giorgina.

You loll your heavy head to your shoulder to flash the man beside you an unenthusiastic, slow-blinking stare, from where he sits on the left side of the brick threshold. The rusted metal door, now missing a knob and refusing to open, sits between the two of you. Something about it feels like a metaphor.

“Because I knew you’d be a shitty husband,” you confess, perhaps a little more truthful than you need to be. “And, turns out, I was right, so…”

Langdon laughs at your honesty, though it comes out more like a punched-out breath. “Wow…”

With your head tipped back against the brick wall behind you, you turn back to face the golden blue sunset, made of a sea of milky pink and orange clouds. The view is far too pretty for the ugly day you’ve had, and for all the ugly you feel inside of you right now.

The music from the sports bar across the block swells distantly, in an unintelligible humming that blankets the momentary silence between you. The smoky scent of freshly cooked hamburgers fills the air, too, making your empty stomach grumble in a silent plea for a meal you haven’t gotten the chance to eat all day. You feel the early-evening chill down into your tired bones, piercing right through your black scrubs, which do little to cushion you from the cold, unforgiving concrete below.

“Gee, twist the knife, why don’t you…” Langdon hums cynically.

You meet his look of boyish offense — made of squinted blue eyes and a deep furrow between his heavy brows — with a narrowed gaze fixed into a firm glare. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that this was the ever-oblivious asshole you spent four years of your life with, though that feels like a couple thousand light-years ago now.

“You’re selfish, Frank. You’ve always been selfish, even when we were kids. That was practically your whole thing,” you ramble with a lazy shrug. “You’re the kinda guy who thinks buying presents, cooking dinner once a week, and getting the mother of your toddlers the most high-maintenance dog on the planet is gonna make up for you never being home.”

The words of an instinctive argument die on Frank’s tongue when his eyes fall to his left hand, hanging off of his bent knee, and noticeably missing his gold ring. The thumb and forefinger of his right hand migrate to the top of his knuckle, twisting the pale tanline where his wedding band would usually be. The anxious tic is muscle memory to him now.

“Yeah, that was… That was a stupid move on my part,” he murmurs with a heavy sigh, and with his blue-eyed gaze averted to his bare ring finger.

Your eyes run over the sharp edges of his profile, bathed in soft shadows and orange sunlight. His chiseled jaw clenches until his temples shift; his brows raise until his forehead wrinkles; and his pink lips quirk into a cynical half-smile.

“And you know what the craziest part is?” he wonders with an emotionless laugh. “I’m pretty sure that’s the reason Abby left me… It wasn’t that I was never home. It wasn’t that I was working with my ex-girlfriend. It was the goddamn dog… And the sonofabitch doesn’t even like me—”

“It was all of it, Frank,” you tell him in a quiet, sympathetic lilt. “And you not understanding that is exactly why we never worked out.”

Langdon scoffs another half-hearted chuckle in response. He feels the ache of your words somewhere deep in his chest, like he’s feeling the pain of losing you all over again. It feels a little like being torn in two. He can’t recall the last time he felt whole since you left him, but he tries not to think about that.

“And what? You think you were the most innocent girlfriend in the world. Is that it?”

You roll your eyes with a chest-deflating huff and cross your arms over your bent knees. You could’ve seen this coming from a mile away. You learned long ago that Frank never learned how to take criticism without needing to hit someone where it hurt right back.

“That’s not what I’m saying—”

“Like you didn’t put me through the fucking ringer, too?”

“Frank—”

“You know what I did the entire time I was with you?” he wonders aloud, with a particular bite in his deep, melodic voice. He shifts on his weight, propping his left hand on the cool concrete as he turns to face you more. The dark strands of hair draping his forehead sway over his brows as he points to you with his free hand. “I worried that every single time I took my eyes off you, that you were gonna throw yourself off the goddamn roof—”

You inhale sharply through your nose, then click your lips against your teeth. “Wow…” you repeat in the same distantly incredulous murmur.

His words pierce you right back. The memories within them, more so.

It was hardly Frank’s fault that you had spent your years together just waiting — waiting to be someone else, waiting to become the person you always thought you were on the verge of becoming, waiting for your life to start finally making sense.

You could never quite shake the constant feeling of abandonment; the nagging thought that the world was constantly gathering in a room that you were not invited in. And Frank’s love for you never felt like enough. You craved affection from him so badly that you began to detest it. And, on the off chance Frank was emotionally available enough to love you, it felt as hard to take as violence.

It took several years of unlearning the filth you had taught yourself — it took finding Jack and realizing that love didn’t always have to be so complicated — to finally feel at home on an Earth that felt like it was constantly leaving you behind. And that thought isn’t lost on either of you.

Frank, particularly, is now forced to live out the rest of his day burdened by the weight of not having been enough to save you — that being with him would’ve killed you; that you would’ve thrown yourself off the roof of the apartment building you used to live in together just to get away from him.

The old memories burn him like a fresh, white-orange flame.

“So, you know what? Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t work out,” Langdon concludes with a slow nod as he settles back into place again, grimacing softly when the brick snags the fabric of his black scrubs. “Because we actually found people who could put up with all our fuckin’— neuroses… Well, you did, I guess…”

He turns to you again, with softer eyes this time, and with a solemn twist to his chiseled face that you don’t see ‘cause you no longer have the strength to meet his gaze.

The thin chain around your neck glitters in the golden hour sun. A gold wedding band hangs at the center of it, usually hidden beneath your scrubs, but now draped at your chest and staring him right in the face.

