kingdon soulmate au where you see life in black and white until you touch your soulmate and the world comes into color
There’s no actual algorithm to it, although there’s been many dissertations written (and Mel has read almost all of them), but the general belief is your world comes into color when you first touch your soulmate and then fades back into gray if you don’t stay in contact.
Intensity and duration play some factor. Mel has heard stories of people who briefly met their soulmate - a chance encounter in an airport for a brief second - and the color fades after a week, like a bad flu. Others lose their soulmates, partners they’ve been with a lifetime now, and for years, report no deteriotiation in vision. But there’s hardly an exact science.
Some connections are stronger than others.
source: @kingdonsgifs
Frank Langdon has seen the world in black and white his whole life and he’s just fine with that. Most people don’t often ask strangers if they can see in color, it’s considered rude. “Like asking someone’s age,” his Mom used to tell him as a child. But in most workplaces, especially the ER, it’s standard practice to disclose. Robby, Collins, Donnie, Dana and Abbott (although the fading is giving him insomnia) definitely see in color, but he’s sure there’s others.
Most people are surprised Frank can’t see in color. They see him and Abby — tall, leggy, brown hair and brown eyes (at least that’s what his mom tells him) — and assume they’re soulmates. They’re not. They’ve touched each other enough times and…well then they ended up pregnant with Tanner. They figured why not get married and make it easier? And then somehow Penny came along. The soulmate thing bothers him less than Abby. Abby’s parents are soulmates and conservative — they met each other young and got married like a fairytale. In some ways, he thinks he was Abby’s fuck you in her rebel days. Mad at the universe for not meeting her soulmate yet, mad at her parents for seeing it as her moral failure, and married Frank out of spite.
Ignoring the rough way they fit and papering it over with kids hadn’t helped. Abby and him are at their wits end with each other. He’s been sleeping in the guest bedroom on and off, his latest “gift” (a goldendoodle) literally has him in the doghouse.
Frank has never cared about the soulmate issue between him and Abby. Frank’s parents also were soulmates, but well…it didn’t exactly work out. His dad left his mom when he was a teenager. Watching his mom lose her ability to see in color was painful, even on her best days. He has no interest in color. In some ways, he feels Abby and him already see each other enough. They both have dark features so would color really make a difference?
His mom tells him he’s missing out on his eyes - the most vibrant shade of blue, she says.
Maybe Abby was also his fuck you to the universe a bit.
—
It’s a random day in September when Frank’s world comes crashing down in more ways than one. He meets the Pitt’s newest members - Santos, Whitaker, Javadi, and….Mel. He does do a double take when Dr. Melissa King from the VA introduces herself (“everyone calls me Mel”).
Mel is different. She’s eager and warm. Smart too — thorough and thoughtful in her diagnosis. She respects Frank’s position as an R4 which is more than he can say about some people. She pulls him onto a case for a four year old who won’t wake up. (He hates cases with kids, especially ones that remind him of his kids). When he notices the gummy substance in the young boy’s mouth, and things start to escalate between the parents, he’s quickly passing off the cotton swab to Mel and taking the boy’s father out to the hallway.
He notices Mel is rather touch averse. She jumps back as he makes his way around her. It’s not uncommon. In a world where your soulmate is revealed via touch, some people are all too eager to touch just anyone. Some become more guarded. He figures it’s either a soulmate thing or a Mel thing.
He’s a little curious about her story (he’s just being a good coworker, he’s not that curious) so he asks about her time at the VA. Her response does make him pause, he knows what it’s like to shoulder a lot of responsibility — him and Abby had Tanner his first year of residency (and then a global pandemic happened so that was fun). Mel sounds like she’s taking care of her sister all on her own.
She rambles a bit which he finds endearing. But mostly, he thinks she’s kind. Mel is an open book, more eager and friendly than the average ED resident. But the ED is not exactly the place for uninterrupted conversation so Santos barges in and makes his blood pressure rise and then the medics interrupt that with a trauma.
