From one of my favorite fic writers. I've been reading their novels for years. Just found their art and had to share it. The last drawing is from one of my favorite scenes in their second novel.
never forget what they (that show, hbo, the usual dumbasses we all know, that lady who was the one in charge of casting, who i can't remember her name right now) took away from us:
gendry actually being a child, first and foremost.
how arya is the social extroverted one and gendry is the asocial introverted one.
gendry canonically being the one with a crush on arya.
gendry's adorable and childish flirtation skills: e.g. "a nice oak tree" and "those soft little things" (when talking about arya's own hands)
gendry canonically being the one that gets irrationally jealous when arya talks with other boys.
gendry canonically being the one that wants to make arya feel jealous.
gendry being awkward and very reserved about sex (because the boy is a virgin, alright)
the fact that arya and her friendship really meant something to book!gendry. (can we even think for a milisecond that probably arya was the first person to actually show gendry that she truthfully cared for him and his well-being?)
how they were and still are separated, but gendry hasn't forgotten about her even for a second. he is still mourning her, because! she! is! important! to! him!
another thing that really hurts me too: how they completely erased the fact that arya and gendry are still in parallel journeys with both being child soldiers that choose/were groomed to join a cult (the bwb later on became a little more cultish with lady stoneheart in charge) and how said cult or cultish organization is obsessed with death. also, can i bring attention to the fact that affc!gendry is fucking dark? there's always people claiming that book!arya has gotten too dark for book!gendry, the same boy (just let me remind people) that is currently an outlaw knight and is part of a group committing war crimes in the riverlands trying to avenge the killing of the stark faction at the red wedding. book!gendry could never be soft boi show!gendry, even if he tried.
and how arya and gendry probably still would understand what the other went through in their time apart better than anyone else.
honestly there's not a "darker arya" without a "darker gendry" to accompany her when they reunite, now that i think about it.
Azune Nayar is not someone who was failed in his youth by the adults around him.
Azune Nayar is someone whose childhood and youth were marked by adults who, faced with bad choices, made the less-worse one because they cared about him.
His parents starved themselves to give him and his sister the chance of being recruited as child soldiers by a mercenary group, because that was the only way to protect him from starvation.
Thjazi Fang saw a child abandoned by the roadside, desperately, determinedly, and implausibly claiming he could fight. Thazi Fang was in the middle of waging a rebellion against the powers of Araman. That rebellion wasn’t the best place for a child of twelve. But it was a better place than abandoned by the roadside or picked up by another mercenary group, and Thjazi cared, so Thjazi took him in and assigned him to noncombat work away from the front lines.
By 15 Azune was fighting on the front lines. (In an earlier war, the same was true of Thazi at that age.)
Thjazi’s rebellion failed. He asked his brother Hal to look out for the teenage Azune. Hal did so, treating Azune as part of his family. Hal did the same for other people who needed it. Being like family wasn’t the same as being Hal’s kid.
The tragedy of Azune isn’t that he was failed or abandoned or uncared for or used. The tragedy of Azune is that the best that people who cared about him could give him still wasn’t the same as what he needed, because being an adult doesn’t make you all-powerful. Azune’s problems weren’t created by those who loved him. They were created by the world he lives in.
Azune lived his adult life for the Torn Banner because it was the life he knew; or out of loyalty; or because they were the ones trying to change that world into something different.
He offers understanding and empathy to enemies (Julien) and strangers (Vaelus). He learned that somewhere.
He will self-immolate for a cause. He likely learned that from his parents, who did it for him, and from Thjazi, who did it for the same cause.
Synopsis: You and Dr Langdon are brilliant together in the ER and completely unbearable everywhere else. When Robby forces you to work as a pair, constant bickering turns into trust, tension, and something neither of you should want. But Langdon is married, quietly falling apart, and lately, when the ER gets chaotic, you’re the first person he looks for.
Tags: SMUT, resident reader, attempt at humour, langdon has adhd, ER romance, forced proximity, rivals to lovers, slow burn, mutual pining, workplace tension, forbidden feelings, angst
The ER had been making that sound all morning. Not one sound, exactly, but a hundred of them layered badly on top of each other. Monitors chiming. Wheels rattling over tile. A toddler crying behind curtain four. Someone coughing like they were trying to turn themselves inside out. A nurse calling for a line kit. Another calling for security. Robby’s voice cutting through the noise every few minutes with the kind of exhausted authority that made everyone move faster without realising they had been told to.
You were at the computer by the nurses’ station, trying to finish a note with one hand while eating a protein bar with the other, when the radio crackled.
“Trauma incoming. Male, mid-thirties. High-speed MVC. Hypotensive in field. GCS thirteen. ETA two minutes.”
The department shifted instantly. That was the thing about the ER. Chaos was constant, but trauma gave it direction.
You abandoned the note. The protein bar went into your scrub pocket, half-eaten and forgotten, as you moved toward trauma bay two. A nurse tossed you a gown before you even asked.
Langdon was already there. Of course he was.
He stood at the head of the bed, pulling gloves on with sharp, efficient movements, his sleeves pushed up to his forearms, his jaw set like the entire room had been waiting for him specifically. He glanced at you as you stepped into the bay.
“No,” he said immediately.
You stopped tying your gown. “Good morning to you too.”
“I’m taking this one.”
“You’re standing in the trauma bay,” you said. “That’s not the same thing.”
His eyes flicked over you, quick and assessing, like he was triaging your usefulness and finding it irritatingly high. “I’ve got this.”
“Congratulations,” you said, snapping your gloves into place. “So do I.”
His mouth tightened. You smiled sweetly.
The doors burst open before he could respond. EMS rolled the patient in fast, their report firing over the noise.
“Thirty-six-year-old male, driver, hit on passenger side at approximately fifty miles an hour. Restrained. Airbags deployed. Brief loss of consciousness at scene. BP eighty-six over fifty in field, heart rate one-thirty. Complaining of chest pain and abdominal pain. Decreased breath sounds on left. Two large-bore IVs established. Gave five hundred fluid en route.”
Langdon moved without hesitation. “On my count. One, two, three.”
The patient transferred onto the bed with a heavy, coordinated lift. He groaned, eyes half-open, blood streaked across his temple and down the side of his face. You took the left side. Langdon took the head.
“Sir, can you tell me your name?” Langdon asked, leaning over him.
“Mark,” the patient rasped.
“Mark, I’m Dr Langdon. You’re in the emergency department. We’re going to take care of you.”
You reached for the shears. “Airway intact. He’s talking.”
“Breathing,” Langdon said. “Oxygen on. Fifteen litres. Get me sats.”
“Already on it,” one of the nurses said.
You cut the shirt open. Purple bruising was already blooming across the patient’s chest where the seatbelt had caught him. His breathing was too fast, shallow. You pressed your stethoscope to his chest.
“Decreased air entry on the left,” you said.
Langdon nodded. “Portable chest. Trauma labs. Type and cross. FAST scan.”
“Pressure’s seventy-eight systolic,” the nurse called.
You looked down at the patient’s abdomen as he flinched under your hands. Firm. Guarding.
“Langdon.”
“I heard it,” he said.
