summary: frank langdon told himself there was no happiness left for him after his divorce, so he spends his days chasing small satisfactions in the form of one-night-stands and first dates. that is, until he meets you.
pairing: frank langdon x reader
tags: afab reader, so much fluff, mentions of sex but nothing nsfw, mentions of drugs & addiction, lots of kissing, fuckboy & then loverboy!frank langdon, divorced!frank langdon, reader is such a chill gal
word count: 2.5k
notes: loverboy frank langdon my beloved. also i use a lot of emdashes in here, i know. i swear it's not ai.
please reblog if you enjoy!
also, check out my masterlist!
Frank Langdon does not want to have sex with you—and he hates it.
Okay, that’s a bit of a lie. There’s just a lot of things he’d rather do with you before having sex with you and that’s the problem.
Since his tumultuous divorce and losing the great big love of his life, Frank’s refused to get close to anyone else. He’s already ruined a marriage, became one half of a fifty-fifty custody decision and had to regain his reputation at work, so there’s no reason to pretend like he’ll move on unscathed from everything he has done. For the longest time, he still peered at Abby a little bit too hard when she dropped off Tanner and Penny, hoping she’d look at him the same way she had all of those years before.
She never had, of course. He was lucky if she even actually glanced at him rather than just let her eyes brush over his chest.
As much as he wanted to enjoy his solitude, alone in his house when he was both off shift and without children, humans crave companionship. Unfortunately, that had brought him to making an account on a few dating apps. To his surprise, he got quite a few matches, even without including that he was a doctor. (There were a lot of hospitals and doctor’s offices in Pittsburgh, but he’d seen enough craziness in the emergency room to know that women could figure out anything they wanted to if they tried even a little bit.)
Every date went the same and Frank ensured that. A kind hug as an introduction, a nice conversation over a couple drinks (soda or water for him, of course, recovery was important) and then usually a one night stand. Never at his apartment, not in the place that his kids called home for three days out of the week. Plus, that gave him the opportunity to leave as soon as he wanted to, which was usually as soon as possible.
But with you, your date had been different. He’d followed all of the normal steps. Scheduling a date after a minimal amount of text messages, a public place with little to no romance, an almost friendly hug as a greeting, but immediately, he’d felt a change. The big smile you had on your face had seemed to light up the entire street he had met you on, seeping into his chest and making him feel warm all over.
Your hair smelled like rosemary and mint when he had politely curled his arms around your waist, chin barely touching your collarbone before he sat up again. Your perfume clung to your wrist when you had lifted a hand to point at the bar across the street, something sweet brushing his nose and distracting him from whatever words had left your mouth.
Luckily, you had been a good sport when he had looked at you, befuddled and speechless. For days, he had remembered the soft twinkle of your laugh and the sparkle of the streetlight in your eyes as you watched him closely.
During dinner, Frank could feel words spouting out of his mouth before he thought about them. He told you that he was a doctor. When the bartender had asked for his order and he had said a soda, he’d easily answered your brief questioning look with an explanation that he was in recovery. Not too much information, as it was just a first date, but you still regarded him with a soft remark of acknowledgement before moving on.
It had meant almost too much to him.
You didn’t invite him back to your apartment, and he didn’t want you to. Instead, he had ended the night with a chaste kiss to your cheek after walking you to your cab, a sincere smile on his face as he closed the door behind you.
The final nail in his coffin had been the text he had sent you afterward. It was nice meeting you. Hope you sleep well. I would love to do that again sometime.
He hadn’t sent a message like that since high school. Since he was still courting Abby and trying to convince her to be his girlfriend before he even asked the question. Admittedly, it scared him more than he liked to admit.
On the second date, he had asked to kiss you, on the mouth this time. It hadn’t been anything crazy, just something gentle beneath the streetlight in front of your apartment complex, but the only thing he could think after that is that he wanted to kiss you again and again and again and again, until his lips molded into the perfect imprint to press against yours.
By the fourth date, Frank had started to feel the pressure. He hadn’t seriously dated in a while, but he knew that the fourth or fifth date is when things start to move into serious territory. Sex and sleepovers usually started around this time, but that seemed too much. For the last few months, he’s been using sex as the final straw, the sign that he needs to make his getaway, but he doesn’t want to let go of you yet.
Or at all, if he allowed himself to admit that.
He holds your hand as the two of you walk towards his apartment, thumb drumming against the back of your hand nervously. A silence has fallen over the two of you, awkward on his side and contemplative on yours. He’s almost ninety-nine percent sure that you have him all figured out and that only makes his anxiety worse.
“Did I do something wrong?” You finally break the silence, moving your focus from the matching pace of your steps to his face. Despite your question, there’s not a flicker of uncertainty or anger in your eyes. Instead, you’re genuinely curious, receptive towards whatever response he’ll give you, which only makes his chest cave in.
Frank looks down at you, tugging on your hand to keep you from accidentally stepping off the sidewalk. “No, baby,” he murmurs. He lets go of your hand to wrap his arm around your shoulder and pull you close, kissing where your wide-eyed wrinkle has smoothened out, lingering there for just a moment to show he means it. “I was just thinking.”
The palm of your hand slides just beneath his shoulder blades, leaning into his side as much as you could without messing up his stride. “About what?”
His thumb brushes along the bare skin of your shoulder, a soothing motion more for him than you. Your hand rises and falls as he exhales a deep breath, staring ahead. “Well.” There’s a beat of silence before he decides to bite the bullet. “I was wondering if you wanted to stay at my place tonight.”
To his surprise, you answer immediately. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
All of the negative feelings he had had leading up to this conversation immediately dissipate at how breezily you agree. Instead, it’s replaced with an excitement that’s so overwhelming that one of his feet catches on the back of the other, almost sending him face-first into the pavement.
You laugh as he regains his balance, flattening your hand on his chest as if it’d help, and he covers that one with his own in hopes that you’ll feel how fast you make his heart beat. A small tell without the words having to leave his mouth.
Once Frank is sat up straight, he presses his face into your hair again, still feeling the rumbling of your chest as you giggle at him. It makes a smile bloom on his own mouth, laughing beneath his breath at just how foolish you make him.
“You know I don’t expect anything, right?” He asks once the both of you climb the steps to his apartment, pulling his keys out of his pocket. His thumb presses through all of his keys as he thinks of what exactly to say. “I just don’t want to feel upset at the idea of you leaving tonight.”
He can feel the shit-eating grin on your face, but he chooses to ignore it to slide his key into his lock.
Another laugh slips out of your lips as you curl your arms around his torso, pressing your cheek into his back. “You like having me around.” It’s a note more than a tease, settling deep in his gut. A truth spilled out onto the pavement for the both of you to marvel at. “I like that.”
The front door swings open and he reaches back to pull you in front of him, leaning down to press his mouth to yours. “Oh, you do, don’t you?” He mumbles against your lips, finger hooking in your belt loop to tug you into his apartment so that he can finally shut the door and leave the outside world behind the both of you.
You laugh again. Frank would probably fail to exist if you ever stopped laughing with him.
He trips over one of Tanner’s toy cars as he holds your hand all the way to his kitchen, cheeks flushing and a hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. “Sorry. I try to pick up everything, but sometimes they slip through the cracks with my shifts and everything.” Leaning down, he plucks up the toy, only separating from you to set it atop one of the side tables in his living room.
Every time you’ve come over, he’s ensured that all of the things belonging to his kids– Penny’s messy coloring books and Tanner’s numerous figurines– were picked up and put away. Not necessarily hidden, especially with the photos of them peppering his walls and fireplace mantel, but out of the way.
He couldn’t tell you why he felt the need to do so. He had made sure early on that you knew he was not only divorced but a father of two, especially since his family controlled every aspect of his life. The last thing he wanted to do was pretend that his son and daughter didn’t exist.
“It’s fine, Frank.” You assure, curling your hand around his bicep and giving it a light squeeze. There’s nothing else to say after that, and he’s okay with it. If you said more, he might end up saying too much.
Later that night, once you’re well-fed and well-kissed, he leads you into his bedroom. He speaks as little as possible as he hands you a stack of his clothes, changing into his own sweatpants inside of his bathroom and running the water for a bit too long to give you ample time to change. He’s only a gentleman, after all.
Once he finally mans up and steps out of the bathroom, Frank’s met with the sight of you already beneath his duvet like you belong there, hair fanned out over his pillowcase. Your eyes immediately drag down his bare chest and his heart drops along with them, butterflies sprouting in his stomach like he’s fourteen again.
His hand presses into the mattress first, then his knee. Slowly, he crawls up until he’s hovering over your body, knee pressed inbetween your legs. Your chin tilts up as he dips down, meeting his sweet kiss right in the middle. Like this, with his hands keeping himself from falling atop you, he can’t feel the outline of your body the way he so desperately wants to.
After he’s sure he’s stolen all the breath from your lungs, he finally crawls off of you, sliding beneath the duvet and immediately pressing his leg against yours just to be closer. He doesn’t have to wait for too long though, as you scoot close enough to slot your head beneath his chin and wrap your arm around his waist. A heavy sigh immediately leaves his lips, tilting his head down to press his nose into your hair.
The both of you are quiet for a few heartbeats, the only sign that either are awake being a wriggle here or there to get comfortable. Finally, Frank speaks, a quiet murmur into your forehead after he places a kiss there. “I’m scared,” he admits. It’s a soft whisper in the dark, like kids swapping secrets after bedtime.
“Of the dark?” You mumble into his chest, voice muffled by both his skin and the sleepiness taking over you.
Despite his best efforts, the corner of his lips twitch in amusement. His fingers card through your hair, gentle when the tiny tangles catch on his fingers. “No, baby,” he muses. There’s a pause before he speaks again. “‘m scared because I think you mean a lot to me.”
That pulls your head from beneath his chin, tired eyes finding his face in the dark. “You think?” you ask.
The hand in your hair stills, strands still caught between his fingers. He stares at you for a moment, admiring the moonlight reflecting off your cheekbones. You’re especially beautiful like this – in his clothes, in his bed, his for now. For a long time, if he can help it.
“I know,” he corrects, “that you mean a lot to me.” The other hand finds your waist, pulling you until you’re finally chest to chest, hip to hip. Your body heat bleeds into his own, but he doesn’t mind it as much as he usually does. “And that scares me.”
His face finds your head again, breath brushing against your skin as he speaks. “No one’s meant as much to me as you do in a long time,” he admits, “and the last time I had something this good, I messed it up. And I really, really don’t want to mess this up.”
You place your palm on his chest, feeling the slow thud of his heart and running your thumb over the skin there. “Well, then, I think you miscalculate how much you mean to me,” you respond. “Ever thought about asking how I feel?”
That makes him freeze, running over the words in his head. “What do you mean?”
To his chagrin, you sit up, leaning on your elbow so you can look down at him. “I mean that I really like you, Frank, and I am not afraid of that, because I know you.” Your hand slides along his side, fingertips pressing into his ribcage. “Your divorce was due to your addiction, which is a disease. Before that, you were a loving husband and, even now, you are a great father.”
You lean down to kiss his cheekbone, which doesn’t help the giddiness that bubbles up in him. “I think we’ll be fine. And I think you should stop treating me like I’ll run away at the slightest grevience.”
Speechless. Utterly speechless is what you’ve rendered him, lips parted as he stares at you. He’s quiet for so long that you smile at him, lowering yourself down to lay on the pillow again. “Now, can we go to sleep?”
Dumbly, Frank nods. Unable to speak, he does what he does best and pulls you closer. You turn around until his chest is flush with your back, the bend of his knees making them press into the back of your legs.
You perfectly fit in his arms, the same way that you’ve fit so perfectly into his life. There hasn’t been much happiness in Frank’s life since his scandal and divorce, but at least there seems to be hope on the horizon in the form of you.
⭒ I Blinked and Suddenly, I Had a Valentine | @bi-bard
Frank is stuck working Valentine's Day. His original plans may be slightly derailed, but that doesn't mean that he won't try his hardest to be a true romantic.
⭒ Best of wives | @mercvry-glow
frank langdon loves his wife dearly, but family is hard when hard when her older brother is your boss.
er barbie and ken | @sugartalk-ing
where he’s married or engaged to reader who is another doctor in the er and just their interactions through out the day plsss
Catch Me | @favefandomimagines
it was only supposed to be a stupid argument; it wasn’t supposed to be the last time they spoke
Radio Silence | @/favefandomimagines
violence against healthcare workers is ramping up all over the country...Y/N just never thought she'd be on the receiving end of it.
Baby On Board | @/favefandomimagines
Y/N is seven months pregnant and Frank is a nightmare
Exam Room 6 | @writtendaydreamm
A seemingly boring day at work takes an unexpected turn that could change Langdon’s life forever when he walks in on Y/n in Exam Room 6.
The Hospital Gossip Mill | @/writtendaydreamm
Y/n and Langdon try to keep their relationship a secret at work, but eventually get caught by their observant colleagues
Allergies and Accidents | @/writtendaydreamm
Y/n and Langdon’s son has an allergic reaction at school and is rushed to the ER
reckless driver | @perseephoneee
we all need a little bit of healing (or frank patches you up after an accident)
Oblivious | @/bi-bard
(Y/n) has a great day every day. But Frank only has a great day if (Y/n) looks at him. (Otherwise known as Frank being down bad, everyone else knowing, but (Y/n) being completely oblivious)
dr. worrywart | @miley1442111
frank is not an openly affection man. what happens when that changes? the entire ER falls into the role of detective. robby and dana figure it out, of course.
dr. worrywart returns | @/miley1442111
finally, paternity leave is up (pretend it exists in america), and dr. worrywart is back in full swing
Captain cocky and the sweet talker | @inlovewithquestionablecharacters
What almost was | @/inlovewithquestionablecharacters
A family affair | @/inlovewithquestionablecharacters
the hot, flirty resident curse | @crushribbons
Dr. Frank Langdon just sustained the luckiest on-the-job injury ever.
angels don’t work the day shift | @mariasont
a flirty white lie to escape a creep gets out of control when you grab the nearest man… unfortunately, that man is dr. frank langdon. now you’re stuck pretending to date the hospital’s scariest ER doctor, who plays along a little too well.
handle with care | @/mariasont
5 times frank langdon manhandles you and the 1 time you manhandle him back
FRANK x ROBINAVITCH!READER | @jacksabbotts
when a cardiac episode sends you back to the pitt, the last person you expect to see at your bedside is frank langdon—your father’s former golden boy, now tarnished and freshly rebuilt after rehab. but one brush of his hand, one kiss you never should’ve shared, and suddenly you’re standing between the man who saved your life, the man who raised you, and the secrets that could break you all.
TOO LATE ! | @lovebugism
when you and langdon get stuck on the roof of the trauma center together, he decides to stir up the ghost of your relationship to pass the time. but you’ve long moved on, and frank’s left haunting the wrong house.
Bruising | @chrys-lism
frank was harder on you than anyone else. little did he know about what was going on behind the scenes
DR. PROTECTIVE ! | @goldsainz
a patient gets aggressive with you which leads langdon to step in your defence.
𝐑𝐮𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐇𝐚𝐬 𝐈𝐭 | @croigealai
the 5 times you and frank langdon are almost caught by your colleagues and the one time you definitely get caught
Non-displaced | @escapi3m
a car accident. an er bay. and the moment you realize loving someone means letting them worry.
the five times frank visits your unit. | @novatheory
another man’s jeans masterlist | @se7entyrell
a frank langdon exes to roommates to lovers fic
divorced!single dad!frank x single mom!reader | @/se7entyrell
can you read my mind, i've been watching you | @/se7entyrell
You're not sure emergency medicine is for you. Frank Langdon is out to change that, one shift at a time.
high school sweethearts | @/se7entyrell
Favorites | @lemonpeppermintstickshift
frank knows he's not supposed to have favorites in the workplace, but there's just something about you that he can't seem to resist, for better or for worse.
living together | @/lemonpeppermintstickshift
after his divorce, frank becomes your new roommate, and it becomes increasingly more difficult for you to not give into temptation.
Wake Me When It’s Over | @megalony
Frank is working his way through triage when suddenly his wife becomes his next patient. But her condition is a lot worse than he first thought, and now the ER is feeling his wrath.
drabble | @starlord-s
open secret | @asxgard
A patient just won’t take no for an answer — making your relationship with Frank all the more obvious.
Blind Date | @/chrys-lism
reader goes on a not great blind date. frank is there to pick up the pieces.
a family affair | @/inlovewithquestionablecharacters
You’re married to Frank, and Robby is your uncle, but people in the ER don’t know this and it ends up causing some problems
My Utah | @marvelslut16
Reader hears Javadi failing at asking out Mateo, and it takes her back to when she tried asking out Frank when she was a first year resident.
Off-limits | @/escapi3m
After a patient crosses the line during a routine shift Frank gets an idea that may make work just a little safer.
FLIGHT RISK, part two | @discokicks
frank langdon’s been your sworn rival since med school. he’s a mean, arrogant prick who, for some reason, made it his lifelong mission to beat you at every single thing you did. but, when you’re forced to transfer out of your residency in boston, you’re placed at the pitt with the one person you swore you’d never share a floor with again. and, as you two are forced to work together, you both realize there might be a little more to each other than meets the eye.
Wife!reader | @maidragoste
Clean | @foolishleclerc
when frank langdon disappears whithout a word, she is left loving him in the silence he leaves behind. months pass, unanswered messages pile up and heartbreak settles in, until the man she never stopped waiting for finds his way back.
5 times frank langdon manhandles you and the 1 time you manhandle him back
bet u wanna read my masterlist! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
pairing: frank langdon x intern!reader
warnings: fem!reader, sunshine!reader, intern!reader, power dynamics, mild manhandling/rough physical guidance, touch-starved characters, mutual pining, mean!langdon, slow burn, frank langdon is grumpy asf, mild panic attacks and dissociation, caretaking to the MAX, i had my med student best friend proof read this so if it’s wrong blame her not me!!!!
wc: 4.4k
1 Unauthorized Draping in a High-Risk Zone
Heel. Toe. Heel. Toe. Heel. Toe. It’s not a conscious thing you do, but you move anyway. You figure it’s your nervous system trying to siphon off all the anxious energy that perpetually resides within you.
This is just how your body chooses to cope, with tiny, repetitive motion, as if it can shake the dread loose before it calcifies into tears or sweat or both.
You make an effort to stop. To try and plant your feet, tell yourself to be good and normal and someone who belongs in this intimidating world.