—
Frank has always loved working the trauma room. The cases are some of the most challenging (and heart breaking too), but he loves the fast pace. He feels the most in control here. Him and Garcia banter easily, lobbying their playful insults back and forth like they always have since med school. When the patients stats drop and they have to preform a crike, Santos jumps at the chance but she’s already on his shit list today so he tells Mel to do it — eager, diligent, R2 Mel.
“Mel, are you ok?” He bends his head a little so he can catch her eye.
“If you’re done fighting.”
Mel is great. She follows instructions well and she’s a little hesitant but precise. Garcia makes a joke about Mel needing help suturing and god, he wishes Garcia could lay off the insults for a second around his (clearly nervous) resident.
When the room clears out, Frank stays. Usually Frank tries to pawn off the babysitting so he can jump into the next thing, but Mel is his resident so he stays. He checks in with Mel again and tells her to take her time. With Mel, he feels like he needs to pause, stay in the moment just a little longer than he normally would.
Suturing is tedious work, but he can tell Mel thrives in it. Falling into the rhythm of it easily, it seems to regulate her. He’s so lost in her finishing up her sutures and their conversation (“Thanks but my frustration manifests itself emotionally and then I can’t cry because you know no one wants to see their doctor cry”) and reassuring her (“You’re doing great, you just did a perfect crike.”) that he doesn’t even realize he lets his fingers brush against hers when she passes the needle and scissors to him.
But then he blinks and the trauma room feels brighter. Like someone came in and turned up the voltage on all the light bulbs which doesn’t make sense. He turns to Mel confused and sees her staring wide eyed at her gloves. What the hell?
When he glances down at his gloves, he feels like someone knocked the wind out of him. There’s small traces of blood on his gloves except instead of the normal gray smudges, he sees something vibrant. Red. He touches the blood on his fingers to make sure he’s not going crazy but it’s definitely real.
In medical school, they teach you all the colors of critical equipment and bodily functions. It’s to help with communication if your patient has the ability to see color and it was so boring to Frank. He knows blood is red, the same way he knows the sky is blue. He has no idea what either color looks like but he knows the fact. What he doesn’t understand is why he can see it? And then his brain catches up and his eyes snap to Mel.
Mel.
Mel who’s looking at the red blood on her gloves weird.
Mel whose hair is escaping some of her braid. Her hair seems lighter now. He sees the same flush of red on the apples of her cheek, on her nose.
Mel who he just absentmindedly touched and now he can see in color.
Mel who’s his fucking resident and he’s supposed to be teaching her and looking after her.
Mel is his soulmate.
“Mel, I—“ God, how does he even start this conversation?
But her eyes are closed, furrowed in pain. He can feel the throbbing headache in the back of his brain. He’s never noticed how bright the trauma room is before. Everything in full saturation feels too overwhelming for his eyes and he kind of wants to lock himself in a dark room.
She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes again. Staring at her gloves in disbelief. Like she can’t believe that she closed her eyes and the world isn’t gray again.
He doesn’t know why but he just desperately needs to look her in the eye like right now. “Mel, can you just look at me?”
And she does.
They lock eyes and if an entire trauma case went on around them, Frank wouldn’t be able to tell you because the overwhelming feeling of looking at the world in full color, quiets — just a little.
Mel is looking at him, even more scared and wide eyed and nervous than when she did the crike. “Mel, are w—“ and then she just bolts.
He’s left staring at the spot she was just standing in disbelief and then he shakes himself out of it and tries to follow her, but she ran into the women’s bathroom. He can’t exactly hang around without someone catching on. Somehow, even though he knows the soulmate connection only impacts vision, everything feels much louder. If someone pulls him into a case, he won’t be able to keep it together so he goes to the bathroom and leans over the sink splashing his face with water.
God, has the light in here always been this bright? Have the tiles in the floor always been so dark and saturated? He feels overwhelmed every time he opens his eyes. Like his brain is working in overtime trying to process all this new information at once. He has the worst headache. He feels like his head is being split open.
He’s suddenly grateful for the back pain, god imagine if he had chronic headaches? This is somehow worse than his back has been all day.