“You heard the pressure. I’m talking about the abdomen.”
“I said FAST scan.”
“You said chest X-ray first.”
“Because he has decreased breath sounds after blunt trauma.”
“And he’s hypotensive with abdominal guarding.”
Langdon’s eyes cut to you. “I’m aware of how blood pressure works.”
“Great. Then you’ll understand why I want blood in the room before radiology gets here.”
His hands stayed steady at the patient’s jaw, but his tone sharpened. “We need to identify the source.”
“We need to stop him crashing before we make him pretty for the CT scanner.”
“I didn’t say CT.”
“You were thinking it loudly.”
A nurse made a noise that was almost a laugh and wisely turned it into a cough.
Langdon ignored her. “Chest first. If he’s got a tension pneumo, we can fix that now.”
“And if he’s bleeding into his abdomen, we can kill him by pretending the chest is the only exciting organ in the room.”
His nostrils flared. “I did not say that.”
“You implied it with your whole personality.”
“Can you two flirt after he has a blood pressure?” Robby said from the doorway.
You and Langdon both turned.
“We’re not flirting,” you said.
“At all,” Langdon added, with more offense than the accusation required.
Robby raised his eyebrows. “Then argue quieter. I need a team, not a podcast.”
The patient groaned again, trying to curl to one side.
You looked back down at him. Focused. “Mark, stay with us. Where does it hurt most?”
“Chest,” he gasped. “And… belly. Left side.”
“Left upper quadrant tenderness,” you said. “Possible splenic injury.”
Langdon’s expression shifted. He had heard you. That was the infuriating thing. He always heard you, even when he was being unbearable about it.
“FAST now,” he said.
You were already reaching for the ultrasound. For half a minute, neither of you argued. The room compressed into motion and information. Probe gel. Monitors. Blood pressure cycling again. The ultrasound screen flickering grey and black beneath your hand. Langdon leaned closer, watching over your shoulder.
“RUQ negative,” you said.
“Pelvis?” he asked.
“Give me two seconds.”
“Your angle’s too steep.”
“My angle is fine.”
“Then why am I looking at bowel gas?”
“Because the patient was inconsiderate enough to have intestines.”
“Move superior.”
“I am moving superior.”
“There,” he said.
“I see it.”
Free fluid.
The room seemed to tighten around the finding.
“Positive FAST,” you said.
Langdon was already turning. “Activate massive transfusion protocol. Surgery now. And get the chest X-ray in here.”
You looked at him. “Now the chest X-ray?”
“Now the chest X-ray,” he said, briskly. “Because unlike some people, I can care about two life-threatening problems at once.”
“Beautiful growth. Really proud of you.”
“Don’t make this emotional.”
The blood arrived. The patient’s pressure dipped again, then steadied under the first unit. Chest X-ray rolled in, the plate slid behind him, everyone moving with that controlled urgency that looked like panic from the outside but felt, from within it, almost elegant. The film came up.
“Left hemothorax,” Langdon said.
You were already moving. “Chest tube tray.”
His gaze snapped to yours. Not surprised. Not approving exactly. But something close.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“You’ll supervise.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”
“You’re a year ahead of me, Langdon, not a prophet.”
“This is not the time for your complex about hierarchy.”
“I don’t have a complex. I have hands.”
“And I have seniority.”
“You have a badge with a slightly older date on it.”
Robby appeared beside you both, expression flat. “She does the tube. You supervise. If either of you says one more word about seniority, I’m intubating myself.”
Langdon’s jaw flexed. You smiled again, quick and victorious, then turned back to the patient. The smile vanished as soon as your scalpel touched skin. After that, there was no room for performance.
You made the incision. Langdon passed the clamp before you asked for it. You spread through muscle. His hand appeared with gauze at exactly the right time. You entered the pleural space, guided the tube in, and dark blood surged into the chamber.
“Good,” Langdon said quietly.
It was so quiet you nearly missed it. Nearly.
You secured the tube while surgery arrived, the patient’s pressure climbing into something less terrifying. His colour improved by degrees. His breathing eased. The room exhaled, not all at once, but person by person.
Surgery took over with the brisk confidence of people who preferred their disasters open and bleeding under bright lights. The patient was transferred out, still critical but alive, moving toward an OR that might actually save him.
For five seconds after the bay emptied, there was silence. Then Langdon said, “You cut me off in there.”
You blinked at him. “That’s what you’re opening with?”
“You did.”
“You were taking too long to get to the correct answer.”
“I was explaining my reasoning.”
“That’s what I said.”
He pulled off his gloves with unnecessary force. “You can’t just steamroll because you think you’re right.”
“You just tried to pull rank over a chest tube.”
“Because I am senior.”
“By one year.”
“One year matters.”
“In medicine, yes. In making you king of trauma bay two, no.”
His eyes narrowed. “You are impossible.”
“And yet the chest tube went beautifully.”
“The chest tube was fine.”
“Fine?” You laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “That was textbook.”
“It was acceptable.”
“You are physically allergic to praise.”
“I praised you.”
“You said ‘good’ like it caused you internal bleeding.”
“It may have.”
You stepped closer before you could stop yourself. “You know what your problem is?”
Langdon stepped closer too, because apparently self-preservation was not one of his clinical strengths. “I’m sure you’re about to misdiagnose it.”
“You think being ahead means being better.”
“No, I think being ahead means having more experience, which is objectively true.”
“And you think experience means no one else in the room can have a good idea.”
“I listened to your idea.”
“After arguing with me for five minutes.”
“Because your delivery is a war crime.”
“Your face is a war crime.”
There was a short, stunned pause. Somewhere behind you, a nurse whispered, “Jesus Christ.” Robby walked between you and Langdon like he was breaking up a bar fight.
“Enough,” he said. “Both of you. You’re giving me a migraine and I work in emergency medicine.”
“He started it,” you said.
“She escalated it,” Langdon said at the exact same time.
Robby looked from one of you to the other. His face changed. It was subtle, but you saw it. The shift from irritation to calculation. That was never good. Robby only looked like that when he was about to make someone’s life educational.
“No,” you said immediately.
Robby pointed at you. “I haven’t said anything.”
“I can feel you about to manage me.”
“Good. Saves time.” He turned to Langdon. “You too.”
Langdon straightened. “I don’t need managing.”
Robby stared at him.
Langdon looked away first.
“You two,” Robby said, “are a nightmare.”
“Thank you,” you said.
“Not a compliment.”
“Still taking it.”
“But,” Robby continued, ignoring you, “you are also annoyingly effective together. Which means I can’t just separate you like misbehaving children, despite the fact that both of you seem committed to the role.”
Langdon’s mouth opened. “Robby-”
“No.”
“I really don’t think-”
“That much is clear.”
You bit the inside of your cheek.
Robby turned back to you. “And you. Stop smiling. You’re not innocent. You argue with him because you like that he can keep up.”
Your smile died. “I do not.”
Langdon looked at you.
You looked at Robby.
Robby looked exhausted by both of you.
“For the next two weeks, when you’re both on shift, you’re paired.”
The room went very still.
“No,” you said.
“Absolutely not,” Langdon said.
