, in your defense, does happen.

“Nah,” he says. “But I swear, I’ve seen you in my dreams.” His smile widens, showing slightly uneven teeth. “I didn’t think angels worked the day shift.”

You laugh, because honestly, what else are you supposed to do? It’s not the worst pickup line you’ve heard. Not even top ten.

This place is practically a petri dish for bad flirting and worst timing, a simmering stew of hormones, narcotics, and people who’ve been sitting in plastic chairs for six hours with nothing to do but stare and develop confidence they did not arrive with. 

You’re pretty sure there was a study about it. Or maybe that was a tweet. Either way, it feels peer-reviewed by lived experience.

“That’s sweet,” you say, defaulting to sugar-coating like your life depends on it, even though it’s not sweet. Not at all. It’s weird. It’s deeply un-sweet. And you would very much like to disintegrate into a puff of strawberry-scented vapor and waft gently toward Dana’s desk. “But I’m pretty sure dream-me doesn’t work doubles. She’s probably napping. Or retired. Or, I don’t know, on a yacht somewhere with a pina colada.”

“Doubles, huh? I can tell,” he says, eyes dipping, just briefly, but long enough to make your skin prickle. “You’ve got that worn-in look. Real cute on you.”

Is that supposed to be a compliment?

Because worn-in sounds suspiciously close to run into the ground, and you’re not entirely convinced real cute is strong enough to save it. It’s like being called brave in a dress you didn’t realize was see-through.

You force a light laugh.

“Well, you know what they say,” you chirp, breezy, harmless. “No rest for the wicked.”

“Maybe what you need is a little after-hours entertainment.”  Then, casually, “What time you get off tonight?”

Your lip curls before you can stop it, and you have to mentally smooth it back into submission. Gross. The hospital air isn’t even sterile enough to filter out the way it sours between you, something rancid creeping in where banter (if you can even call it that) used to be. 

You don’t want to imagine what after-hours entertainment means to him, don’t want the visuals nor the explanation. 

But you do imagine what happens if you tell him to back off. Best case, you’re a bitch. Worst case, he follows you into the staff lot.

So you give him an out. Wrapped in politeness, sealed with a smile. Just enough plausible deniability to keep things from tipping. You tilt your head, shrug like it’s nothing.

“Tempting,” you say. “But my boyfriend’s already booked me for after-hours entertainment.”

You do not say that your boyfriend lives in your imagination. That he’s cobbled together from soap opera plotlines, your worst instincts, and a half-formed mental sketch labeled man who could end someone. 

“Yeah? Where’s he at then?”

You should have expected that response. Men like this only register rejection if it arrives somene else’s fists.

So you switch tactics. Fast. Panic jumps a little in your chest, but you press it down. Flatten it. Replace it with a square of your shoulders.

“He — he’s around,” you say, lifting your chin. “He works here. In the hospital. You know. With the… medicine.”

Smooth. So smooth.

And of all the people in this very large, very populated hospital, your brain reaches into its little Rolodex and picks Dr. Frank Langdon.

Mr. Monosyllabic Trauma Bay. ER Ken with rage issues and cheekbones that could slice steel. Professional proof that repression is alive and well in the greater Pittsburgh area.

Probably the single worst option for a fake boyfriend. He’s the guy who barely looks at you unless you’re blocking his path, and even then it’s just to sigh like you’ve personally ruined his afternoon. He’s moody. Dry. Practically allergic to small talk.

And yet somehow your brain plasters his face across your internal romance billboard like he’s the star instead of a guy who once told you to “get off the gurney, it’s not a toy.”

You tell yourself it’s because he’s convenient. Because no one would question a man like that defending you. He looks intimidating enough to scare off someone with a single glance.

But that’s not the truth. The truth is you’ve always had a thing for fixer-uppers, for a challenge.

And Langdon is the epitome of a challenge: rehab, recent divorce, a kid he only sees on alternating weekends because addiction rearranged his life into neat, painful compartments. 

He’s locked behind walls you’d very much like to scale, if only to prove you could. 

And despite your charm, your wit, your general tendency to leave people a little bit in love with you after three sentences, he remains immune. 

Still. Imagining him as your fake boyfriend has a certain appeal.

The man’s gaze sharpens. “Must not be very good at his job if he lets guys talk to you like this.”

You open your mouth to respond, something feminist and devastating in a fuck-you sort of way — something about how your boyfriend respects your boundaries and believes in your agency and doesn’t need to play caveman to prove his love — but then the universe does what it rarely, rarely does for you: it delivers.

A miracle in navy scrubs appears to your right. Langdon. 

You seize him. There’s no other word for it, treating his bicep as your personal stress ball. You worry you might be a second away from popping a blood vessel.

“He’s excellent at his job,” you blurt.

You are so going to hell for this. Straight to HR medical prison. Is that a thing? Doesn’t matter. You are definitely not passing Go, not collecting Frank’s approval. 

He looks down at you, startled. “What —”

“Aren’t you, honey?” you chirp, turning to him with the most desperate approximation of casual affection, your eyes doing all the heavy lifting as you beg him, silently and with every fiber of your being, please don’t ruin this, I’m in too deep, I’ll knit you another scarf, I’ll stop calling you Doctor Daddy in public (for a week), just go with it.

Langdon looks at you, then over at the guy, then back at you.

“I mean,” he finally says, in that same begrudgingly-human tone he uses when you ask him to open your pickle jars, “I’d like to think so.”

He’s still frowning. You’re not sure he understands what’s going on.

“Well, aren’t you a lucky bastard,” The man says, loud enough for the entire nurse’s station to hear. His voice is thick with something slimy, all false cheer and veiled challenge. “Good for you, man. You’re really punching up. Hope you’ve got a good grip on her.”

Langdon blinks once. Then again, slower. You can almost hear the internal gears clicking together, the pause where he reads between the lines and then draws a big red circle around the situation.

His head tilts, just barely, but enough that it radiates condescension, surgical grade.

“Yeah,” he says, voice dry as bone. “I’m still adjusting to the burden of being this blessed.”

“See? This is why I keep him around. The self-awareness. The humility.” You turn to the guy. “And the sarcasm? Complimentary. Limited time offer.”

Langdon doesn’t say anything at first. Just shifts his weight a little closer, the edge of his arm brushing yours, hand drifting to the small of your back like a warning, you’ve made your point, Barbie, let’s not give this creep another reason to open his mouth.

“Alright,” he says, “Let’s head back before I start living up to the reputation.”

You nod like you’ve been programmed to obey, limbs still buzzing with aftershock as he guides you down the corridor.

Your heart’s doing that fluttery, hummingbird thing it does when you almost trip in front of someone hot, or when Langdon says your name with too much gravel in his voice. You’re riding the adrenaline high and trying to walk in a straight line, which is difficult because your knees? Fully made of Jell-O.

Then, from behind, sleazy and absolutely not whispered enough —

“She’s even prettier from the back.”

Before your brain can register rage or disgust or a comeback involving a clipboard to the jaw, Langdon’s arm wraps around your waist.

He pulls you directly in front of him, his own body suddenly a full barrier between you and the hallway. Between you and that guy.

“Boyfriend privileges,” he says without looking back, “That’s a restricted angle.”

Interesting. Because that sounds a lot like proprietary language for someone who doesn’t notice you and definitely isn’t interested.

You try not to smile. You’re a mix of emotions right now, a contradiction in every right of the word. Angry with the stranger, a little hot for Langdon.

Once you’re finally out of sight, and earshot, you let go of the breath you’ve been holding. It escapes out of your lungs all at once, dramatic and overcompensating, and you immediately try to reel yourself back in. 

You slow your steps, glance at Langdon, and smirk. It’s shaky at first, but you smother it with sheer willpower. 

“Punching up,” you repeat, “Wow. I mean, congrats. That must be exhausting for you. Dating someone this far out of your league. I’m sure you’re doing your best.”

He side-eyes you, brow ticking up like he’s debating whether you’re worth engaging or just tolerating.

You can see the exact moment he gives in.

“You’re right,” he says flatly. “I should’ve gone for someone more attainable. A woman like you is not worth the stress.”

“That sounds like an admission that I’d ruin you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“So you think you could handle me?”

“I could handle you without breaking a sweat,” he says, too sharp, too fast.

“Prove it.”

Langdon goes still. The only part of him that betrays any reaction is his throat, tightening around a swallow so slow, you swear you can hear it. Like he’s physically pushing the words down. Forcing them back.

And for one single, stupid second, your heart dares to hope. You swear he just might do it. You imagine him stepping in, crowding your space, that unreadable look in his eyes sharpening into something hungry. You imagine his hand braced your head and his voice wrecked when he says, “Fine.” You imagine a lot of things. Because you are you, and your brain is an unmedicated place set to a Lana Del Rey soundtrack.

But none of that happens. 

Instead he swallows again. Clears his throat. Refuses to meet your gaze. “That… was hypothetical.”

You don’t let him off so easy. 

“That’s crazy, because it didn’t sound hypothetical.” You lean in. “But if you want to pretend you’re not tempted, that’s between you and your therapist. Assuming you have one. Which… mm. Might explain a lot.”

His jaw flexes. “If I needed a therapist, it’d be because of you.”

You beam at him. “Aw. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“That’s not a compliment.” 

“Didn’t say it was. You can insult me as long as you’re thinking about me afterward.”

He mutters something under his breath.

“I’m not participating in this conversation any longer.” He turns like that’s the end of it, then pauses. “And if that idiot tries something, come get me. You’ve got the situational awareness of a soap bubble.”

Another insult. You can recognize that. You can also recognize that your whole body is doing that glittery, fizzy thing it does anytime he’s around.

Because he just exists like that. Hot, mysterious, fundamentally allergic to saying what he means.

Anyway. Lost discharge papers. Terrible lighting. Emotional whiplash. Show must go on.

“The new intern claims Barbie’s been doodling your name with little hearts all over her forms. Somebody’s got it bad.”

Mateo’s statement floats over the nurses’ station diver.

It manages to slam straight into your self-image. Delicate tissue at the best of times, wedged between your left ventricle and the tiny circuit that compels you to adopt every sad house-plant at Trader Joe’s.

Yes it’s true, you do, for the record, employ thematic embellishments. A heart here. A flourish there. (Morale matters; medicine is bleak). That is not the same thing as ‘having it bad’. 