He lets the water from the faucet run over his hands and probably stares at the water for too long. (Maybe if he looks close enough he can see a hint of blue — he sees nothing and it just looks clear to him). He takes a few deep breaths. Inhale. One. Two. Three, Four. and Exhale.
He looks at the mirror and holy shit. His eyes are so blue. So much deeper and striking against his features than he ever imagined. He closes them again so he can process. Inhale. One. Two. Three, Four. and Exhale.
Mel is his soulmate.
Inhale. One. Two. Three, Four. and Exhale.
Mel is his soulmate.
Inhale. One. Two. Three, Four. and Exhale.
Dr. Melissa King, R2 from the VA, is his soulmate.
Inhale. One. Two. Three, Four. and Exhale.
He lets himself just sit with those thoughts for a minute. It’s not ideal. But he can live with this. Mel seems smart. Driven. Kind. Surely, they’ll just have a logical, practical conversation and then they can move on. Maybe they can even be friends?
Before he can talk to anyone though, he needs this headache to subside. He’s given the diagnosis a thousand times as a doctor, “Your headaches are triggered by sensory overstimulation. Exposure to intense or high-contrast colors from your soulmate connection have overstimulated the visual cortex and can cause migraine or tension-type headache symptoms.”
There’s only two long term treatment plans. Increase exposure to your soulmate so your eyesight adjusts to the increased intensity of color. Or. Decrease exposure to your soulmate so your exposure to high contrast and intense colors is reduced. The colors will eventually fade and life goes back to normal.
Surely, Mel — as a doctor too — can come to some agreement on their treatment plan. It’ll be fine.
Inhale. One. Two. Three, Four. and Exhale.
—
He downs another Red Bull and hopes he’s able to keep it together for the rest of his shift. After his bathroom freak out, the headache has at least reduced so it’s a consistent throb and not a piercing pain. He takes some Ibuprofen from the staff lounge and it helps enough. Frank is not a stranger to living with pain.
The intercom goes off and he doesn’t know why the first person he chooses to do a STEMI with is Mel. He might actually be dumb. Logically it makes sense, she’s an R2, but he should have been more considerate of the fact that maybe she doesn’t want to see him so soon.
Mel is…normal though. The same cheerful and enthusiastic resident he met this morning. It throws him off. Was it just him close to a panic attack? God, does she even have a headache?
He hopes she doesn’t notice his hands linger when he passes her gloves (he probably didn’t need to pass her gloves). The soft throb in the back of his head dulls a bit around her (especially when their hands touch — not that he’s noticing). He turns around to explain their door to balloon time and then…just stays looking back at her a little longer than necessary. She looks so vibrant after the extra jolt of color touching her gives him. It’s too easy to dance around the ER with her. Feels fun and thrilling in a way he hasn’t felt in a while.
(Later, he sees her massage the nape of her neck after the STEMI, a small wince and a close of the eyes, when she thinks no one is looking. She must be in some pain from the overstimulation).
—
If you asked Frank why he stood openly staring at Mel when she asked Terrence about his pain, he’ll tell you it’s because he wanted to know why the universe chose her. Frank feels bad about the way he threw in the little remark about his son, the Dr. Google in his life, when she asked about his patient. His wedding band has been on full display all morning (in front of his soulmate’s face) and now he’s quietly telling her “I’m a dad too.” He feels like the worst for not having a proper conversation with her, but how can they when they’re working?
He should go see other patients. He should give Mel her space. They’re in desperate need of beds and Mel can take care of Terrence. It’s simple really.
But he doesn’t.
Instead he steps into Central 9 and props the door open so he can watch Mel explain her diagnosis to Terrence. Watching Mel is surreal. She’s incredible - patient and kind in all the ways he’s never excelled in bedside manner. When they leave Terrence, Frank is still a little in awe when he asks Mel, “How did you get through to him?”
(Frank will spend months, 10 months to be exact, analyzing this day. Combing over every detail in his mind. It somehow takes him a few months to remember that Mel came to him that day about Terrence. She came over to him and asked him about the case.
Maybe Mel was a little curious too why the universe chose him.)