But your brain pipes up with its favorite playlist: don’t touch anything blue, don’t lean on anything that costs more than your rent, don’t talk unless someone with a PhD says your name first, don’t be weird, don’t be you.
Not you-you. Not the klutzy, apology-powered wind-up doll who says “sorry” when someone else steps on your foot and once high-fived a paper towel dispenser by accident (don’t ask).
“Wrong hallway. Wrong badge.”
Shit.
Every neuron in your body slams on the brakes at once, and when you turn, it’s with the same slow, dawning horror of someone realizing they’ve just wandered into the morgue by mistake, except instead of toe tags and chillers, you’re greeted by six feet of brutal posture and eyes that look like they haven’t seen joy since the inventions of pagers.
You look down at his own badge and frown. Dr. Langdon. The senior resident with the god complex and the too-loud temper and the rehab stint.
He’s severe. That’s your first thought. Gaze that makes your mouth dry up and hate how immediately attractive you find him in that hyper-competent, morally disapproving kind of way.
You open your mouth to say something, anything, hi, sorry, I swear this was an accident, maybe even please don’t kill me but you don’t get the chance, because he’s already moving.
Coming close enough that you can see the indent on his chin, flexing with every angry breath he takes.
His hand then moves to your shoulder while the other catches the tie at your gown and tugs it with quick efficient impatient.
What is happening?
Your ears burn, heart going loud, obnoxiously so, like it’s trying to escape your ribcage and run laps around the hallway.
This is the part where you do something. Step back maybe? Speak? React? Anything that might come across to the effect of: hey stranger danger why are you touching me like that?
Instead, you freeze completely, letting him reposition you like an object with poor spatial awareness, standing there like the world’s most pathetic statue.
“I — wait, I thought —” you squeak, and it’s not a strong performance, not even close, just a frantic jumble of syllables strung together with the blind optimism that maybe, just maybe, he’ll let you explain yourself.
He doesn’t. He talks right over you, his words slicing through your sentence.
“You’re not cleared,” he says, cool and direct, the kind of tone that doesn’t invite conversation so much as it ends it. Then, as if the knife needed twisting: “No one told you to suit up.”
He undoes the final knot, as if he’s unwrapping an inconvenience instead of peeling the last bit of your dignity off your shoulders, and when you don’t drop the gown fast enough he just takes it from you, tossing it in the linen bin.
He shoves a chart into your hands.
“Triage notes need updating,” he says. “Do that.”
You’re still rooted to the spot, stunned into inaction, gripping the clipboard like it's the only thing keeping you upright.
You manage one step backward. Then another. It feels like learning to walk again.
Behind you, he adds, “And drink some water. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
2 Manual Dexterity: Failed Check
You’re staring at your hands. More specifically, the gloves that reside there. They feel weird on your skin, too loose at the fingertips, too bunchy on the palms.
There’s this awful puff of air trapped between your fingertips and the latex, and you keep flexing your hands like that’ll make it better, but it only makes the squish-snap worse.
You could take them off and grab a better-fitting pair, but that would involve drawing attention, and you’re already pushing the acceptable intern limit for “visible fumbling.”
Especially not with Dr. Langdon standing nearby. Dark hair, cutting eyes, that carved-from-contempt expression that already seems to say you’re wasting his time just by existing. His whole aura screams, I have better things to do than acknowledge your carbon footprint, and it works, you’re been trying to stay out of his way since the Gown Incident (capital G, capital I), but he has this unnerving talent for appearing exactly where you don’t want him to be.
And you could maybe cope with that, if your body didn’t decide to implode every time he got close. Five feet is the threshold, apparently. Any closer and all the blood rushes to your cheeks.
You’re so focused on pretending to be normal (chin up, shoulders back) that you don’t even realize he’s moved until it’s already happening.
A common theme, apparently.
His hand is around yours, lifting up your own like it’s some sort of misfiled lab result and brings it up under the light. He turns it over once. Then again.
You think for a second he might have forgotten it’s attached to a living, breathing person.
His brows furrow in what you assume is either concentration or deep disappointment. Probably the later.
“What are you doing?” you whisper, because that’s all your vocal cords will give you right now and you’re deeply afraid of drawing more attention than he already has.
He doesn’t answer, but rather just releases you hand. The loss of contact leaves a strange chill behind.
He stalks off toward a shadowy corner of the room that apparently hides a second supply cart.
A cart you’ve walked past, what, twenty times? He crouches, grabs a glove box from the bottom shelf, glances at the size like he’s memorized your hands from the quick thirty second glance over he gave them, and straightens in one fluid motion.
He’s back in front of you before you can fix your face, reaching for your hand to unpeel the glove in a way that makes your knees whisper things like maybe buckle now?.
The material slides away with a snap, leaving your hand bare and tingling in the open air.
“I can do it,” you hiss, “I knew they looked weird. I mean, not my hands, the gloves obviously, my hands are normal, at least I think they’re normal, unless you — no, sorry, what I meant was — I just didn’t know there were any smaller ones and I didn’t want to slow anyone down and —”
He positions the new, correct-sized, glove and slides it onto you, smoothing it down with expert hands.
He has really nice hands you realize. You mourn the second the go out of view.
“Wrong size compromises dexterity.”
“Oh,” you say, and then immediately regret it, because oh is not a real response to anything, so you tack on a breathless, “Thank you. I mean — for noticing. And fixing it. Sorry again.”
You’re smiling now. Why are you smiling?
“Don’t thank me.”
“Right,” you say, nodding. “No, yeah. I didn’t. I mean, I did, but… un-thank you. Consider the gratitude rescinded. Retracted. Gone.”
What a loser.
You wish the floor would do you a solid and just open up, suck you in, maybe relocate you to a dimension where you’re not inventing new ways to embarrass yourself in front of the grumpiest man alive. Preferably somewhere tropical and remote. With no gloves.
He looks at you like he’s deciding whether or not to dignify that with a response.
Then: “You done?”
“Uh-huh,” you say, “Done. Done talking. So done.”
He lifts his chin, gestures down the hall toward curtain three, and starts walking.
You follow like a kicked puppy. A very polite, professionally dressed, medically licensed kicked puppy.
3 Redirecting a Human GPS Malfunction
“She’s hyponatremic but still alert, which makes me think it’s chronic rather than acute, and the reflexes were intact except for a slight delay on patellar, so I’m leaning away from neuro, but if her cortisol’s low again I think we need to rule out secondary adrenal insufficiency, especially since her ACTH levels haven’t come back yet and nobody seems concerned about the mild orthostasis.”
Dr. Langdon hums low in his throat. It’s not disapproval. But it’s not agreement either. It’s a sound that lives somewhere in the neighborhood of try again, but smarter.
“And if the ACTH comes back low?”
“Then I’d want a CRH stimulation test to see if the pituitary’s response because if both ACTH and cortisol are low, we could be looking at hypothalamic suppression instead of adrenal failure, and at that point, imaging the pituitary would be the next step. Unless she’s been on chronic steroids, but I didn’t see anything in her med list to suggest that.”
“Good. But keep an eye on the sodium trend, if it spikes with fluids, you might be chasing the wrong diagnosis.”
Good.
It’s one word. One syllable. Not even said warmly, more of a clinical stamp of temporary adequacy. But your brain grabs onto it like a starved plant seeing sun for the first time in weeks.
You want to keep your face still. You really try. You train every muscle into neutrality, schooling your expression like a child behind glass. But inside… inside it’s glowing. Confetti. Champagne. Tiny internal high-fives.
You got a good. From him. From Dr. Langdon, who looks at most people like they’re bad test results. Who’s allergic to praise. Who speaks in critiques and glares and weaponized silence.
“Yep. Sodium. Absolutely,” you nod eagerly. “You know, I read this case study once where a woman presented with severe hyponatremia after a hot yoga retreat and it turned out she’d been drinking like three gallons of water a day because she thought it was detoxing her live, and her sodium dropped to 118, which is horrifying, but she was totally asymptomatic until she passed out in her car.”
He looks at you. “You ever do that?”
You blink. “Sorry, do what?”
“Hot yoga.”
“I have! Um, I went through this whole phase junior year where I was like, trying to become one of those ‘balanced’ people who wake up early and do gratitude journaling and drink matcha and just like, glow all the time? So I signed up for a free week at this studio that was supposed to be ‘soul-transforming,’ which in hindsight should’ve been a red flag, but I was optimistic, and kind of desperate — anyway, I made it halfway through the first class before I realized I’d accidentally worn fleece-lined leggings, and then I couldn’t leave because the instructor locked the door for ‘heat-integrity,’ and —”
His fingers close over your collar, tugging you just enough to redirect you a few steps to the left before you cheek meets drywall.
“— and I was already sweating like crazy but trying to act normal because everyone else looked so serene, and then —”
He stops walking. You stumble to a halt just behind him, trying to get a handle on your breathing and your mouth, which have both been sprinting ahead without a permit.
“Watch where you’re going,” he says, flat and unbothered. “I’m not doing that again.”
You’re not quite sure what he means, but apologize anyway, “Right. Sorry.”
He pauses. Glances over his shoulder. “And stop apologizing.”
“Mhm. Got it.” You give him a weird little salute. Loser strike two.
“Go check on your patient.”
“Going!”
You make it three steps before his fingers wrap around your elbow. He spins you back around with minimal effort. “Wrong way.”
You glance sideways. “Thought you weren’t doing that again.”
He doesn’t let go yet. Just raises one eyebrow. “Don’t be a smartass.”
His mouth twitches. A small, tiny flicker of amusement. It feels like a secret you weren’t supposed to see, so you pretend not to.
4 Medical Intervention (Sandwich Required)
You’re not even sure when you stopped standing and started leaning, all you know is the supply cart is cool and metal and solid under your palm, which is more than you can say for your knees.
Sixteen hours in, eight traumas logged, and your internal organs are currently operating on a diet consisting of two cups of hospital coffee (burnt and betrayal flavored) and a single saltine you found crumpled in your pocket.
You blink against the sudden fuzz crawling at the edges of your vision, but it’s no use, the black spots are doing synchronized jumping jacks now. Little warning flares that you’re probably pushing your luck. Again.
Dana steps into your line of sight, eyes narrowing. “You okay, kid?”
You slap on a smile like a band-aid over a bullet wound. Your special-sauce if you ever had one.
“Yup! All good. Just needed a minute. Long day. A lot of… exciting cases. You know how it is.” You do a vague jazz-hands motion. “Crushing it.”
Your vision pulses again. You do not, in fact, appear to be crushing it, you’re very sure of that. Maybe in the way a soda can gets crushed under a steel-toed boot.
“And I’m the Queen of England.” She takes one long look at your pale face and glassy eyes. “Sit. Before you faceplant and I have to explain to Gloria why we lost one to stubborn optimism.”
“I promise I’m fine! I just — stood up too fast.”
“Bullshit.”
His hand appears at the same time as his voice, both faster than your excuses.
One moment you’re vertical and the next you’re yanked with just enough force, like he knows how much pressure you can take without crumbling.
His grip is all calloused heat, palm pressing into your arm as he pulls you into the chair.
The world tilts once, then slams back into place. Cold metal bites into your thighs. His hand lingers a second too long, fingers flexing like he’s still gauging whether you’ll tip over again.
“I could’ve sat on my own, you know,” you grumble half-heartedly.
You glance toward Dana, hoping for backup, or at the very least a supportive eyebrow raise. She meets your gaze, chews her gum, and shrugs one shoulder in a perfect display of girl, please. Entirely unsympathetic. Possibly amused.
“Nope,” she says. “You were about one sway away from eating tile. Survival of the smartest, sweetheart. ”
“Don’t care if you could’ve,” he says as he crouches. “I’m not scraping you off the floor because you’re too much of a hard head to sit when you’re clearly crashing.”
Then, without asking (because when does he ever ask), he takes your wrist in his hand, thumb pressing gently into the inside. You try not to squirm.
“There’s a difference between committed and careless.” His brow furrows as he counts the beats under his thumb. “Right now, you’re leaning toward the wrong one.”
“I wasn’t trying to be careless, I swear. I just lost track of time, which is funny because I’m usually really good at that, like I even set alarms for hydration, but I ignored all of them because I didn’t want to miss rounds and then one trauma turned into five —”
You stop when you realize he’s still holding your wrist. And staring.
He exhales hard through his nose and shakes his head.
“You’ve got ten minutes here with food,” he says. He jerks his chin at Dana, who nods and heads for the cart without needing more. “Then fluids. Then, and only then, you can check on the lac in bay four.” His eyes cut back to you. “And if I see you wobble even once, you’re off the board for the night.”
“Yes. Yes sir – uh, not sir, just — yes. I’m staying.”
Dr. Langdon nods once, brushes his fingers briefly over your shoulder in what might be the lamest pat in human history (the universal ‘don’t make me come back’ signal), and walks off without another word.
Dana returns with a sandwich and a raised brow.
You unwrap it slowly. “Is he always so — uh — intense?”
She barks a laugh. “That was him being gentle.”
5 Objects in Motion (You) Meets Immovable Force (Also You, Apparently)
“—I’m telling you, he’s been on my ass before the sun even showed up,” Santos grumbles, tapping her pen against the desk. “I said good morning, and he looked at me like I suggested we kick a puppy together. Someone pissed in his Cheerios, and now I’m the one getting crucified for it.”
You tilt your head. “Maybe he just needs a snack. Or like… a hug.”
She snorts without looking at you. “I was thinking more along the lines of a double whiskey and a week locked in solitary with nothing but his own guilt complex, but sure. Hugs. Why not.”
“That’s so mean! Dr. Robby is not that bad. He just… glares at people like they personally ruined his life on occasion. He’s usually very kind.”
“Next you’re gonna tell me he’s just misunderstood and has a good heart underneath it all.”
“I mean… yeah. I kind of believe that about everyone. Doesn’t mean I’m right, but like… I’m not not hoping.”
Santo swivels in her chair, stares. “Even Langdon?”
You falter there. Step back. Physically, even, as if that’ll help distance you from the question, from the thought, because now it’s in there.
Dr. Langdon. Frank Langdon. The man who speaks in flat tones and judgmental silences. Who glares like it’s a sport and you’re always losing.
And now you’re thinking about him with… layers. Like, not just as a terrifying force of workplace intensity, but as someone who maybe carries all that stormy energy because he doesn’t know what to do with the softer parts.
Someone who maybe, just maybe, has a good heart buried underneath a mile of barbed wire
You chew on the thought like it’s an overcooked piece of gum — rubbery, bitter, sticking to the inside of your skull even as you try to spit it out — and you’re not even sure what part is more disturbing: the possibility that Langdon has hidden depths, or the fact that your brain insists on exploring them like a museum exhibit you weren’t emotionally prepared for.
But before you can get to the part where he maybe owns houseplants or secretly feeds stray cats behind the loading bay, the thought shatters, violently, like someone dropped a wine glass in the middle of your mental dinner party.
Noise. Sudden. Loud. A voice shouting something urgent, boots hammering the floor, movement that feels too fast for the space.
You flinch instinctively, start to pivot toward the commotion, but before your body can even decide what direction to go, a hand snaps around your waist and then you’re moving, pulled into something broad and unyielding and extremely human-shaped.
Specifically, Dr. Langdon-shaped.
Your cheek brushes the starchy edge of his scrub top. His arm curls in front of you, protective like a steel beam, while a crash cart screams past, inches from where you were just standing, the air it kicks up biting against your skin.
You realize, distantly, that you would’ve been directly in its path if not for him.
You can feel his heartbeat through the wall of muscle between you and everything else.
You can smell him, too. Clean, masculine soap invading your senses.
You shift, just slightly, enough to tilt your face upward.
He’s looking down at you like you’re a particularly complicated equation he’s trying not to solve out loud. And for a second, you don’t breathe. Not really. Because his grip tightens and you swear, you swear, his eyes flick down to your mouth.
“Jesus,” Santos mutters, breaking the spell as she peers after the cart. “You good? That thing was flying.”
You blink, realizing a second too late that Santos was talking to you.
“Huh?” You clear your throat, a sound that comes out way too dry. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”
At the same moment, Langdon steps away. Lets go. And the absence is bizarrely loud, like someone hit mute on the part of your body that had been braced against him.
You’re suddenly hyper-aware of not being touched. Of gravity reasserting itself. Of how your arms feel too light and your chest feels too tight and none of it makes any damn sense.
“You could’ve gotten flattened,” he mutters, jaw tight. It sounds like criticism, but there’s something else under it. Concern, maybe. Or frustration aimed more at the situation than at you.
You rub at your forearm, pretending it itches instead of tingles. “Yeah, well. I’m thinking of investing in high-vis tape and a ‘please don’t run me over’ sign.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just stares at you with that signature flat, heavy-lidded expression like even he can’t believe how often he has to save your life from your own proximity to disaster.
You can’t really believe it either.
“I won’t say thanks,” you say. “I know you hate that. And apologizing. But uh… I didn’t die. That’s… cool. For both of us. I mean, mostly me. But also you, probably, because paperwork would’ve sucked. I’m gonna leave before I say something dumber than that, which is a very low bar, so —”
“Do you really believe that?” he says behind you.
You stop.
“What?”
“What you said earlier. About everyone?”
It takes a second. He’d heard that?
You scratch your cheek, suddenly feeling exposed.
“Yeah,” you say finally. “I really do.”
+1 Please Just Stay
The stairwell is freezing, cement bones and rebar spine, and you’re crumpled against the wall like a misfiled piece of paper. It’s quiet here, except for the stupid way your breathing bounces off the walls and makes it sound like someone else is crying too.
But it’s just you. It’s always just you. The tears keep coming, hot and salty and mortifying. You wipe them away with the back of your hand, again and again, but they just keep returning, stubborn as guilt.
Everyone said it wasn’t your fault. In serious tones people use when they want to sound very sure. As if it makes a difference. It really doesn’t.
It was your first patient death.
He was somebody’s father. Somebody’s brother. Somebody’s son. And in the end, you were the last person to touch him. You watched the monitors go still. You felt his hand lose its warmth.
Footsteps echo up the stairwell.
Your body reacts accordingly, jolting upright like you’ve been caught doing something illegal (crying isn’t illegal, you remind yourself, but it sure feels like it), and your hands fly to your face.
Both of them. Too rough, too fast, trying to erase the emotions by brute force.