Robby nodded. “That’s the spirit. Shared patients. Shared notes. Shared sign-outs. You present together when appropriate, and you figure out how to disagree without turning the department into a debate club with central lines.”
“Robby,” Langdon said, voice tight, “with respect, this is not necessary.”
“With equal respect,” you added, “this may actually worsen patient outcomes by increasing homicide risk.”
“Then don’t kill each other,” Robby said. “Growth opportunity.”
Langdon dragged a hand over his face. “I am a year ahead of her.”
You made a noise. “Oh my God.”
Robby closed his eyes briefly, as if asking a higher power for strength or a transfer. Then he opened them and pointed between you.
“You two are going to learn how to work together without turning every chart note into a courtroom deposition.”
Langdon looked like he had swallowed a scalpel.
You looked like you were considering throwing one.
Robby smiled thinly. “Excellent. Glad we agree.”
“We don’t,” you both said.
“Progress already,” Robby said. “You’re saying things in unison.”
Then he walked away, leaving you and Langdon standing in the wreckage of trauma bay two, surrounded by discarded gloves, blood-specked gauze, and the horrible realisation that your next two weeks had just become significantly more irritating.
Langdon looked at you. You looked at him. His expression was grim. Yours was worse.
Finally, he said, “Try to keep up.”
You gave him your brightest, sharpest smile.
“Try to be worth following."
By the third shared patient of the shift, you had decided Robby was a sadist. A professionally respected one, obviously. A gifted attending. A steady hand in a crisis. A man who had once calmly talked a hypoxic patient through a panic spiral while simultaneously directing a central line placement and telling an intern not to faint into the sterile field.
But a sadist nonetheless. Because there was no other explanation for why you and Langdon were standing side by side at the same computer, reviewing the same chart, after seeing the same patient, for the third time in six hours.
“Scroll up,” Langdon said.
“I am scrolling.”
“You scrolled too far.”
“You have eyes.”
“I have more experience interpreting what my eyes see.”
You stopped scrolling and looked at him. “You are genuinely committed to being unbearable.”
“I prefer consistent.”
“You would.”
He leaned past you without asking, reaching for the mouse.
That was the first problem. Langdon had no concept of appropriate physical distance when he was focused. None. In ordinary conversation, he kept himself neatly arranged behind sarcasm and seniority, all sharp edges and professional posture. But put a chart in front of him, give him abnormal labs and a patient with three vague symptoms, and apparently his entire body forgot other people existed.
His shoulder brushed yours. It was not dramatic. Not even intentional. The contact lasted less than a second, just the dark fabric of his scrub top grazing your sleeve as he angled toward the screen.
Still, your brain noticed. He smelled faintly of hospital soap, coffee, and something clean beneath it, like whatever detergent he used had survived a twelve-hour shift through sheer force of will. His forearm crossed in front of you as he took the mouse, sleeve pushed up, tendon shifting under skin as he clicked into the medication history.
You stared for half a second too long.
Not at the chart.
At his arm.
At the flex of muscle near his wrist. At the faint blue line of a vein. At the tension in his hand where it rested over the mouse.
And then, because your mind apparently wanted to ruin your entire professional life, at his ring.
Plain. Silver. Simple. Caught in the fluorescent light as his fingers moved.
He must have felt you looking, because his hand stilled.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
You dragged your eyes back to the monitor. “With your note? Yes."
You reached across him and stole the mouse back. “Your note says the patient denies chest pain twice.”
“He denied it emphatically.”
“Then write emphatically once. Not twice, like you’re trying to convince the insurance company through repetition.”
“I value clarity.”
“You value hearing yourself document.”
He leaned closer, reading over your shoulder as you edited. Again, his shoulder touched yours. Again, not on purpose. Probably.
“You’re changing my wording,” he said.
“I’m improving your wording.”
“My wording was precise.”
“Your wording was a hostage situation.”
Langdon made a low sound of disapproval, then pointed at the screen. “Don’t delete the family history.”
“I’m not deleting it. I’m moving it.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t belong between the physical exam and your dramatic description of his ankle swelling.”
“It wasn’t dramatic. It was relevant.”
“You wrote ‘markedly pitting’.”
“It was markedly pitting.”
“You enjoyed writing it.”
“I enjoy accuracy.”
“You enjoy adjectives.”
His mouth opened, presumably to argue, but before he could, the charge nurse appeared behind both of you with a chart in hand and an expression of deep amusement.
“Your next shared case,” she said.
You turned. “Already?”
“Robby’s orders.”
Langdon took the chart. “What is it?”
“Fifty-two-year-old female. Dizziness, nausea, some vague chest discomfort, says she feels ‘off.’ Vitals stable. ECG done.”
The moment the clinical details hit, Langdon changed. It was subtle but immediate. The irritation sharpened into focus, the bickering folded away into something more useful. He flipped the chart open, eyes scanning quickly.
“Dizziness and chest discomfort could be posterior circulation, ACS equivalent, electrolyte, vestibular, hypoglycaemia, medication effect, panic, but we don’t call it panic until everything else has earned the right to be excluded.” He started walking before he finished speaking, forcing you to match him. “Any diaphoresis? Radiation? Neuro deficit? Did triage note nystagmus? Of course they didn’t. Why would anyone note the thing that matters?”
“You know,” you said, falling into step beside him, “some people ask questions with the expectation that another person might answer.”
“I was building a framework.”
“You were monologuing.”
“I was thinking aloud.”
“You do that a lot.”
“Because I think a lot.”
“And aloud, apparently.”
He pointed the chart at you without looking. “Mockery is not a diagnostic tool.”
“It is when I’m diagnosing you.”
He glanced over. “And what have I got?”
“Terminal seniority.”
“Tragic. Untreatable.”
“You’d refuse treatment anyway.”
You introduced yourself first. Langdon let you. That surprised you enough that you almost looked at him.
Mrs. Alvarez described the dizziness as a sudden wave that came while she was making tea. No true spinning. Nausea. A pressure in her chest she insisted was “probably indigestion,” which immediately made both you and Langdon exchange a look. Her ECG was not dramatic, but it was not perfectly comforting either. Slight ST depression in the lateral leads. Nothing screaming. Just enough to whisper. Langdon saw it at the same time you did.
“Troponins,” you said.
“Serial ECGs,” he added.
“Full neuro exam.”
“Glucose.”
“Electrolytes.”
“CXR if the chest pressure persists.”
“Orthostatics.”
“Medication review.”
Mrs. Alvarez looked between you. “Do you two rehearse?”
“No,” you said.
“Unfortunately,” Langdon said.
Her mouth twitched. “Could’ve fooled me.”
You did the neuro exam while Langdon took the history, and this was where you discovered something else about him. Langdon was a yapper.
Not in the useless way. Not in the nervous intern way where silence felt like failure and every thought spilled out unfiltered. Langdon’s talking had structure, technically. It just had far too many doors, and he insisted on opening all of them.
One question about recent illness turned into a brief explanation of viral labyrinthitis, which became a tangent about how often dizziness was mislabelled, which became a story about a man he had seen the year before who came in for vertigo and turned out to be anaemic, which then somehow became a complaint about the way people used the word “dizzy” to mean eight different sensations and expected doctors to perform linguistic archaeology under fluorescent lighting.