—
Frank finds Mel in the ambulance bay. He only went looking for Mel because Terrence wanted to say thank you and Frank feels like he owes the guy a bit. He briefly thinks about talking to Mel about their situation, but the ambulance bay is a terrible place to talk, especially now with so many EMTs around.
She misses her sister and his heart hurts a bit for her (in a normal, human empathy way). He knows what it’s like to be a caregiver, but he chose this life with Tanner and Penny and he had many years of freedom and fun before he did. Mel loves her sister, but he can’t imagine how much pressure it is for Mel. Some days he feels like the pressure is too much for him and Abby takes on so much of the parenting load.
He tells her Terrence was looking for her. Because he was.
He tells her she’s good at helping people. Because she is.
He tells her she’s even teaching him a few things. Because she is.
He tells her she’s making a great first impression. Because she is.
—
During the STEMI, Frank thought maybe he misremembered Mel’s reaction. Maybe she’s his soulmate and he’s not hers (he’s read stories about a mismatch happening before). Maybe she ran out because of something else? She was so excited and normal with him in the trauma room after (even though that’s the room where they found out they were soulmates).
But he can see Mel unraveling now. The young drowning victim was rough on everyone in the ED and he heard she talked to the little girl who lost her sister. He can’t imagine it didn’t make her think of her own. After they pick up two more patients from the ridiculous fight in the waiting room, he sees her freezing up. Unfocused in a way that seemed so unlike her.
She gives herself away just a little bit, her eyes following the colorful beaded bracelet from Penny on his wrist when he goes to pick up the syringe of saline. He’s been trying to find her eyes with his since they started treating this dumbass (he’s keeping that comment to himself but really? The no mask rhetoric in a hospital?).
He just feels like he needs to know she’s ok. He does eventually catch her eyes (asking her “Are you ok?”) and he swears Mel stopped breathing for a second. When she looks at him with that wide eyed expression, it just makes him want to be softer for her. He sends her away to take a break. She tries to argue with him, but he’s not hearing it. She needs it.
Frank doesn’t have to feel guilty later for seeking Mel out. He lost his cool at Santos — who is not being a team player even if Robby isn’t agreeing with him — and then Robby got annoyed at him and told him to go find Mel. He’s going to ignore the way it feels when Robby implies that Mel is his.
He finds her in the breakroom on the floor, petting Crosby. They’re finally alone after being in crowded rooms all day. He should bring up the practical soulmate conversation he’s been meaning to have with her all day (“Hi. It’s nice to meet you, I’m married and I don’t really believe in the soulmate thing anyways.”).
But. He can’t. Not when Mel is so obviously on the verge of breaking down. Not when she’s already doubting herself. He wants to give her the push she needs, the confidence. He wants to be soft and gentle for her. He wants to be good (at this) for her.
So he tells her he needs her instead.
Her smile makes it feel like the right decision.
—
The day goes to shit. Well the day goes to shit twice for Frank Langdon. The first is when he had to open his locker for Robby with his heart beating a mile a minute. Robby and him get into a loud argument by the lockers and he’s trying to convince Robby that he’s not an addict (because he’s not, he was just weening himself off). Frank decides he hates the ugly green color of Librium. He’s going to see it in his nightmares. But Robby throws him out of the hospital and Frank spends the next hour in his car desperately dialing Robby, the hospital and Dana.
It goes to shit for everyone else when they hear about the Pittfest shooting. He knows it feels crazy, but the only thing he’s ever really known how to do is be a good resident, be a good doctor. He’s never been a great husband, he doesn’t always feel like a good dad, but he knows he’s a good doctor.
He figures he can beg for Robby’s forgiveness with a dozen other things rather than ask permission.
He comes back for his job. He comes back because he wants to help people. He comes back because he wants to help his colleagues get through this shitty day. And well, he doesn’t come back for Mel, but he does try to find her.