Your shoulders curl in, chin tucking down so far it could hit your collarbone. Hide, hide, hide. You try to stop the sniffling, will it down your throat, but it stutters out of you anyway, weak, wet, pathetic. Perfect.
“Oh — shit. Sorry.” It takes you half a second to recognize the voice. A half second too long, because by the time it clicks, it’s already too late. Dr. Langdon.
Your stomach flips so intensely it feels like it’s trying to escape through your throat, a sudden swoop of nausea and disbelief tangled together. Of all people.
You hear the shift, his footsteps faltering, uneven now, breath snagging mid-step before everything goes still. The stairwell swallows the sound.
Then: “You’re crying.”
You let out a exhale that stumbles out halfway between a laugh and a cough.
It sounds pathetic, honestly, but you don’t have the energy to care. “That obvious, huh?”
Silence stretches long enough to get awkward, and you start to hope maybe he took the hint. Maybe he backed away, quietly, like a decent person who knows how to pretend they didn’t just catch someone crying their face off in a desolate place. Maybe you get to keep your breakdown private.
However, you aren’t so lucky.
“First time I lost a patient, I threw up in the supply closet.” He doesn’t sound embarrassed by it, just matter-of-fact, like he’s naming a side effect. “I told the attending that it was food poisoning. It wasn’t.”
You twist toward him, shoulders still hunched, face hot and raw. You’re sure you look like hell, and he sees all of it, but he doesn’t react. No flicker of discomfort. No awkward glance away.
“Does it… ever get easier?”
It sounds fragile on your tongue. Like you’re scared of the answer, but more scared not to ask.
He looks past you for a second.
“No,” he says. Then, almost like an afterthought, “If it did, that’d be worse.”
You swallow around the lump in your throat. “Yeah,” you whisper. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
He nods and you see the look on his face that suggests maybe he wants to say more. But he doesn’t.
“Take a minute. If you need anything…” He hesitates. “Come get me.”
He turns, just slightly, like he’s giving you privacy. Respect. Distance.
And maybe that was what you needed. What you thought you wanted not even two seconds ago. But not anymore.
Because the second he turns, the second his body shifts and his presence starts to pull away even by the smallest degree, panic claws its way up your chest like a reflex, like a toddler reaching out in the dark, and your hands shoot forward without asking permission from the rest of you, both of them closing tight around the soft fabric of his scrubs. Clumsy and fast and maybe too hard.
You don’t even know what you're holding onto exactly, not really, except it’s him, and he’s warm and real and not going anywhere, not unless you let him, and for a second you just stand there like that, fists full of fabric, heart full of please don’t leave.
“Don’t —” you choke, the word cracking like it’s too big for your throat, and you bite it down fast, try again, quieter this time, like whispering might make it less desperate. “Can you just… stay. Just a minute. Please.”
He doesn’t say anything right away, and for a terrifying, breath-holding moment, you think maybe you misread it, maybe he’s about to step back, untangle himself from your grip, do the polite thing and leave you to cry in peace like people do when they don’t want to deal with someone else’s damage.
His eyes drop to where your fists are bunched in his scrubs
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah. Okay.”
His arms come around you. Not expertly either. It’s real and maybe a little uneven, a little unsure, like he’s not totally certain where his hands are supposed to go.
But he does it anyway, one hand finding the back of your head, fussing with the tag on the back of your shirt, the other curling around your back.
And for the first time all day, you don’t feel like you’re falling.
pairing: frank langdon x fem!reader ( no use of y/n )
summary: with frank unable to join the bets while he catches up on his rehab bills, you decide to up the stakes in a different way. you propose a new reward: a kiss. from you.
content warnings: mention of rehab and withdrawals, mention of one rough patient but no details, mostly fluff
a/n: hai lovelies!! i'm so pittpilled at the moment so my inbox is open pls send in your lovely requests
You watched as Frank stared at the betting pool pinned to the bulletin board. A few of the other residents were gathered around, laughing as they scribbled their names down and threw in a few dollars. For a moment, you saw the competitive edge he used to wear so easily, flicker across his face.
Then he shook his head. "Gotta pass. Still catching up on rehab bills."
The words came out casual enough, delivered with a small shrug. But you noticed the way his eyes lingered on the board for just a second longer than necessary before he turned away.
Betting on stupid stuff had been his thing. Every shift, he'd have his name in some pool or another. It was part of who he was here, part of how he connected with everyone. And now he couldn't even do that.
You found him a few minutes later, leaning against the top of a desk near the nurses' station. His forearms were pressed flat against the surface, body angled forward as he squinted at a patient chart, brow furrowed in concentration. He looked tired.
You moved quietly, slipping into the space beside him until your shoulder brushed against his.
He turned his head, and when he saw it was you, something softened in his expression. "Hi," you said, offering a small smile.
And he smiled right back. "Hey." Then he looked away, back down at the chart in his hands.
It happened a lot these days, you'd noticed.
Ten months. That's how long it had been since everything fell apart. Ten months since you'd both been so excited about your first date. Ten months since he'd been exposed, since Robby had confronted him.
And then he was gone.
Rehab. You texted and called him every week. You'd even looked into visiting, researched the facility, figured out the hours. But when you finally got him on the phone, he'd asked you not to come. Explained that the withdrawals were too awful and that he didn't want you to see him like this.
So you waited.
And now he was back, and every time he looked at you, you could see the shame and guilt written all over his face. The absolute terror that you must hate him for what he did, for who he turned out to be.
You didn't, of course. But he didn't believe that yet.
You watched him for another moment, the way his jaw tightened as he read, the way his thumb traced the edge of the chart without really seeing it.
"You're not participating in the bet," you said softly, gently pulling him out of his head.
Frank glanced at you, just for a second, before his eyes dropped back to the paperwork. He wouldn't let himself look at you too long. You'd noticed that too. Like he was afraid that if he really let himself remember how pretty you were and how much he'd wanted that date, it would hurt too much.
"Yeah, got too many unpaid bills," he muttered. He grimaced slightly, and you could feel the discomfort radiating off him.
You closed your eyes for a brief moment, gathering yourself, before turning your head toward him. "You can still participate in the bet," you spoke softly, your voice carrying a gentle warmth.
Frank looked back at you, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
But this time, you remained looking down, your gaze fixed somewhere on the floor between you. And he ,foolishly, used that moment to really look at you.
Your hair had gotten longer.
It was pulled back in a ponytail, the way you always wore it during shifts so it wouldn't get in the way. But the length of it now, the way it swept back from your face, the few shorter pieces that had escaped to frame your temples, he noticed all of it. And then he turned his head away immediately, before you could catch him staring.
"We could make a bet together," you said softly, finally lifting your gaze to meet his. "And the reward wouldn't be money."
Frank looked down at you properly now, his blue eyes piercing as they searched your face. His gaze held yours, unwavering, as the silence stretched between you.
"What would be the reward then?" he asked after a long moment.
"A kiss."
Frank's eyebrows shot up so fast they nearly disappeared beneath the strands of hair that had fallen across his forehead. His lips parted slightly, then closed, then parted again as he processed the word.
"A kiss," he repeated.
"Yup." You held his stare, refusing to back down even as your heart hammered in your chest. "If you win, you'll get a kiss from me." You tilted your head slightly, the picture of casual confidence even though your pulse was racing. "You can just tell me what you think made Westbridge shut down, and if you're right, you'll get a kiss."
You said it so simply, like it was nothing, like you weren't offering him something you'd both been wanting for nearly a year now.
Frank's eyes moved rapidly across your face, searching, trying to gauge if you were messing with him. He knew you, knew your sense of humor, knew how you liked to tease. But this felt different.
"So?" you asked, and you managed to look assured and unbothered. But your fingers, hidden from his view, were tapping rapidly against the top of the desk, giving away every ounce of nerves you pretended not to have.
Frank stared at you for another long moment. Then slowly, a grin spread across his face. The first real grin you'd seen from him since he came back. "Okay," he said. "You got a deal."
And you smiled, relieved. "Yeah?"
He smiled further at your smile, like he couldn't help it, like seeing you happy made him happy whether he wanted it to or not. "Yeah."
You nodded, smiling to yourself, feeling warmth spread through your chest. You were about to push off from the desk, about to go find a case to work on and give yourself a moment to process what just happened, when Frank's voice stopped you.
"You—" He cleared his throat, and when you glanced back at him, you saw color rising on his cheeks. He closed his eyes briefly, like he was embarrassed by what he was about to ask but couldn't stop himself. "You are talking about a—" He swallowed hard. "A kiss on the lips?"
The question hung in the air between you, and you could practically hear him cursing himself internally for how awkward it sounded.
You couldn't help your giggle.
"Yeah, Frank." You grinned, tilting your head as you watched him narrow his eyes, realization dawning that you were enjoying his embarrassment just a little too much. You leaned in slightly, lowering your voice. "I'm talking about a kiss on the lips."
His cheeks flushed deeper, and he shook his head slightly, a huff of embarrassed laughter escaping him. You grinned wider, delighted by his flustered reaction, by the way the confident doctor who used to charm everyone had been reduced to blushing over the word kiss.
He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, and you caught the small smile he was trying to hide. "You're enjoying this way too much," he muttered.
"Maybe," you admitted, still smiling. "But you agreed. No takesies backsies."
Frank laughed and for a moment, he looked like the man you'd wanted to go on that date with ten months ago. "I wouldn't dream of it," he said softly, his eyes meeting yours again.
"Any more questions?" you asked, your grin turning playful. "I can send you a tutorial on how to kiss if you want, too."
Frank stared at you, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and amusement. The old Frank would have fired back with something smooth that would have made you blush instead. But this Frank just shook his head with a soft laugh.
"Yeah, yeah. Very funny," he mumbled, but the smile didn't leave his face.
You grinned, warmth flooding your chest at the sight of him actually smiling. Before you could overthink it, you reached out and squeezed his bicep.
"Just write your theories for the shutdown on some paper and slip it into my locker, yeah?" you asked, still smiling up at him.
Frank glanced down at your hand on his arm, his gaze lingering there for a moment. Then he looked back up at you and nodded slowly. "Yeah."
You smiled once more, squeezing his bicep again and then you turned and walked back, disappearing into one of the patient rooms without looking back.
Frank stared after you. For a long moment, he just stood there, leaning against the desk, his eyes fixed on the empty space where you'd been. His mind was struggling to catch up with what had just happened.
You wanted to kiss him.
That was still on the table. After everything, after ten months of silence, after he'd practically bailed on you, after you'd found out he was an addict and a thief, you still wanted to kiss him. He pressed his palm flat against the desk.
You wanted to kiss him.
The thought replayed itself over and over, each time feeling more impossible than the last. He'd ghosted you. Not intentionally, but effectively all the same.
He shook his head slowly.
He remembered that morning he asked you out so clearly. It had been early, barely 8am, and he'd stopped by your locker with a coffee. Your usual order, because of course he knew your usual order, he'd been paying attention for months by then. You'd turned around when he said your name, and the sight of you had hit him like it always did. Your hair was slightly messy from your commute and you'd looked so pretty it had just burst out of him.
"Dinner?" he'd said. Just like that. No smooth lead up, no charming preamble.
You'd held the coffee he handed you and stared at him for what felt like fifteen full seconds. "What?" was all you'd said.
And he'd stared back, mouth opening and closing like a fish, suddenly terrified by his own impulsiveness. But then he'd swallowed and asked again, properly this time. "Do you want to get dinner with me?"
"Dinner with you?" you'd repeated. He'd been ready to bolt at that point. But then your hand had shot out and grabbed his arm. "Hey, are you serious?" you'd asked. "You're not messing with me, right?"
He'd shaken his head immediately. "No."
And then you'd smiled. "I'd love to."
He'd grinned so hard his face hurt. "Yeah?"
You'd nodded again, practically bouncing on your toes, your excitement bleeding through even though you tried to play it cool. "Yes, yeah."
"I'll pick you up at 7pm, okay?" he'd asked, already planning it in his head, already thinking about where to take you, what to wear, how not to screw this up.
And you'd nodded so enthusiastically. "Yes, yeah. Okay. Seven."
He'd walked away from that locker on cloud nine.
He sighed to himself, shaking his head again in disbelief. He couldn't believe you wanted to kiss him.Something he'd dreamed about doing the entire time the day he asked you out. He remembered thinking about it for long stretches, letting his mind wander when he should have been focused on patients.
If he'd do it as he dropped you off after dinner. If he should go for it directly after the meal, while you were still sitting across from him, candlelight and all that. If he should stick with one kiss or let it turn into more. If you'd prefer soft and slow or something bolder. If he should grab your waist. If he should start with touching your waist and work his way up to your face.
It was like he was a teenage boy all over again.
He'd thought he had his game figured out by now. Thought he'd matured past the nervous pacing and overthinking. He'd asked girls out plenty of times before, thought he knew how this whole thing worked.
Nope. You played him down to a boy. Every time.
And now here he was, standing in the middle of the ER with a chart in his hands, realizing he was going to have to deal with this all over again.
God help him get through the rest of his shift, because he was sure he was going to stare at your lips all day. Every time you walked past, every time you spoke, every time you smiled, he'd be watching, waiting, thinking about that kiss he'd somehow managed to wrangle back into existence.
He pressed his lips together and forced his eyes back down to the chart in his hands. Focus. He needed to focus.
But before he could even finish the first sentence, a piece of paper appeared at his elbow.
He looked up to find Princess standing there, arms crossed, expression entirely too knowing. "Write your theories," she said flatly. "Now. Or you'll miss out on that kiss."
Frank stared at her, mouth opening slightly in confusion. And then he turned his head slightly and met Perlah's stare from across the nurses' station. She was leaning against the counter, a massive grin spread across her face. She'd clearly caught the entire conversation as well.
Frank just shook his head. "Can you guys like not listen in on other people's conversations for once in your life?" he mumbled, reaching for the paper.
"No," Princess said suddenly from right behind him.
He jumped slightly, when had she moved?, and shot her a look over his shoulder. She just raised an eyebrow, completely unbothered, and walked away. He sighed, turning back to the paper in his hands.
"Get it right!" Perlah shouted after him, her voice carrying across the ER with zero subtlety. He heard her immediately start gossiping with Princess again. He sighed again and ran his free hand through his hair as he walked back toward his computer.
Get it right. As if he needed the pressure.
Throughout the day, Frank was a man on a mission.
He ran from person to person, cornering anyone who looked like they might have even a scrap of knowledge about Westbridge. Nurses. Techs. A bewildered janitor who just wanted to mop the hallway in peace. He even asked Garcia.
She'd stared at him for a long moment, her expression caught between confusion and delight, before a slow grin spread across her face. "Oh my God," she'd said, voice dripping with amusement. "You're actually trying to win that kiss, aren't you?"
Frank had opened his mouth to deny it, but she'd already started laughing. A laugh that made everyone around them turn and look.
"You're pathetic," she'd informed him cheerfully. "I love it. No, I don't know anything about Westbridge, but please keep running around. This is the best entertainment I've had all shift."
He'd sighed, shaken his head, and walked away to the sound of her still laughing behind him.
Now he found himself back at the nurses' station, leaning against the counter with his elbows, feeling slightly defeated. He'd talked to a dozen people and had exactly nothing to show for it.
"Dana," he called, and she raised her head from the paperwork she'd been buried in.
"Yeah?" she said, her tone distracted but not unkind.
"You got any idea what happened to Westbridge?"
Dana considered him for a moment, then shook her head. "No, kid. Otherwise I'd be winning that bet myself." She tilted her head, curiosity flickering in her eyes. "Why you asking?"
Frank straightened up, pushing himself off the counter. "No reason," he said quickly, too quickly, judging by the way her eyebrow shot up.
He looked around the ER, scanning faces, looking for you. It was habit by now, this constant awareness of where you were in the room. He always knew where you were. Always made sure to see you at least once an hour, even if it was just a glance across the department.
But he hadn't seen you in at least two.
His chest tightened slightly as he scanned again. Nothing. No sign of you anywhere.
"Think she's in the stairwell," Dana said quietly, and Frank turned back to her. She nodded toward the door leading to the stairs, her expression softening. "Had a rough patient."
Frank's heart dropped.
You rarely went to the stairwell. Like, truly rarely. It was your spot, he knew, the place you went when things got really bad, when you needed to be alone. But usually, you came to him first. Usually, you found him in the middle of whatever he was doing and just stood there until he noticed, until he pulled you aside and let you decompress.
But that dynamic had been broken now, hadn't it? Ten months of silence had probably erased that right along with everything else. He hesitated, his feet rooted to the floor.
Dana watched him, reading the conflict on his face. "She'll want you there," she said softly. "Go."
Frank hesitated one more second, then turned on his heels and walked toward the stairwell door.
The stairwell was quiet, the way it always was. He stepped inside and immediately looked down. And there you were.
Sitting on the lowest staircase, your back against the wall, your knees pulled up slightly. You weren't crying, which was something, but you looked tired. Frank hesitated at the top, his hand on the railing. Then he stepped down softly, one stair at a time, until he was just behind you.
You turned your head and met his eyes."Hi," you said softly, and you smiled.
You scooted slightly, making room, and he didn't hesitate this time. He stepped down and sat beside you, close enough that your shoulders almost touched.
"Hey," he finally spoke, his voice quiet. "You okay?"
"Rough patient," was all you said softly. You didn't go into details, and he didn't need you to. He knew that sometimes you just needed to sit with someone, not talk about it.
You scooted closer and put your head on his shoulder. He put his arm around your back, his hand resting gently on your far shoulder, and started brushing softly up and down.
You sighed. It was barely audible, but Frank heard it clearly. And when he noticed it was a sigh of relief, he closed his eyes briefly. He couldn't believe that he was still capable of making you feel this way.
You pressed closer, your weight shifting slightly against him, and he welcomed it.
"I missed you," you suddenly spoke, your voice muffled slightly by his shoulder. You kept your head there, hidden, finally having the peace of not worrying about seeing his facial expressions or getting nervous from his pretty face.
Frank's hand, which had been brushing softly against your back, traveled higher. Until his fingers reached the back of your head and started threading gently through your hair. "Missed you too," he mumbled. For a long time, neither of you spoke.
"I'm sorry."
The words were quiet you almost missed them. You stayed still, barely breathing, to hear him better.
"For what I did," he continued, his voice even softer now. "With the date." He swallowed hard, and you felt the movement against your cheek. "I—" He stopped. Started again. "And for lying about the pills. And for stealing."