Mrs. Alvarez seemed entertained. You were fascinated despite yourself.
His mind moved fast. Too fast sometimes. It leapt from symptom to mechanism to anecdote to warning sign and back again. He interrupted himself. Once, he interrupted you, caught your look, and said, “Sorry, continue,” in a tone so reluctant it barely qualified as an apology.
Then, ten minutes later, while you were ordering bloods, he said suddenly, “Family history.”
You looked up. “What?”
“Her father had an MI at fifty-four. She said it when you were checking sensation in her left leg.”
“I heard.”
“I forgot to put it in the note.”
“That must have been very difficult for you to admit.”
“It was. Be respectful.”
He wrote it down, then immediately started tapping his pen against the desk. Fast. Rhythmic. Annoying.
Tap tap tap tap.
You waited.
Tap tap tap tap tap.
“Langdon.”
“What?”
“The pen.”
He looked down like he had never seen his own hand before. The tapping stopped. For six seconds. Then his knee started bouncing. You turned slowly toward him.
He was reading the chart, completely absorbed, one hand at his mouth, the other hovering over the keyboard, knee vibrating beneath the desk like he was personally powering the department. His coffee sat untouched beside the monitor, the lid off, gone cold.
“Do you ever stop moving?” you asked.
“Do you ever stop making observations no one asked for?”
“No.”
“Then we understand each other.”
You should not have laughed.
It slipped out before you could stop it, small and surprised. Langdon looked at you like you had done something unexpected. Not impossible. Just unexpected from you. Then his mouth curved. It was not a smile, not fully. But it softened him by a dangerous margin.
The blood results came back while you were both still at the computer. First troponin mildly elevated. Potassium low. Creatinine slightly up. Enough to complicate things. Enough to make the case interesting.
Langdon leaned in again. You felt him before he touched you. A shift of warmth at your side. The brush of his shoulder against yours. His arm reaching past you, close enough that you could see the faint indentation the ring left at the base of his finger. He clicked through the labs, eyes narrowed.
“She needs admission,” he said.
“Agreed.”
He looked at you quickly.
“What?” you asked.
“You agreed too fast.”
“I can disagree if it would make you feel safer.”
“It would feel more familiar.”
The word sat between you, strangely weighted. Because the worst part was, he was right.
The arguing had already developed a rhythm. You knew when he was about to lecture because his eyebrows lifted half a second before he started. He knew when you were about to challenge him because you inhaled like you were loading a weapon. You passed each other things without looking. You corrected his notes. He caught your missed boxes. You rolled your eyes. He pretended not to enjoy it.
Mrs. Alvarez was handed over to medicine with a neat plan, a cardiology discussion pending, and strict instructions for repeat ECGs. Langdon presented the case to the attending, and to your deep irritation, he did it well. Concise, intelligent, no unnecessary adjectives. He included your neuro findings without claiming them as his own.
When the attending nodded and moved on, you looked at him.
“That was almost humble.”
Langdon slid the chart under his arm. “Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late. I’m documenting growth.”
“I’ll dispute the note.”
“You dispute everything.”
“Only when it’s wrong.”
You walked side by side back toward the nurses’ station. The ER was still loud, still overcrowded, still held together by caffeine, compression socks, and the collective denial of everyone working past hour eight. But something had shifted. Not softened exactly. Nothing about Langdon was soft. But the edges of the day had changed shape.
At the computer, he took the chair before you could.
You stared at him. “That’s my seat.”
“I got here first.”
“You are such a child.”
“I’m senior.”
“Move.”
“No.”
You leaned over him to reach the keyboard, deliberately crowding into his space this time. “Fine. I’ll chart standing.”
He looked up at you, eyes bright with challenge. “That’s terrible ergonomics.”
“Then move.”
“Ask nicely.”
“I would rather develop spinal pathology.”
He laughed under his breath and rolled the chair back half an inch. Not enough to be useful. Just enough to be annoying. You squeezed beside him anyway, shoulder pressing against his. Neither of you moved away. For a few seconds, you both looked at the screen in silence.
Then Langdon said, “You spelled haemorrhage wrong.”
You closed your eyes. “I’m going to sedate you.”
“With what order?”
“With my bare hands.”
“Poor technique.”
“Poor survival instinct.”
And this time, when he smiled, you saw it properly.
By the end of the first week, people had started making comments. Not helpful comments. Not clinical comments. Comments made by nurses who had worked too many consecutive shifts and thrived on emotional blood sport.
“Where’s your other half?” one of them asked as you reached for a new set of gloves.
You froze. “My what?”
She nodded toward the trauma board. “Langdon.”
“He is not my other half.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
You gave her a look. “That is a professionally reportable statement.”
She grinned. “To who? Robby? He started this.”
That was, unfortunately, true. Robby had started it, and now the entire department seemed invested in whether you and Langdon could stand beside each other for more than ten minutes without starting a constitutional crisis. The worst part was that you were improving. Not peacefully. Not gracefully. But improving.
You still argued. Of course you argued. Langdon remained physically incapable of saying a simple thing when a longer, more irritating version existed. You remained incapable of letting him get away with it. But the arguments had become shorter. Sharper. Almost efficient.
Sometimes you caught him changing his mind before you finished making your point. Sometimes he caught you doing the same. Neither of you acknowledged this. Acknowledging it felt dangerous.
You were finishing a discharge summary when triage called over.
“Can I get someone to eyeball bed nine? Twenty-six-year-old female, shortness of breath and chest tightness. Vitals mostly fine. Says she feels like something is wrong. No cardiac history. Looks anxious.”
Langdon, standing beside you with a chart tucked under one arm and a pen between his fingers, sighed.
You looked at him. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to say panic attack.”
“I was about to say that ‘looks anxious’ is rarely a useful diagnostic category.”
That surprised you enough to stop typing. He noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You look like you’ve just discovered I’m not entirely negligent.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
You stood, grabbing your stethoscope. Langdon followed without being asked.
Bed nine held a young woman sitting bolt upright, one hand pressed against the mattress, the other curled tightly against her chest. She was pale beneath the harsh lights, dark hair pulled back messily, lips slightly parted as she tried to slow her breathing.
Her chart said: Maya Ellis. Twenty-six. Shortness of breath. Chest tightness. Anxiety?
You hated the question mark.
“Hi, Maya,” you said, pulling the curtain closed behind you. “I’m one of the doctors. This is Dr Langdon.”
Maya looked between you and him quickly. “Are you two together?”
The question landed with the force of a dropped instrument tray. You blinked. Langdon went completely still beside you.
“No,” you said at the exact same time he said, “Absolutely not.”
Maya’s eyes widened. “Oh. Sorry. You just came in together, and you’re standing like—”
“We work together,” Langdon said, too quickly.
“Against our will,” you added.
Maya stared. You felt heat crawl up your neck. Beside you, Langdon’s ears had gone pink. Actually pink. You had never seen anything so gratifying in your life.
You turned to him slowly. “Are you blushing?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m warm.”
“It’s freezing in here.”
“I have circulation.”
“Apparently too much.”
“Patient,” he said through his teeth.