He gets pulled into stabilizing a patient before he gets too far though. There’s blood all over his trauma gown already, all over his patients, and seeing so much red is giving him the worst headache. His brain feels muffled in the worst way. Is red really this vibrant? He’s always pictured it grittier…darker maybe? Frank knows how to do this though, it’s like breathing to him—
“You’re here!” Mel. Hearing her voice is like someone pulled him up from underwater.
He makes his way over to her. He just needs to check on her, he swears. If he’s having a massive migraine, he can’t imagine how it is for her. Her and Whitaker are holding their own and he’s proud of her (of them, he thinks). Quick thinking even in a chaotic situation is the makings of a good ER doctor after all.
He finds himself gravitating towards her (it keeps him away from Robby and Santos which is a plus). They have to intubate a woman - Sylvia, Mel said was her name. Mel is quick and confident. She’s flourished in just one day. He can see her wince when she sees how much blood is caked over Sylvia’s chest. He’s seen her wincing ever since he found her earlier, going to rub her forehead and then stopping herself when she realizes how bloody her gloves are.
She has a headache too.
Frank lets his fingers glide over hers, a lot longer and a lot more contact than is strictly necessary when they’re guiding the intubation tube and passing medical equipment back and forth. It works though. Mel lets him catch her eyes and he holds her gaze for a few seconds, raising his eyebrows slightly, silently pleading that she gets what he’s asking “Are you ok Mel?” She gives a small nod and then they get back to work.
After this horrible day winds down, after he tried to comfort Jake (who’s covered in blood himself) and watched his girlfriend die, he swears he meant to find Robby and then find Mel. So they could finally talk. He knows him and Mel need to talk, but he really needs to talk to Robby.
Robby and him end up screaming at each other first.
He does catch a glimpse of Mel before he leaves, somehow running around still helping people even after she worked over 12 hours and has barely eaten. After she gave blood and convinced Robby to start a blood drive that helped save even more lives. How is Melissa King real?
She deserves to not be tied into his bullshit. He doesn’t want whatever misunderstanding is going on between him and Robby to jeopardize how Robby sees her. (There’s a small voice in the back of his head telling him that he doesn’t want her to find out so it will jeopardize how she sees him). Frank has always been right, the soulmate system was shit. She deserves more than him as her soulmate.
He knows he’s still a coward when he goes home without saying goodbye.
—
When Frank gets home, after one of the worst days of his life (and an entire pandemic is vying for that top spot), he’s so tired. He knows he can’t put off the conversation with Abby, but all he wants to do is sleep. But Tanner, the absolute troublemaker that he is, wakes up and comes down the stairs (far past his bedtime) when he hears Frank at the door.
And Frank takes one look at Tanner and starts crying. Because Tanner’s eyes are so blue.
When Tanner was born, Frank cried the first time he held him. Tanner was so perfect and small to him and he couldn’t believe that this human was relying on him from now one. Now when he sees Tanner, he can’t believe that he’s been missing this part of him his whole life. His eye color and how it fits on his son’s face. This little detail that he just couldn’t see this whole time. He lets himself hold Tanner a little too long and sob softly into his hair.
After he’s pulled himself together (to Abby’s bewilderment) and put Tanner to bed, Frank is slouched in the dinning room chair. Abby is sitting in the corner chair next to him. She thinks it’s just the stress from Pittfest but no, it’s so much worse.
Everything comes out like a confession. The backpain he never got over, the pills, the pain that never subsided, and then the pills he took from work for that. Abby to her credit is silent through the whole thing - the confession, the terms of his rehabilitation, how he’s on the edge of losing his ability to be a doctor. There’s screaming after, a lot of harsh words exchanged between the two of them. They know tomorrow, they’ll have to be all business (god Frank has to plan for where he’ll go and how Abby will manage the kids). But tonight, he lets Abby scream at him because he feels like he at least owes her that much.
They’re both even more exhausted when they finish the conversation. Frank should let them retreat to their separate rooms (because he noticed the look Abby gave him and he’s definitely still sleeping in the guest bedroom), but he can’t bring himself to hide this. To keep lying to Abby about yet another thing. So he tells her, “I can see in color now.”
And Abby, honest to god, laughs. “Frank, are you fucking high?” (He hates her a little bit when she’s like this).