But the problem is apparently people can’t make that distinction, and now you can see it too clearly, a pack of first-years huddled together, snickering over your smittenness, spider-webbing a hairline crack right through the high-gloss competence you spent seventy-eight paychecks shellacking.

It’s that eighth-grade deja vu: the day Jack Harrison caught you tracing Mrs. Jack Harrison in bubble letters on your planner and passed the page down the row like contraband. 

The heat that bursts behind your ears now is the exact temperature of that day, when the whole cafeteria seemed to sync with your cardiac rhythm — thump, she likes him, thump. 

You straighten behind the med cart, ready to emerge and correct the narrative before it mutates any further, when Frank speaks first. “Ignore it. It’s just noise — I’m sure she’ll lose interest soon enough.”

Oh.

Something clamps shut inside you so abruptly it almost audibly clicks.

Like you’ve been fizzing under pressure all shift and someone, somewhere, has just screwed the cap on tight. The carbonation tears around blind, frantic for an exit.

Noise. The word expands until it feels the whole corridor. Noise, as in background nuisance, as in easily tuned out, as in the thin electrical whine of a dying bulb that nobody bothers fixing until someone from maintenance finally rips it out and tosses it. 

So that’s what he hears when you talk? A squeaky hindrance he tolerates out of courtesy? 

The lively back-and-forth you stored under maybe someday morphs, in one breath, into you pawing at a deadbolt while he waits for the scratching to stop. 

You pivot on silent flats, slip down the side corridor before Mateo or Frank registers movement. 

Three steps in, a shoulder clips yours — McKay, clutching a stack of imaging requests. Clipboards explode across linoleum. 

“Whoa, road-runner much?” she laughs, stooping. Her grin falters when she meets your deer-in-the-headlights stare. “Hey, you good? You’re kind of… vibrating.”

There’s no better word for it. Your fingers keep sparking against each other, your chin keeps twitching toward the main hall, and every nerve ending chants the same directive: bolt, wounded-fawn style, into the nearest underbrush before the hunter looks up. 

You drop to your knees, paper edges nicking your skin as you herd the spill into something vaguely stack-shaped.

Out of the corner of your eye, Frank and Mateo both turn at the clatter. Frank’s brows notch, mouth already forming the silent You okay?

You slap the stack into McKay’s hands.

“Peachy!” you babble, already sidestepping to block Frank’s sight-line. “Totally good. Very busy. High-priority sticker emergency. Life or death if you’re, like, six and waiting for discharge.”

Your shoes squeak as you bolt. 

There are several indicators, in Frank’s opinion, that suggest you’ve come down with something terminal, and the first arrives in the form of his inbox. 

Or rather, the absence of its usual infestation. 

When he finally gets ten uninterrupted minutes to wade through his overnight emails, there is only one from you.

A curt administrative note about revised intake-labeling protocol, plus an attached spreadsheet for the week’s front-desk coverage.

It is concise. Properly punctuated. Horrifyingly lucid. 

Frank stares at it a full second longer than necessary, as if more of you might reveal itself under scrutiny.

Because, usually, by this point, there are at least twelve.

They arrive in glitter-bomb bursts throughout the day. A few carry actionable intel. Most are digital magpies’ nests: random URLs, blurry memes, rogue exclamation points, and the kind of half-formed shower-thought nonsense you apparently consider too important to trust to your own mind.

He spends longer than he’s willing to admit at the computer waiting for more emails to come in.

They never do.

The second indicator presents itself when he swipes into radiology and, for the first time in recent memory, does so alone. 

No sudden apparition at his elbow, no imploring eyes, no breathless little “oops, forgot mine again,” delivered as though this is an unforeseeable act of the gods rather than a behavior pattern.

He tends to just hand the badge over without questions. 

There is no point doing otherwise. If not him, you’ll simply latch onto the next available soft touch with security clearance, and Frank would rather it be him. 

He frowns when the reader spits its green light at an empty hallway.

The third, and by far the most worrying, indicator arrives in the break room.

Frank boxes himself into a stolen minute, pours a cup, looks up too late, and finds you standing at the same counter. 

Usually this is your opening. Your preferred habitat. 

You’d reach across his body for sugar you absolutely do not need (you’re sweet enough as it is), clip his front with your ass, crowd his elbow while stirring, then look up like none of it was intentional, like he’s just a piece of furniture placed unfortunately in your path. 

He braces for impact. Nothing happens.

Instead you give a brisk nod, measure out a generous amount of creamer into your cup, and keep your radius fanatically intact. 

You leave before he can tally the damage.

The space beside him turns freezer-aisle cold. Frank’s fingers blanch on the mug handle. He blames the overzealous hospital ventilation for about half a second, then hears the excuse rattle around his own head and die there. 

He has half a mind to go after you. Catch you by the wrist before you get too far, steer you into a vacant bay, and do the whole thing properly since apparently no one else is treating this personality drop as emergent. 

History, exam, differential. What’s been siphoned out of you, and can he replace it?

In a better universe, that line of inquiry earns him one of your usual responses, “Should I unbutton for the stethoscope, Doctor?” 

But he can’t do that. Can’t go stalking after you like some lovesick asshole with a savior complex and a death wish. 

Especially not now when he is, at best, one bad headline away from vaporizing the fellowship he’s been clawing toward for years. He needs HR to stop looking at him like one more incident will finish the job rehab failed to. 

And beyond that, he’s been trying to starve the gossip before it gets any bigger. Partly for himself, sure. Mostly for you. 

This place has a long memory when it comes to his mistakes and a short one when it comes to anything decent he’s ever done. 

He’s not about to hand the hospital a fresh excuse to staple your name to his and let people act like you’re just another piece of collateral from the mess he made of himself. 

But shit he misses you. He wants your attention back on him. And the flirting and the smart mouth and the little collisions of your body with his like you’ve forgotten where one of you ends and the other begins. 

So if he can’t be obvious, he’ll be strategic. He’ll do what he does best. Lay the bait and wait for you to come to him. 

At two he messes with the thermostat. 

There’s a woman in Facilities who’ll adjust it for him without putting in a work order, no questions, an ongoing favor from the time she showed up in the ER with split knuckles and a story about slipping while replacing a vent cover. 

Frank stitched the cut closed in under six minutes, declined the point out that the wound looked a lot more like she’d punched through something than brushed against it, and earned himself a useful little pocket of goodwill in the process.

And, more often than not, Frank squanders that usefulness on you. 

A degree warmer in the mornings, sometimes two if the night crew has left the department with all the ambient warmth of a crypt, timed just before you blow in the front doors, already looking faintly wounded by the concept of central air.

It’s at sixty-six now. 

Low enough to summon you, high enough that no one can accuse him of weaponizing infrastructure for attention.

Although that is precisely what he’s doing. 

But it takes longer than expected for you to appear in his line of sight. And when you finally do, you pay him no mind.

You putter through the department in several layers: cardigan, coat, fleece, thermal tights, hands tucked into your sleeves.

You look pissed. You look adorable. Frank resents learning those two things can coexist so easily.

He tries to catch your eye but you just keep moving through the pit like an overdressed cumulonimbus radiating indignation at every ceiling vent, refusing to seek him out.

It makes no sense. You should have filed a verbal complaint with him by minute eight.

And at minute forty-five he watches (sourly) as Garcia slides up beside you, a still-steaming warmer blanket perfectly folded over her arm. 

“You look frostbitten,” she murmurs, settling the plush square around your shoulders. 

You exhale a blissed little thank-you and lean into her, soaking up the heat Frank had planned to supply by proxy.

Garcia lifts her gaze, finds him across the pit, and winks. Problem solved, ER Ken, she mouths, fluffing the blanket with exaggerated care just to make sure he clocks her fingerprints all over his failed experiment. 

Problem not solved. In fact, freshly enlarged. 

Frank later lumbers down the hallway toward your office like a kicked senior dog chasing the last scrap of affection from its owner. He clutches the print-outs in his hand so tight they rasp with every step. 

He finds you at your desk, hair fallen in stray ribbons across your face, mouth pulled down at the corners while the monitor paints you blue. Concentration or maybe displeasure. Hard to tell from this angle.

He hovers, suddenly unsure whether to knock on the actual door or just the wall of silence you’ve erected. 

He opts for the literal door, two knuckles, two quick knocks.

Your head lifts. Something bright like excitement sparks across your face then the expression collapses, shutters down to business. Like you remembered all at once the circumstances surrounding him and whatever stupid hope had leapt up before you could stop it. 

He hates that expression immediately. Hates that it exists. Hates even more that he can’t quite sort out why seeing it on your face feels like a personal failure. 

“Need this form revised,” he says, lifting the mangled stack. “Thought maybe you could escort me to radiology? Could use the company, and you terrify the techs less than I do.”

It’s needy and transparent and he knows. He doesn’t care how it sounds as long as you say yes.

“I’m, uh, really busy at the moment, Dr. Langdon. Pending labs, two admits… might be a while.” You rattle it off too fast, like reading a grocery list you just wrote in your head. He knows every item is invented on the spot. 

“Humor me, okay? I’ve had seven hours of people telling me to wait my turn. I need one cooperative face before I implode.”

You worry the inside of your lips, eyes flicking to the doorway.

Finally you nod. “Fine.”

One syllable, and it hits like epinephrine. He can’t stop the microscopic lift of his chin, lungs taking in a fuller breath as if permission itself has oxygenated the air. 

He angles toward the hallway, offering the smallest tilt of his shoulder so you can merge. 

“Thanks,” he says, voice pitched towards casual.

“Sure.”

He glances at you to his left. Goosebumps litter the expanse of your arms. He eases his stride so you’re shoulder-to-shoulder instead of half a step behind. “You cold?”

“Nope. Perfectly comfortable.” You answer while simultaneously yanking your sleeves down to your knuckles.

He snorts. “Yeah and I’m the post child for impulse control.”

You stop mid-stride, eyes narrowing. “That’s not funny, Frank.”

His first name. That’s progress, he thinks. Even laced with contempt, hearing it from you feels like an exhale after hours underwater.

He knew you wouldn’t like the joke. Made it anyway, cheap currency to buy a spark out of you. If spark equals fury, so be it. Fury beats indifference every time. 

“Yeah, poor taste. Reflex, I guess.” He winces, thumb rubbing the knot at his collar. 

You huff through your nose and pivot forward again, pace clipped. Frank falls in step a half-pace behind, then edges closer.

“Cardigan looks new,” he ventures. “Color suits you.”

“It’s old,” you say, eyes still on the hallway ahead. 