And as he said it, you both knew what he meant. You'd worked countless shifts together. Treated countless patients. Every pill you'd ever handed out, every medication you'd administered, some of those had been stolen first by him.
You'd thought about that over the weeks since everything came out. Thought about it a lot, actually. But mostly, mostly, you'd thought about it with sadness, that you hadn't noticed, that he'd been suffering right next to you and you'd been completely blind to it.
You lifted your head off his shoulder now, needing to see him. His blue eyes met yours, and what you found there made your heart break. It was pure fear. Fear of your reaction, fear that this would be the moment you finally turned away.
"You don't need to apologize to me."
But Frank shook his head immediately. "Yeah, I do." His voice cracked slightly. "I betrayed your trust. I used our—" He hesitated, the word catching in his throat. "Our relationship to steal from patients."
He didn't say friendship. You noticed that immediately. He said relationship, like he knew it had always been more than that, like he understood that what was between you couldn't be reduced to something so simple.
You stared at him for a long moment, taking in the way his eyes searched yours. And you realized that maybe he needed this. "Okay," you said softly. "Thank you for apologizing, Frank."
His shoulders sagged slightly, almost imperceptibly, relief so profound you could feel it radiating off him. You watched him for a while longer. Then you looked back down at the steps below you, breaking the intensity of the moment just slightly.
"So," you said, a hint of playfulness creeping into your voice. "How's your bet going?"
And Frank let out the biggest sigh in the entire world. It was dramatic and exaggerated. "That bad?" you laughed.
He just shook his head slowly, mournfully, his expression so defeated. "That bad," he confirmed with another heavy sigh.
You smiled softly as he kept talking, apparently needing to unload. "I've asked everyone," he said, gesturing vaguely with his free hand. "Literally everyone. Nurses, techs, that janitor who definitely thought I was crazy. I even asked Garcia."
You raised an eyebrow. "Garcia?"
"Who gave me a bunch of crap," he confirmed, pushing a hand through his hair to fix it, a nervous habit you recognized.
You started giggling and Frank smiled. He watched you as you calmed down, your giggles fading, your shoulders still shaking slightly with the last remnants of amusement. And then you finally turned your head, met his eyes and froze.
Because he was staring at you with that soft smile still playing on his lips, the one that said he'd been watching you this whole time and enjoying every second of it.
You got shy immediately. He saw the way your eyes widened slightly, the way you broke eye contact and looked away like you'd been caught doing something you shouldn't.
Frank's smile widened. Turned cocky, even.
Because yeah. Yeah, he was still capable of this. Still capable of turning you shy, of making you look away first, of having some small effect on you after everything. After ten months and a destroyed reputation and more shame than he knew what to do with, he could still do this.
You kept your gaze fixed on the stairs, pretending to be very interested in the concrete, and Frank let himself enjoy the moment.
"Your hair's longer," he spoke finally.
His hand came up to your ponytail, tentative at first. When you didn't pull away, he gently wrapped a strand around his finger, twirling it slowly, watching the way the light caught the ends.
You smiled. "Yeah. Thought I'd grow it out a bit." You tilted your head slightly, watching him watch your hair. "You like it?"
He kept twirling, seemingly mesmerized. "Love it," he mumbled.
You smiled wider, then let your eyes drift to his hair, perfectly styled and gelled back. You raised an eyebrow.
"Yours is fully gelled back," you observed. "What happened to letting your hair breathe?" You were teasing, and he knew it. And in response he lightly tugged on your ponytail, just enough to make you sway slightly, and you giggled.
He let go of your hair and reached up to touch his own, fingers running lightly over the styled strands. "You don't like it?" he asked, and his voice was quieter now.
Your smile softened immediately. "I like it," you assured him gently. "Makes you look really serious." You tilted your head, letting your grin turn playful again. "Which I know you're not."
Frank raised an eyebrow. "Hey, I'm serious. I can be serious."
You just looked at him, letting the silence stretch. "Frank." He held your stare, chin lifted slightly, like he was daring you to disagree. You grinned. "Sure. If that makes you feel better."
He sighed dramatically, shaking his head as if deeply wounded by your disbelief. But there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, betraying him completely.
"I'm just joking," you said, your voice gentler now. "You look as handsome as ever."
You raised your hands slowly, giving him time to pull away if he wanted to. He didn't. Your palms cupped his face, warm against his skin, and you felt him exhale softly at the contact. One hand stayed there, resting against his cheek, while the other moved up toward his hairline.
His eyes stayed locked on yours as you carefully picked two strands near his forehead and pulled them down gently, freeing them from the gel. You rubbed the strands between your fingers, working the product out until they were loose. Then you curled them lightly around your finger, watching them fall into place, softer now. You let your hand drop back down, but the other remained on his cheek, thumb brushing lightly against his skin.
"Hm," you murmured, surveying your work with a small satisfied smile. "That's better."
Frank stayed silent. His eyes hadn't left your face. He was staring at you with an intensity that made the stairwell feel suddenly very small.
You shifted slightly under the weight of his gaze. "What?" you asked, suddenly self conscious.
"Nothing," he said, but his voice was rough.
You knew that tone, knew it meant the exact opposite of nothing. "Frank." You sighed. "Spill it."
He held your stare, those blue eyes boring into yours. For a long moment, he just looked at you, at your face, your eyes, your lips, back to your eyes. "You're making it really hard to wait to kiss you."
You froze. You opened your mouth, then closed it again. Then your hand dropped from his face into your lap, and you just sat there, staring at him like he'd grown a second head.
Frank started chuckling. Partly at your reaction, which was, admittedly, pretty adorable, but partly because the tension had grown so thick between you that he needed some kind of release, before he did something impulsive, like kiss you right here, right now, bet be damned.
"You can't say stuff like that," you finally managed, rubbing a hand over your face, trying to compose yourself.
He raised his eyebrows, outrage coloring his features. "I can't say things like that?" He gestured between the two of you, voice pitching higher with disbelief. "You're the one who started this whole thing!"
You started giggling. "This whole thing? What's that supposed to mean?"
"The kissing thing!" Frank said, and immediately wanted to die.
Because yeah. Yeah, he'd just said that. Out loud. Like some kind of flustered teenager who'd never done this before. He could feel heat creeping up his neck, could see the way your giggles intensified at his expense.
"You know," you managed as you kept giggling, "we don't have to do it if you don't want to."
Frank turned his head toward you fully, slightly more serious. "I want to," he said sincerely. "Definitely want to."
He smiled, and you smiled right back.
Then you stood up, brushing off the back of your scrubs casually, like you hadn't just turned his entire world upside down in the span of ten minutes.
"Good," you said, looking down at him with that playful glint back in your eyes. "Well, I hope you bet right, then." You smiled, and then you stretched your hands out toward him.
Frank stared at them blankly for a moment, confused. What were you—oh.
You were trying to help him up.
His back. He hadn't even thought about it when he sat down next to you, hadn't considered the consequences of perching on concrete steps for who knows how long. But you had.
And suddenly he could feel the insecurity biting at him. The disgust curling in his stomach at himself, at all the ways he was damaged and not worthy of someone who remembered things like this.
But, you just leaned forward, grabbed his hands yourself and waited. He pushed up, using your grip for balance, and felt the familiar twinge in his lower back as he straightened. You let go of his hands immediately, as soon as he was up, pretending not to see the slight pained grimace he couldn't quite hide.
You just turned toward the door, casual as anything. "Want to work on a case together?" you asked, already walking back toward the ER.
Frank fell into step beside you, matching your pace. "Yeah." He glanced at you, a small smile tugging at his lips. "It's my turn this time, though."
You'd always had this thing. When one of you got tired of working solo, you'd grab a case together. And you alternated, each time, whoever hadn't picked last time got to choose the next one.
"I remember," you said, smiling at him.
The two of you worked for a couple more hours, pulling you in opposite directions more often than not. A trauma here, a consult there, a patient crashing in between. You barely got to talk about anything else, just quick glances across the department, brief touches when you passed each other in the hallway.
At some point, Frank had gathered enough intel to form a theory.
He'd pieced together fragments from a dozen different conversations and convinced himself he'd cracked it. He'd written it down on that blank piece of paper, folded it carefully, and slipped it into your locker.
Then he'd spent the rest of his shift praying it was right.
The two of you, in your busy days, completely missed the gathering that happened near the end of the shift. A cluster of nurses and residents huddled around someone's phone. The real reason for the Westbridge shutdown had been exposed. A cyberattack.
Frank caught the tail end of the conversation as he walked past, and the color drained from his face so fast he felt dizzy.
Damn it. He had it completely wrong.
From that moment on, it was better to avoid him.
Most people could sense it. He was pissed. Terribly, deeply pissed. At himself, at the situation, at the cruel twist of fate that had dangled a kiss in front of him and then snatched it away.
At the end of the day, Frank walked toward your locker in the slowest steps possible. Each one felt heavier than the last, dragging against the floor like they didn't want to get there. He sighed to himself, running a hand through his hair, the strands you'd freed from the gel now falling naturally across his forehead.
And there you were.
Standing by your locker, holding his paper. The one with his wrong theory written on it. You hadn't opened it yet. "Walk me home?" you asked, smiling.
Frank summoned every ounce of acting ability he possessed and put on an arrogant smile. "Yeah, sure," he said smoothly, like he hadn't just lost the thing he wanted most. Like he was totally fine with waiting a little longer for that kiss.
You smiled at his reaction, turning to grab your jacket from the locker. Frank watched you for a moment, then stepped forward.
He helped you into your jacket, his hands settling on your shoulders briefly before sliding down to the buttons. He started fastening them slowly, starting from the bottom and working his way up. You watched his face, trying to gauge whether he'd gotten it right. When he reached the top button, he shot you a confident smile. He wouldn't have to keep the mask up for long, anyway. He just had to make it through the walk and to your front door.
The two of you headed out into the cool night air. You chitchatted about dinner plans, what you might make, whether you'd order in, if there was anything good in your fridge.
Soon enough, you were at your front door.
You reached into your bag and pulled out the paper. The paper that would determine whether tonight ended with a kiss or not.
"So." You smiled up at him, trying to keep your voice light. "Did you guess it right?"
Frank stood on the step below you, but he was still at your height. He grinned at you. Weakly, maybe, but a grin nonetheless. While nodding his head, he said, "Guess you'll have to see for yourself."
You hesitated when you saw the way his eyelashes flickered when he moved his head. You knew that tell. Every time he spoke with a grin and nodded his head like that, it was a lie. You'd learned that about him months ago, back when you were just coworkers who noticed things about each other.
"Power supply unit failure," you read aloud.
Frank nodded, shuffling his feet against the ground below. His eyes didn't quite meet yours.
You stayed quiet for a moment, letting the silence stretch.
"Guess I got that wrong," he grimaced finally, a self deprecating smile tugging at his mouth. "Good thing I didn't bet any money."
You raised an eyebrow. "Was the loss here not just as big?"
You were teasing him. Obviously. Poking fun at his deflection, at the way he was trying to make this about money when you both knew what was really on the line.
But he didn't realize you were teasing. Or maybe he did, and he was worried that you were jokingly hiding your real feelings. He held your eye contact, his blue eyes steady and serious. "No, it's bigger."
You tilted your head, trying to gauge if he was lying. Trying to read him the way you always could. But his gaze didn't waver. He meant it. Losing the chance to kiss you was bigger than any amount of money.
You looked back down at the paper in your hands. Squeezed it slightly. Your fist balled up tightly around the edges, crinkling the corner, as you made a decision for yourself. Quickly, before you could overthink it, you stuffed the paper back into your bag.
You looked up at him. He'd followed your hand movements with his eyes, watching you shove the evidence away, but he still wasn't looking at you directly, like he couldn't bear to see disappointment on your face.
And then you leaned in.
It was a bit awkward, you were too shy to touch him to close the distance properly. But you were confident enough to press your lips against his. A kiss that lasted barely five seconds before you pulled away.
Mostly because Frank didn't react. He just stood there, frozen, staring at you like he was trying to catch up with what had just happened.
You fell back onto your feet. "Thought you deserved a reward for trying," you said, smiling weakly. Trying to hide the fact that he hadn't kissed you back.
Frank stared at you for another long moment, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted. And then he finally spoke. "That's it?"
Your head snapped up, meeting his eyes. "What?" you asked, breathless, still reeling from what you'd done.
"That's all I get?" He tilted his head slightl.
"I—what?" you asked again, still unable to quite catch up.
He smiled at your shy reaction, the way you were suddenly flustered, suddenly uncertain, after being so bold just moments ago. And then his hands came up and framed your face and his lips were back on yours.
This time, you were the one who took a second to realize what was happening.
He was actually kissing you. Really kissing you.
You leaned in immediately, closing the small distance until you were chest to chest, your hands flying up to his biceps and gripping them tightly. His lips moved against yours and they felt just as nice as you'd always imagined they would. Better, even.
Frank couldn't help the smile that crept up his face when he noticed the taste of your lips. Vanilla. Your chapstick. You'd planned and hoped for this.
The thought made him smile so wide he had to break the kiss, his lips curving against yours until they couldn't stay connected anymore. You were grinning as well, couldn't stop if you tried. Frank kept his eyes closed for a moment, just making sure this was real. Then he opened them, needing to know if you were okay with what just happened.
You were more than okay. "Do you feel better about your reward now?" you spoke, grinning up at him.
Frank joined you in smiling, his thumbs brushing softly against your cheekbones. "Almost," he mumbled.
And then he leaned in and kissed you again.
This one was longer and slower. Your heart beat frantically against your ribs, pure happiness flooding through every part of you. You would've felt embarrassed about how hard it was pounding, if you hadn't been able to feel Frank's heartbeat against yours at the same time, just as fast, just as overwhelmed.
When he finally pulled back, your noses were still touching, neither of you willing to create any more distance than absolutely necessary.
"Still not enough," he murmured, his breath warm against your lips, "but it'll do for now."
You smiled even wider, if that was possible. Your hands were still gripping his biceps, your body still pressed against his, and you had never felt more alive.
He watched you for a second, his blue eyes soft for you, before a grin spread across his face. "You knew I wasn't going to get it right," he said, his tone teasing. "You just wanted an excuse to kiss me."
He pushed a strand of hair behind your ear, his fingers brushing softly across your cheek, lingering there like he couldn't stop touching you. His confidence was creeping back, that familiar cockiness you'd missed so much.
"So?" you said, smiling up at him, squeezing his biceps for emphasis. "Are you complaining?"
warnings: mentions of rehab, reliance on a partner, anxious attachment, divorce mentioned
notes: post rehab frank, robby mention, mention of abby/frank divorce, hints of a previous unhealthy relationship with abby
His alarm went off at 4:30am for his morning shift, the same time every morning. It never seemed to feel any easier for him to wake up, untangle himself from you and slip out of the fresh sheets. He was so anxious about being far from you ever since rehab, it was like it he couldn't be himself without you.
He gently pawed at his phone on the bedside table to turn off the alarm before turning back to you so he could sleepily wrap his arms around you. His nose nuzzled into the crook of your neck as he held you tightly, savouring every moment before his next alarm could go off.
You slowly stirred and ran your fingers over his hair and mumbled, “Frankie…” but he protested by gently kissing your chin and smiling, his whole body pressed to yours.
“5 more minutes…” He whispered, his fingers gently rubbing your back as he shifted closer under the sheets to tangle his legs with yours.
The early morning chill was rife in your apartment so his chest felt warm against you as he shifted closer and closer, a sleepy smile on his face.
His next alarm went off, which you shifted to turn off, but he didn’t get up. Instead he took your chin to give you a sleepy kiss, tender and gentle, before pulling back to whisper, “I love you, angel…” It was as if he’d missed you in his sleep.
With genuine love and affection, you held his face and whispered, “I love you too, baby…but you need to get up and ready for work otherwise you’ll be told off again…” before giving him a quick kiss.
He just huffed and rolled out of bed, slowly shuffling to the bathroom. It was probably record time for the slowest he could get ready, but it was sweet watching him dig his heels in and drag out his morning.
After an hour or so, he finally sat at the edge of the bed, stroking your hair as he whispered, “I’m going now…” as he resisted the urge to crawl back into bed beside you. Feeling that same ache in his chest he got every morning.
You just nodded sleepily and murmured, “Your lunch is in the fridge, your flask’s on the draining board…it’s cold, take a jacket…” Causing him to smile and nod. You were always so sweet and thoughtful, helping him stay organised on the days where he couldn't.
He sat there admiring you for a moment before leaning down to kiss your forehead whispering, “Have a good day, baby…I’ll ring you if I get a break…” in a soft tone.
In a slightly clumsy, sleepy movement, you guided him closer to properly kiss him, lips pressed to his and fingers in his hair. Lovingly, he reciprocated the kiss, letting his fingers rove over you as he whined softly into your lips.
He had to pull back slightly to whisper, “Don't want to go yet, baby…” as you looked genuinely anxious about leaving you. It made your heart ache seeing him so distressed, so you sat up in bed.
“C’mere Frankie…” you whispered as you let him curl into you for a moment, checking the bedside clock to see he should really be leaving now. You held him tightly and pressed kisses to his hair, whispering, “I’ll be home when you get back, I’ll be here the whole time…you have to go to work…”
He nodded and just tightened his arms around you whispering, “I’m going…just don't leave whilst I’m there, need you here when I come home…” It was evident this was one of his bad days, the feeling of abandonment from his relationship with Abby, the quiet need for security, and his desire to stay close.
You nodded softly whispering, “I’ll be right here, we’ll order takeout tonight or have pancakes…I’ll find a film for us to watch,” and gently pressed a kiss to his forehead and mumbled, “Ring me on your lunch break and tell Robby you're having a bad day, okay?”
Frank finally nodded and pulled back, his gaze holding yours as he snuck a kiss to your cheek and mumbled, “Okay…” as he squeezed your hand and stood up.
You watched him walk out of the bedroom, and listened to his footsteps down the stairs, through the first floor to collect his things before the front door closed. With a sigh, you laid there and blinked back tears for Frank and reached for your phone.
You sent two texts that morning, one to Frank reading: “I love you, Frankie. You’re so brave, I know this morning was difficult for you but I know you can do it, I’ll be right here when you get home x”
The second was to Robby: “Frank had a bad morning, tried to sort it before he left but he’ll need you today.”