Jack had given you the ring a few years ago, after three years shy together and a not-quite wedding. You’d eloped quietly, then spent the three days you had off work together on a makeshift honeymoon. No one other than Robby and Heather — your only witnesses at the courthouse the day you got your marriage certificate — even knew you had gotten married until you and Jack showed up to work some days later, with a pair of matching rings hung around your neck.

Frank had a panic attack in the locker room when he found out, which he opted to blame on the unforgiving shift.

The ring feels particularly heavy around your neck now, made leaden under the weight of this unwarranted conversation, of which you know you should not entertain but can’t seem to help yourself otherwise. You pinch the gold band between your thumb and forefinger, dragging it absentmindedly across the thin necklace in a faint swish, swish, swish sound.

“Yeah…” you sigh, blinking away the tears that sting at the backs of your eyes, made perhaps more emotional than usual from the long day. “Because Jack would never say something like that to me…”

He meets your glass-eyed glower with a crooked grin, just like he always used to — back when he was still a starving med student, and all of his problems felt like the end of the world, which only really meant that all of yours couldn’t possibly be as serious in comparison.

Sometimes they weren’t, to be fair. Sometimes, not getting your hair to cooperate in the morning sent you into a spiral the rest of the day. Sometimes, all Frank could do was laugh and hold you tighter and wait for you to put yourself back together again. Other times, you felt unearthly, not at home in the world, and you needed him to really care, but he didn’t know how to.

“Oh, please,” Langdon scoffs. “Fighting is what we’re good at. I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing we ever did right… Other than the sex, obviously—”

“Oh, my god! Frank!” you scold, though a laugh sputters from your lips before you can stop it. “You can’t just say that stuff to me!”

“Hey, I’m not trying to hit on you or anything, alright? I’m just… making an observation,” he shrugs with a quiet smile and with his wide palms splayed in surrender. “We loved each other, we just… didn’t know how to show it—”

“You never loved me, Langdon,” you correct with a sad sort of smile, weighed down with a heavier reminiscence. “You loved the idea of me. You loved the idea of having someone that would’ve stuck around no matter what, even if we fought all the time—”

“That’s not true,” Langdon insists, with his ocean blue eyes narrowed into thin slits.

“Face it, Frank,” you laugh with a lazy shrug. “You want someone who will love you and be loyal to you, no matter how many times you hurt them—”

“No, that’s not—”

“Someone that’ll keep on loving you no matter how many times you fuck up—”

“Can you… Can you just let me talk—”

“You don’t want a wife, Langdon, you wanted a fucking dog!”

“No, I want you!” he hears himself shout.

His voice rings across the expanse of the concrete rooftop, forcing him to hear the words that he’d immediately take back if the universe allowed it. It might’ve been easier to take if you didn’t look at him like you were halfway horrified, flinching back like his words had pained you somehow physically. His cobalt-colored eyes widen in a similar look of alarm.

“I mean, I— I wanted you,” he stammers, stumbling over himself to get the words out. His hands flail wildly as he explains, like they always did when he was nervous. “E-Even if I didn’t exactly know how to treat you at the time. I did… I did love you, you know? And I… I think we could’ve been good together. That’s all…”

You open your mouth to speak, but nothing comes out right away.

Your breath hitches in your throat instead, as your mind races a million miles a minute. The knock that comes suddenly at the door beside takes you out of your stupor and makes you flinch — hard. You feel the two hard raps against the locked entrance in your burning chest. The familiar voice that accompanies it melts your heart into specks of ash that you can feel trickling down into your swimming stomach.

“Guys?” your husband calls, half-muffled from within the stairwell. “You up there?”

“Jack?” you call back on bated breath.

You share a wide-eyed look of apprehension at the man beside you, whose ocean-blue stare bores right into yours. Neither of you can shake the feeling that you’ve just been caught doing something horrible — and, in a way, you have.

You scramble to your feet and feel the blood rush back to your tingling legs almost instantly as you stand before the rusted door, resting your palms along the cool metal.

“How long have you guys been out here?”

“Too long,” Frank answers in a huff, still slouched against the concrete.

You scoff a breathy laugh despite the tight feeling in your chest. “How long did it take everyone down there to figure out we were stuck?”

“Yeah, I don’t think they have yet,” Jack chuckles. “I just got here, and Robby said you guys were getting some air, so…”

He trails off.

You can hear the smile in his gritty voice when he asks, “How’d you two idiots manage to get stuck up here, anyway?”

“The universe hates me,” you deadpan in a non-answer.

You hear Jack laughing from behind the heavy door between you, a sound more golden than the setting sun painting everything a flaxen shade of orange. It makes a wavering smile curl at the very edges of your mouth, though it’s weighed down by a more palpable dread that Frank can see from here, with his glittering eyes still trained on your profile.

“I’ll go tell maintenance, alright?” Jack tells you. “Just… don’t do anything else stupid up while I’m gone.”

“Yeah, no promises,” Frank jokes back with his own artificial grin that deflates the moment Jack’s muffled footsteps descend back down the stairwell.

He slouches back against the unforgiving brick with a heavy sigh, feeling the exhaustion settling heavy in his bones — the acknowledgement that, once he’s back inside The Pitt, he’ll never get to be alone with you like this again; and that he’ll have to spend the rest of his life pretending like he isn’t constantly grieving your absence.

You step away from the door with a trembling sigh. You try to turn away before Frank sees the emotion crumpling your face, but he catches it anyway — there’s nothing about you that he wouldn’t immediately notice.