Frank smothers another wince. Stupid. By this point the day has offered him more than enough evidence that the usual methods are dead on arrival.

Compliments, bait, orchestrated coincidence, all of it useless now that you’ve apparently decided to treat him like a mildly inconvenient coworker.

That’s the part he likes least. The sudden sense that he can’t locate himself in relation to you anymore. 

The part he likes least changes when he finds you twenty minutes later, stationed beside some orthopedic meathead, looking luminously alive.

No longer wan or withdrawn or visibly dying of whatever new strain of virus you’ve contracted. But smiling. A laugh bubbling out, fingers corkscrewing a curl the way they do when you’re charmed.

Apparently you can still flirt. You can still sparkle. You just can’t seem to do it anywhere near him. 

Before his cortex can veto, he’s crossing the floor, stopping dead at your shoulder. 

“Just need a status update on Mrs. Carlson’s tib-fib before radiology locks the board.” 

Mrs. Carlson, insofar as he knows, is fictional, but her imaginary fracture buys him two startled glances and three precious seconds inhaling the vanilla-and-alcohol warmth of your laugh. 

Meathead flips through pages. “Um… we don’t have a Carlson today.”

Frank fakes a thoughtful frown. “Huh. Alias, then. Happens every weekend — patients think we’re the witness-protection program.” 

Ortho squints. “I can pull the day-sheet again —”

“Good idea,” Frank says, nodding like a supervising attending. “Check PACU and the boarding queue; wouldn’t want to miss an imaging window.” 

The guy mutters agreement and slinks off, shoulders hunched in duty. Frank turns to you, expression suddenly softer. 

Crossing your arms, you cock a hip where Ortho had been. “Impressive diversion tactic. Did Mrs. Carlson spring fully formed from your imagination, or is she a previous imaginary friend?” 

The fury’s back again. 

Frank scratches at his jaw. “Didn’t think it through.” 

“You think plenty. Maybe just tell me what you want instead of throwing Jason under a bus.” 

Jason. Stupid name for a stupid guy, he thinks.

What he wants is one honest conversation and maybe your ass back where it belongs — in his personal space. He can’t say that last part though, so he settles for the first in the only terms he knows how.

“What I want is a five-minute consult with you. Somewhere quieter.” He flicks a glance at the empty bay down the hall, then back to your crossed arms. “Please.” 

You study him for a moment, then nod once.

“Bay twelve’s open. Five minutes, then I’m due back at my desk.”

Frank files the claim under Questionable. You treat workstations like bar stools — occupied only until something shinier beckons. It’s not the desk ticking in your head; it’s the idea of being walled in with him past the half-life of your composure.

He watches tension climb your scapulae as you march ahead, timing yourself like a patient on a stress test. 

Bay 12 yawns open and swallows you both.

The instant the noise of the corridor seals off, Frank feels his pulse redeploy to places it has no business patrolling. Temples, wrists, the hollow just above his sternum.

For one beat you stand opposite like combatants in a children’s-duel-turned-board-meeting: arms folded, backs straight, pretending neither of you can feel the static in the air. 

“Right.” He claps once (why did he clap?) and immediately regrets it. “Consult.” 

Your brows tip up, perfectly polite, perfectly guarded. “On our imaginary tib-fib?” 

Frank’s ears go hot. 

“Yeah, about that. I might have — misallocated resources.” He forces a laugh that sounds like a cough that sounds like a car refusing to start. “Look, I just —” A breath, steady, like he tells interns before a lumbar puncture. “I’ve noticed you’ve been… different. Quieter. Less —” he gestures vaguely, like there’s a medical term for starlight. “I thought maybe I’d done something.” 

“Frank, I’ve been at this hospital for three years. You’ve existed in approximately one and a half of them. If I’m different and you assume it’s about you, that’s either breathtaking narcissism or —” a small, lethal smile “— maybe something else.” 

Something else. He recognizes your own bait and still lunges. 

“Yeah. Maybe.” Quiet. Direct. No place to hide in it. “Maybe I did assume it had something to do with me because I wanted it to.” His knuckles sweep his jaw. He never looks away from you. “Because if it’s not that, then I’m standing here making an ass out of myself for no reason, and I’d actually prefer the narcissism.” 

You hesitate. “I’m just… giving you a little breathing room, okay?”

“Breathing room?” He moves toward you impulsively before catching himself, eyes wide, almost pleading. “I don’t — fuck, I don’t want breathing room. What are you doing that for?”

“What do you think?” You laugh, but it’s hollowed out completely. He doesn’t like the sound. “I spend half my shift practically trailing after you. Everyone sees it. I just —,” you purse your lips. “I don’t want to embarrass myself any more than I already have.”

He frowns at that. You’ve never once moved through this place like someone worried about looking foolish. 

You flirt when you want to flirt, laugh when you want to laugh, and say things most people would bury alive before letting them leave their mouths. You leave little traces of yourself everywhere. Lip gloss prints on coffee lids. Heart-dotted notes. Sweaters draped over chairs that aren’t yours. There is nothing cautious about you, nothing particularly governed by social survival.

Even your embarrassment tends to be theatrical, temporary, burned through fast and replaced with another bad idea. He has never known you to care this much about the audience. 

“What are you talking about?”

He watches as your eyes break off and land somewhere past his shoulders, as if the answer might be stapled to the wall.

“I heard what you said earlier.”

Frank’s brow furrows harder, causing a headache. “What?”

“With Mateo.” Your arms tighten across your middle. “About me being ‘just noise.’ About how I’d lose interest soon enough.” Your eyes flick up to his for a second. “So I thought maybe I should help you out with that.” 

Blood sluices out of his skull, then surges back so hard his vision pulses.

For a beat, Frank just stands there, knocked completely sideways by the realization that you heard that, heard those exact words with none of the context that had made them make sense in his head. Christ. 

No wonder you pulled back. No wonder you’ve been different. He’d been cornered by Mateo outside the med-supply cage, half-listening to him gleefully recycle some intern gossip thread like it was harmless entertainment, and all Frank had been trying to do was kill it fast.

Shut it down. Mateo was fishing for a reaction, for confirmation, for anything he could carry back into the staff room and let breed. 

Robby’s got a disciplinary file half built with his name on the tab. One more thing and he’ll be back in that carpeted purgatory explaining how “post-rehab Frank” was just a limited-time offer.

The only thought had been do not feed this. Do not let you become a bigger target than you already are. 

“No, that’s — fuck.” He breaks off, already hating how badly he’s said everything. “That’s not what I meant. I called the intern noise. The gossip. The whole stupid conversation. I meant she’d get bored and move on if I didn’t exacerbate it. I did not mean you.”

If anything, the entire point had been to avoid throwing you under the bus by acting like there was nothing there to poke at. And somehow that attempt has landed here, in front of him now, having done exactly the opposite. 

You look at him for a second like you’re trying to decide whether to believe him and coming up short. 

“I can handle it, you know. I’m a big girl. If I’m too much, or if I’ve been making you uncomfortable, you can just tell me.” The flat seam of your lips is more withering than any shout. “I’d rather hear it straight than keep walking around here feeling like some joke everybody else is already in on.” 

“I know you could,” he says, too fast, like he needs to get there before you decide otherwise. “I know you could handle it. And if that was what this was, I would’ve said it, yeah?” His chest keeps punching at the scrub top, lungs over-ventilating around the terror of being misunderstood.  “I don’t want you to stop flirting with me. I don’t want you to stop hovering or talking or… any of it. I — I fucking need it — You.” 

“Frank…”

His eyes flick down to your mouth, then up again, like he hates that you can see him thinking it.

“If I do something stupid right now,” he says, voice low, “are you gonna slap me?” 

He’s half begging for the hit, half begging on the green light. 

Your exhale stutters into a breathy laugh. “Depends how stupid.” 

Stupid wins. 

Frank closes the last inch and touches his mouth to yours.

Soft at first, like he’s half-afraid you’ll vanish. You don’t. You stay… then soften… then melt, and everything inside him rushes forward. The second your lips part, the kiss deepens. Hunger and apology braided tight.

His hand rises to the back of your neck, thumb stroking the hair there, and the kiss tips from cautious to greedy in a single heartbeat. 

He’s been starving himself on purpose, convincing the ache it was dietary. You don’t feed a craving that noble, he’d told himself in a dozen graveyard-shift pep talks. Now the craving is kissing back, and his resolve crumbles like a sugar packet. 

You curve forward, spine bowing until his shoulders hit the curtain and the metal rings screech on the rail, but the world past the vinyl may as well be orbiting another sun. You both break into breathless laughter, but neither of you stops.

They warned you about selfish addicts, a voice needles.

This is exactly what they meant: taking the one thing that makes the ward bearable and unintentionally hurting its feelings to keep it safe — then stealing it anyway.

He swallows the guilt, chases it with another taste of peppermint. 

Frank pulls back just far enough to speak, foreheads still touching. “No more breathing room, okay?” 

You pretend to ponder, then glance at the inch (maybe) separating your bodies. “Pretty sure you just repossessed every cubic inch of it.” 

“Good,” he says, thumb stroking the tendon at your nape like he’s checking his own pulse there. “I’m keeping it.” 

Selfish, a reprimand flickers, but he can’t imagine surrendering the warmth that’s finally tugged his chest open. 

Then the hallway pager shrieks, reminding you that the world still exists and someone probably needs a doctor who isn’t currently making out behind a curtain. 

You both straighten, slower than necessary, Smooth hair, reset badges. 

As you step through the divider he catches your hand, gives it a quick, secret squeeze.

You squeeze back, and the grin you trade in that split-second says everything the rumor mill never could: whatever this is, it’s no longer background noise.

MARIA NOTE hi hi hi thank you for reading and witnessing er barbie and franks FIRST KISS!!!!!!!!!! behind a questionably sanitary curtain, no less. may their pager batteries die forever so we get more smooch time. ₊ ⊹🪻 ✧˚. ᵎᵎ 🪴

There were, conservatively, one thousand things you wanted to tell Frank Langdon in the ten months he was gone in rehab.

Realistically, it was closer to a million. Possibly a billion. The number started snowballing around week three and never stopped, just stacked itself up like the seventy-six unread emails currently rotting in your inbox under the subject line Friendly Reminder!!!

You wanted to tell him about the coffee shop that opened two blocks from your apartment in month one.