You turned back to Maya, who looked slightly less frightened now, if only because she had been distracted by whatever that had been.
“Tell me what happened,” you said gently.
Maya swallowed. “I was at work. I got this pain here.” She touched the right side of her chest. “Not really pain, like pressure? Then I couldn’t get a full breath. My hands started tingling. Everyone said I was having a panic attack, but I’ve had panic attacks before. This feels different.”
Langdon’s posture shifted.
You saw it because you were starting to see too much where he was concerned. His focus sharpened. His gaze moved over Maya’s face, her breathing, the way she held herself too carefully.
“When did it start?” he asked.
“Maybe an hour ago.”
“Any recent travel?” you asked.
“No.”
“Birth control?”
She hesitated. “The pill.”
Langdon glanced at you.
You were already looking at him.
“Any leg pain or swelling?” you asked.
“My calf hurt yesterday,” Maya said. “But I thought I’d pulled something at the gym.”
You reached for the pulse oximeter. Her oxygen saturation was technically acceptable, but lower than you wanted for a healthy twenty-six-year-old. Her heart rate flickered between one-oh-eight and one-fifteen. Not dramatic.
You checked her chest. Clear. No wheeze. No crackles. No obvious infection. Her blood pressure was stable, but her skin had that faintly grey look that made your stomach tighten before your brain had finished catching up. Langdon was watching you.
You looked at Maya. “We’re going to run some tests.”
Her face tightened. “So you don’t think it’s just panic?”
“I think panic is a diagnosis we can consider,” you said, “after we’ve ruled out the things that like to disguise themselves as panic.”
A voice came from the other side of the curtain.
“Seriously?”
Dr Patel, one of the other residents, pulled the curtain back slightly, holding Maya’s triage sheet. He was not unkind, exactly, but he had the slightly rushed expression of someone who had already decided the department had bigger problems.
“She’s twenty-six,” Patel said. “Normal ECG. No hypoxia. She’s anxious, hyperventilating, tingling hands. This is classic.”
You felt your spine straighten.
“She’s tachycardic, on the combined pill, pleuritic chest pressure, calf pain yesterday, and says this feels different from previous panic attacks.”
Patel gave you a look. “You want to PE workup every anxious young woman with chest tightness?”
“I want to work up this one.”
“It’s overkill.”
Langdon stepped in before you could answer.
“She’s right,” he said.
You blinked. He did not look at you.
“Don’t look so shocked,” he added. “It’s not cute.”
You immediately stopped blinking and glared instead.
Patel looked between you both. “You’re serious?”
“Yes,” Langdon said. “D-dimer, troponin, VBG, pregnancy test, CXR. If the D-dimer’s positive, CTPA. And repeat the ECG if symptoms change.”
“Radiology will love that.”
“Radiology has survived worse than clinically justified imaging,” Langdon said.
Maya’s eyes moved between you again, something like hope breaking through the panic. “So you believe me?”
You looked at her. “Yes.”
Langdon was quieter when he added, “We do.”
The we should not have hit you. It did anyway. After that, the case moved quickly.
Bloods. Cannula. Chest X-ray. A nurse getting Maya changed into a gown. Langdon arguing with the lab about turnaround time as if personally offended by coagulation delays. You reassessing Maya when her breathing worsened, catching the way she clutched at the side rail and tried not to cry.
Her D-dimer came back high. Very high. Patel, to his credit, swore softly and stopped arguing.
Langdon was already beside you at the computer, shoulder pressing against yours as you both stared at the result. He had moved in close without thinking again, but this time the contact did not feel accidental in the same way. Or maybe you were just becoming too aware of him.
His arm brushed yours as he reached for the mouse. You did not move. Neither did he.
“CTPA,” you said.
“Already requesting it.”
“Pregnancy negative?”
“Just resulted.”
“Renal function?”
“Fine.”
“You checked?”
“I knew you’d ask.”
You looked at him. He kept his eyes on the screen, but his mouth twitched. “Don’t make it sentimental.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were considering it.”
“I was considering whether that counts as teamwork or just fear of my standards.”
“Both can be true.”
The scan happened fast because Langdon made it happen fast. You did not ask what he said to radiology. You suspected it involved an unbearable amount of confidence and at least one phrase like “clinically indefensible delay.”
When the result came through, the department seemed to narrow around the words.
Bilateral pulmonary emboli. Evidence of right heart strain.
For a second, no one spoke. Then you and Langdon moved at once.
“Get Robby,” you said.
“I’ll call ICU,” Langdon replied.
“Anticoagulation?”
“Unless contraindicated. I’ll check with Robby.”
“Echo?”
“Bedside first. Formal after.”
“Maya needs explaining before she hears it from six strangers talking over her.”
“I’ll do ICU. You talk to her.”
There was no argument over who should do what. You went back to Maya while Langdon made the call, his voice low and rapid behind you. Maya looked up as you entered. She knew from your face.
“It wasn’t panic,” she said.
“No,” you said, pulling a stool close. “It wasn’t.”
Her eyes filled. You explained as clearly as you could. Blood clots in the lungs. Serious, but treatable. The team was moving quickly. She had done the right thing by coming in. She had done the right thing by insisting it felt different.
Langdon appeared halfway through, standing at the foot of the bed. He did not interrupt. He did not take over. He listened. When Maya asked if she could die, you paused for half a second. Langdon answered, not over you, but beside you.
“That’s why we’re treating it aggressively,” he said. “You’re in the right place.”
Maya looked between you both again, tears on her cheeks.
“You’re sure you’re not together?” she asked weakly.
The blush hit you so fast you almost hated her. Langdon’s face changed colour too. A faint, unmistakable pink rising under his cheekbones.
“Maya,” he said, with immense dignity, “you have a pulmonary embolism.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But I’m still observant.”
Despite everything, you laughed. Then Robby swept in, and the spell broke.
“Okay,” he said, scanning the chart. “Talk to me.”
You and Langdon presented together.
Not one after the other. Together.
You gave the history. Langdon gave the imaging. You gave the clinical progression. He gave the plan. You caught the missing contraindication question before he asked it. He remembered the calf pain and added it into the handover. Robby listened, eyes moving between you both with increasing interest.
When you finished, he nodded.
“Good. Very good. ICU are aware?”
“On their way,” Langdon said.
“Anticoagulation?”
“Ready once you confirm.”
“I confirm.” Robby looked at you, then at Langdon. “See? That. Do that more.”
You frowned. “What?”
“Whatever that was where neither of you made me want to walk into traffic.”
Langdon looked offended. “We are always professional.”
Robby stared at him.
You stared at him too.
Langdon looked away. “Intermittently.”
Maya stabilized over the next hour.
The anticoagulation was started. ICU came down. Her breathing eased, her colour improved, and she squeezed your hand before they transferred her.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“You caught it,” you said. “We just listened.”
Maya’s eyes flicked to Langdon, then back to you. “He listened because you said it.”
You did not know what to do with that.
Apparently, neither did Langdon. He became intensely interested in adjusting the line that did not need adjusting.