“Hey, I… I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t,” you snap, turning on your heel to face him. You wear a stern glare on your face that makes him falter as he rises from the cold concrete to stand to full height. The golden hour sparkles in your glassy eyes, wetting with unshed tears. “Just… don’t, alright? Because if you make this a whole thing, I’m gonna have to tell Jack—”

“Tell him what?” Frank presses, brows raised to his hairline until three fine lines wrinkle at his forehead.

His shoes scuff the pavement when he goes to take a hesitant step forward. You flinch back again, like he’ll burn you if he gets too close — like he already has burned you and like you refuse to be kissed by that flame again.

He stops short, splays his wide palms before him in surrender, and continues quietly, “That I’m right? ‘Cause I really don’t think this upset if I were wrong—”

“Of course, I’m upset!” you shout, voice cracking and ringing across the empty rooftop. A breeze rolls by, cooler than silk, rippling in your scrubs and billowing in your hair. “But that doesn’t mean that us not being together is the wrong choice! It’s just— Something we’re gonna have to carry!”

“Then why can’t we just have it out—?”

“Because we tried,” you agonize through a stuttering breath. “And it ended up like this! Every single time!”

Frank shakes his head, strong jaw clenched, too stubborn to listen.

“The only reason we were ever together is because we were…” you trail off, gaze darting wildly as you search for the right words. “Pathologically terrified of abandonment—”

“What are you? My shrink?” he scoffs cynically, biceps straining against the sleeves of his scrubs when he crosses his milky white arms across his chest.

“We knew, before we started dating, that we both were incapable of giving each other what we really needed,” you tell him, half-strangled, as you fight back the emotion wrapping itself around your throat. “And we did that because we knew that when we inevitably didn’t work out, neither of us would be at a totally substantial loss! I mean, why do you think we both moved on so quickly?”

Langdon flinches, chin jerking as his pretty face screws in offense. Your words find him like a punch to the stomach — they knock the breath from his lungs, make him feel like the world is swaying below his feet.

“Substantial loss?” he echoes with his brows raised in an incredulous look. He exhales an emotionless laugh and looks away. His tongue darts out to wet his mouth before he clicks his lips against his teeth, waving an accusatory finger in your direction. “No, see… See, that’s the difference between us. Because I was with you, because I actually loved you—”

“Key word here being loved. Past tense,” you snap with a clenched jaw, mirroring his rigid stature with your arms folded over your scrubs. “We were never gonna work out, Langdon. So whether or not we would’ve been good together doesn’t mean anything anymore, alright? It’s too late, so just… Just drop it.”

“So what?” he calls to you when you turn away again. “All those years we put each other through hell and back, that meant nothing to you?”

“It meant everything,” you confess tearily, knuckles blanching around the cold metal railing you lean against. You lack the strength to look over your shoulder at him, lest you see the boy you used to love in the man standing behind you now. “And it’s over now. And it’s been over for a long, long time…”

“Yeah, not for me…” Frank tells you, voice breaking into a fragile whisper. He clears his throat a second later, half-strangled by the words that’ve been stuck in his throat since the day you left.

Your head snaps over your shoulder, delicate features crumpling in a pained look. “You can’t say that to me,” you repeat, voice coated with tears this time instead of laughter. “You can’t just say that, Langdon—”

Your breath hitches as a sob swells in your throat. You hide your face behind your palms before he can see the way it twists at your face. Langdon feels your hurt like it’s his own, a burning somewhere deep inside his sternum, as he rushes to you on instinct.

“Look, okay? I-I know I’m not a perfect guy— I know that I’m not half as good as Abbot, alright? I know that—”

His fingers are long and warm when they curl gently around your wrists, urging your hands away from your face. You’re swaddled immediately in the warmth of his musky cologne, much stronger than Jack’s, but just as familiar to you.

He ducks his head to meet your gaze, navy-blue eyes glittering as they dart between both of yours. You peer up at him from beneath your lashes, which are now clumped together with unshed tears.

“But I-I’m different now. I am,” he tells you, nodding rapidly. “I wouldn’t be the asshole I was before. I’d be different— I’d be good for you this time.”

“You are, okay?” you choke out, pointing a stern finger at his chest, hands still caught in his unwavering hold. “You are a good man, and I am so grateful to you, and I am so proud of you, but we would be miserable together—”

“Don’t say that,” Langdon murmurs, chiseled features screwed together like your words have pierced him somehow physically. “Why— Why are you saying that?”

“Because look at us!” you laugh through the tears clinging to your lashes. “Love isn’t supposed to feel this way, Frank! This isn’t normal! I can’t even remember the last time Jack made me cry— I don’t even know if he ever has!”

Your words take the breath from his lungs. His fingers slip slowly from your wrists. His chin jerks back like he’s flinching. The hair draping his forehead sways as he shakes his head to himself.

“It always goes back to him, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does…” you sigh, deflating as you watch him walk away again, going blurry from the warm tears gathering at your waterline. “Because that’s what love is, Frank… And even if you and Abby are done for good, you will find someone, okay? And she will worship you, and she will love you in all the ways you need her to. Just because I can’t give that to you, doesn’t mean you can’t love somebody else—”

“That’s exactly what it means…” Langdon concludes with a heavy sigh, slouching back against the brick again.

He drops hard to the ground and rests his arms over his bent knees. His teary gaze, painted a lighter blue, focuses on the golden skyline behind you, slowly dimming to a darker pink color.

You sigh and muster a sad sort of smile. “Self-pity is not a good look on you, Langdon.”