A tiny, overly priced place with exposed brick and a chalkboard menu and oat milk in little ceramic pitchers, and how you’d gone in excited and came out with something called a lavender haze latte that tasted like drinking a candle and cost fourteen dollars.

You stood outside afterward holding it in both hands, blinking at traffic, thinking, Frank would have something horrible to say about this place.

He would call it stupid. He would say lavender belongs in cleaning products.

You would accuse him of having no whimsy.

It would’ve been perfect.

You wanted to tell him about the plant you’d bought in month two because you read somewhere that having something alive in your apartment was good for your mental health and how it had died in month three despite what you could only describe as over enthusiastic care. 

You wanted to tell him about the movie you’d seen alone in month four.

You wanted to tell him about how your upstairs neighbor had gotten a dog in month five. A large dog. A loud dog. A dog that sounded, at three in the morning, like it was dragging a full-grown man across hardwood floors.

And how your best friend got engaged in month six and married in month seven in a courthouse three blocks from the hospital.

You wore a brown bridesmaid dress that he would have found hideous.

In month eight you cut bangs. In month nine you grew them back out, because apparently you are not built for radical reinvention, just small, glittery delusions of it.

And in month ten, your brother called, two years clean now.

All you could think about was Langdon and whether he would sound the same.

None of that, of course, makes it anywhere near him.

Because you know yourself. You know you are not built for the unobtrusive support that a situation like this requires.

You are built for other things. You are confetti and volume and love that announces itself when it enters a room. 

You are the person who cries at discharge reunions and leaves affirmation Post-its on lockers in looping cursive and once spent forty minutes making a get-well card for a man you spoke to for six.

You are color and over-involvement and “just checking in!!! 💕” at exactly the wrong time.

Your brother had spent the better part of his early twenties disappearing in increments so gradual you’d almost missed them.

Almost.

You’d seen enough, toward the end, to know something was wrong, and you’d responded the way you respond to everything. Which was with overwhelming, well-intentioned, catastrophically misguided love.

Calling too much, showing up too often, making yourself so present in his orbit that he’d finally, in a moment you still think about more than you should, looked at you with exhausted eyes and said you make everything harder, you know that?

He hadn’t meant it, or he had, or it had been the addiction talking, or it had been him.

You never fully sorted that out. 

You only sorted yourself into categories.

A lot. Possibly too much, if your brother had been even partially correct in the things he’d said during the worst of it. And perfectly lovely when the world is stable and mutual and fun.

But when someone is clawing their way back to shore? When the water needs to be still? You are a wake. You are ripples. You are motion.

And motion, no matter how well-intentioned, can look like danger to someone trying not to drown.

Which is why you’ve been floating around ER like a porcelain figurine set too close to the edge of the shelf since Langdon came back eight days ago.

You meant to act normal, to slide back into the old rhythm as if ten months were nothing but a scheduling error, but instead you swung so far toward composure that it hardened into distance.

Calling him Dr. Langdon with a formality that made the nurses visibly confused, dropping his coffee and leaving before he could say thank you, finding extremely urgent reasons to be in other parts of the hospital whenever he was stationary for too long.

You, the person who once followed him into a supply closet mid-argument because you refused to let him win on a technicality, are now treating him like a volatile chemical spill.

Contain. Do not agitate. Maintain distance.

“The compression bandages are backordered until Thursday. Again. And — are you even listening?”

You are, in theory, a participant in this exchange with your favorite charge nurse.

In practice, your entire consciousness is fixated on a scuff mark on the counter that has abruptly become the most compelling object in the building.

You are not, under any circumstances, allowing your gaze to drift toward the main corridor where he might appear. 

You are running probabilities instead. Three corridors. One potential Langdon sighting.

Corridor A is likely. Corridor C not so much. Corridor B leads to the stairwell he takes when he avoids the elevator, because elevators are a thing for you and apparently also a thing for him and that shared vulnerability is a landmine.

“Yup,” you hum, transferring the lollipop to the other side of your mouth because if your mouth is full, you cannot blurt something you’ll regret.

Like, for example, So how is he? Or Has he been… okay? Or Does he look tired to you?

You want to ask Dana if he’s coping. If he’s sleeping. If he’s eating. 

You let the sugar dissolve slowly instead.

“That’s the third time this quarter,” Dana continues, steady and unimpressed. “I need you to flag it with supply before end of shift. Not tomorrow. Today.”

“Already on my list.”

“It wasn’t on your list this morning.”

“It’s on my list now.”

Dana lifts her head slowly, the clipboard dipping just enough for you to see the full, unfiltered skepticism assembling across her face like storm clouds over a very specific, very pink horizon.

Her gaze flicks to the lollipop. Back to you.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Pediatric stash.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m cold and my blood sugar is low,” you say, like that settles it.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It answers the important one.”

She exhales through her nose. 

“It’s for kids post-procedure.”

“And I am post-something,” you reply, because if the last ten months don’t qualify as a procedure then what were they? Surgical removal of delusion. Metaphorical incision. Sutures pending.

Dana narrows her eyes like she’s about to connect dots you would prefer remain decorative.

You smile anyway. Cherry red grin. Sugar blooming sharp against your tongue.

Emotional trauma counts. Sugar is medicinal. These are facts you have decided. If pediatric patients get comfort candy after invasive events, then you absolutely qualify. Your heart has been under anesthesia for eight whole days.

You gather your things, tucking loose forms into place. “Okay so I’ll get the supply flag first thing and then —”

“The secondary intake tray,” Dana says quickly, eyes darting over your head.

You falter mid-sentence. “— start on the Tues — sorry, what?”

“Secondary intake tray,” she clarifies, clearing her throat awkwardly. “It’s backed up.”

“I cleared it this morning.”

“It’s backed up again.”

You frown. That doesn’t track. You are very good at your job. You take pride in not missing things. Things don’t simply… repopulate.

Dana is still not looking at you. She’s looking slightly to the right. Slightly behind you.

You brow furrows. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Her mouth twitches. A shrug.

“Don’t know what to tell ya, kid.”

“Dana, that’s not —” you start, already stepping forward like you can physically tug her back by the edge of her scrub top and demand adult supervision. “ — helpful,” you finish weakly to the air, watching her retreating back as she rounds the corner without so much as a glance over her shoulder.

“Hey.”

You yelp.

Then spin at full velocity and immediately almost knock yourself unconscious on a metal supply rack because apparently you are committed to dying in the most humiliating way possible.

Except you don’t.

Because a hand shoots out and braces against the shelf with a sharp metallic thud just before your skull makes contact. You feel the whoosh of air as your hair brushes his wrist, your breath tumbling out of you in a soft gasp.

Langdon stands there, close enough that the world narrows sufficiently. His arm angles above your shoulder, creating a small, accidental shelter around you. A human parentheses.

Neither of you moves. 

This close, you can see the tiny flecks of lint clinging to his navy scrubs. The deep, inky blue that makes his skin look warmer, his shoulders broader. 

Fucking Dana.

“Thanks,” you say, the lollipop knocking awkwardly against your teeth. “For the — yeah. The hand thing.”

“Mm.”

“I was going to be fine, for the record,” you add. “I have a very hard head.”

“I know.”

Does he mean stubborn? Resilient? Reckless? Does he mean you talk too much? That you barrel into things without looking?

You decide, strategically, not to investigate.

“You know, most men just ask for my number instead of —” your eyes flick up to his, the smile already there, already doing the thing it does, “ — pinning me to —”

You think about the water. Stillness. Wake. Motion. Drowning.

So the word dies mid-air like you’ve bitten down on it too hard.

“Sorry, um, yeah, thanks again,” you murmur, composure snapping back into place like a cardigan buttoned too tightly, “I have to go log some requisition forms.”

He stops you from moving, caging you in further, bicep tightening to the right of your face.

“Pinning you to —” he says, almost mildly, like he’s genuinely invested in your unfinished thought, “— whatever surface is most convenient?”

You take the lollipop out of your mouth because something in your chest just dropped and you need full oxygen.

The tables, you think distantly, have turned. Spectacularly.

In a way that feels karmic because you have been on the delivering end of this for two years and somehow failed to anticipate what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of it from him specifically. 

Tongue like sandpaper. Heat crawling up your neck. Every coherent thought evacuating the premises in an orderly single-file line.

Is this how he feels? When you do your thing, when you say the things you say, when you look at him the way you look at him? Does it feel like this?

Probably not. This is probably just the baby blues working on you.

The jawline, the forearms, the stupid unbothered competence of him, the crush you’ve been nursing like a part-time job for longer than you’re willing to put a number on.

“Forms,” you say. “I have to go log —”

“You said that already.”

“I’m reiterating the point,” you reply quickly. “For emphasis. It’s a completely valid rhetorical —”

His hand closes around the lollipop stick between your fingers and lifts it away.

“Hey!” You reach for it immediately. He holds it up just out of reach, not mockingly, just enough to make you aware of the proximity required to reclaim it. “That’s — okay, very funny, can I have that back, that is a choking hazard in the wrong hands —”

“Sure,” he says easily. “Talk to me first.”

“About what?”

You’re not stupid. You know exactly what about. And he’s not stupid, he’s arguably the least stupid person in this building, which is why you knew he’d notice. 

You just operated under the wildly naive assumption that noticing and confronting were two entirely separate categories of human behavior.

That there would be a little more distance between observation and confrontation, a buffer wide enough for you to assemble something articulate.

“About you. You’ve been… off,” he continues, choosing the word like he doesn’t want to make it heavier than it already is. His voice lowers on the last part, a half step down, conscious of the open hallway around you. “With me.”

“Off,” you repeat, like the word is unfamiliar to you. “That’s — I mean, I wouldn’t say off that’s such a strong adjective. Maybe you could say temporally misaligned.”

“With me,” he reminds you.

“Yes, but contextually,” you press on, because if you keep talking maybe you can outrun the implication. “There’s been significant planetary congestion lately. Mercury, Venus, something is in opposition to something else, and when that happens it can create this weird atmospheric pressure that makes people instinctively recalibrate their interpersonal radius.”

“Interpersonal radius,” he deadpans.

“Yes.” You nod with full conviction. “Like gravitational fields. It’s physics adjacent.”

He watches you without interrupting, which is frankly the worst possible choice he could make because now you have room to continue.

“And I just think it would be irresponsible to ignore cosmic warning signs,” you finish, slightly breathless. “So if I have been momentarily… radius-adjusted, that is not off. It’s just planetary compliance.”

He watches you for a long second. 