And then, you put your phone on the nightstand and fell asleep on Frank’s side of the bed and clutched the duvet, counting down until he’d be back home.
author's note: hello lovies!! this is the first I've written in a while (apologies) life has been all over the shop but found some time to write this, I hope you enjoy it and please do give it a cheeky like and reblog if you fancy showing some support!! x
pairing: frank langdon x fem!reader ( no use of y/n )
summary: with frank unable to join the bets while he catches up on his rehab bills, you decide to up the stakes in a different way. you propose a new reward: a kiss. from you.
content warnings: mention of rehab and withdrawals, mention of one rough patient but no details, mostly fluff
a/n: hai lovelies!! i'm so pittpilled at the moment so my inbox is open pls send in your lovely requests
You watched as Frank stared at the betting pool pinned to the bulletin board. A few of the other residents were gathered around, laughing as they scribbled their names down and threw in a few dollars. For a moment, you saw the competitive edge he used to wear so easily, flicker across his face.
Then he shook his head. "Gotta pass. Still catching up on rehab bills."
The words came out casual enough, delivered with a small shrug. But you noticed the way his eyes lingered on the board for just a second longer than necessary before he turned away.
Betting on stupid stuff had been his thing. Every shift, he'd have his name in some pool or another. It was part of who he was here, part of how he connected with everyone. And now he couldn't even do that.
You found him a few minutes later, leaning against the top of a desk near the nurses' station. His forearms were pressed flat against the surface, body angled forward as he squinted at a patient chart, brow furrowed in concentration. He looked tired.
You moved quietly, slipping into the space beside him until your shoulder brushed against his.
He turned his head, and when he saw it was you, something softened in his expression. "Hi," you said, offering a small smile.
And he smiled right back. "Hey." Then he looked away, back down at the chart in his hands.
It happened a lot these days, you'd noticed.
Ten months. That's how long it had been since everything fell apart. Ten months since you'd both been so excited about your first date. Ten months since he'd been exposed, since Robby had confronted him.
And then he was gone.
Rehab. You texted and called him every week. You'd even looked into visiting, researched the facility, figured out the hours. But when you finally got him on the phone, he'd asked you not to come. Explained that the withdrawals were too awful and that he didn't want you to see him like this.
So you waited.
And now he was back, and every time he looked at you, you could see the shame and guilt written all over his face. The absolute terror that you must hate him for what he did, for who he turned out to be.
You didn't, of course. But he didn't believe that yet.
You watched him for another moment, the way his jaw tightened as he read, the way his thumb traced the edge of the chart without really seeing it.
"You're not participating in the bet," you said softly, gently pulling him out of his head.
Frank glanced at you, just for a second, before his eyes dropped back to the paperwork. He wouldn't let himself look at you too long. You'd noticed that too. Like he was afraid that if he really let himself remember how pretty you were and how much he'd wanted that date, it would hurt too much.
"Yeah, got too many unpaid bills," he muttered. He grimaced slightly, and you could feel the discomfort radiating off him.
You closed your eyes for a brief moment, gathering yourself, before turning your head toward him. "You can still participate in the bet," you spoke softly, your voice carrying a gentle warmth.
Frank looked back at you, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
But this time, you remained looking down, your gaze fixed somewhere on the floor between you. And he ,foolishly, used that moment to really look at you.
Your hair had gotten longer.
It was pulled back in a ponytail, the way you always wore it during shifts so it wouldn't get in the way. But the length of it now, the way it swept back from your face, the few shorter pieces that had escaped to frame your temples, he noticed all of it. And then he turned his head away immediately, before you could catch him staring.
"We could make a bet together," you said softly, finally lifting your gaze to meet his. "And the reward wouldn't be money."
Frank looked down at you properly now, his blue eyes piercing as they searched your face. His gaze held yours, unwavering, as the silence stretched between you.
"What would be the reward then?" he asked after a long moment.
"A kiss."
Frank's eyebrows shot up so fast they nearly disappeared beneath the strands of hair that had fallen across his forehead. His lips parted slightly, then closed, then parted again as he processed the word.
"A kiss," he repeated.
"Yup." You held his stare, refusing to back down even as your heart hammered in your chest. "If you win, you'll get a kiss from me." You tilted your head slightly, the picture of casual confidence even though your pulse was racing. "You can just tell me what you think made Westbridge shut down, and if you're right, you'll get a kiss."
You said it so simply, like it was nothing, like you weren't offering him something you'd both been wanting for nearly a year now.
Frank's eyes moved rapidly across your face, searching, trying to gauge if you were messing with him. He knew you, knew your sense of humor, knew how you liked to tease. But this felt different.
"So?" you asked, and you managed to look assured and unbothered. But your fingers, hidden from his view, were tapping rapidly against the top of the desk, giving away every ounce of nerves you pretended not to have.
Frank stared at you for another long moment. Then slowly, a grin spread across his face. The first real grin you'd seen from him since he came back. "Okay," he said. "You got a deal."
And you smiled, relieved. "Yeah?"
He smiled further at your smile, like he couldn't help it, like seeing you happy made him happy whether he wanted it to or not. "Yeah."
You nodded, smiling to yourself, feeling warmth spread through your chest. You were about to push off from the desk, about to go find a case to work on and give yourself a moment to process what just happened, when Frank's voice stopped you.
"You—" He cleared his throat, and when you glanced back at him, you saw color rising on his cheeks. He closed his eyes briefly, like he was embarrassed by what he was about to ask but couldn't stop himself. "You are talking about a—" He swallowed hard. "A kiss on the lips?"
The question hung in the air between you, and you could practically hear him cursing himself internally for how awkward it sounded.
You couldn't help your giggle.
"Yeah, Frank." You grinned, tilting your head as you watched him narrow his eyes, realization dawning that you were enjoying his embarrassment just a little too much. You leaned in slightly, lowering your voice. "I'm talking about a kiss on the lips."
His cheeks flushed deeper, and he shook his head slightly, a huff of embarrassed laughter escaping him. You grinned wider, delighted by his flustered reaction, by the way the confident doctor who used to charm everyone had been reduced to blushing over the word kiss.
He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, and you caught the small smile he was trying to hide. "You're enjoying this way too much," he muttered.
"Maybe," you admitted, still smiling. "But you agreed. No takesies backsies."
Frank laughed and for a moment, he looked like the man you'd wanted to go on that date with ten months ago. "I wouldn't dream of it," he said softly, his eyes meeting yours again.
"Any more questions?" you asked, your grin turning playful. "I can send you a tutorial on how to kiss if you want, too."
Frank stared at you, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and amusement. The old Frank would have fired back with something smooth that would have made you blush instead. But this Frank just shook his head with a soft laugh.
"Yeah, yeah. Very funny," he mumbled, but the smile didn't leave his face.
You grinned, warmth flooding your chest at the sight of him actually smiling. Before you could overthink it, you reached out and squeezed his bicep.
"Just write your theories for the shutdown on some paper and slip it into my locker, yeah?" you asked, still smiling up at him.
Frank glanced down at your hand on his arm, his gaze lingering there for a moment. Then he looked back up at you and nodded slowly. "Yeah."
You smiled once more, squeezing his bicep again and then you turned and walked back, disappearing into one of the patient rooms without looking back.
Frank stared after you. For a long moment, he just stood there, leaning against the desk, his eyes fixed on the empty space where you'd been. His mind was struggling to catch up with what had just happened.
You wanted to kiss him.
That was still on the table. After everything, after ten months of silence, after he'd practically bailed on you, after you'd found out he was an addict and a thief, you still wanted to kiss him. He pressed his palm flat against the desk.
You wanted to kiss him.
The thought replayed itself over and over, each time feeling more impossible than the last. He'd ghosted you. Not intentionally, but effectively all the same.
He shook his head slowly.
He remembered that morning he asked you out so clearly. It had been early, barely 8am, and he'd stopped by your locker with a coffee. Your usual order, because of course he knew your usual order, he'd been paying attention for months by then. You'd turned around when he said your name, and the sight of you had hit him like it always did. Your hair was slightly messy from your commute and you'd looked so pretty it had just burst out of him.
"Dinner?" he'd said. Just like that. No smooth lead up, no charming preamble.
You'd held the coffee he handed you and stared at him for what felt like fifteen full seconds. "What?" was all you'd said.
And he'd stared back, mouth opening and closing like a fish, suddenly terrified by his own impulsiveness. But then he'd swallowed and asked again, properly this time. "Do you want to get dinner with me?"
"Dinner with you?" you'd repeated. He'd been ready to bolt at that point. But then your hand had shot out and grabbed his arm. "Hey, are you serious?" you'd asked. "You're not messing with me, right?"
He'd shaken his head immediately. "No."
And then you'd smiled. "I'd love to."
He'd grinned so hard his face hurt. "Yeah?"
You'd nodded again, practically bouncing on your toes, your excitement bleeding through even though you tried to play it cool. "Yes, yeah."
"I'll pick you up at 7pm, okay?" he'd asked, already planning it in his head, already thinking about where to take you, what to wear, how not to screw this up.
And you'd nodded so enthusiastically. "Yes, yeah. Okay. Seven."
He'd walked away from that locker on cloud nine.
He sighed to himself, shaking his head again in disbelief. He couldn't believe you wanted to kiss him.Something he'd dreamed about doing the entire time the day he asked you out. He remembered thinking about it for long stretches, letting his mind wander when he should have been focused on patients.
If he'd do it as he dropped you off after dinner. If he should go for it directly after the meal, while you were still sitting across from him, candlelight and all that. If he should stick with one kiss or let it turn into more. If you'd prefer soft and slow or something bolder. If he should grab your waist. If he should start with touching your waist and work his way up to your face.
It was like he was a teenage boy all over again.
He'd thought he had his game figured out by now. Thought he'd matured past the nervous pacing and overthinking. He'd asked girls out plenty of times before, thought he knew how this whole thing worked.
Nope. You played him down to a boy. Every time.
And now here he was, standing in the middle of the ER with a chart in his hands, realizing he was going to have to deal with this all over again.
God help him get through the rest of his shift, because he was sure he was going to stare at your lips all day. Every time you walked past, every time you spoke, every time you smiled, he'd be watching, waiting, thinking about that kiss he'd somehow managed to wrangle back into existence.
He pressed his lips together and forced his eyes back down to the chart in his hands. Focus. He needed to focus.
But before he could even finish the first sentence, a piece of paper appeared at his elbow.
He looked up to find Princess standing there, arms crossed, expression entirely too knowing. "Write your theories," she said flatly. "Now. Or you'll miss out on that kiss."
Frank stared at her, mouth opening slightly in confusion. And then he turned his head slightly and met Perlah's stare from across the nurses' station. She was leaning against the counter, a massive grin spread across her face. She'd clearly caught the entire conversation as well.
Frank just shook his head. "Can you guys like not listen in on other people's conversations for once in your life?" he mumbled, reaching for the paper.
"No," Princess said suddenly from right behind him.
He jumped slightly, when had she moved?, and shot her a look over his shoulder. She just raised an eyebrow, completely unbothered, and walked away. He sighed, turning back to the paper in his hands.
"Get it right!" Perlah shouted after him, her voice carrying across the ER with zero subtlety. He heard her immediately start gossiping with Princess again. He sighed again and ran his free hand through his hair as he walked back toward his computer.
Get it right. As if he needed the pressure.
Throughout the day, Frank was a man on a mission.
He ran from person to person, cornering anyone who looked like they might have even a scrap of knowledge about Westbridge. Nurses. Techs. A bewildered janitor who just wanted to mop the hallway in peace. He even asked Garcia.
She'd stared at him for a long moment, her expression caught between confusion and delight, before a slow grin spread across her face. "Oh my God," she'd said, voice dripping with amusement. "You're actually trying to win that kiss, aren't you?"
Frank had opened his mouth to deny it, but she'd already started laughing. A laugh that made everyone around them turn and look.
"You're pathetic," she'd informed him cheerfully. "I love it. No, I don't know anything about Westbridge, but please keep running around. This is the best entertainment I've had all shift."
He'd sighed, shaken his head, and walked away to the sound of her still laughing behind him.
Now he found himself back at the nurses' station, leaning against the counter with his elbows, feeling slightly defeated. He'd talked to a dozen people and had exactly nothing to show for it.
"Dana," he called, and she raised her head from the paperwork she'd been buried in.
"Yeah?" she said, her tone distracted but not unkind.
"You got any idea what happened to Westbridge?"
Dana considered him for a moment, then shook her head. "No, kid. Otherwise I'd be winning that bet myself." She tilted her head, curiosity flickering in her eyes. "Why you asking?"
Frank straightened up, pushing himself off the counter. "No reason," he said quickly, too quickly, judging by the way her eyebrow shot up.
He looked around the ER, scanning faces, looking for you. It was habit by now, this constant awareness of where you were in the room. He always knew where you were. Always made sure to see you at least once an hour, even if it was just a glance across the department.
But he hadn't seen you in at least two.
His chest tightened slightly as he scanned again. Nothing. No sign of you anywhere.
"Think she's in the stairwell," Dana said quietly, and Frank turned back to her. She nodded toward the door leading to the stairs, her expression softening. "Had a rough patient."
Frank's heart dropped.
You rarely went to the stairwell. Like, truly rarely. It was your spot, he knew, the place you went when things got really bad, when you needed to be alone. But usually, you came to him first. Usually, you found him in the middle of whatever he was doing and just stood there until he noticed, until he pulled you aside and let you decompress.
But that dynamic had been broken now, hadn't it? Ten months of silence had probably erased that right along with everything else. He hesitated, his feet rooted to the floor.
Dana watched him, reading the conflict on his face. "She'll want you there," she said softly. "Go."
Frank hesitated one more second, then turned on his heels and walked toward the stairwell door.
The stairwell was quiet, the way it always was. He stepped inside and immediately looked down. And there you were.
Sitting on the lowest staircase, your back against the wall, your knees pulled up slightly. You weren't crying, which was something, but you looked tired. Frank hesitated at the top, his hand on the railing. Then he stepped down softly, one stair at a time, until he was just behind you.
You turned your head and met his eyes."Hi," you said softly, and you smiled.
You scooted slightly, making room, and he didn't hesitate this time. He stepped down and sat beside you, close enough that your shoulders almost touched.
"Hey," he finally spoke, his voice quiet. "You okay?"
"Rough patient," was all you said softly. You didn't go into details, and he didn't need you to. He knew that sometimes you just needed to sit with someone, not talk about it.
You scooted closer and put your head on his shoulder. He put his arm around your back, his hand resting gently on your far shoulder, and started brushing softly up and down.
You sighed. It was barely audible, but Frank heard it clearly. And when he noticed it was a sigh of relief, he closed his eyes briefly. He couldn't believe that he was still capable of making you feel this way.
You pressed closer, your weight shifting slightly against him, and he welcomed it.
"I missed you," you suddenly spoke, your voice muffled slightly by his shoulder. You kept your head there, hidden, finally having the peace of not worrying about seeing his facial expressions or getting nervous from his pretty face.
Frank's hand, which had been brushing softly against your back, traveled higher. Until his fingers reached the back of your head and started threading gently through your hair. "Missed you too," he mumbled. For a long time, neither of you spoke.
"I'm sorry."
The words were quiet you almost missed them. You stayed still, barely breathing, to hear him better.
"For what I did," he continued, his voice even softer now. "With the date." He swallowed hard, and you felt the movement against your cheek. "I—" He stopped. Started again. "And for lying about the pills. And for stealing."
And as he said it, you both knew what he meant. You'd worked countless shifts together. Treated countless patients. Every pill you'd ever handed out, every medication you'd administered, some of those had been stolen first by him.
You'd thought about that over the weeks since everything came out. Thought about it a lot, actually. But mostly, mostly, you'd thought about it with sadness, that you hadn't noticed, that he'd been suffering right next to you and you'd been completely blind to it.
You lifted your head off his shoulder now, needing to see him. His blue eyes met yours, and what you found there made your heart break. It was pure fear. Fear of your reaction, fear that this would be the moment you finally turned away.
"You don't need to apologize to me."
But Frank shook his head immediately. "Yeah, I do." His voice cracked slightly. "I betrayed your trust. I used our—" He hesitated, the word catching in his throat. "Our relationship to steal from patients."
He didn't say friendship. You noticed that immediately. He said relationship, like he knew it had always been more than that, like he understood that what was between you couldn't be reduced to something so simple.
You stared at him for a long moment, taking in the way his eyes searched yours. And you realized that maybe he needed this. "Okay," you said softly. "Thank you for apologizing, Frank."
His shoulders sagged slightly, almost imperceptibly, relief so profound you could feel it radiating off him. You watched him for a while longer. Then you looked back down at the steps below you, breaking the intensity of the moment just slightly.
"So," you said, a hint of playfulness creeping into your voice. "How's your bet going?"
And Frank let out the biggest sigh in the entire world. It was dramatic and exaggerated. "That bad?" you laughed.
He just shook his head slowly, mournfully, his expression so defeated. "That bad," he confirmed with another heavy sigh.
You smiled softly as he kept talking, apparently needing to unload. "I've asked everyone," he said, gesturing vaguely with his free hand. "Literally everyone. Nurses, techs, that janitor who definitely thought I was crazy. I even asked Garcia."
You raised an eyebrow. "Garcia?"
"Who gave me a bunch of crap," he confirmed, pushing a hand through his hair to fix it, a nervous habit you recognized.
You started giggling and Frank smiled. He watched you as you calmed down, your giggles fading, your shoulders still shaking slightly with the last remnants of amusement. And then you finally turned your head, met his eyes and froze.
Because he was staring at you with that soft smile still playing on his lips, the one that said he'd been watching you this whole time and enjoying every second of it.
You got shy immediately. He saw the way your eyes widened slightly, the way you broke eye contact and looked away like you'd been caught doing something you shouldn't.
Frank's smile widened. Turned cocky, even.
Because yeah. Yeah, he was still capable of this. Still capable of turning you shy, of making you look away first, of having some small effect on you after everything. After ten months and a destroyed reputation and more shame than he knew what to do with, he could still do this.
You kept your gaze fixed on the stairs, pretending to be very interested in the concrete, and Frank let himself enjoy the moment.
"Your hair's longer," he spoke finally.
His hand came up to your ponytail, tentative at first. When you didn't pull away, he gently wrapped a strand around his finger, twirling it slowly, watching the way the light caught the ends.
You smiled. "Yeah. Thought I'd grow it out a bit." You tilted your head slightly, watching him watch your hair. "You like it?"
He kept twirling, seemingly mesmerized. "Love it," he mumbled.
You smiled wider, then let your eyes drift to his hair, perfectly styled and gelled back. You raised an eyebrow.