“I’m just being realistic,” he shrugs. “You and… You and Abbot will be together forever, and you’ll have kids, and you’ll move on, and… I’ll watch…”

“Frank—”

“Don’t. It’s— It’s okay,” he interjects with a foreign sort of tenderness about him, as his pink lips curl into a distant half-smile. “Cause I… You know, I’d rather have a piece of you than— than nothing at all, so… You’re right. I’m just too late…”

You exhale a heavy breath and turn away again, bending at the waist to rest your elbows on the metal railing a few feet from the roof’s edge. You prop your forehead in your hands, watching a heavy tear fall from your bottom lashes and splatter hard on the concrete below.

You have to fight back the urge to climb over the barriers keeping you from the ledge, physically shaking the thoughts of doing so out of your head — of how free it would feel to jump, to fall and reach an inevitable darkness. It would feel much easier than being trapped up here, on this roof, and in this life, and in this skin that doesn’t feel like yours.

The train of thought always has a way of finding you, no matter where you are, no matter how happy you are. Sometimes, you find yourself physically startled by your very existence — like it’s some great mystery to discover that you’ve survived at all.

And, like always, Jack’s is the voice that pulls you back from the abyss.

“Alright, losers— As you were!”

His low, melodic voice shatters the heavy tension blanketing the quiet rooftop. But if he notices, he doesn’t show it. And if he heard anything that came before, he doesn’t say so.

You hurry to wipe the warm tears from your cheeks, swiping your middle and ring fingers below your eyes to remove any evidence that you’d been crying. You spin on the heel of your shoe to face him, mustering a tight-lipped smile as the man walks out into the cool, orange-pink evening — biceps straining against the black sleeves of his scrubs as his hands grasp either end of the stethoscope around his neck.

Robby walks out just behind him, brown eyes darting around as if he were surveying the rooftop — undoubtedly searching for dead bodies after being told that you and Langdon were trapped up here together. His brows bounce in silent shock to find that neither of you had killed each other.

The maintenance workers in navy blue coveralls stand just behind the two of them, replacing the broken knob with a newer one less likely to snap in half in record time.

“See?” Jack hums. The golden hour shines in his salt-and-pepper curls as he turns his head to the man beside him. “Told you I wasn’t lyin’, brother.”

“Yeah, thanks for caring about us, Robinavitch,” Frank huffs, grimacing at the ache in his lower back when he rises to full height again.

“Hey, I thought you deserved the break,” Robby says with his calloused palms splayed before him in surrender. “I just didn’t realize you guys had been forced into having one.”

Langdon says nothing in response, just slinks back through the opened threshold to what should feel like freedom, but finds him more like a slaughterhouse.

Robby watches him go, brows pinching in a wordless confusion, before his eyes dart back to you. His dark brown gaze glitters with curiosity as he nods his head towards Langdon’s disappearing figure, scratching at the grey patch in his beard with his left hand.

“What’s his deal?”

“I’ve been asking myself that for years…” you sigh, trudging across the rooftop like your feet are made of nrick. You inhale sharply through your nose and just barely manage to find the strength to joke, “Just please tell me this cuts a half hour off my double?”

“No, it means you gotta work a half hour overtime. Obviously,” Jack scoffs, wrapping his strong arm around your shoulder when you’re close enough to reach.

You stumble hopelessly into his side, immediately blanketed by his innate warmth. You inhale deeply, and let his musky cologne fill your lungs — smelling of home in every sense of the word, and replacing all the remnants of Langdon (also in every sense of the word).

“Don’t worry, honey,” he croons in a low, gritty voice. “I’ll keep you company through the dinner rush, if you don’t mind bein’ stuck with me for the next twelve hours… And the twelve hours after that… And the twelve hours after that—”

“Alright, we get it…” Robby huffs, narrow features twisted in an only halfway playful look of disgust. “Go ahead and get it out of your system, you two. You gotta long night ahead of you…”

He follows Langdon back down the stairwell, footsteps echoing as he hurries back down to the main floor to help the day shift prep the night shift. The weight of his words remains long after he’s gone. You should feel preemptively fatigued by them, and in many ways you are, but just being in Jack’s arms now is enough to reinvigorate you — like a shot of espresso, or like sunshine after days of stormy weather.

You know you should probably be sick of him by now, ‘cause when you’re not working with him, you’re living with him. But even still, on the rare days your schedules don’t align, you find yourself missing him anyway. You’re always missing him. And every day you are with him, you can’t help but wish for a hundred more. A lifetime with Jack Abbot isn’t nearly enough, but you’re glad to have at least gotten this one.

“You know, I never thought that I’d say this, but…” you trail off with a heavy exhale as you melt into his side, smoothing your left hand up his spine. “After a half hour trapped up here, I wouldn’t exactly mind being stuck with you, Dr. Abbot.”

His thin lips curl into a quiet grin, though the expression glitters mostly in his hazel eyes, which crinkle softly at the edges. He can’t help but hold all his love for you there. You’ve never once had to guess where you stand with him, or if he truly cares about you, ‘cause he wears it all in his eyes.

“See, that’s the kinda spirit I’m looking for, my darling wife,” he lilts sarcastically and ducks down to press a chaste kiss to your cheek, before this sort of PDA becomes a strict no-go when you’re back in the trauma center together. His greying scruff scratches at your delicate skin there.

You only pray he doesn’t taste the salt on your cheek, from where your tears are still drying.

                            ★。＼｜／。★

it's starting to burn, and i wanna go home . . .