“Or,” he finally says, “you could just tell me what’s actually going on. And if it’s the thing I think it’s about —” he pauses, just briefly, “ — if this is about the pills, just say so. If you don’t want to be around someone with that kind of history, that’s — I get it.”

“Frank.”

His name comes out with more feeling than you intended.

“No. Absolutely not, that is not — no.” You can hear the desperation in your voice. “My brother went to rehab. Did you know that? You didn’t know that. He had a whole — it was bad, and I missed it, and then I saw it and I handled it the way I handle everything because I don’t have a great history of pacing myself and I suffocated him and I didn’t want to do that to you and —”

You stop speaking and for a second you don’t even register why, until the echo of your own voice catches up to you and you hear what you just said the way he must have heard it.

Unfiltered and personal and too much. 

The blood leaves your face in one long sweep, drains all the way down to somewhere around your kneecaps, and then reverses course and comes back with compounding interest, flooding back up in a wave so thorough you can feel it in your ears. 

You were supposed to be controlled. I

nstead you have handed him a piece of your worst fear with absolutely no packaging, no warning, no flattering lighting to soften it. 

You can feel yourself wanting to pull it back, to laugh it off, but it’s already out there, sitting between you in plain view.

“That’s not what this is,” he says after a moment.

“What?”

“That’s history,” he continues. “This is you deciding what I can handle without asking me. You don’t get to preemptively protect me from yourself. Especially not based on something that had nothing to do with you in the first place.”

“That’s not what I meant,” you say, almost defensive now. “I’m not trying to manage you. I just — I know how I can be.”

You have relocated your gaze to a point near his collar. Specifically the second button. It is a very neutral button. It has no opinions about any of this.

“I know exactly how you can be and I don’t have a problem with it. What I have a problem with is you avoiding me. I don’t want you different.”

“You say that now,” you mutter.

“I’m saying it consistently.”

The words hit you in a place that has been braced for impact. You’ve been preparing for boundaries. For a version of him that came back with sharper edges and less tolerance for pink stationery and overenthusiastic check-ins.

You had assumed, with the certainty of someone who has loved difficult people before and learned what it costs, that there would be a list. Of things that were too much now. Of habits and tendencies and particular varieties of you that didn't fit into the life he was carefully rebuilding.

You had built the whole picture. You had pre-grieved it, even.

You swallow. “Okay.”

The word comes out unadorned, unqualified, the smallest thing you've said all conversation, and somehow the most honest.

A door opening instead of a speech about doors.

He raises an eyebrow. “Okay as in we’re done pretending we’re coworkers who’ve never spoken? Should I expect the innuendos to resume at full capacity?”

Heat creeps into your cheeks before you can stop it.

“I don’t just flip a switch,” you say, lifting your chin slightly like that will restore authority. “There’s a warm-up period.”

“Of course,” he says, a flicker of something pressing at the outmost corner of his mouth. “No pressure.”

“…Can I have that back now?” you ask, nodding toward the lollipop.

He looks at it like he forgot he was holding it.

And then, without breaking eye contact — without so much as a flicker of hesitation, without the decency to look even slightly sheepish about what he is clearly about to do — he lifts it and puts it in his mouth.

“That’s not —” you start.

“Choking hazard,” he says around it, calm as ever. “Wrong hands.”

He steps past you, brushing your shoulder just barely as he goes.

“Log your forms,” he adds over his shoulder.

You don't move for a moment.

The hall continues without you. The noise, the motion, the relentless forward momentum of a place that does not pause for anything.

You think you might be okay. You think, for the first time in ten months, you actually might be.

You also make a small, private note that the next time Frank Langdon puts something of yours in his mouth without asking, you are going to say something about it that will require him to take a very long walk and reconsider his life choices.

You're a patient person. You can wait.

And there is also a ninety-nine percent chance you’ve broken a nail, misplaced your lip gloss, or encountered some other minor inconvenience you’re blowing out of proportion.

Unfortunately, Frank has never been good at gambling with that one percent where you are involved.

He lasts twelve whole seconds before he’s moving towards the sound of your voice.

He finds you balanced on the very edge of your desk, head cranked so far back the ends of your hair brush the wall. If not for the thin red ribbon escaping your nostril he’d assume you’d discovered a fascinating constellation in the acoustic tiles.

Tissues have overtaken the room. They’re balled in your fist, strewn over your skirt, and scattered across the floor like paper-white snowfall in progressively bloodier clumps.

Frank’s stomach gives one hard, unpleasant turn he would never admit.

Arterial spurts he can irrigate without flinching, but that single ruby trail slipping over your lip uncorks a primitive alarm that gallons of stranger-blood never reach.

He smothers the reaction beneath irritation, where most things involving you seem safest. 

“Sit forward,” he orders, already crossing the room.

“But then it’ll all come out.”

“That’s the idea. Tilting back doesn’t stop the bleeding, it sends it down your throat.” He hand closes around the back of your neck as he guides your chin toward your chest. “Forward. Pinch the soft part. Breathe through your mouth.”

You start to pinch, squeak at the warm smear, and snatch your hand away. “I don’t like this. I really don’t like this, Frank.” 

Frank intercepts, lacing his fingers over yours to trap them against your lap, then uses his other hand to pinch your nose for you. 

“There,” he says, voice low. “Five minutes exactly. If you faint, aim for me — not the floor.”

Your eyes go saucer-wide. “What if I —”

“Breathe.” He tightens his grip by a millimeter. “And stop narrating your imminent demise.” 

Whatever you try to say next comes out as a damp squeak. Frank catches only the shape of the word bad dissolving into his skin. Your hand not trapped between his on your lap moves to fist in the fabric of his shirt just above his waistband.

“Look at me.” He waits until your frightened eyes settle on his. “Did something hit you in the face?”

You shake your head.

“Any dizziness before the bleeding started?”

Shake.

“Headache?”

Another shake. Your chin tips just enough to croak, “Promise me you’ll wear navy to my funeral service. Brings out your eyes.” 

“You’re not dying.” Frank can feel each shaky mouth-breaky fan over his knuckles, warm and sugary from the iced coffee you like.

He could probably step back. Delegate. Page someone else. But instead he frees the hand pinning yours, fishes a mildly wrinkled square of gauze from his pocket and tucks it beneath his pinched fingers. 

You twitch, gearing up for another smartass one-line, but Frank is faster. His grip slides south, heel of his palm sealing over your lips. 

“Enough,” he murmurs, though he isn’t sure whether the word is meant for you or the sudden satisfaction he feels.

Your eyes go round instantly, lashes trembling against his knuckles in soft sweeps, and for one suspended second, you are entirely still beneath his palm, waiting. You don’t resist. You simply watch for whatever instruction he gives next. Frank’s always loved wringing little sounds out of you, but there’s a darker pleasure in silencing them, feeling all that frantic spark tamp down because his palm tells it to. 

His pulse gives a sharper, heated thud. Adrenaline, he decides, because the honest explanation makes him sound like the sort of man he prefers pretending he isn’t.

He releases your mouth slowly, almost reluctantly. 

Your lips stay parted, expression sparking indignation that might work if you weren’t still white-knuckling his scrub top at his waist. He notes the possessive little grip, lets it thrill him, and doesn’t hurry you to let go.

A minute more and the crimson drop becomes a faint, reluctant stain.

He holds steady anyway, listening while you recount — between congested gulps of air — how one innocent “tiny little sneeze” plus desert-level ER air equals a crime scene on your cream-colored skirt. You also note he’ll inherit your record collection “if the reaper circles back.”

When he judges it safe, he swaps the soaked gauze for a fresh square, thumb ghosting over the soft swell of your cheek.

Mascara has pooled in damp half-moons and your bottom lip trembles with leftover fight-or-flight. The sight makes him want to tuck you under his coat, then scold you like a brat for scaring him over something so stupid.

“You’re staying right here for ten minutes,” Frank says, already gathering the ruined tissues into the trash. “I’ll grab you some juice.”

You lift one finger. “It has to be —”

“Apple. Yes, I remember.”

Frank sets the brimming trash bin beside the doorway and reaches for the door handle.

“Thank you for helping me, Dr. Langdon.”

He starts to say — That’s my job — then notices the impish tilt of your smile, the bright specks dancing in puffy eyes.

Somehow you’re no less tempting even with your frazzled appearance. Hell, maybe even more so. 

“Unfortunately, I’m uninsured.” Your thighs drift apart, no more than the width of two fingers, but the cherry-red smear on your inner knee guides his gaze down the runway of skin. “Could we work out some kind of private payment plan?” 

His eyes hitch to the shadowed junction of your skirt, snap back to the gold flecks in your irises. A single beat hammers in his ears. 

“That maneuver,” he murmurs, voice gravel-thick, “just bought you an extra ten on the clock. Make it twenty. I’ll be back.”

He spends every one of those twenty minutes thinking about being between between your knees.

MARIA NOTE i’ve missed er barbie and frank terribly, so here’s a little something to satiate me ♡

Sometimes Langdon wonders if you get dressed in the dark. He doesn’t mean that maliciously or even as an insult exactly, but it’s more a working theory, a generous explanation, because the alternative is that you looked at yourself this morning in full light, turned a little left and a little right, did whatever inscrutable sequences of decisions leads to you becoming so pretty at eight in the morning, and still landed on that skirt.

Which, fine, your clothes are usually not that issue. Usually they are just very you.

All those pale pinks and creamy whites and lace and ribbon and those delicate fabrics that seem to have been engineered for sitting near windows and being admired quietly, not for existing within ten feet of trauma shears and spilled saline. 

And usually he can tolerate it, more than tolerate it, which is private information and therefore useless and inadmissible, because he has no intention of contributing to your already flourishing ego.

Today, though, your skirt is a problem. Too short for this place, too slight, too easily compromised by the mechanics of the day. 

This department runs on velocity and collision. Stretchers fly around blind corners, patients get handsy, forms hit the floor, somebody always needing something from a low drawer or a high shelf, and you spend half your life leaning, crouching, crossing, being jostled out of position by whatever fresh hell the doors spit out next.

It is not difficult to imagine the outcome. In fact it is too easy. 

Eventually the math of it all gets on his nerves enough that overrides common sense. 

One second he’s reviewing the board. The next he’s striding toward chairs. 

You’re sitting beside Lupe, half-turned in your seat, talking with your hands, cardigan sleeve slipping down your wrist.