After Maya left, the ER swallowed you both again. There were discharge summaries to finish, a drunk man singing in curtain three, a child with a bead stuck in his nose, and an elderly woman insisting she had not fallen despite arriving with leaves in her hair.
Normal chaos returned.
Except Langdon was quieter.
Not silent. Never silent. Langdon being silent for too long would have caused genuine concern. But quieter. His comments came slower. His sarcasm lost some of its bite. Once, when you corrected his medication reconciliation, he simply said, “You’re right,” and kept typing.
You nearly checked his pupils.
Later, while you were speaking to a nurse near the supply room, you felt it.
The awareness of being looked for.
You turned.
Across the department, through the movement of stretchers and staff and families and monitors, Langdon stood near the central desk. A chart was open in his hands, but he was not reading it.
He was scanning the room.
Searching.
His gaze moved past trauma, past triage, past the medication room.
Then he found you.
For one second, his expression changed.
Not relief exactly.
Recognition.
As if some part of him had been tracking your absence without permission and settled only once you were accounted for.
Your breath caught.
Then he seemed to realise what he was doing.
His attention dropped abruptly to the chart.
Too late.
You had seen.
When you came back to the desk, you said nothing at first. You stood beside him, close enough that your shoulder almost touched his, and reached for the keyboard.
He cleared his throat. “Where were you?”
You kept your eyes on the screen. “Working.”
“I didn’t ask because I cared.”
“Obviously.”
“I needed the chart.”
“The chart was here.”
“Yes. Well.” He tapped his pen once against the counter, then stopped himself. “You weren’t.”
You looked at him then. He looked back. The ER moved around you, loud and fluorescent and alive, but for a moment, the space between you went very still. Langdon’s ring caught the light as his fingers tightened around the chart. Then a nurse called his name from across the department.
“Dr Langdon!”
He blinked first. The moment broke. He stepped back, all at once professional again, but something remained in his face as he turned away. Something unsettled. Almost frightened.
And you understood, with a strange ache of certainty, that whatever was happening to him had very little to do with your face, or your body, or the fact that sometimes you caught him looking too long.
It was not just attraction. It was worse. He trusted you.
He trusted your eyes on a patient. Trusted your instincts. Trusted the way you stood your ground. Trusted you enough to back you publicly before he had time to remember all the reasons he should be careful.
And for a man like Langdon, that seemed to scare him more than wanting ever could.
The ER went quiet at 2:17 in the morning.
Not truly quiet. It never managed that. There was always a monitor complaining somewhere, a printer coughing out labels, the distant squeak of wheels against linoleum. Someone in curtain five was snoring with the violent determination of a man who had denied sleep apnoea for twenty years. A nurse laughed at something near triage, low and tired, and the sound slipped through the department like a match struck in the dark.
But for the first time in hours, no one was actively dying. No one was shouting. No one was bleeding onto your shoes.That counted as peace.
You found refuge in the breakroom beneath the cold buzz of the fluorescent lights, sitting at the small table with your back against the wall and one leg hooked around the chair beside you. The vending machine hummed in the corner with the smug authority of the only thing in the hospital that got regular maintenance. Your coffee was terrible. Your crackers were worse. You ate them anyway.
Half a packet remained in front of you, along with a bruised cereal bar you had no memory of buying and a banana so far past optimism that even the bin seemed reluctant.
You were staring at the wall without seeing it when the door opened. Langdon walked in. Then stopped. He had not known you were there. That was obvious from the brief, unguarded second before he rebuilt himself. He looked wrecked.
Not in any dramatic, tragic way. Not bloodied, not frantic, not visibly broken. Just worn down past the point where sharpness could hide it. His hair was slightly mussed from where he had dragged a hand through it too many times. His scrub top was creased. The sleeves were still shoved to his elbows, but the movement looked less deliberate now and more like he had been too tired to fix them.
He stood in the doorway for half a breath, one hand against the frame. Then he exhaled, rubbed both hands over his face, and muttered something under his breath. You caught only the last word.
“...ridiculous.”
“Me or the hospital?” you asked.
Langdon’s head snapped up. For a second, he looked genuinely startled. Then his face arranged itself into offence. “Do you make a habit of sitting silently in dark corners?”
“The lights are on.”
“They’re hospital lights. They barely count as illumination.”
“Fair.”
He stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind him. The room was small enough that his presence changed its temperature. Or maybe that was just your exhaustion making everything feel too close. He moved to the counter, picked up the coffee pot, looked inside, and grimaced.
“That’s been there since midnight,” you said.
He poured it anyway. You watched him add one sugar, then another, then stir it with a wooden stick so aggressively it sounded personal.
“That coffee owes you money?” you asked.
“This coffee is a crime.”
“And yet you’re drinking it.”
“I’m building a case.”
“Against the coffee?”
“Against whoever allows this hospital to call itself a place of healing while serving liquid despair in a paper cup.”
You pushed the crackers toward the empty chair opposite you. “Eat something before you start litigating beverages.”
He looked at the crackers. Then at you. Then back at the crackers, as if they were beneath him morally.
“No.”
“Fine.”
“I don’t want crackers.”
“Okay.”
“They’re dry.”
“They are crackers.”
“That doesn’t mean they have to be aggressively joyless.”
You broke one in half and held it out. “Langdon.”
He stared at your hand. A long second passed. Then he took it.
He sat down opposite you with the air of a man being forced into an indignity by his own body’s basic requirements. He ate the cracker, frowned, then reached for another. You did not comment. You wanted to. You deserved an award for not commenting.
The two of you sat in a silence that should have been awkward but was, strangely, not. The vending machine hummed. The fluorescent light flickered once overhead. Langdon’s coffee steamed faintly between his hands. He took one sip and made a face like it had betrayed him.
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
“Still building your case?”
“Class action.”
“Against the hospital?”
“Against medicine. Possibly society.”
You smiled into your coffee. He saw. That was the problem now. Langdon saw things. Worse, he was beginning to see you. Not just your mistakes, or your stubbornness, or the exact second you were about to disagree with him. He saw the small things too. The way your mouth twitched when you were trying not to laugh. The way you went quiet after paediatric cases. The way you rubbed at your temple when you were hungry but too busy to admit it.
And you saw him. You saw that his knee had started bouncing beneath the table. Saw that his left hand was around the coffee cup, but his right hand had drifted toward his ring. Saw the thumb brush once over the metal, then stop, then return.
He looked down as if catching himself. Then, perhaps to cover the movement, he started talking.
“I had a patient last year,” he said abruptly, “who came in convinced he had been bitten by a venomous spider. Very insistent. Had pictures on his phone of spiders that were not, in fact, in this country. He’d printed off an article. Highlighted sections. Presented it like a dissertation.”
You leaned back. “Was he bitten?”
“No. He had an infected ingrown hair.”
“Devastating.”
“Deeply. He was furious. He wanted antivenom.”
“For the hair?”
“For the imaginary spider.”
“Naturally.”
“He told me I lacked imagination.”
“You do sometimes.”
Langdon pointed a cracker at you. “I have an excellent imagination. I simply refuse to waste it on medically implausible arachnid conspiracies.”
You laughed, and he kept going.
That was how it happened.