You loll your heavy head to your shoulder to flash the man beside you an unenthusiastic, slow-blinking stare, from where he sits on the left side of the brick threshold. The rusted metal door, now missing a knob and refusing to open, sits between the two of you. Something about it feels like a metaphor.

“Because I knew you’d be a shitty husband,” you confess, perhaps a little more truthful than you need to be. “And, turns out, I was right, so…”

Langdon laughs at your honesty, though it comes out more like a punched-out breath. “Wow…”

With your head tipped back against the brick wall behind you, you turn back to face the golden blue sunset, made of a sea of milky pink and orange clouds. The view is far too pretty for the ugly day you’ve had, and for all the ugly you feel inside of you right now.

The music from the sports bar across the block swells distantly, in an unintelligible humming that blankets the momentary silence between you. The smoky scent of freshly cooked hamburgers fills the air, too, making your empty stomach grumble in a silent plea for a meal you haven’t gotten the chance to eat all day. You feel the early-evening chill down into your tired bones, piercing right through your black scrubs, which do little to cushion you from the cold, unforgiving concrete below.

“Gee, twist the knife, why don’t you…” Langdon hums cynically.

You meet his look of boyish offense — made of squinted blue eyes and a deep furrow between his heavy brows — with a narrowed gaze fixed into a firm glare. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that this was the ever-oblivious asshole you spent four years of your life with, though that feels like a couple thousand light-years ago now.

“You’re selfish, Frank. You’ve always been selfish, even when we were kids. That was practically your whole thing,” you ramble with a lazy shrug. “You’re the kinda guy who thinks buying presents, cooking dinner once a week, and getting the mother of your toddlers the most high-maintenance dog on the planet is gonna make up for you never being home.”

The words of an instinctive argument die on Frank’s tongue when his eyes fall to his left hand, hanging off of his bent knee, and noticeably missing his gold ring. The thumb and forefinger of his right hand migrate to the top of his knuckle, twisting the pale tanline where his wedding band would usually be. The anxious tic is muscle memory to him now.

“Yeah, that was… That was a stupid move on my part,” he murmurs with a heavy sigh, and with his blue-eyed gaze averted to his bare ring finger.

Your eyes run over the sharp edges of his profile, bathed in soft shadows and orange sunlight. His chiseled jaw clenches until his temples shift; his brows raise until his forehead wrinkles; and his pink lips quirk into a cynical half-smile.

“And you know what the craziest part is?” he wonders with an emotionless laugh. “I’m pretty sure that’s the reason Abby left me… It wasn’t that I was never home. It wasn’t that I was working with my ex-girlfriend. It was the goddamn dog… And the sonofabitch doesn’t even like me—”

“It was all of it, Frank,” you tell him in a quiet, sympathetic lilt. “And you not understanding that is exactly why we never worked out.”

Langdon scoffs another half-hearted chuckle in response. He feels the ache of your words somewhere deep in his chest, like he’s feeling the pain of losing you all over again. It feels a little like being torn in two. He can’t recall the last time he felt whole since you left him, but he tries not to think about that.

“And what? You think you were the most innocent girlfriend in the world. Is that it?”

You roll your eyes with a chest-deflating huff and cross your arms over your bent knees. You could’ve seen this coming from a mile away. You learned long ago that Frank never learned how to take criticism without needing to hit someone where it hurt right back.

“That’s not what I’m saying—”

“Like you didn’t put me through the fucking ringer, too?”

“Frank—”

“You know what I did the entire time I was with you?” he wonders aloud, with a particular bite in his deep, melodic voice. He shifts on his weight, propping his left hand on the cool concrete as he turns to face you more. The dark strands of hair draping his forehead sway over his brows as he points to you with his free hand. “I worried that every single time I took my eyes off you, that you were gonna throw yourself off the goddamn roof—”

You inhale sharply through your nose, then click your lips against your teeth. “Wow…” you repeat in the same distantly incredulous murmur.

His words pierce you right back. The memories within them, more so.

It was hardly Frank’s fault that you had spent your years together just waiting — waiting to be someone else, waiting to become the person you always thought you were on the verge of becoming, waiting for your life to start finally making sense.

You could never quite shake the constant feeling of abandonment; the nagging thought that the world was constantly gathering in a room that you were not invited in. And Frank’s love for you never felt like enough. You craved affection from him so badly that you began to detest it. And, on the off chance Frank was emotionally available enough to love you, it felt as hard to take as violence.

It took several years of unlearning the filth you had taught yourself — it took finding Jack and realizing that love didn’t always have to be so complicated — to finally feel at home on an Earth that felt like it was constantly leaving you behind. And that thought isn’t lost on either of you.

Frank, particularly, is now forced to live out the rest of his day burdened by the weight of not having been enough to save you — that being with him would’ve killed you; that you would’ve thrown yourself off the roof of the apartment building you used to live in together just to get away from him.

The old memories burn him like a fresh, white-orange flame.

“So, you know what? Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t work out,” Langdon concludes with a slow nod as he settles back into place again, grimacing softly when the brick snags the fabric of his black scrubs. “Because we actually found people who could put up with all our fuckin’— neuroses… Well, you did, I guess…”

He turns to you again, with softer eyes this time, and with a solemn twist to his chiseled face that you don’t see ‘cause you no longer have the strength to meet his gaze.

The thin chain around your neck glitters in the golden hour sun. A gold wedding band hangs at the center of it, usually hidden beneath your scrubs, but now draped at your chest and staring him right in the face.