“Did someone ever sign off on the discharge packet for bed nine?” he asks, arriving with an excuse so flimsy it practically disintegrates on contact. 

He hears it. You hear it too. 

Your eyes narrow, and then your mouth curves in that way that always makes him feel, briefly and against his will, like he’s walked into a trap and helped set it. 

“Good afternoon, Dr. Langdon. You look tense.”

“I’m not tense.”

You roll your eyes, then pat Lupe lightly on the arm as you peel away from your seat.

“Hold that thought,” you tell her. “I still need an unbiased ruling on whether texting a man a paragraph that opens with I’m going to kill you reads as hot and assertive or the kind of thing that gets screenshots forwarded to the cops. Don’t let me forget.”

You head off down the corridor. He trails after you and tries not to read too much into that.

You jot a note onto the clipboard as you walk, using your shirt as leverage, then you tip him a glance over your shoulder, lashes lifting.

“Now that we’ve gotten your little fake question out of the way,” you say, “did you want something specific, or were you just feeling called to my presence?”

He should let it go. That would be the smart version of this. Keep walking, mind his business, trust that if you insist on treating every place you visit as a runaway with occasional paperwork, that is between you and whatever god oversees bad judgment.

Instead he says, “You ever think about how much bending your job involves?”

The second it leaves his mouth, he regrets it.

You come to such an abrupt stop that he almost collides with your back.

Almost, because years in medicine have left him with decent reflexes, though apparently not decent enough to stop his hands from catching at your waist before the rest of him can follow.

Warm and pliable through the fabric.

A terrible detail to notice, and therefore the first one his mind seizes and refuses to let go of.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, rougher than he means to. “Give a person some warning.”

Your eyes drop, briefly, to his hands. 

“Oh,” you say. “Were you hoping for a little more build-up before you got me bent over?”

His hands leave your waist immediately. Something in your face brightens at the speed of it.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then why are you asking follow-up questions about how much bending I do?”

“Because I don’t want some idiot getting an eyeful he didn’t earn,” he says, gesturing toward your skit, and hears it how it sounds, hears the possessive edge, the mistake. He tries to sand it down. “You’re always in motion. It’s a practical concern.”

You turn to fully face him, taking a step toward him that makes him feel slightly claustrophobic. He can see the tiny flecks of mascara that gather around your eyes from this distance.

“Sounds like your issue isn’t that someone might see, it’s that it might not be you.”

For a second he just looks at you. It’s the looking that gives him away, more than anything he could say, that split second where he has no immediate defense, no dry comeback ready to put distance back between you and the truth of it.

Then his mouth hardens.

“My issue,” he says, very carefully, “is that you have a remarkable ability to turn basic concern into foreplay.” He steps back half an inch. “And before you say anything else, no, I’m not interested in continuing this line of conversation while standing in the middle of a hallway.”

You hum like you’re taking his boundary under serious consideration.

“Fair enough. Hallway’s not ideal.” Your lashes lift. “Your apartment would be better. Less foot traffic. Better acoustics.”

He sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. “You need to stop doing that.”

It’s telling that he doesn’t need to clarify what that is.

“And you need to stop policing my outfits.” You fold your arms. “If you’re that worried, buy me a longer skirt.”

“I’ll buy you ten,” he says flatly. “Just don’t wear that one in here again.”

“That’s a very slippery slope, Doctor,” you practically sing. “First it’s don’t wear that skirt again, then it’s let me pick one out for you, and then it’s turn around and let me see.”

Fucking hell. He prays you can’t see the flush bound to be climbing up his neck through the tips of his ears. That’s a picture he doesn’t need lodged in his head. It might never dislodge.

“You really ought to come with a muzzle,” he counters.

“Kinky,” you chirp, and wink at him before turning on your heel.

Then you’re gone again, disappearing down the corridor with that smug little sway still in your step, your skirt moving with you in a way that feels almost sentient, as if the thing itself is pleased with the amount of trouble it’s caused.

Langdon tells himself, with increasing firmness and decreasing success, that he has more important things to think about.

So when, an hour later, someone at the station makes a smartass remark that your outfit was a little too short for work, it’s a shock that it pierces right through him.

Casual voice, casual timing, the usual hospital way of pretending gossip was just an observation that happened to fall out of someone’s mouth.

He looks up before he means to.

The irritation is instant, disproportionate, embarrassing in its speed. Not because they were wrong, per say, but because they were saying it.

Because suddenly your clothes had become communal property, open for review, and something in him rejected that on sight.

“It’s fine,” he ends up saying, too quickly for a man with no stake in it. The words hit the air with a flat sort of finality, not open for discussion, not especially friendly. “She’s fine.” 

He returns to the chart in front of him, expression unreadable, as if the whole thing bored him, and pretends not to notice Lupe watching him over the rim of her coffee with the kind of smile that suggests she understands entirely too much.

There are, Langdon has concluded over the handful of years he’s known you, a frankly staggering number of behaviors you exhibit that force him to pause mid-thought and briefly reconsider several foundational assumptions about adult independence.

Specifically, how you managed to reach your twenties without either a dedicated handler or, failing that, a laminated instruction card clipped somewhere visible on your blouse.

Exhibit A: the afternoon he caught you misting your keyboard with what he initially assumed was disinfectant and what, upon closer inspection, turned out to be strawberry-scented facial spray.

Exhibit B: the morning you announced to the entire nurses’ station, unprompted, that mercury retrograde was “obviously” responsible for the triage printer malfunctioning again.

Exhibit C: when you kicked a vending machine after it stole your dollar and then immediately gave a mortified little apology afterward, like you hurt its feelings.

None of these instances aligns with anything he understands about how people operate in the world.

Which is why when he walks past the breakroom around four-thirty and sees you seated there with a spread of snacks that looks less like a meal and more like the aftermath of a convenience store robbery — string cheese, iced coffee, crackers, yogurt, gummy bears colonizing the table surface in bright plastic packaging — he isn’t surprised.

Concerned, yes. Professionally obligated to intervene, possibly.

He hadn’t actually intended to stop in the breakroom.

There is a patient in South 15 waiting on medication orders, and under ordinary circumstances that fact alone would keep him moving through the hallway with the efficient forward momentum he generally prefers.

The breakroom is not a place he needs to linger at unless caffeine is involved.

And yet instead of leaving, instead of continuing down the corridor, without any particularly conscious decision to do so, his route shifts and he drifts toward you.

He’ll blame it on needing a cup of coffee that suspiciously never makes it to his hands.

You look up almost immediately when he gets close enough to exist within the blurred margin of your peripheral vision. You do this with such uncanny reliability that he sometimes suspects you can sense him, specifically, in the same way people sense someone staring at them from across a crowded room.

Your eyes find his naturally.

Your hair is pinned back with something pink and impractical.

It looks like velvet. He is fairly certain velvet has no place in a trauma-adjacent environment.

“Dr. Langdon,” you say warmly, as if he has just arrived after weeks abroad rather than having spent the entire afternoon working roughly twenty feet away from you at any given moment. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you all day.”

Langdon slows to a stop a few feet from the table, positioning himself just close enough for conversation while maintaining the cautious perimeter he has learned, through repeated trial and error, is advisable when dealing with you.

Experience has taught him that proximity tends to encourage escalation, and escalation with you rarely follows any predictable professional trajectory.

“Did you need something?” he asks.

The question is practical and unadorned, the sort meant to move a conversation efficiently toward its conclusion.

You don’t appear interested in cooperating with that goal. 

“Nope,” you reply easily, looking up at him with complete unconcern. “Just missed your face.”

He holds your gaze for a long moment after that, expression flattening into the kind of look that usually precedes a lecture about hospital protocol, as though he’s mentally reviewing several policies at once and trying to determine whether any of them technically apply to whatever you’re doing right now. 

He has, over time, become reasonably skilled at ignoring your more blatant flirtations, or at least for performing the appearance of indifference convincingly enough that most observers would assume they have no effect whatsoever.

“Well,” he replies after a moment, “if the urge strikes again, you can usually find me in the trauma bay. I don’t exactly wander far.”

You wrinkle your nose immediately.

“See, that’s the problem,” you say. “The pit is full of bodily fluids.” You punctuate the statement with another sip of iced coffee. “I prefer to admire you from a safe, non-splattery distance.”

“Yes, that tends to happen when people are injured.”

Your smile widens at once.

“See, that’s exactly the kind of insight I rely on you for,” you say, smirking in a way that makes it very clear you are not, in fact, relying on him for anything remotely related to medical insight. “Medical expertise. I would’ve never connected the dots between injuries and blood.”

Langdon lets the sarcasm pass without acknowledgement.

Instead he nudges the chair opposite you back with the toe of his shoe, the metal legs scraping softly against the tile, and lowers himself into it.

“Is that… dinner?” he asks cautiously, nodding to the unimpressive spread in front of you.

“Yep. Girl dinner.” You emphasize the p sound, cocking your head to the side, ponytail swinging with it.

He waits for the phrase to resolve into something coherent.

It does not.

The words simply remain there between you, apparently complete despite containing no immediately recognizable meaning.

“...I’m sorry?”

You look at him with mild confusion, as though he has somehow complicated a concept that should have been obvious from the start.

“Girl dinner,” you repeat patiently.

Langdon frowns faintly and glances back down at the table.

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Right.” You purse your lips. “I always forget you’re not on social media.”

Langdon says nothing, waiting for an elaboration. You happily supply one.

“So girl dinner is when you basically just eat… things. Not like a meal meal. Just a bunch of items. Cheese, fruit, crackers, popcorn, whatever’s around. It’s like grazing. People post them online constantly.” You pause, then gesture proudly at the spread in front of. “This is a very authentic example.”

Langdon’s frown deepens.

“So… malnutrition?”

“It’s not malnutrition.”

“This is approximately fifteen grams of protein and a significant amount of refined sugar,” he says. “You’re going to crash in an hour.”

“That’s what the coffee is for. It evens things out.”

“Caffeine doesn’t stabilize blood glucose,” he says. “It accelerates the inevitable crash.”

You consider that for a moment and then shrug.

“Well then it’s lucky you’re here,” you say. “If I collapse, you can write a very educational case study.”

“I have actual patients to see,” Langdon counters with a sigh, glancing toward the hallway as if reminding both of you that the hospital still exists beyond this table. It’s easy to forget. “I can’t spend the rest of my shift supervising you.”

“Supervising sounds kind of nice, actually.”