And then he tells her. About Dr. Melissa King, the new R2 fresh off a rotation at the VA. About his soulmate. It’s a toss up which conversation is more painful for them both. This one is far quieter in volume. Too quiet. He feels like he can hear himself think (which isn’t typical around Abby). He remembers when he first met Abby, a much more naive version than the one who sits in front of him today. A version who believed in soulmates, who was very disappointed when they weren’t soulmates. He can’t believe he’s having this conversation with her. He always pictured it the other way round.
Abby is quiet, for a very long time, and then asks, “What’s it like? To meet your soulmate? To see in color?”
And Frank - who should really have more of a filter, but is far too tired to even stop and think says, “It’s like…like opening your eyes in a bright room. In a really bright room with every light set to the highest setting. And your head just hurts— like all the time it just fucking hurts. And all you can think about is why it hurts and why everything looks different. And even though it hurts, you just keep being drawn to it—to that person. Like— you kind of want it to hurt more….because everything finally feels so vivid for the first time.”
They go to their separate rooms after that.
It’s 4am and Frank should be sleeping. His life is fucking falling apart. But he can’t sleep. Because he needs to know. What color is Mel’s hair? Her eyes? Her shirt? He’s never had to have words for this before and now he desperately wants them.
He spends far too long Googling and looking at swatches of colors with all sorts of intricate labels and names that he’s never had any use for. There’s so many cheesy “you met your soulmate!” websites showing different hues and shades of colors. His eyes glaze over from how overwhelming it is. But he’s a doctor and he needs a name for his diagnosis or he won’t be able to sleep. He spends a long time scrolling through different yellows and purples and browns. Too light, too dark, too dark, too brown, too light, too light….
He finds it.
Honey blonde hair. A lilac shirt. Her eyes are the hardest. He spends too long scrolling and feels dissatisfied with all the options. Brown doesn’t capture how it changes in different lighting. There’s flecks of green and gray in there. Hazel maybe? Nothing feels enough like Mel to him. Not knowing for sure is going to drive him insane.
—
Mel is a memory he pulls out constantly — her wide eyes when they first touched after the crike, when everything changed, her confusion in getting his Captain Scurvy joke, the way she looked at him in the breakroom and how happy she was to see him during the MCI. He thinks about her more than he should given his circumstances — her hair (honey blonde), the color of her shirt (lilac), and her eyes (why is it so hard for him to put a label on it?).
He thinks about her even when he’s in rehab, at his lowest points when he’s suffering from withdrawal, he thinks about her long after too — when the color starts to fade from his vision.
(Part 1/?)
Author’s Notes Below —
I’ve sat with this idea for a while and I finally felt inspired to flesh out the hcs. It’s my favorite soulmate au trope so felt like time with people asking for more kingdon soulmate aus! This part was a whole lot more angst and Frank focused than I originally intended… it also was meant to be written more bullet point style and then everything got lengthy + with dialogue, it felt better formatted this way. It’s not really meant to be a fic so who knows exactly how the other parts will be formatted.
This piece is inspired by the most amazing giftset below from @kingdonsgifs. The crike scene is included above since it’s pivotal to this fic. The crike scene is slightly altered from canon so their on screen conversation can take place before they touch.
💬 0 🔁 161 ❤️ 577 · Kingdon + evolution of touch
I really debated making the glove hand off before the STEMI scene the soulmate touch. Something about the crike scene felt more intimate to me, but I watched both gifs a dozen times to figure out exactly where they touched. The finger touch in the crike scene does me in for this fic but the glove hand off is such a good scene.
source: @francislangdon
I’m pretty sure I got the order of canon events right but wow I forgot how many cases Mel and Frank did s1. Also I actually don’t know what Taylor Dearden’s eye color is, helppp. I stared at her instagram photos for so long but i’m struggling to decide and so is Frank! Frank’s descriptions suck because I realized there’s no way for this man to use any color to describe anything unless he already knows it as a fact. He can’t really differentiate anything since he has no frame of reference for any colors until he Googles at the end. So that was fun.