Jack had given you the ring a few years ago, after three years shy together and a not-quite wedding. You’d eloped quietly, then spent the three days you had off work together on a makeshift honeymoon. No one other than Robby and Heather — your only witnesses at the courthouse the day you got your marriage certificate — even knew you had gotten married until you and Jack showed up to work some days later, with a pair of matching rings hung around your neck.

Frank had a panic attack in the locker room when he found out, which he opted to blame on the unforgiving shift.

The ring feels particularly heavy around your neck now, made leaden under the weight of this unwarranted conversation, of which you know you should not entertain but can’t seem to help yourself otherwise. You pinch the gold band between your thumb and forefinger, dragging it absentmindedly across the thin necklace in a faint swish, swish, swish sound.

“Yeah…” you sigh, blinking away the tears that sting at the backs of your eyes, made perhaps more emotional than usual from the long day. “Because Jack would never say something like that to me…”

He meets your glass-eyed glower with a crooked grin, just like he always used to — back when he was still a starving med student, and all of his problems felt like the end of the world, which only really meant that all of yours couldn’t possibly be as serious in comparison.

Sometimes they weren’t, to be fair. Sometimes, not getting your hair to cooperate in the morning sent you into a spiral the rest of the day. Sometimes, all Frank could do was laugh and hold you tighter and wait for you to put yourself back together again. Other times, you felt unearthly, not at home in the world, and you needed him to really care, but he didn’t know how to.

“Oh, please,” Langdon scoffs. “Fighting is what we’re good at. I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing we ever did right… Other than the sex, obviously—”

“Oh, my god! Frank!” you scold, though a laugh sputters from your lips before you can stop it. “You can’t just say that stuff to me!”

“Hey, I’m not trying to hit on you or anything, alright? I’m just… making an observation,” he shrugs with a quiet smile and with his wide palms splayed in surrender. “We loved each other, we just… didn’t know how to show it—”

“You never loved me, Langdon,” you correct with a sad sort of smile, weighed down with a heavier reminiscence. “You loved the idea of me. You loved the idea of having someone that would’ve stuck around no matter what, even if we fought all the time—”

“That’s not true,” Langdon insists, with his ocean blue eyes narrowed into thin slits.

“Face it, Frank,” you laugh with a lazy shrug. “You want someone who will love you and be loyal to you, no matter how many times you hurt them—”

“No, that’s not—”

“Someone that’ll keep on loving you no matter how many times you fuck up—”

“Can you… Can you just let me talk—”

“You don’t want a wife, Langdon, you wanted a fucking dog!”

“No, I want you!” he hears himself shout.

His voice rings across the expanse of the concrete rooftop, forcing him to hear the words that he’d immediately take back if the universe allowed it. It might’ve been easier to take if you didn’t look at him like you were halfway horrified, flinching back like his words had pained you somehow physically. His cobalt-colored eyes widen in a similar look of alarm.

“I mean, I— I wanted you,” he stammers, stumbling over himself to get the words out. His hands flail wildly as he explains, like they always did when he was nervous. “E-Even if I didn’t exactly know how to treat you at the time. I did… I did love you, you know? And I… I think we could’ve been good together. That’s all…”

You open your mouth to speak, but nothing comes out right away.

Your breath hitches in your throat instead, as your mind races a million miles a minute. The knock that comes suddenly at the door beside takes you out of your stupor and makes you flinch — hard. You feel the two hard raps against the locked entrance in your burning chest. The familiar voice that accompanies it melts your heart into specks of ash that you can feel trickling down into your swimming stomach.

“Guys?” your husband calls, half-muffled from within the stairwell. “You up there?”

“Jack?” you call back on bated breath.

You share a wide-eyed look of apprehension at the man beside you, whose ocean-blue stare bores right into yours. Neither of you can shake the feeling that you’ve just been caught doing something horrible — and, in a way, you have.

You scramble to your feet and feel the blood rush back to your tingling legs almost instantly as you stand before the rusted door, resting your palms along the cool metal.

“How long have you guys been out here?”

“Too long,” Frank answers in a huff, still slouched against the concrete.

You scoff a breathy laugh despite the tight feeling in your chest. “How long did it take everyone down there to figure out we were stuck?”

“Yeah, I don’t think they have yet,” Jack chuckles. “I just got here, and Robby said you guys were getting some air, so…”

He trails off.

You can hear the smile in his gritty voice when he asks, “How’d you two idiots manage to get stuck up here, anyway?”

“The universe hates me,” you deadpan in a non-answer.

You hear Jack laughing from behind the heavy door between you, a sound more golden than the setting sun painting everything a flaxen shade of orange. It makes a wavering smile curl at the very edges of your mouth, though it’s weighed down by a more palpable dread that Frank can see from here, with his glittering eyes still trained on your profile.

“I’ll go tell maintenance, alright?” Jack tells you. “Just… don’t do anything else stupid up while I’m gone.”

“Yeah, no promises,” Frank jokes back with his own artificial grin that deflates the moment Jack’s muffled footsteps descend back down the stairwell.

He slouches back against the unforgiving brick with a heavy sigh, feeling the exhaustion settling heavy in his bones — the acknowledgement that, once he’s back inside The Pitt, he’ll never get to be alone with you like this again; and that he’ll have to spend the rest of his life pretending like he isn’t constantly grieving your absence.

You step away from the door with a trembling sigh. You try to turn away before Frank sees the emotion crumpling your face, but he catches it anyway — there’s nothing about you that he wouldn’t immediately notice.