You rest your chin in your palm, watching him with the kind of expression that suggests you’ve decided the conversation is far more entertaining than he does.

“That wasn’t an invitation,” he says.

“Sounded like one,” you point out sweetly, “you are very authoritative. I feel like I’d respond well to that. Could be a beneficial arrangement.”

Langdon huffs out a quick laugh under his breath before he can quite stop it.

The idea itself arrives in his brain with an immediacy he does not appreciate.

It is not a helpful thought. It’s a profoundly inappropriate one. One that opens a door his mind has no business touching, much less step through.

Because he can picture it.

He does not want to picture it.

You looking up at him with that exact expression while he tells you what to do. You listening. For once in your godforsaken life. Obedient. Sweet. 

The mental image is shut down with impressive force, the way he would clamp a ruptured artery before the bleeding spreads.

He pushes his chair back and stands.

“You’re pushing your luck, angel,” he warns, already turning toward the door. “Eat something with actual nutrients.”

Later, somewhere between charting and the strange lull that sometimes settles over the department, Langdon ordered takeout from the place down the street. 

If you continued eating what you had confidently described as girl dinner (he still isn’t sure why it’s called that or what it really is), the probability of the sugar crash he had warned you about was high, and the last thing the emergency department needed was another patient created entirely by preventable dietary negligence.

This was the whole and complete reasoning.

He didn’t need more work.

And the idea of explaining to Al-Hashimi that you fainted because you believe gummy bears constituted a sound dinner was not an outcome he was willing to entertain.

So he got you something with actual substance. Protein. Vegetables. Carbohydrates that had not, at any point in their lifecycle, existed inside a brightly colored candy wrapper.

And when the bag arrived he set it on your desk without comment, because the situation did not require commentary.

Preventing foreseeable medical inconvenience was, after all, a perfectly legitimate form of hospital management.

you can find my frank langdon masterlist here!

You’re halfway into your date outfit. Well, if halfway means standing in your office in nothing but a satin bra and a swishy skirt that keeps catching on the corner of your desk, surrounded by six potential tops draped across your chair like they’re contestants waiting to be handed a rose.

You’ve spent fifteen full minutes analyzing the difference between cute but not desperate and hot but not like trying-too-hard hot, which feels like the emotional equivalent of performing surgery with a spoon.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

Your date itself is… fine. Whatever. A blurry, man-shaped opportunity for human conversation without talking about charting software and insurance codes.

And, of course, free food. You tend to be extremely motivated by the prospect of free food.

You hold the pink top up to your chest, smoothing it flat with your palm. Too romantic. Too soft. Too I bake on weekends. 

You swap it for the lace once. Too intense. Too funeral. 

Are you dating a man or being reborn into a new faith? 

You exhale, dramatic and long-suffering, and let both tops slide from your hands to the floor, where they land in a sad little pile of unmet expectations.

The door swings open without warning, hinges squeaking like they’re tattling, and in walks Dr. Langdon, voice already doing that brisk, efficient thing that usually means paperwork is about to become your problem.

“Charting from Bay 3 is missing again. I need you to follow up with Supplies and flag the intake forms from the double-code Tuesday.” 

He doesn’t even glance up from the clipboard. Just keeps talking like you’re not — well. Like you’re not.

He tends to do this. To talk at you, rather to you. Like you’re just a vessel for admin efficiency. Which, you are, technically.

You’d rather be a vessel for something else when it comes to him but that’s besides the point.

“Got it,” you chirp, turning to reach for a little ceramic holder on the windowsill. Where are your gold hoops? Did you leave them at home? You flick open the container. Empty. You frown as you turn back to Langdon and add, “I’ll track it down and resend anything they lost.”

He shuts the door behind him, nose buried so deep in his notes you’d swear the hospital would implode if he looks up for even half a second.

“And check whether radiology sent over their addendum,” he tacks on, then stops short, square in your path, transforming himself into a broad-shouldered obstacle.

You repress the urge to scold him and rather sidestep his body. It’s a clean maneuver honed by years of dodging gurneys, supply carts, IV poles, and men who somehow manage to occupy doorways like it’s a competitive sport.

You catch a clean hit of coffee and linen starch clinging to his scrubs. It’s nice.

And — oh. There. On the hook behind him. Your hoops.

They had been a gift from your sister.

Langdon isn’t a fan, once muttering about how they’re a liability, how patients could yank them out of your ears, and how studs would be safer.

As if you’d ever surrender an accessory with emotional significant and outfit impact for something as trivial as self-preservation.

One woman’s liability is another woman’s signature look. Or something like that.

You clasp them on mid-step, moving around him again so you’re in front of him.

“Just so you know,” you add lightly, “a please would really elevate this whole interaction.”

Langdon huffs. “I’ll add it to my list of aspirational behaviors —” 

He finally looks up and his words falter instantly, vanish, get replaced by a strange, suspended stillness.

His gaze catches somewhere around your collarbone and stalls.

You watch his expression blur, then go blank entirely, a neutral mask where something else had started to bloom. You can’t put your finger on what.

“Well while you’re workshopping personal growth,” you say, distracted as you adjust your earring,  “you could work on being nicer to me specifically. Baby steps.”

You step forward, hand reaching for his clipboard to confirm whether the double-code patient had ever gotten their updated consent form.

You don’t bother to look as you move because spatial awareness has never really been your strong suit and you have a tendency to trust that your proximity sensors kick in.

They don’t. 

You misjudge the distance, your chest brushing against his bicep. It’s not a grand amount of contact by any means, but it’s enough to turn his whole body to stone.

Shoulders tense, arm rigid beneath you, as if his body has decided on its own that movement is a no good, very bad idea.

There’s that linen smell again.

You find yourself wondering what detergent he uses. Something boring, you suppose. Probably unscented, because he strikes you as a man who resents fragrance as a concept.

You bet he irons. You know he irons. 

You peek back up at him again.

He’s usually brimming with eloquent disdain by now, some perfectly honed remark about professionalism or personal space or this is why HR has ulcers.

But this time, he says nothing. Just stands there, staring somewhere past your shoulder like he’s trying very hard not to look at you.

He clears his throat, finally, and it’s the most awkward sound you’ve ever heard him make.

Strange.

“Baby steps,” he repeats, flat, like he’s rolling the phrase around his mouth to see if it bites back. Then, after a beat, “I’ll try to remember that the next time I’m compensating for half the department dropping the ball.”

“Okay, well, I’m not the department. You can’t passive-aggressively scold me for other people’s incompetence. That’s emotional mismanagement.”

 And frankly, beneath you.

“I don’t scold you,” he says, not even blinking. “I delegate.”

“Passive-aggressively.”

“Efficiently.”

You shove the clipboard against his chest with more force than strictly necessary. “Well, your little delegation kink can wait until tomorrow. I have plans. And they do not involve getting micromanaged into celibacy.”

It’s a good line. Strong delivery. Very feminine rage of you. 

But the second it leaves your mouth, you feel it. Like biting into a strawberry that looked better than it tasted. A lie. Tart and bright and 100% cosmetic. 

You are not sleeping with your date tonight. You’re not even planning to. You’re planning to swirl the ice in your drink, feign interest in a marketing executive’s gym schedule, and go home to exfoliate in silence. 

Not that you’re opposed to first date sex, you’re not a nun, but the logistics get tricky when you know, with absolute certainty, that the entire time you’d be picturing someone else.

Someone taller. Grumpier. Addicted to energy drinks and benzos.

He visibly recoils at your words. Nose wrinkles, lip curls.

“I don’t want to know anything about that,” he mutters, which is rich coming from a man who’s seen arterial spray and more than likely has performed a disimpaction or two in his med student days.

“That’s a shame,” you say, casually, bending at the waist to dig through your purse, the black hole where lip gloss goes to die. “Because I was just about to overshare. With emphasis. And hand gestures.”

“Jesus Christ, just — don’t,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand down his face. “My blood pressure cannot handle whatever comes after that sentence.”

His tone’s flat, but the tips of his ears are going a little pink. Peony-pink, to be specific. Very cute.

You straighten, uncapping your lip gloss. “Sounds like a you problem, Doctor.”

Langdon exhales sharply through his nose and tilts his gaze toward the ceiling like he’s appealing to a higher power for backup. (Joke’s on him. Heaven likes you better.)

“So is this why you’re half-naked in here?”

Your brows furrow at that, lips pursed as you try to reconcile his words with reality.

You glance down. Shit. Bra. No shirt.

Your brain bluescreens so violently you half-expect your vision to pixelate. No thoughts, no language, just a single screaming dial-up tone echoing through your skull and the creeping realization that you are the world’s biggest idiot.

A workplace violation so severe you can already see the email subject line: Regarding Your Conduct.

You shriek and lunge for the nearest top, which, unluckily, has three buttons and zero stretch.

“Oh my god,” you yelp, halfway tangled in a sleeve. “What is wrong with you? Say something next time, you freak!”

“I did say something.”

You growl, still wrestling the top like it personally wronged you.

The sleeve is inside out, the collar’s twisted around your ear, and your hair is now somehow… inside the shirt?

“Hold still,” he sighs, then careful fingers hook into the fabric, tugging it until it slides into place. 

You clamp down at the urge to shiver against the feeling of calloused, cold hands against you.

“Thanks,” you grumble, cheeks radiating enough heat to power a small clinic. You pat your now-mostly-covered chest like it might apologize on your behalf. “And you should’ve said something sooner. Can’t I be, like… charged for that? Public indecency or something?”

“I’m pretty sure intent matters.”

“Oh, I see — so because I didn’t intend to traumatize you with my boobs, it’s fine?”

Langdon raises an eyebrow. “If that’s what you consider traumatizing, you have a dangerously low opinion of yourself.”

You gasp and smack his chest with your palm.

“Dr. Langdon!”

He holds up his hands in surrender, lips twitching. “Apologies.”

The bastard doesn’t sound sorry at all. Doesn’t look it, either.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m not.” His hands are still raised like you’re a flight risk. His eyes, however, are on anything but you. Or more accurately — anything below your shoulders. “I swear.”

“You should’ve knocked anyway. There are rules. Laws. Social contracts. Just because you’ve got a badge and a God complex doesn’t mean you’re exempt from the sacred Knock First Doctrine.”

He presses his lips together, failing miserably at pretending he’s not amused. “I know. You’re right.”

And it’s that damn half-smile that seems to completely dismantles your argument. You were doing so well, too. At hiding the embarassment you feel so clearly.