"Yours is fully gelled back," you observed. "What happened to letting your hair breathe?" You were teasing, and he knew it. And in response he lightly tugged on your ponytail, just enough to make you sway slightly, and you giggled.
He let go of your hair and reached up to touch his own, fingers running lightly over the styled strands. "You don't like it?" he asked, and his voice was quieter now.
Your smile softened immediately. "I like it," you assured him gently. "Makes you look really serious." You tilted your head, letting your grin turn playful again. "Which I know you're not."
Frank raised an eyebrow. "Hey, I'm serious. I can be serious."
You just looked at him, letting the silence stretch. "Frank." He held your stare, chin lifted slightly, like he was daring you to disagree. You grinned. "Sure. If that makes you feel better."
He sighed dramatically, shaking his head as if deeply wounded by your disbelief. But there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, betraying him completely.
"I'm just joking," you said, your voice gentler now. "You look as handsome as ever."
You raised your hands slowly, giving him time to pull away if he wanted to. He didn't. Your palms cupped his face, warm against his skin, and you felt him exhale softly at the contact. One hand stayed there, resting against his cheek, while the other moved up toward his hairline.
His eyes stayed locked on yours as you carefully picked two strands near his forehead and pulled them down gently, freeing them from the gel. You rubbed the strands between your fingers, working the product out until they were loose. Then you curled them lightly around your finger, watching them fall into place, softer now. You let your hand drop back down, but the other remained on his cheek, thumb brushing lightly against his skin.
"Hm," you murmured, surveying your work with a small satisfied smile. "That's better."
Frank stayed silent. His eyes hadn't left your face. He was staring at you with an intensity that made the stairwell feel suddenly very small.
You shifted slightly under the weight of his gaze. "What?" you asked, suddenly self conscious.
"Nothing," he said, but his voice was rough.
You knew that tone, knew it meant the exact opposite of nothing. "Frank." You sighed. "Spill it."
He held your stare, those blue eyes boring into yours. For a long moment, he just looked at you, at your face, your eyes, your lips, back to your eyes. "You're making it really hard to wait to kiss you."
You froze. You opened your mouth, then closed it again. Then your hand dropped from his face into your lap, and you just sat there, staring at him like he'd grown a second head.
Frank started chuckling. Partly at your reaction, which was, admittedly, pretty adorable, but partly because the tension had grown so thick between you that he needed some kind of release, before he did something impulsive, like kiss you right here, right now, bet be damned.
"You can't say stuff like that," you finally managed, rubbing a hand over your face, trying to compose yourself.
He raised his eyebrows, outrage coloring his features. "I can't say things like that?" He gestured between the two of you, voice pitching higher with disbelief. "You're the one who started this whole thing!"
You started giggling. "This whole thing? What's that supposed to mean?"
"The kissing thing!" Frank said, and immediately wanted to die.
Because yeah. Yeah, he'd just said that. Out loud. Like some kind of flustered teenager who'd never done this before. He could feel heat creeping up his neck, could see the way your giggles intensified at his expense.
"You know," you managed as you kept giggling, "we don't have to do it if you don't want to."
Frank turned his head toward you fully, slightly more serious. "I want to," he said sincerely. "Definitely want to."
He smiled, and you smiled right back.
Then you stood up, brushing off the back of your scrubs casually, like you hadn't just turned his entire world upside down in the span of ten minutes.
"Good," you said, looking down at him with that playful glint back in your eyes. "Well, I hope you bet right, then." You smiled, and then you stretched your hands out toward him.
Frank stared at them blankly for a moment, confused. What were you—oh.
You were trying to help him up.
His back. He hadn't even thought about it when he sat down next to you, hadn't considered the consequences of perching on concrete steps for who knows how long. But you had.
And suddenly he could feel the insecurity biting at him. The disgust curling in his stomach at himself, at all the ways he was damaged and not worthy of someone who remembered things like this.
But, you just leaned forward, grabbed his hands yourself and waited. He pushed up, using your grip for balance, and felt the familiar twinge in his lower back as he straightened. You let go of his hands immediately, as soon as he was up, pretending not to see the slight pained grimace he couldn't quite hide.
You just turned toward the door, casual as anything. "Want to work on a case together?" you asked, already walking back toward the ER.
Frank fell into step beside you, matching your pace. "Yeah." He glanced at you, a small smile tugging at his lips. "It's my turn this time, though."
You'd always had this thing. When one of you got tired of working solo, you'd grab a case together. And you alternated, each time, whoever hadn't picked last time got to choose the next one.
"I remember," you said, smiling at him.
The two of you worked for a couple more hours, pulling you in opposite directions more often than not. A trauma here, a consult there, a patient crashing in between. You barely got to talk about anything else, just quick glances across the department, brief touches when you passed each other in the hallway.
At some point, Frank had gathered enough intel to form a theory.
He'd pieced together fragments from a dozen different conversations and convinced himself he'd cracked it. He'd written it down on that blank piece of paper, folded it carefully, and slipped it into your locker.
Then he'd spent the rest of his shift praying it was right.
The two of you, in your busy days, completely missed the gathering that happened near the end of the shift. A cluster of nurses and residents huddled around someone's phone. The real reason for the Westbridge shutdown had been exposed. A cyberattack.
Frank caught the tail end of the conversation as he walked past, and the color drained from his face so fast he felt dizzy.
Damn it. He had it completely wrong.
From that moment on, it was better to avoid him.
Most people could sense it. He was pissed. Terribly, deeply pissed. At himself, at the situation, at the cruel twist of fate that had dangled a kiss in front of him and then snatched it away.
At the end of the day, Frank walked toward your locker in the slowest steps possible. Each one felt heavier than the last, dragging against the floor like they didn't want to get there. He sighed to himself, running a hand through his hair, the strands you'd freed from the gel now falling naturally across his forehead.
And there you were.
Standing by your locker, holding his paper. The one with his wrong theory written on it. You hadn't opened it yet. "Walk me home?" you asked, smiling.
Frank summoned every ounce of acting ability he possessed and put on an arrogant smile. "Yeah, sure," he said smoothly, like he hadn't just lost the thing he wanted most. Like he was totally fine with waiting a little longer for that kiss.
You smiled at his reaction, turning to grab your jacket from the locker. Frank watched you for a moment, then stepped forward.
He helped you into your jacket, his hands settling on your shoulders briefly before sliding down to the buttons. He started fastening them slowly, starting from the bottom and working his way up. You watched his face, trying to gauge whether he'd gotten it right. When he reached the top button, he shot you a confident smile. He wouldn't have to keep the mask up for long, anyway. He just had to make it through the walk and to your front door.
The two of you headed out into the cool night air. You chitchatted about dinner plans, what you might make, whether you'd order in, if there was anything good in your fridge.
Soon enough, you were at your front door.
You reached into your bag and pulled out the paper. The paper that would determine whether tonight ended with a kiss or not.
"So." You smiled up at him, trying to keep your voice light. "Did you guess it right?"
Frank stood on the step below you, but he was still at your height. He grinned at you. Weakly, maybe, but a grin nonetheless. While nodding his head, he said, "Guess you'll have to see for yourself."
You hesitated when you saw the way his eyelashes flickered when he moved his head. You knew that tell. Every time he spoke with a grin and nodded his head like that, it was a lie. You'd learned that about him months ago, back when you were just coworkers who noticed things about each other.
"Power supply unit failure," you read aloud.
Frank nodded, shuffling his feet against the ground below. His eyes didn't quite meet yours.
You stayed quiet for a moment, letting the silence stretch.
"Guess I got that wrong," he grimaced finally, a self deprecating smile tugging at his mouth. "Good thing I didn't bet any money."
You raised an eyebrow. "Was the loss here not just as big?"
You were teasing him. Obviously. Poking fun at his deflection, at the way he was trying to make this about money when you both knew what was really on the line.
But he didn't realize you were teasing. Or maybe he did, and he was worried that you were jokingly hiding your real feelings. He held your eye contact, his blue eyes steady and serious. "No, it's bigger."
You tilted your head, trying to gauge if he was lying. Trying to read him the way you always could. But his gaze didn't waver. He meant it. Losing the chance to kiss you was bigger than any amount of money.
You looked back down at the paper in your hands. Squeezed it slightly. Your fist balled up tightly around the edges, crinkling the corner, as you made a decision for yourself. Quickly, before you could overthink it, you stuffed the paper back into your bag.
You looked up at him. He'd followed your hand movements with his eyes, watching you shove the evidence away, but he still wasn't looking at you directly, like he couldn't bear to see disappointment on your face.
And then you leaned in.
It was a bit awkward, you were too shy to touch him to close the distance properly. But you were confident enough to press your lips against his. A kiss that lasted barely five seconds before you pulled away.
Mostly because Frank didn't react. He just stood there, frozen, staring at you like he was trying to catch up with what had just happened.
You fell back onto your feet. "Thought you deserved a reward for trying," you said, smiling weakly. Trying to hide the fact that he hadn't kissed you back.
Frank stared at you for another long moment, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted. And then he finally spoke. "That's it?"
Your head snapped up, meeting his eyes. "What?" you asked, breathless, still reeling from what you'd done.
"That's all I get?" He tilted his head slightl.
"I—what?" you asked again, still unable to quite catch up.
He smiled at your shy reaction, the way you were suddenly flustered, suddenly uncertain, after being so bold just moments ago. And then his hands came up and framed your face and his lips were back on yours.
This time, you were the one who took a second to realize what was happening.
He was actually kissing you. Really kissing you.
You leaned in immediately, closing the small distance until you were chest to chest, your hands flying up to his biceps and gripping them tightly. His lips moved against yours and they felt just as nice as you'd always imagined they would. Better, even.
Frank couldn't help the smile that crept up his face when he noticed the taste of your lips. Vanilla. Your chapstick. You'd planned and hoped for this.
The thought made him smile so wide he had to break the kiss, his lips curving against yours until they couldn't stay connected anymore. You were grinning as well, couldn't stop if you tried. Frank kept his eyes closed for a moment, just making sure this was real. Then he opened them, needing to know if you were okay with what just happened.
You were more than okay. "Do you feel better about your reward now?" you spoke, grinning up at him.
Frank joined you in smiling, his thumbs brushing softly against your cheekbones. "Almost," he mumbled.
And then he leaned in and kissed you again.
This one was longer and slower. Your heart beat frantically against your ribs, pure happiness flooding through every part of you. You would've felt embarrassed about how hard it was pounding, if you hadn't been able to feel Frank's heartbeat against yours at the same time, just as fast, just as overwhelmed.
When he finally pulled back, your noses were still touching, neither of you willing to create any more distance than absolutely necessary.
"Still not enough," he murmured, his breath warm against your lips, "but it'll do for now."
You smiled even wider, if that was possible. Your hands were still gripping his biceps, your body still pressed against his, and you had never felt more alive.
He watched you for a second, his blue eyes soft for you, before a grin spread across his face. "You knew I wasn't going to get it right," he said, his tone teasing. "You just wanted an excuse to kiss me."
He pushed a strand of hair behind your ear, his fingers brushing softly across your cheek, lingering there like he couldn't stop touching you. His confidence was creeping back, that familiar cockiness you'd missed so much.
"So?" you said, smiling up at him, squeezing his biceps for emphasis. "Are you complaining?"
divorced!Frank Langdon who meets you a year after the divorce, still healing from the heart break, at a local coffee shop on the way to work one morning and feels compelled to ask you out before he looses his chance after being convinced he’s just seen an angel in human form. He reminds himself that he needs to move on at some point.
divorced!Frank Langdon who's a lot more awkward then he means to be and internally scolds himself for losing that charm he once had. The charm that had once made Abby fall in love with him.
divorced!Frank Langdon who is more than surprised when you say yes and give him your number even though you don't even know anything about each other, except for your names.
divorced!Frank Langdon who knows how busy his work schedule can be so he takes a couple days off to make his schedule more open for you, wanting to do what he can to make sure things with you go well and he doesn't fuck anything up.
divorced!Frank Langdon who's in complete awe of you when he picks you up and can't shut up about beautiful you look.
divorced!Frank Langdon who has nothing to talk about when you ask him about himself except for his kids and his job and apologizes for being so boring, hiding how awkward he feels about this with a bit of sarcasm, worrying that you won't like him. But little does he know, you're already smitten and want him in your life for a very long time.
divorced!Frank Langdon who kisses you breathless when he drops you off at your apartment, having to resist the urge to take things too fast.
divorced!Frank Langdon who after a few months of dating you, worries that he isn't enough for you and cries when you reassure him that he is and he's everything you've ever wanted.
divorced!Frank Langdon who easily becomes your favorite person on the entire planet and the person you love more than anything else. The person you go to when you have a bad day, when you have something exciting to share and when you simply just need someone to hold you.
tags: pre season 1, angst, suicide, overdose, no abby, y/n used once, not proofread
a/n: only uploading this at 2am cuz people won’t GO THE FUCK HOME omg im so irritated
These past months have been absolutely terrible for you. You’ve gone through many friendship breakups, family losses, and work has been especially rough on you. Life has just been a struggle lately, almost chore like. It nearing the new year hasn’t made it any better.
When you need comfort or someone to listen to you, you’d turn to your good friend, Frank Langdon. When you first interned at The Pitt, he took you under his wing, and that is where you stayed. He was like the tough loving older brother you never had. You were grateful for him, as he is for you.
journal entry #67 12/31/23
Dear Diary,
I’m not sure if I can carry on. Everything sits far too heavy on my heart, and I don’t know what to do with it all. I know I can turn to Frank, but he’s going through his own shit, and I’m not trying to add onto any of that. I don’t think there is anyone at work I can talk to. Maybe Dana, but I’m not that close to her. I don’t know. I just feel so lost. Someone from up above, please send me a sign. Hopefully next year will be better than this one.
As new year’s eve rolled around, your condition had noticeably gotten worse. You’ve begun to withdraw from work hangouts, you barely spoke to anyone, the light no longer reached your eyes, and the ED hasn’t heard you light laughter in a good minute. Naturally, people began to worry. It started with Samira, then Dana, Robby, and lastly, Frank. He’s seen you bounce back from your melancholic episodes, so he left you to do your own thing.
You finish off your charting with a heavy sigh, and trudge towards the locker room. Your fingers move sluggishly over the lock pad, messing up the code one too many times causes you to curse quietly in frustration. You rest your forehead on the cold wood and attempt to take some calming breaths though they do very little.
Unbeknownst to you, Frank had been watching you with quiet and concerned eyes. “Hey, uh… have you been doing alright?” he questions, worry lingering in his tone. He knows that he would not be able to gauge a satisfying answer for you, at least not here.
“I’m fine,” you mutter, keeping your answer to the question short, like you have always done as of late. You give him a small smile that could’ve fooled everyone, but not him. No, not Frank. You sling your bag over your and make your way towards the door without another word nor glance.
For a reason he cannot name, this set a million alarm bells off in his head. His feet feel frozen to the ER floor for a moment before he finally gains the strength to move them again. He does an awkward jog in your direction and lays a hand on your shoulder as the two of you fall into step, “Do you want to come over maybe? We can order from that Chinese place you like?”
“I think I’m just going to head straight home tonight, Frankie,” you whisper, wrapping your arms around your own body. The decision weighs heavily on your mind, and it has since you were a preteen. You don’t know what you did to deserve this and why it won’t go away.
Your response causes his footsteps to falter and his mind automatically catalogs through excuses and ways to get you to stay with him tonight. “If you’re tired, we can go to yours,” he suggests with a shrug, his voice mildly shaken. “Oh, what about that movie we’re supposed to watch? The action one with the actress you really like.”
Frank’s words flow through one ear and out the other. On a usual day, you would have agreed, but today you have exhaustion that lays heavy on your bones. “I’m just feeling tired tonight, Frank. I don’t know,” you sigh, shaking your head. You make an effort to part ways, but Frank only follows.
“Let me walk you to your car at least,” the walk to your car is quiet, save for wailing sirens that the both of you pay no mind to. Speaking of sirens, Frank can’t seem to ignore the ones going off in the back of his mind, screaming that something is wrong.
“Thanks, Frank,” you toss your bag into the passenger seat before turning back to him. You finally meet his eyes just to find him already staring at you with a concerned gaze. Without a second thought, you pull him into a tight hug. It shocks the both of you, you not being one for physical touch.
Pushing away that fact, Frank wraps his arms around you. One arm held over your upper back, the other holding the back of your head. “Any time,” he whispers, letting his face rest in your hair.
You both stay like that for a moment, not caring if anyone sees. It’s almost like everyone else doesn’t exist and that it is only you two in your little bubble. This is nice, Frank thinks to himself. He’s never held you like this, and you have never had anyone to hold you like he is right now. This is a feeling worth keeping.
“Goodbye, Frank,” you simply mutter into the fabric of his hospital scrubs before pulling away after a moment longer.
He lets you fall from his arms, watching as you retreat into your car, his chest aching. His eyes watch with a unique sense of sorrow that he’s never felt before. His mind thinks hard on your goodbye for a moment. It wasn’t your usual ‘see you tomorrow’ or ‘see you next shift,’ and was simply just goodbye. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”
“yeah,” your voice wasn’t filled with any form of commitment, because you have already made up your mind. You pull out of the parking space, and once you’re horizontal to the spot and Frank, you roll down your window and wave, “I love you, Frankie,” before driving off.
He must’ve misheard you, right? Out of your many years of friendship, that was the first time either of you have said I love you to one another. So it catches him off guard. Before he even gets a second to process, you’re already out of the parking garage. He replays the sound of your voice in his head, warm and full of woe. With that, he walks over to his car with his hands stuffed into his pocket, thinking about you.
7:30pm
f: you good?
f: I know you said you were fine, but I feel like I still have to check in.
y: read 7:56
8:00pm
f: ??
f: you’re worrying me you know…
f: just tell me you’re alright
f: please
y: read 8:13
Luckily, you have no pets, so you don’t feel as guilty for your decision. You change into the nicest and most comfortable pajamas you own and stuff your face with pizza. The sound of your favorite show, Interview with the Vampire, plays softly from your TV, though you aren’t really paying attention.
Once you are finished with your meal, you stare at the bottle of sleeping pills that sit on your coffee table that might as well be laced with neon lights. The decision weighs heavy in your mind at the moment though you had been so previously sure. Your hands shake with anticipation as you reach for the bottle that might as well come to life and taunt you. The clock strikes midnight and the bottle pops open with gibe. one, two, three… six pills, you count. You become hesitant at the size of them.