One random story turned into another. The spider patient became a woman who had swallowed a dental crown and demanded a written guarantee it would not “attach to anything important.” That became a short but passionate complaint about patients describing pain numerically but then adding “but I have a high pain tolerance,” which somehow became an explanation of a study he had read about pain reporting, which became an argument with himself about whether the study design was flawed, which became a detour into how much bad research got repeated because the abstract sounded confident.
He talked with his hands. Even exhausted, he could not seem to stop them. They moved around the coffee cup, sliced through the air, tapped the table, reached for a cracker and forgot about it halfway there. His thoughts jumped tracks but never fully derailed. They circled, looped, returned. Ten minutes after mentioning the dental crown, he suddenly said, “Actually, the crown did pass uneventfully,” as if you had been waiting in suspense.
You had been, a little. You let him talk. Not because he needed humoured. Because he was interesting. Annoyingly interesting.
He knew too much and said too much and somehow carried a dozen half-connected thoughts in his head without dropping any of them. He could be arrogant, yes. Insufferable, obviously. But when he forgot to perform seniority at you, when he stopped trying to win, he was something else.
Alive with thought. Messy with it. Almost boyish beneath the exhaustion, though you suspected saying so would get you murdered in a professionally deniable way.
Eventually, his words slowed. Not stopped. Langdon did not stop. But slowed enough that he noticed the silence on your side of the table. He looked at you.
You took another sip of coffee and regretted it. “You know, for someone who acts like he hates talking to me, you talk to me a lot.”
“That’s because you keep being wrong.”
“I haven’t said anything in seven minutes.”
“Exactly. It was unsettling. I had to compensate.”
You laughed again. This time he smiled properly. It was tired. Crooked. Brief. And maybe because it was late, or because the room was small, or because the ER outside had gone soft around the edges, the smile felt more dangerous than all the shoulder brushing in the world.
Then his hand moved again. Thumb to ring. One pass. Another. The smile faded before it fully had time to live. Your eyes followed the movement before you could stop them.
He saw. Of course he saw. This time, his hand did not disappear beneath the table fast enough. His fingers curled over the ring, not hiding it exactly, but protecting it. Or protecting himself from being asked.
The room changed. Not dramatically. The vending machine still hummed. The coffee was still awful. Somewhere outside, someone called for a blanket. But the small pocket of ease between you thinned into something fragile.
Langdon’s jaw tightened. You could almost see him preparing. For the question. For the pity. For the polite, terrible concern people used when they wanted information more than they wanted to help. You looked at his hand. Then back at him.
“I’m not asking,” you said gently.
The words landed harder than you expected. He went very still. Not like before, when you had startled him in this same room and he had hidden the ring beneath the table. This was different. This was not being caught. This was being spared.
His face did not change much, but something behind it did. Some defensive structure he had been holding upright with both hands seemed, for one impossible second, to weaken.
“Good,” he said. His voice was quiet. A pause.
“Because I wouldn’t answer.”
“I know.”
Langdon looked down first. His thumb moved once more across the ring, but slower now. Less like panic. More like acknowledgement.
“I don’t hate talking to you,” he said.
The words were so quiet you almost thought you had imagined them. You held very still. He seemed immediately annoyed with himself.
“I mean,” he added, “you are frequently wrong.”
“There it is.”
“And argumentative.”
“Mm.”
“And you edit my notes without consent.”
“Because they need help.”
“And you have an extremely concerning relationship with being right.”
“You’re describing yourself.”
“I’m describing a pattern.”
“Again. Yourself.”
He breathed out, but it was almost a laugh. Almost. You broke the last cracker in half and slid one piece across the table. He took it without complaint this time.
Outside the breakroom, the ER began to wake again. Footsteps quickened. A monitor alarm rose, cut off, then rose again. Someone knocked once on the door and opened it just far enough to say, “Langdon? Bed twelve’s asking for pain relief.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“Coming.”
The nurse disappeared. Langdon stood, taking the coffee with him despite having insulted it for twenty minutes. At the door, he paused. You expected a joke. A correction. Some little piece of armour placed back over the exposed thing between you.
Instead, he said, “You should eat the cereal bar.”
You looked at the sad, bruised thing on the table. “That an order?”
His mouth curved.
“No,” he said. “Unfortunately, you don’t outrank me.”
“Yet.”
The smile stayed for one more second. Then he left. You sat alone beneath the fluorescent lights, listening to his voice rejoin the chaos outside, low and quick and familiar.
And you knew, with an ache you did not want to name, that something had shifted. Not enough for either of you to speak of it. Enough that silence no longer felt empty when he was in the room.
Time passed strangely in the ER. Hours stretched until they felt like punishment. Days vanished inside the blur of patient names, blood results, chest pain pathways, sepsis protocols, discharge summaries, and cold coffee. You measured time less by clocks and more by what had gone wrong: the night of three overdoses, the morning the CT scanner went down, the shift where paediatrics overflowed and everyone in the department aged five years before lunch.
Somewhere inside all of that, working with Langdon stopped feeling like a sentence. It became a habit. An irritating one. A persistent one. One you would still complain about if asked, loudly and with evidence. But a habit all the same. He brought you coffee one morning and set it beside your keyboard without looking at you.
“What’s this?” you asked.
“Coffee.”
“I know what coffee is.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Why are you giving me coffee?”
He opened a chart. “They made an extra.”
You looked at the cup. It had your usual amount of milk. Your usual one sugar. Your name was not on it, but it might as well have been.
“They made an extra exactly how I take it?”
“Miracles occur in emergency medicine every day.”
“Langdon.”
“Drink it before I regret being generous.”
“You mean before you regret being caught.”
He did not answer, which was answer enough.
Later, you corrected his charting grammar while he stood over your shoulder pretending not to care.
“You cannot describe someone as ‘very febrile,’” you said.
“They were very febrile.”
“They had a high fever.”
“That loses emphasis.”
“It gains dignity.”
He leaned closer to read the screen. He stood beside you by choice now. That was the dangerous part. At first, proximity had been practical, both of you crowded around the same computer because Robby had forced you to share cases and there were never enough workstations. But now Langdon appeared at your side when there were other computers open. He rested one hand on the back of your chair. He leaned in, shoulder brushing yours, as if the space beside you had become his natural place in the department.
The bickering remained, but it changed texture. Less blade, more spark. He still corrected you when he thought you were wrong, but now there was a glint in his eye when he did it. You still challenged him, but sometimes the challenge came with a smile you failed to suppress quickly enough.
The nurses noticed. Of course they noticed. Nurses noticed everything. If you ever committed a crime, you were certain an ER nurse would know before the police and would critique your technique.
“Your shadow is looking for you,” one of them said as you came out of bed four.
You frowned. “My what?”
She nodded across the department. Langdon stood near the central desk with a chart in his hand, scanning the room in that way he had. Not frantic. Never frantic. But intent. His eyes moved over beds, curtains, staff, doorways.
Searching. Then they found you. His expression settled for half a second before he looked back down at the chart.
The nurse beside you made a small humming sound.
“Don’t,” you said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was simply observing a workplace relationship improving.”
“This workplace relationship is none of your business.”
“In this department? Everything is everyone’s business.”
You had no defence against that, so you left.