You had momentum and moral-high ground, and now you’re losing it because he looks stupidly handsome when he’s trying not to laugh, the dimple on his chin flexing then smoothing.

“What if I’d been fully naked?”

He pauses at that, a flicker of something dark shining through the irises of his eyes. Really pretty eyes, you might add. Blue and striking. Like frozen lakes you’re warned not to step on.

Whatever crosses his mind, he doesn’t flinch from it.

“I think,” he starts, “you’d have to take responsibility for what that would do to me.”

You can feel every ounce of blood rush to your head.

Sorry? What kind of responsibility are we talking here? The fun kind? The moral kind? The “oh no I slipped and fell into my boss’s lap and now we have to move to the Alps” kind?

You’re not quite sure if you could recall your name if someone asked you right now.

And he knows. You can see that he knows what he just did to you.

You try to muster up some whitty deflection but come up empty, mouth opening and closing like a useless doll.

“Well,” he adds, saving you from yourself, hand on the door, “I won’t keep you.”

You blink. “Keep me from what?”

He glances at you with a smirk. You want to kiss it off his face.

“Your plans.”

“Oh,” you say dumbly. “Right. My… plans.”

You had plans? Interesting, you don’t recall.

“I’m sure he’ll love it,” Langdon says, nodding toward your now strewn together outfit. Not the final look. “Or at least try not to crash his car when you open the door.”

And then he’s out the door, leaving you in a helpless puddle of… something. Best not to be named.

You should text your date and cancel. Or reschedule. Or fake your death and change your name. 

Because if you go on this date now, you are bringing Langdon’s voice with you

“...Do you live here, or is this some kind of installation piece I'm not educated enough to understand?”

You suppress the urge to shut the door on him.

You’ll be damned if you give Langdon the satisfaction, he’s already smug enough as is, and if you unleash the passionate lace monologue currently frothing like over-whipped cappuccino foam in your throat, well, you’d never stop, it’d spill everywhere.

Probably ruin your perfectly nice dress.

Besides, he’s made it clear your name is preemptively scribbled on every psych hold form in his possession ever since your accidental group-email confession about being cosmically bonded soulmates. (In your defense, hitting reply-all instead of forward is practically a workplace epidemic.) Happens to the best of the best.

Better to redirect your attention somewhere safe, safe-ish, like Langdon himself, specifically.

Minus the hospital garb, minus the permanent pinch of his lips into a thin, critical line… He seems practically amiable, approachable even, like someone took a warm cloth and scrubbed away his perpetual frostiness to reveal the shockingly pleasant shades underneath. 

His grey henley clings to muscles the scrubs normally obscures, jeans slung perilously low on hips designed, surely, to cause trouble.

The Penguins cap shadows most of his face, but you catch the corner of his mouth curling upwards, bemused, in a way that’s probably not safe for your heart health.

Definitely not.

Your eyes follow Langdon’s line of sight with his skeptical scrutiny, doing your best to borrow his blend of lovely disdain and world-weary disbelief as you survey your living room. 

You hapen to think it’s perfect.

Sunshine everywhere, making your piled-up picture frames sparkle just enough that they look intentionally artistic rather than plain lazy (lies, it’s all lazy). Your ridiculous swan pillow proudly holding court from the peeling armchair like it’s earned that position through sheer fluffiness. Whites and greens and pinks.

You lift one finger dramatically, eyes narrowed just so. “Ah-ah, Langdon, the first and most sacred rule of visiting my apartment is zero judgment from you. Non-negotiable."

“Interesting how I'm subjected to rules when my involvement wasn't exactly voluntary.”

“Oh, please,” you start, “as if you weren’t itching to flex those muscles. Which, by the way, huge fan. I deeply appreciate you allowing me to shamelessly exploit them.”

His jaw tenses ever so slightly, suppressing something undoubtedly acidic, but amusement inevitably prevails.

“You know, most people at least pretend to be subtle about taking advantage of others.”

You click your tongue sympathetically. “And deprive you of the unparalleled job of being openly objectified? I’m not a monster, Langdon.”

He rolls his eyes extravagantly (you're surprised they haven't fallen out of his head by now).

“You’re a humanitarian, truly.”

He steps around you before you can fire back a witty comeback, stopping abruptly at your bookshelf and tilting his head with mild disbelief, chin dimple deepening with the motion.

“…Did you even try?” he mutters, prodding the loose panel that, honestly, you're hoping stays attached through nothing more than the universe’s goodwill at this point.

“I swear, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die level of serious, I did try.” You follow after him. “But then there was a missing shelf and like, ten extra strews, and then panel C didn’t match panel D no matter what angle I held it at and, well… I accepted reality and moved on.”

And this is all true, however, it wasn’t exactly heartbreaking when the shelves stayed in pieces.

A good, harmlessly messy disaster meant you got to unleash your best puppy-eyes emoji in a shamelessly flirtatious SOS text to Langdon, anyway.

Silver linings, and all that.

He picks up the instructions, giving you a pointed side-eye as he unfolds them. He squints suspiciously at the diagrams, then at you. 

“Sure. Convenient way to rope me in, don’t you think?” He glances down again. “I mean, the pictures are literally labeled step-by-step, sweetheart. Did you even open these?”

You fight the urge not to preen at the nickname. If pushing his buttons gets you that, you’ll never stop.

“Are you accusing me — sweet, innocent me — of concocting an elaborate scheme just to get you alone in my apartment?”

You smother your grin behind a lifted finger. His face contorts predictably.

“Concoting, scheming, manipulating,” he replies, turning another page and shrugging. “Pick whatever verb you prefer. But yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

He sinks down to the floor with an exhale that could only belong to someone perpetually burdened by life’s endless inconveniences, already sporting that familiar expression. Somewhere between resigned exhaustion and vague irritation. 

You follow suit, slipping to his side, your dress pooling around your ankles like spilled champagne, fizzing silk brushing close to the tip of his worn-out sneaker.

You don’t move away. He doesn’t either.

But he does freeze mid-page-turn, staring at you incredulously.

“So you're just gonna sit there and watch me?”

“Only if you’ll let me. I’m really good at moral support.”

He breathes out slowly, visibly restraining whatever sarcastic retort comes first to mind, and grudgingly nods. 

“Fine. Sit there. Be supportive.”

You can practically feel the sarcasm. 

But you do exactly that.

You sit there, legs folded beneath yourself, shoulders pressed against his as Langdon scowls down at the pile of wood and pieces, managing to frown with a degree of charm you’re quite certain he’d deny if you point it out. (You consider pointing it out.)

And naturally, you pepper him with essential, philosophical inquiries: “Do you think they have furniture in heaven?” and “If shelves are constructed poorly, do they suffer from impostor syndrome?”

He responds with a glare, the same tired resentment he directs toward the snack machine when it devours his bills and refuses to surrender his Snickers.

But he doesn’t chase you away, not really.

And you bicker briefly about the angle of one of the pieces. (“Langdon, honestly, I think gravity might be on my side here.” “I’m fairly certain gravity doesn’t play favorites, but okay.”), and at some point, inevitably, your head slips onto his shoulder. 

For a split second he freezes, but then you feel him relax infinitesimally beneath your touch, accommodating your invasion of his carefully defended personal space.

In record time, Langdon snaps the final panel into place so efficiently you wonder if perhaps you blinked and missed the ceremonial summoning circle, the arcane ritual, the secret incantations murmured under his breath.

You should accuse him of witchcraft, but it might be best not to provoke him. At least, not yet.

“That was fast.”

He continues unnecessarily pressing the top panel, testing its strength like someone who doesn’t quite believe in stability of permanence or that life might, for once, cooperate without fuss.

“It’s calling following instructions,” he says. “Revolutionary concept.”

You hum appreciatively, tilting your head gently side-to-side, inspecting the assembled bookshelf.

“So,” you drawl casually, fingers tracing absentminded patterns on the oak. “What’s your going rate these days?”

His eyes snap toward you sharply. “My — what?”

“For services rendered,” you clarify. “Labor, expertise, resilience in the face of adversity —”

“I don’t —”

“Because I would hate to underpay you.”

“I’m not charging you,” he insists, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well, that’s worse,” you say immediately. “Now I'm indebted to you, practically eternally. You've doomed me to a lifetime of gratitude.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“That’s not how debts or favors or karmic balance works.”

He doesn’t move, stubbornly refusing to budge as though afraid even the smallest twitch might disrupt the equilibrium of the universe.

Or at least your shared corner of it.

Maybe he's imagining gravity might spontaneously decide to flip upside down if he so much as blinks too hard, sending both of you hurtling toward your popcorn ceiling.

“Then enlighten me.”

You smile, warmth creeping upward from your throat, heartbeat fluttering beneath your collarbones.

“Well,” you say, “usually when a very capable man comes into my apartment and fixes things for me, I feel… compelled to show my appreciation.”

His eyes flicker downward, lingering at the soft dip of your neckline, gaze darkening ever so slightly, and suddenly your dress feels like the flimsiest barrier imaginable, fragile as spun sugar dissolving on your tongue.

“Is that right?”

“Mh-hmm.” you breathe out in reply, barely a whisper, more like a private admission, some lovely little secret you've decided to entrust him with.

“How terribly unfortunate for me.” He stands upright again.

Suddenly you feel robbed, cheated somehow.

“Unfortunate?” you repeat, blinking up indignantly at him, like he's offended some obscure point of etiquette you hadn't even realized mattered until this precise instant.

He extends both hands gently toward you, palms upturned, the irony in his gaze feather-soft, subtle enough to miss if you blinked too soon.

“Means I’d better leave quickly before you decide to act on that impulse.”

You slip your fingers into his waiting palms, letting him pull you to your feet.

“You’re no fun.”

“No,” he says, gaze softening minutely, “I suppose I’m not.”

You sigh, your hands reluctantly slipping from his grasp, the sensation of warmth lingering along your fingertips long after you've pulled away.

“I was very nearly convinced I had corrupted you.”

He shakes his head. “Ah, better luck next time.”

You walk him slowly to the front door, the two of you shuffling quietly in sync, wooden floors creaking companionably like they're sympathizing with your sad little plight.

He pauses there, turning back briefly, your proximity shrinking quietly in the soft glow from the lamp in the hall.

“Trust me,” he murmurs gently, eyes sparkling. “It’s entirely for your benefit.”

And then he's gone, slipping out before you can object — or beg for him to reconsider.

Silver linings, and all that.