You plot to your kitchen cabinet and pull out a flask of vodka that you said you would get to months ago and pour yourself a cup. You toss the pills in your mouth without a second thought and chug the alcohol. It burns ten times more than you thought it would. You fall into a coughing fit at the sensation. My last coughing fit, you think. The thought makes you laugh. Imagine knowing when your last coughing fit is. Now that the hard part is over, you slog to your bedroom, your clean bedroom, and cover yourself all nice and pretty, close your eyes, and wait for the lord to take you. But before you allow yourself to truly rest, you text frank
y: sorry if i was acting a little weird earlier, frankie.
y: i did mean it though.
y: i do love you.
At around 2:13a.m, Frank’s eyes shoot open at the sudden feeling that something is wrong. He hasn’t forgotten to turn off the stove or lock the door, he knows he has. He checked three times before allowing himself to relax and settle into bed. He scrambles to his phone and grimaces at the bright screen. His fingers move painfully slowly to the messaging app to find three unread messages of yours.
f: what’s going on with you?
f: that sounded rude, sorry
f: but are you alright?
f: ???
f: do i need to come over?
f: y/n??
Your texts set Frank’s brian into fight or flight. He re-reads your messages, remembering everything he can from nursing schools about signs someone is to kill themselves, and every box is mentally checked off. He springs off of his bed and out the door in record time. He could care less that he’s speeding when his mind believes that your life is on the line.
He makes it into your apartment complex with a spare key he never took off from the one time you had gone on vacation. He then sprints up three flights of stairs and makes it into your house in about a minute and a half. He shouts your name, no response. He prays that it’s just you being a heavy sleeper. He bursts into your bedroom, to find you lying still. He calls your name, still no response. His heart beats a million beats per minute as yours doesn’t beat at all. He shakes you with determination, checking your pulse to find… nothing. He can swear that his own heart stopped beating. At that point, Frank quietly breaks down in a way he hadn’t in years. His hand finds your cold one and holds it tight in his.
“I should’ve known, damnit…” he curses himself, feeling a deep sense of regret. He fumbles his phone and immediately dials 911. Paramedics are here faster than Frank had ever seen. They had pronounced you dead at the scene, having nothing that they could do. Still, they took you to the morgue that would pass through the pitt.
The ride has to be the worst thing that Frank has gone through, save for his addiction. None of this sits right in his heart. It shouldn’t and it will not. He feels as if he had lost a part of him. A part of his heart, his whole, his routine.
January 4, 2024
Now, a year has passed since your death, and Frank has decided to show up this year. No one had expected him to. He skipped work for a whole two weeks and a half following your death, and had planned to today. But he said that he would show up for you. And that everyone should push in honor of you.
something about reader noticing frank hurting his back during the the scene where he carried the boy into the er?
when frank places the boy carefully down on the bed, you see the twinge of pain in his features. it’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment, but you notice how he struggles to pull himself upright for a brief moment.
you look away to focus on caring for your new patient, but when he’s stable you’re the first to follow langdon out of the room. you place a gentle, comforting hand on his arm.
“you good?” you ask softly, searching his face for any sign of discomfort.
“yeah, why wouldn’t i be?” he asks and you pull him towards a quieter part of the ED.
“is your back hurting?”
langdon shifts on his feet, like he’s uncomfortable by the fact you’ve noticed. you give him a soft smile, completely understanding of his situation, and he relaxes slightly.
“it’s been playing up again recently. i’ve been trying to work on it in the gym, but sometimes when i lift things i feel it. i don’t think it’ll ever go away.”
you nod, “well, you’re doing really well. i’m proud of you for trying.”
frank softens, the first genuine smile of the day coming to his face, “thanks, (y/n).”
“if you need anything, you know where to find me.” you squeeze his arm before leaving the room, and langdon watches you go with a newfound appreciation for your friendship.
𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮: you've wondered why frank never let you see his locker combination until you find out it's your birthday.
𝙬𝙘: 1.2k
𝙖/𝙣: we are so fucking back
"are you seriously not going to let me see your combination?"
you and langdon were very close friends and have been since you began your residency around two year ago. though two months into it, he'd begin rehab and be gone for eight months, the second he returned to work you welcomed him back with open arms and zero judgment. he really needed a friend like that and he was so grateful for you.
the first time you'd noticed langdon's secrecy regarding his locker combination, you didn't say anything. but the second time, in which he'd asked you to physically walk away so he could unlock the locker, you started teasing.
"seriously, what is it? is there a secret pet or something you're hiding in there? i promise not to tell."
he laughed at you then. "just like my privacy, i guess."
you pretended to believe that. you never questioned it out loud again, though still teased him about it. it became a running joke of the pitt very quickly that he had a shrine to dr. robby plastered on the inside of the door.
today, of all days, was quite literally one of the longest shifts of your life. not only did you wake up late, late enough where you were able to get to work on time by skipping out on breakfast, but the patients kept coming and coming and there was practically no downtime for anything. you'd barely seen langdon all day.
when 3pm rolled around and you'd still had yet to see him, though, you began to worry. you finally had a second to recollect yourself and decided to walk over to dana's desk.
"i have yet to see langdon all day," you cross your arms and lean on them. "he even come in?"
she sends you a look, a look that instantaneously made you begin to worry.
"he is here," she starts, "but literally two minutes before you walked over slipped on some blood outside trauma one and has a nasty cut on his forehead."
seeing how scared hearing that made you, she told you the exam room he was being held in and you rushed over quickly. whitaker was in there with him just giving the exam and making sure he was okay. no stitches, thank god, but needed some pressure before they could bandage the wound nonetheless.
whitaker left the room and you sat next to langdon, who's eyes were closed as he held gauze on his forehead.
"ouch, dude," you said. "i'm sorry."
he shook his head slightly. "don't be, should've looked where i was going."
"true."
he shot you a look and you motioned a zipper to your lips, suppressing a laugh.
"the one time i don't have my phone on me, too," he sighed.
"i can get it for you."
he tensed up slightly, but just enough for you to notice it. "no, it's okay."
"langdon, come on, it's just in your locker, it's right down the hall."
"i can wait."
you scoff. "you're being ridiculous. just tell me your combination and i'll grab it, it'll literally take less than a minute."
you watched the cogs turn behind his eyes and after a few moments he responds, "you know, dana knows my combination, can you just--"
"are you being for real?"
"yes, please."
you decide not to argue, even though it bothered you a lot. you wondered why he didn't want to tell you his combination, why it was such a secret. did he just not trust you? did he not want you to see something in his locker?
annoyed, you walk over to dana yet again. "could you do me the biggest favor and get langdon's phone from his locker?"
her eyebrows furrow. "like i'm not busy with--?"
"i know, i'm just as annoyed. he...he won't tell me his combination. he says you know it, you're the only one that knows it and he is really desperate for that phone."
something switches behind her eyes when you say "combination" and she sighs. you follow behind her towards the lockers and stop in front of his. you don't peel your eyes away.
dana looks over at you. "come on, no peeking."
your jaw drops. "you can't be serious."
"i'm sorry, babe, i'm sworn to secrecy."
you stammer a bit before realizing it's no use arguing with her. you back away from her, standing behind her.
she puts the combination in rather quickly, and you thank god she left her glasses over at her desk as you're able to peer over her shoulder and catch glimpses of the numbers, an order of numbers you happen to know all too well.
it was your birthday.
the month, the date, the last two digits of the year. you hide your blush as much as you can from dana as she hands you his phone. you thank her quickly as she returns to her desk. she leaves his locker open, quick to return to work. you'd hate yourself for snooping, but you can't help but just before you close the locker.
it wasn't anything special, he had his backpack on the shelf and a baseball cap hanging on a hook. there was a small lunchbox and some books as well as some pictures of his kids hung up on the door. it was just a normal locker, there was nothing to hide. it always was the combination of it all.
you compose yourself and your racing thoughts as you return to the exam room and hand him his phone.
"dana opened it?"
"mhm," you nod, "gotta get back to work now, see you later."
you heard him begin to speak as you rushed out of the room. you had four hours left of the shift to figure out what to say to him.
he returned to work a half hour later after a bandage was put on and you both rushed through the rest of the shift. today was thursday, you'd carpooled to work together today, so you waited outside by your car for him to finish charting.
"hey," he begins, "thank god that shift is--"
"your locker combination is my birthday."
he freezes. "how did you--?"
"i'm sorry, dana put it in and i couldn't help put peek, it was a complete invasion of your privacy and i'm sorry." you pause. "your locker combination is my birthday."
he swallows. "it is."
"why so secretive about it?"
he shrugs. "i don't know, it's kinda weird, isn't it?"
you furrow your eyebrows with a small smile. "of course not, frank, we're good friends--"
"no, don't do that."
your smile drops. "do what?"
"pretend that's all it is."
you swallow. you knew he was right but you decide to play dumb anyway. since the moment he'd returned from rehab and you guys started becoming friends, there was always a kind of underlying tension that neither of you admitted to each other. you shared many "almost"s together, but nothing ever came of it, both too scared of the consequences.
"your combination is my birthday."
he shakes his head and looks down, embarrassed. "stop saying it--"
you put your hand on his cheek and watch his eyes flick up to meet yours. you smile at him.
"it's really sweet. it's not weird at all. just caught me by surprise."
he swallows. "you sure?"
"more than."
for now, this would be just another "almost" and you two would carpool home and walk into your separate abodes. but come tomorrow, he'd finally kiss you for the first time.
summary — you were the person frank bet on before you’d earned it, the one he handed crumbs you’d turned into a religion. it was fine and completely harmless; he was married, untouchable, and miles above you, and wanting him cost nothing as long as it stayed in your head.
warnings — general warnings for the series, detailed warnings in chapters - age gap/minor power imbalance, implied but not formal mentor-mentee relationship, emotional infidelity, divorce, exploitation of feelings, unhealthy relationship dynamics, substance abuse and addiction, depictions of medical trauma, obsessive idealization, unhealthy attachments.
comment to be added to the taglist!
01. drop dead ✦ 02. stupid song ✦
03. u + me = <3 ✦ 04. purple ✦ 05. begged ✦
06. the cure ✦ 07. cigarette smoke ✦ 08. maggots for brains ✦
09. honeybee ✦ 10. what’s wrong with me ✦
11. my way ✦ 12. less ✦
$ log - bucky barnes has been filing debrief reports on your shared missions since day one. thorough ones. he thinks he’d been private; instead you've been receiving every single one!
$ warn --sfw --fluff --gn!reader --cutie-jealous!bucky --bucky-has-a-crush
$ wc -w 2.1k
$ cd masterlist
The SHIELD debrief portal had a lot of options Bucky didn't care about.
CC, BCC, Priority flag, Read receipts, etc. He'd clicked through all of them once when Fury made the whole team migrate to the new system. He'd retained exactly what he needed: Subject line, Body, Attach file, and Send.
BCC he'd figured out on his own.
Blind carbon copy, so his copy. B for Bucky, obviously, the logic was airtight — you hit BCC, put your own address in, and you got a private duplicate that nobody else could see or trace. His personal record, similar to a filing cabinet that lived in his email.
What the portal's onboarding documentation would have explained, had he read it, was that BCC worked the other way. You put other addresses in BCC. Addresses you wanted to receive the email invisibly, without the main recipient knowing.
What the portal's backend had also done, automatically and without asking anyone, was flag your email address to receive copies of any SHIELD documentation in which your name appeared more than four times.
Bucky's reports averaged twelve.
He didn't know any of this. He hit send, opened his own BCC copy, read it over once with a quiet satisfaction of reviewing something he was privately proud of, and closed his laptop.
The first one arrived on a Tuesday.
You were in the common room with your phone, half-watching something on the TV and not really tracking it, when the notification came through. SHIELD internal. Debrief document, your name in the subject line, sender ID: AGT-J.B.BARNES-2245.
You read it once, then you read it again.
Asset demonstrated exceptional situational awareness during the extraction sequence. Threat neutralisation was efficient and tactically sound.
Of additional note: asset's decision to reroute through the east corridor rather than the designated path resulted in the successful retrieval of secondary intelligence that would otherwise have been lost. This was not a lucky call. This was good instinct. Recommend continued field partnership.
This was not a lucky call. This was good instinct. You put your phone face-down on your knee, then picked it up to read it again.
Nobody had ever put that in writing before.
You were smiling before you'd fully registered. It was the kind you had to press your lips together to keep reasonable, and you looked up at the TV without seeing it and thought, huh.
Across the room, Bucky watched your face do something he didn't have a word for and felt a pull in his chest he chose not to examine.
You were on your phone a lot. He'd noticed. But, he wasn't keeping track or anything. So, he looked back at his coffee.
The second report went out three weeks later, after the Rotterdam job.
Bucky wrote it the same night, still in the post-mission quiet when everything felt slower and more honest. You'd been good in Rotterdam. Better than good. You'd held a position under pressure that most people would have abandoned and you'd done it without being asked.
You hadn't mentioned it in the debrief at all, just moved on like it was nothing, and it was very much not nothing.
He wrote the report, and he did so carefully. He added a line he took out, then put back in, then reworded three times:
Asset shows consistent pattern of underreporting her own contributions in verbal debrief settings. For accuracy of record, this document reflects observed field performance rather than asset's own account, which trends toward omission.
He looked at that for a while. Then he hit send, BCC'd himself, and closed the laptop.
You got it during breakfast.
Sam watched you pick up your phone mid-bite, watched your expression shift into something soft and private and a little delighted. He watched you put the phone screen-down with the careful precision of someone protecting something.
"Good news?" Sam said.
"Mm." You picked your fork back up. "Just — yeah. Good news."
Sam looked at you. He then looked across the kitchen at Bucky, who was reading the newspaper with the focus of totally not listening into the conversation.
Sam looked back at you, but he said nothing. He was mentally storing all these signs.
Bucky noticed you were doing it more.
The phone thing and the quiet smile. The way you'd look up from whatever you were reading with this expression like something had settled right in you. Then you'd put it away carefully, like you were folding something you wanted to keep.
He'd assumed it was texts. Someone's texts. Someone who made you look like that on a random Thursday morning over coffee, and he sat with that for approximately forty-five seconds before deciding he didn't want to think about it anymore.
He opened his laptop that evening and pulled up the debrief for the Lisbon job. Standard stuff, you know, like routine retrieval.
Except you'd done this thing mid-mission where you'd talked down a civilian who was about to make everyone's life significantly harder, just calm and steady and completely unbothered. It had taken maybe ninety seconds and saved the whole operation two hours minimum. Nobody had commented on it. It was the kind of thing that disappeared into the noise.
He started typing.
He wrote the standard sections firstL objectives, timeline, outcome. Then he got to the additional notes field, which SHIELD technically used for anomalies and escalations, and which Bucky had been using for other things.
Asset's interpersonal management under pressure warrants specific notation. The civilian stabilisation in the market was executed without backup, without prior briefing, and without any apparent increase in the asset's stress response.
It is the opinion of this agent that this represents a skill set that is both rare and consistently undervalued.
He was adding a final line — something about recommended commendation, which he'd never put in a report before, and which he also chose not to examine — when the chair next to him scraped back and Steve sat down.
Bucky tilted the laptop slightly away, reflex.
"Working late?" Steve said.
"Report."
"Which one?"
"Lisbon."
Steve glanced at the screen anyway, as he had no sense of boundaries that Bucky hadn't explicitly built a wall around. He read exactly enough to go very still in the way that meant he was trying not to have a reaction.
"That's very thorough," Steve said.
"I'm a thorough person."
"You recommended a commendation."
"They earned it."
Steve opened his mouth, and Bucky closed the laptop.
"The report," Bucky said, "is classified."
"It's an internal debrief document —"
"Goodnight, Steve."
Steve stood up. He walked out of the room at a completely normal pace.
Steve found Sam in the gym the next morning. He looked up from the bench press, while Steve held out his phone. Sam read the screenshot — received at 11:43pm, the text reading just you need to see this with no other context — and set the bar back in the rack.
They looked at each other.
"Do they know?" Sam said.
"They don’t know."
"Does he know?"
Steve's expression answered that. Sam picked the bar back up. "We're not telling either of them."
"Absolutely not."
"This is the most entertaining thing that's happened in six months."
"I know."
"Your best friend is writing this person love letters and filing them with SHIELD."
"I know, Sam."
You'd started saving them.
Not in a folder or anything organised. Just — you hadn't deleted them. You'd read the Lisbon one four times. On the fourth read you'd hit the consistently undervalued line and had to put your phone in your pocket and go do something with your hands for a while.
Someone on the team was writing these. Had to be. The mission details were too specific, the access too internal. Someone who'd been in Rotterdam, in Lisbon, on the extraction job in February.
You were running the list in your head while you made coffee, not really tracking the room, when you said out loud: "Do you think it could be an analyst? Like someone in the documentation department who just — sees the same names a lot and —"
"No," said Bucky, from the table.
You turned around. He was eating cereal and looking at his phone. He didn't look up.
"I mean, it's possible though, right?" you said. "They review everything. They'd have context."
"Analysts don't do field commendations. That's agent-level sign-off." He turned his phone over. "Whoever it is has been in the field with you."
You stared at him. Nonchalantly, he ate his cereal.
"That," you said slowly, "is actually really helpful, thank you."
"It's a logical deduction."
You turned back to the coffee maker. You were smiling again. You could feel it.
Behind you, Bucky looked at the back of your head with the expression of a man who had just realised he might have a problem.
The fourth report was the one that got away from him.
It was after the Geneva job, which had gone sideways in three different directions and then come back together.
It was entirely because of a call you'd made that Bucky was still thinking about four days later. It wasn't even a dramatic call. That was the thing. It was quiet and fast and so precisely right that he'd had trouble focusing for the rest of the op.
He sat down to write the report and he wrote the standard sections and then he got to additional notes and he just — kept going.
He wrote about the Geneva call. He wrote about Rotterdam again, because he'd been thinking about it. He wrote:
This agent has now worked alongside asset in eleven field operations. Pattern of observation across this period leads to the following assessment: asset is the kind of person who makes every operation better by being in it.
This is the conclusion of eleven data points and one agent who has been paying attention.
Then, because Geneva had also produced something worth noting — genuinely, this part was professional — he added:
Of additional commendation: asset developed a partner communication system mid-mission, Geneva operation. Implemented in under thirty seconds, zero errors.