“Hey, I… I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t,” you snap, turning on your heel to face him. You wear a stern glare on your face that makes him falter as he rises from the cold concrete to stand to full height. The golden hour sparkles in your glassy eyes, wetting with unshed tears. “Just… don’t, alright? Because if you make this a whole thing, I’m gonna have to tell Jack—”

“Tell him what?” Frank presses, brows raised to his hairline until three fine lines wrinkle at his forehead.

His shoes scuff the pavement when he goes to take a hesitant step forward. You flinch back again, like he’ll burn you if he gets too close — like he already has burned you and like you refuse to be kissed by that flame again.

He stops short, splays his wide palms before him in surrender, and continues quietly, “That I’m right? ‘Cause I really don’t think this upset if I were wrong—”

“Of course, I’m upset!” you shout, voice cracking and ringing across the empty rooftop. A breeze rolls by, cooler than silk, rippling in your scrubs and billowing in your hair. “But that doesn’t mean that us not being together is the wrong choice! It’s just— Something we’re gonna have to carry!”

“Then why can’t we just have it out—?”

“Because we tried,” you agonize through a stuttering breath. “And it ended up like this! Every single time!”

Frank shakes his head, strong jaw clenched, too stubborn to listen.

“The only reason we were ever together is because we were…” you trail off, gaze darting wildly as you search for the right words. “Pathologically terrified of abandonment—”

“What are you? My shrink?” he scoffs cynically, biceps straining against the sleeves of his scrubs when he crosses his milky white arms across his chest.

“We knew, before we started dating, that we both were incapable of giving each other what we really needed,” you tell him, half-strangled, as you fight back the emotion wrapping itself around your throat. “And we did that because we knew that when we inevitably didn’t work out, neither of us would be at a totally substantial loss! I mean, why do you think we both moved on so quickly?”

Langdon flinches, chin jerking as his pretty face screws in offense. Your words find him like a punch to the stomach — they knock the breath from his lungs, make him feel like the world is swaying below his feet.

“Substantial loss?” he echoes with his brows raised in an incredulous look. He exhales an emotionless laugh and looks away. His tongue darts out to wet his mouth before he clicks his lips against his teeth, waving an accusatory finger in your direction. “No, see… See, that’s the difference between us. Because I was with you, because I actually loved you—”

“Key word here being loved. Past tense,” you snap with a clenched jaw, mirroring his rigid stature with your arms folded over your scrubs. “We were never gonna work out, Langdon. So whether or not we would’ve been good together doesn’t mean anything anymore, alright? It’s too late, so just… Just drop it.”

“So what?” he calls to you when you turn away again. “All those years we put each other through hell and back, that meant nothing to you?”

“It meant everything,” you confess tearily, knuckles blanching around the cold metal railing you lean against. You lack the strength to look over your shoulder at him, lest you see the boy you used to love in the man standing behind you now. “And it’s over now. And it’s been over for a long, long time…”

“Yeah, not for me…” Frank tells you, voice breaking into a fragile whisper. He clears his throat a second later, half-strangled by the words that’ve been stuck in his throat since the day you left.

Your head snaps over your shoulder, delicate features crumpling in a pained look. “You can’t say that to me,” you repeat, voice coated with tears this time instead of laughter. “You can’t just say that, Langdon—”

Your breath hitches as a sob swells in your throat. You hide your face behind your palms before he can see the way it twists at your face. Langdon feels your hurt like it’s his own, a burning somewhere deep inside his sternum, as he rushes to you on instinct.

“Look, okay? I-I know I’m not a perfect guy— I know that I’m not half as good as Abbot, alright? I know that—”

His fingers are long and warm when they curl gently around your wrists, urging your hands away from your face. You’re swaddled immediately in the warmth of his musky cologne, much stronger than Jack’s, but just as familiar to you.

He ducks his head to meet your gaze, navy-blue eyes glittering as they dart between both of yours. You peer up at him from beneath your lashes, which are now clumped together with unshed tears.

“But I-I’m different now. I am,” he tells you, nodding rapidly. “I wouldn’t be the asshole I was before. I’d be different— I’d be good for you this time.”

“You are, okay?” you choke out, pointing a stern finger at his chest, hands still caught in his unwavering hold. “You are a good man, and I am so grateful to you, and I am so proud of you, but we would be miserable together—”

“Don’t say that,” Langdon murmurs, chiseled features screwed together like your words have pierced him somehow physically. “Why— Why are you saying that?”

“Because look at us!” you laugh through the tears clinging to your lashes. “Love isn’t supposed to feel this way, Frank! This isn’t normal! I can’t even remember the last time Jack made me cry— I don’t even know if he ever has!”

Your words take the breath from his lungs. His fingers slip slowly from your wrists. His chin jerks back like he’s flinching. The hair draping his forehead sways as he shakes his head to himself.

“It always goes back to him, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does…” you sigh, deflating as you watch him walk away again, going blurry from the warm tears gathering at your waterline. “Because that’s what love is, Frank… And even if you and Abby are done for good, you will find someone, okay? And she will worship you, and she will love you in all the ways you need her to. Just because I can’t give that to you, doesn’t mean you can’t love somebody else—”

“That’s exactly what it means…” Langdon concludes with a heavy sigh, slouching back against the brick again.

He drops hard to the ground and rests his arms over his bent knees. His teary gaze, painted a lighter blue, focuses on the golden skyline behind you, slowly dimming to a darker pink color.

You sigh and muster a sad sort of smile. “Self-pity is not a good look on you, Langdon.”