Examples: "wrong floor" for abort, "you owe me coffee" for stand down. Effective. Recommend standard adoption.
For the record, the coffee was never collected.
He read that back. He sent it before he could think about it differently. BCC: himself. B For Bucky. Private and safe.
You got it during movie night.
You felt your phone buzz, glanced at it, saw the sender ID, and made a decision in real time to read it right now that you would later question.
Asset is the kind of person who makes every operation better by being in it.
You made a very small sound that you hoped nobody heard. Sam definitely heard it.
This is the conclusion of eleven data points and one agent who has been paying attention.
You were smiling so hard your face hurt and you were staring at your phone like it had personally done something kind to you. You were going to need a moment, you were going to need just a —
You kept reading.
"Wrong floor" for abort. "You owe me coffee" for stand down.
You stopped smiling. You read that back.
Those were yours. The system you'd built in a Geneva stairwell in thirty seconds because you'd looked at Bucky and done the math on how the next hour was going to go.
You'd whispered the whole thing to him while checking the corridor and he'd said got it and that had been that. You hadn't written it down. You hadn't told debrief. Nor, had you mentioned it to anyone because it had felt like — it had just felt like a thing between the two of you.
For the record, the coffee was never collected.
He'd put that in a SHIELD report. You looked up.
Bucky was looking at the TV with his arms crossed, jaw slightly set. The specific stillness of someone who had decided in advance that they were going to look at the TV and they were going to keep looking no matter what.
You looked at him for a long moment, realisation configuring in your head. He didn't look back. You looked down at your phone, then back up at Bucky.
Sam looked at Steve, who just looked at the ceiling, avoiding any stray gazes. Nobody said a word.
You locked your phone, very carefully, and put it face-down on your knee. On screen, something exploded.
The room stayed very quiet.
# fic inspo
$ tag @twentytomidnight @i-gotta-go-so-much-bigger
$ log - bucky barnes has been lurking in tower doorways for three weeks trying to figure out how to talk to people. you come back from a mission hurt. he stops thinking about it and helps!
$ warn --sfw --gn!reader --avengers!reader --soft!bucky --awkward!bucky --steve-and-sam-are-proud-parents
$ wc -w 2.6k
$ cd masterlist
$ echo “account's js going to be quiet during the day bc im busy interning, but posts will be scheduled still, maybs” > authors-note.txt
The debrief runs long enough that by the time you get back to your floor, the common room has thinned out. You can hear the TV distantly — someone left it on, low volume, a laugh track going off for no one. You've got your kit on the bathroom counter and your shirt off. You're already regretting not asking someone to do this before they all dispersed.
The problem with cuts on your back is geometry. Simple, stupid geometry.
You manage the lower ones fine. The upper left (the one that actually needs a stitch or two) is the problem. You can feel it pulling when you reach, and you keep having to re-angle the mirror. So annoying — the gauze keeps slipping since you're contorting your arm in a direction it wasn't designed to go.
This is fine, you think, pressing the cloth to it at the wrong angle. This is completely fine and very normal and you are a trained operative.
The gauze slips again.
You don't hear him in the doorway. You just — become aware of him. It’s similar to the way you become aware of a change in air pressure, and when you clock the reflection in the mirror your first instinct is to go for the knife on the counter before your brain catches up:
Barnes. It's Barnes.
He's leaning in the frame, arms crossed, watching you with the particular expression he seems to wear as a default. Not unfriendly, exactly, just very still. It’s like he's turned most of himself down to a frequency you can't quite tune into.
You'd noticed him around the tower; it’s hard not to. He had this way of hovering near the edges of rooms — near enough to be present, far enough to have an exit, watching conversations like he was studying for a test on how to be a person again.
You'd clocked him lingering near the kitchen while Sam told a story, near the TV while Nat and Clint argued about something. Or near the window during debrief like a curious, brooding version of Thor.
You'd wanted to say something to him about a dozen times and each time you'd talked yourself out of it because you genuinely could not figure out what the opening line was. Hey, you seem lonely felt presumptuous. Good job not being a sleeper agent felt worse.
So you'd just decided not to..
And apparently he'd been doing the same math, which had resulted in him standing in your bathroom doorway at eleven at night watching you fail at first aid.
"Hey," you say, because something has to be said.
He nods, and you turn back to the mirror. "I've got it."
You don't have it. The gauze slips again, proof positive, and you watch his reflection push off the doorframe and cross the room and then his hand — the left one, the metal one, cool even through the cloth — covers yours and just takes it. Bucky wasn’t rough with it nor hesitant, just with the quiet certainty of someone who has decided a thing and is doing it.
You go still. "What are you doing?"
"Helping."
He says it like it's the most obvious thing — like you'd asked him what two plus two was. He's already repositioning, tilting the light, assessing. The efficiency of it catches you off guard, the way he moves through like a checklist: clean, irrigate, and assess depth. You can feel him deciding about the stitch before he says anything.
"This needs two," he says.
"I know."
"You were going to do it yourself."
"I was going to, yes."
He makes a sound, something not quite a laugh — something shorter, quieter. But it's there.
Bucky works without narrating it, which you appreciate. Some people talk through medical stuff to be reassuring and it always has the opposite effect. He just does it, and so the stitches are neat. Tighter than you'd have managed at this angle, if you'd managed at all.
You're watching his reflection without meaning to. He's focused — entirely, completely focused, the same way you'd clocked him watching the sparring sessions from the mezzanine last week. It’s like the thing in front of him is the only thing that exists.
"You had good angles tonight," he says.
You blink. "Sorry?"
"On the entry. The building." He ties off the stitch, reaches for the gauze. "Most people come in high. You came in low and right, cut off the exit before they registered you were there."
You process that for a second.
"You were watching."
"Everyone was watching. You were the interesting part."
It's delivered completely flatly; just a fact he's reporting.
"...thanks," you say.
He tapes the gauze down, smooth and precise, with no wasted movement. "The one by the stairwell. Your second engagement. You knew he was going to draw left."
"He was guarding his right side the whole time. Led with it."
Barnes nods like you've confirmed something. "He'd been hit there before, old injury. You read it in about four seconds."
"Three," you say, and then feel slightly stupid.
The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile, exactly, but the shape of one. "Three," he allows.
He steps back, checking his work with the same assessing look. You pull your shirt back on and turn around, leaning against the counter. He's already moving to wash his hands, unhurried.
"I've been trying to figure out how to talk to you for like three weeks," you say.
He looks at you in the mirror.
"You're very — " you gesture vaguely, " — a lot to approach. You've got a whole thing going on. Very brooding-corner-of-the-room energy."
He's quiet for a moment, drying his hands. "I didn't know what to say."
"Yeah, me neither."
"So I didn't say anything."
"Same."
He turns off the tap and sets the towel down. Bucky looks at you with that low, even look, and you get the sense he's filing something away — cataloguing this. Perhaps in the way he catalogued your entry angle and the guard's weak side and the two stitches. Just simply noting it.
"Your form on the last guy," he says. "The big one by the door."
"What about it?"
"It was reckless."
You stare at him.
"You had three cleaner options."
"I had him."
"You had him that time." He crosses his arms. "Different footing, you're on the floor."
You open your mouth, close it. "Are you critiquing me right now? You just stitched me up and now you're critiquing me?"
"The two things aren't unrelated."
You look at him, and he just stares back. Somewhere down the hall the laugh track goes off again, tinny and distant.
"Okay," you say. "Fine. What were the three cleaner options?"
And he tells you. Quiet and precise, standing in your bathroom at eleven-fifteen at night, talking about leverage and sightlines and weight distribution like he's narrating a documentary only he can see.
You find yourself arguing back. Though, not defensively, just because you have a different read. He seems like the kind of person who wants you to push back, actually, who comes alive slightly when you do, the stillness shifting into something more alert.
The laugh track goes off again and you both ignore it.
You're still leaning against the counter. He hasn't moved toward the door yet. There's something in the quality of the silence that doesn't feel like an ending, so you don't treat it like one.
"Can I ask you something?"
He looks at you.
"The — " you gesture vaguely in the direction of the rest of the tower, " — social stuff. Is it hard? Like, actually hard, or is that a stupid question?"
A pause. He seems to be deciding something.
"It's loud," he says finally.
"The tower?"
"Rooms. When everyone's — " he stops, and tries again. "When people already know how to talk to each other. There's a frequency. I can't find it."
He says it the way he said three — like a correction. It’s as if he's been carrying the precise language for it and hasn't had anywhere to put it. "I stand there and I know what a normal response would look like but by the time I've worked out how to enter it the moment's already gone."
Letting the conversation sit, you stay silent.
"Steve tries," he adds. "He's — he tries very hard. So does Sam. It's worse when people try."
"Because then you know they're watching to see if it works."
He looks at you; something shifts slightly. "Yeah."
"I noticed you," you say. "Around, for weeks. I kept almost saying something."
"Why didn't you?"
"Couldn't really figure out the opening line. You've got a very — " you make the same vague gesture from before, " — don't approach energy."
"Hm." He considers this without apparent offense. "What changed?"
"You walked into my bathroom and took the gauze out of my hand."
The shape-of-a-smile thing happens again. Brief and almost involuntary.
"I didn't think about it," he says. "I just — did it."
"Yeah." You pause. "That's usually how it works, actually. The thinking is the problem."
He's quiet for a moment. Then, like he's noting something: "You patch yourself up alone."
"I had it."
"You didn't."
"I almost had it."
He tips his head slightly, but not agreeing. "You came back from a mission with a laceration that needed two stitches and you didn't ask anyone."
"I didn't want to bother anyone."
He looks at you with an expression that is very flat and very pointed and somehow manages to make you feel slightly called out without him saying a single word.
"That's different," you say.
"Is it?"
"I'm not — " you stop and start again. "That's just not wanting to be annoying. That's not the same thing as not being able to read a room."
"You were alone in a bathroom at midnight with a needle."
"Barnes."
"I'm just noting it."
"You're critiquing me again."
"The two things," he says, deadpan, "aren't unrelated."
You stare at him, and he does the same. The laugh track plays. You both continue to ignore it.
"Okay," you say. "Fine. We're both bad at it."
He considers this for a moment, like he's checking it for accuracy. Then, quietly: "Yeah."
It's not a big admission, as he doesn't really make it one. But you get the sense it's the kind of thing he doesn't say out loud very often — the small ordinary version of the truth, without the armor around it.
He's still here, you think, and that's the thing. He walked in and he stayed and he answered. He's still here, which for Bucky at this particular point in his grand life is probably the whole sentence.
"We should spar sometime," you say. "You could show me. The three options."
He goes quiet.
Though not the closed-off quiet from before — something different. Smaller, like a door opening somewhere very far inside, in a room that hadn't been unlocked in a long time. Something that, if you knew him better, if you'd known him before — back when he had a whole laugh and an easy grin and twenty-five cents in his pocket for the Coney Island ferris wheel — you might have recognised it as the very beginning of giddy.
He doesn't let it reach his face, but it's there.
"Yeah," he says. A pause. "That sounds good."
It's four words, but it shouldn't land the way it does.
He leaves, and you're standing in your bathroom, alone again. The laugh track plays one more time.
Huh, you think. Okay then.
He finds Steve and Sam in the kitchen at half past midnight. They're doing nothing in particular.
Sam has a bowl of cereal he's clearly eating out of boredom, Steve has a book open that he hasn't looked at in a while. They both clock Bucky in the doorway and do the thing they always do, which is very carefully not make it a big deal that he's there.
"Hey," Sam says. "You eat yet?"
Bucky doesn't answer that. He comes into the kitchen and stops a few feet from the counter — hands at his sides, shoulders back, the posture of a man delivering a report to people with the appropriate clearance level — and says: "I talked to Y/N tonight."
Steve closes his book.
"Yeah?" Sam says, neutral, cereal spoon frozen.
"They came back from the mission with a laceration on their upper back. I assisted with the stitching." A pause. "Then we talked about the mission. Their tactical instincts are good. They read injury patterns. They noticed I'd been — " a very brief stop, " — around. They said I had brooding-corner-of-the-room energy."
Sam's mouth twitches. "They’re not wrong."
"We talked about the social stuff. I told them about the frequency thing." He says it plainly, no preamble, the way he'd report a weather condition. "They didn't make it weird."
Steve's expression does something complicated and tender that he is trying very hard to keep off his face and completely failing at.
"They patch themself up alone," Bucky continues, with the faint air of someone filing a complaint. "They came back with a two-stitch laceration and didn't ask anyone. Y/N said they didn't want to bother people."
"That does sound like them," Sam says carefully.
"It's the same thing. What I do. They just don't see it that way." He pauses. "I told them the two things weren't unrelated."
Sam sets his spoon down very slowly.
"We're sparring next week," Bucky says. "So I can demonstrate the three alternative approaches they should have taken in the final engagement. Their form on the last target was reckless."
Silence.
Steve is gripping his book, but his jaw is doing something. His eyes are doing something considerably worse. He has the look of a man watching a sunrise he'd been told might never come and trying very hard not to ruin it by crying about it in a kitchen at midnight.
"That's — " his voice comes out slightly higher than intended. He clears his throat. "That's really good, Buck."
"They’re good," Bucky says, with a faint defensive edge that no one asked for. "Technically. Their entry angles are efficient. And they process fast. They even asked me a question and then actually waited for the answer."
"Mmhm," Sam says, nodding. Neutral and completely fine. Absolutely not affected by any of this.
"I'm just saying. As context."
"Useful context," Sam says. "Very useful."
Bucky looks between them, and they look back. Sam with a careful, nonchalant stillance. Steve with the barely-contained energy of a man who is sitting, technically, but only just.
"What?" Bucky says.
"Nothing," Steve says immediately.
"Nothing at all," Sam agrees.
A beat.
"I'm going to bed," Bucky announces.
"Good night," Sam says smoothly.
"Night," Steve manages.
Bucky leaves; his footsteps go down the hall, then a door closes.
Steve and Sam look at each other.
"He made a friend," Steve says, at a volume that is too loud for midnight.
"Steve — "
"Sam. He made a friend."
"I know, I was there — "
"They waited for the answer — "
"Steve — "
"They just waited — "
"I will pour this milk directly onto you," Sam says. "Look at me. I mean it."
Steve presses both hands over his face. His shoulders are shaking. It takes Sam a second to clock that it isn't distress — it's laughter, the silent kind. The one that gets away from you when you've been holding something careful for a very long time and something small and good finally tips it over.
Sam looks at the ceiling, picking up his spoon and takes a bite of cereal.
"...they sound good," he says, after a moment. Quietly. "The frequency thing. That they just — let it sit."
"They’re going to be so good for him," Steve says, into his hands.
"We don't know that yet."
"Sam."
Sam takes another bite and looks at the ceiling again. "...yeah," he says. "Probably."
$ tag @twentytomidnight @i-gotta-go-so-much-bigger @froggibus
what about enemies to lovers frank x reader where reader gets overstimulated very easily and is having a bad day?
it's been like a month since i wrote a drabble!!! i missed it :) cw: reader's sad
You were having a bad day, but even that would be an understatement.
This was the worst day and that's why you were on the roof.
You were sitting against the cold brick wall, your shoulder blades pressed flat, your neck craned back, so you could watch the sky. The sky was doing its best to be beautiful, but you barely noticed. It was cold. It seeped through your scrubs, but that didn't seem to interest you much right now. The cold was just another sensation to add to the overwhelming pile of emotions you were feeling.
From somewhere below, you could have sworn you heard Robby's voice. He was probably making his way home, same as you were supposed to be doing, same as you should have done forty five minutes ago.
You were supposed to be following him out, but your feet had carried you up the stairs instead of down, and now here you were.
Today, you had lashed out a bunch of times. The worst had been with Robby. He'd given you a simple instruction and you'd responded like a child. You were still getting shivers just thinking about it. Embarrassing wasn't even the right word, what you'd done had been just simply humiliating. When Dana came to check on you, she'd rested her hand on your lower back and you had flinched.
The entire day had been like this. Repeatedly getting overstimulated by things that never bothered you before. Everything had been too much.
You sighed as you brushed a hand over your face. Maybe you could call in sick tomorrow. You didn't really feel like facing anyone.
It didn't take long before someone opened the door to the roof.
You heard it more than saw it. You were on the other side of it, pressed against the wall to the right of the frame, so whoever it was couldn't see you immediately and you couldn't see them.
When the door closed, you saw Frank standing there, now glancing to his right side and spotting you. He wasn't wearing his scrubs and his face was tired in a way that matched how you felt. He stared down at you. "You should be at home."
You barely blinked at him. Your eyes were dry and gritty from staring at the sky too long and you averted your gaze, letting your chin drop so you were looking at your shoes instead of his face.
"So should you," you mumbled.
You didn't have the energy to banter with him like you usually did. You were tired and sad, very sad.
You saw Frank's shoes enter the side of your vision and then, without a word, a jacket settled over your shoulders.
You glanced up. You didn't get much niceness from Frank. That wasn't how your relationship worked. You had quite the banter relationship, poking fun, rolling eyes, trading insults that never quite landed as insults. Frank was good at that and he was also good at disappearing when things got emotional. He wasn't the let's talk about our feelings type, and neither were you, and that had always worked fine.
So this felt weird, yet you couldn't help but like it.
"It's cold," he said, as if that explained everything.
Then, he sat down next to you. He lowered himself carefully, one hand braced against the wall, his face tightening as he made contact with the ground.
"Thanks," you mumbled. The word felt strange in your mouth, especially directing it at Frank.
But Frank had just given you his jacket and sat down on a painful surface to keep you company, so thanks was the only word you had.
He just nodded, once, and leaned his head back against the wall.
You sat there for ages, while neither of you spoke. Above you, the sun was setting, the sky shifting from purple and orange to deeper blues.
"You don't have to stay," you said after a while.
You turned your head towards him. It took effort, your neck was stiff from staring up for so long, but you did it and his blue eyes met yours.
"I want to watch the sunset," he said, grimacing slightly knowing it sounded like a lie.
You had to suppress a smile at that, because that was such a Frank thing to say. Of course he would't say I want to stay with you. or I'm worried about you. He was just going to act as if he'd come up to the roof for the view and you just happened to be here.
"Yeah, sure," you said, and your voice almost sounded like yourself again.
And maybe at some point you let your head drop to his shoulder. You were just so tired and so sad. And his shoulder was warm under your temple, and the jacket he'd given you smelled like him and he was being oh so kind by being here.