“I’m just being realistic,” he shrugs. “You and… You and Abbot will be together forever, and you’ll have kids, and you’ll move on, and… I’ll watch…”

“Frank—”

“Don’t. It’s— It’s okay,” he interjects with a foreign sort of tenderness about him, as his pink lips curl into a distant half-smile. “Cause I… You know, I’d rather have a piece of you than— than nothing at all, so… You’re right. I’m just too late…”

You exhale a heavy breath and turn away again, bending at the waist to rest your elbows on the metal railing a few feet from the roof’s edge. You prop your forehead in your hands, watching a heavy tear fall from your bottom lashes and splatter hard on the concrete below.

You have to fight back the urge to climb over the barriers keeping you from the ledge, physically shaking the thoughts of doing so out of your head — of how free it would feel to jump, to fall and reach an inevitable darkness. It would feel much easier than being trapped up here, on this roof, and in this life, and in this skin that doesn’t feel like yours.

The train of thought always has a way of finding you, no matter where you are, no matter how happy you are. Sometimes, you find yourself physically startled by your very existence — like it’s some great mystery to discover that you’ve survived at all.

And, like always, Jack’s is the voice that pulls you back from the abyss.

“Alright, losers— As you were!”

His low, melodic voice shatters the heavy tension blanketing the quiet rooftop. But if he notices, he doesn’t show it. And if he heard anything that came before, he doesn’t say so.

You hurry to wipe the warm tears from your cheeks, swiping your middle and ring fingers below your eyes to remove any evidence that you’d been crying. You spin on the heel of your shoe to face him, mustering a tight-lipped smile as the man walks out into the cool, orange-pink evening — biceps straining against the black sleeves of his scrubs as his hands grasp either end of the stethoscope around his neck.

Robby walks out just behind him, brown eyes darting around as if he were surveying the rooftop — undoubtedly searching for dead bodies after being told that you and Langdon were trapped up here together. His brows bounce in silent shock to find that neither of you had killed each other.

The maintenance workers in navy blue coveralls stand just behind the two of them, replacing the broken knob with a newer one less likely to snap in half in record time.

“See?” Jack hums. The golden hour shines in his salt-and-pepper curls as he turns his head to the man beside him. “Told you I wasn’t lyin’, brother.”

“Yeah, thanks for caring about us, Robinavitch,” Frank huffs, grimacing at the ache in his lower back when he rises to full height again.

“Hey, I thought you deserved the break,” Robby says with his calloused palms splayed before him in surrender. “I just didn’t realize you guys had been forced into having one.”

Langdon says nothing in response, just slinks back through the opened threshold to what should feel like freedom, but finds him more like a slaughterhouse.

Robby watches him go, brows pinching in a wordless confusion, before his eyes dart back to you. His dark brown gaze glitters with curiosity as he nods his head towards Langdon’s disappearing figure, scratching at the grey patch in his beard with his left hand.

“What’s his deal?”

“I’ve been asking myself that for years…” you sigh, trudging across the rooftop like your feet are made of nrick. You inhale sharply through your nose and just barely manage to find the strength to joke, “Just please tell me this cuts a half hour off my double?”

“No, it means you gotta work a half hour overtime. Obviously,” Jack scoffs, wrapping his strong arm around your shoulder when you’re close enough to reach.

You stumble hopelessly into his side, immediately blanketed by his innate warmth. You inhale deeply, and let his musky cologne fill your lungs — smelling of home in every sense of the word, and replacing all the remnants of Langdon (also in every sense of the word).

“Don’t worry, honey,” he croons in a low, gritty voice. “I’ll keep you company through the dinner rush, if you don’t mind bein’ stuck with me for the next twelve hours… And the twelve hours after that… And the twelve hours after that—”

“Alright, we get it…” Robby huffs, narrow features twisted in an only halfway playful look of disgust. “Go ahead and get it out of your system, you two. You gotta long night ahead of you…”

He follows Langdon back down the stairwell, footsteps echoing as he hurries back down to the main floor to help the day shift prep the night shift. The weight of his words remains long after he’s gone. You should feel preemptively fatigued by them, and in many ways you are, but just being in Jack’s arms now is enough to reinvigorate you — like a shot of espresso, or like sunshine after days of stormy weather.

You know you should probably be sick of him by now, ‘cause when you’re not working with him, you’re living with him. But even still, on the rare days your schedules don’t align, you find yourself missing him anyway. You’re always missing him. And every day you are with him, you can’t help but wish for a hundred more. A lifetime with Jack Abbot isn’t nearly enough, but you’re glad to have at least gotten this one.

“You know, I never thought that I’d say this, but…” you trail off with a heavy exhale as you melt into his side, smoothing your left hand up his spine. “After a half hour trapped up here, I wouldn’t exactly mind being stuck with you, Dr. Abbot.”

His thin lips curl into a quiet grin, though the expression glitters mostly in his hazel eyes, which crinkle softly at the edges. He can’t help but hold all his love for you there. You’ve never once had to guess where you stand with him, or if he truly cares about you, ‘cause he wears it all in his eyes.

“See, that’s the kinda spirit I’m looking for, my darling wife,” he lilts sarcastically and ducks down to press a chaste kiss to your cheek, before this sort of PDA becomes a strict no-go when you’re back in the trauma center together. His greying scruff scratches at your delicate skin there.

You only pray he doesn’t taste the salt on your cheek, from where your tears are still drying.

                            ★。＼｜／。★

it's starting to burn, and i wanna go home . . .