Langdon was still pretending to read when you reached him.
“Lose something?” you asked.
“No.”
“Looked like you were searching.”
“I was assessing departmental flow.”
“With your eyes?”
“That is traditionally how assessment works.”
“You found me pretty fast.”
His pen tapped once against the chart. Stopped. “You were in my way.”
“I was across the room.”
“Obstructively.”
You smiled before you could help it. He watched you with patients. You caught him doing it during a difficult discharge with an elderly woman who had no one to collect her and kept insisting she did not want to be a bother. You sat beside her for ten minutes you did not have, explaining the plan twice, then a third time when she looked embarrassed for forgetting. You wrote it down in large letters. You found her a sandwich. You got social work involved before anyone could rush her out. When you stepped back out, Langdon was at the counter, looking at you.
The compliment was so direct that you nearly missed a step.
“Patients?”
“No, vending machines. Yes, patients.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Are you ill?”
“I can retract it.”
“No. Too late. I’m keeping it.”
“Use it sparingly.”
“I’m going to document it.”
“I’ll dispute the note.”
You expected him to turn away after that, but he did not. His gaze lingered, not on your face exactly, but on the part of you that had stayed soft despite the shift, despite the noise, despite the endless pressure to become brisk where kindness took too long. You felt seen.
His defensiveness appeared in other ways. When a surgical registrar asked if you were “sure” about an abdominal finding in a tone that implied you might have confused guarding with enthusiasm, Langdon cut in before you could.
“She knows the difference.”
The registrar looked at him. “I wasn’t asking you.”
“No,” Langdon said. “You were patronising her. It’s a subtle distinction, but I’m confident you can learn it.”
You stared at him.
The registrar stared too, for different reasons.
Afterwards, you followed Langdon to the computer. “I had that handled.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you say something?”
“Because he was being an idiot.”
“I can handle idiots.”
“I’ve noticed. You handle me daily.”
He shrugged, but there was colour high on his cheekbones. He did not apologise for defending you. He did not make it into something noble either. He simply stood beside you, close enough for your arms to touch, and let the moment pass into charting.
Then there was the procedure. A straightforward abscess drainage, nothing dramatic, nothing you had not done before. Langdon was supervising because technically he had seen more of them, a fact he had only mentioned twice, which for him was basically restraint.
He stood across from you, sleeves rolled up, gloves on, forearms tense as he adjusted the tray.
You looked. You meant only to glance. Unfortunately, Langdon had very nice arms.
This was not clinically relevant. This was not professionally useful. This was not information you had asked your brain to collect. And yet there it was, filed somewhere between “patient needs follow-up antibiotics” and “Langdon’s veins are a public safety issue.”
He was explaining something about incision placement. You heard none of it. He stopped. You looked up. His eyes were bright with terrible understanding.
“Were you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Then what did I say?”
“Something about antibiotics.”
“Devastatingly specific.”
You pressed your lips together.
He leaned in slightly, voice dropping just enough that only you could hear. “Were you distracted?”
“No.”
“By the sterile field?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. Because the sterile field is lower.”
“Langdon.”
“Were you staring at my arms?”
You wanted the floor to open.
For one second, his face went blank. Then pink. Then unbearably smug.
“I see.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I think I do.”
“You think a lot of things. Many are wrong.”
“Not this.”
“You are enjoying this far too much.”
“I intend to enjoy it for years.”
“Touching confidence in your life expectancy.”
He smiled through the rest of the procedure. You considered sedating him. But beneath the humour, beneath the coffee and the charts and the almost-smiles, something darker was moving.
His marriage was getting worse. You did not know details. Langdon gave no details. He guarded them with the same stubborn competence he brought to trauma bays and difficult airways. But the shape of the pain became harder to miss. He took phone calls outside now. Not many. Just enough.
His phone would light up. He would look at the screen and something would close in his face. Then he would step into the hall near radiology, voice low, back turned. Once, you saw him through the narrow window in the door, one hand braced against the wall, head bowed as he listened to someone on the other end.
When he came back, he was pale. Not sick-pale. Worse. Angry-pale. Hurt-pale. The colour of someone holding himself together through muscle memory alone.
“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.
He did not look at you. “Fine.”
You hated that word from patients. You hated it more from him.
Another night, after a messy resus, you both stood at the sink scrubbing blood from your hands. Langdon pulled his ring off to wash beneath it. That was normal. Practical. Sensible.
But then he stopped. Water ran over his wrist while he stared down at the band resting in his palm. The moment stretched too long. You looked away first, giving him the privacy of pretending you had not seen. When he put it back on, his hand shook once. Just once.
He slept in the on-call room more often too. You knew because you found him there one morning, still in yesterday’s scrubs, hair wrecked, one arm thrown over his eyes like he was trying to block out the entire world. He woke when the door creaked and sat up too quickly.
“I was reviewing notes,” he said.
“In the dark? Horizontally?”
“Advanced method.”
One night, close to the end of another impossible shift, when the ER had settled into a thin, watchful lull and the two of you ended up outside by the ambulance bay doors, stealing five minutes of air that smelled faintly of rain and petrol.
Langdon stood beside you, shoulder nearly touching yours, coffee cooling untouched in his hand. For once, he was not talking.
“You’re quiet,” you said.
“I’m capable of quiet.”
“Medically unproven.”
He huffed, but it was not quite a laugh. The automatic doors opened behind you, then closed again. Somewhere in the distance, a siren rose and faded. Langdon looked out across the wet pavement.
“Things at home are…”
He stopped. His hand closed around the coffee cup, then shifted. His thumb found the ring. Pressed hard. Once. Twice. His jaw worked.
“Never mind.”
You could have let him have it. Maybe you should have. Maybe the kinder thing would have been to pretend he had not started to open a door and then lost the courage to stand in it.
But you were tired too. Tired of fine. Tired of never mind. Tired of watching him bleed invisibly and then turn sharp because sharp was safer than wounded.
“Okay,” you said.
He looked at you, wary. “Okay?”
“You don’t have to tell me. But don’t pretend you’re fine and then bite my head off because I’m the nearest available target.”
The words hung between you. For a second, you thought you had gone too far. Langdon stared at you. Not angry. Not exactly. Exposed. The kind of exposed that made anger tempting.
You waited for it. The snap. The correction. The reminder that he was senior, that you were overstepping, that whatever was happening behind the closed door of his marriage was not yours to observe.
It did not come. Instead, he looked at you for a long time. Long enough that you became aware of the small distance between your shoulders. Of the coffee cooling in his hand. Of the ring beneath his thumb. Of his mouth, pressed into a line to keep back words that had nowhere safe to go.
He wanted to say something. You could see that. Maybe not the whole truth. Maybe not even a useful part of it. But something. Something more honest than sarcasm. Something more dangerous than fine.
He could not. Because he was still married. Because you worked together. Because he was technically your senior by one year, a ridiculous fact he had turned into armour and identity and distance. Because whatever this was, it had grown in the wrong season. So he chose something safer.
“You’re very annoying,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
His eyes stayed on yours.
“It’s becoming a problem.”
“For you?”
His thumb stilled against the ring.
“Mostly.”
The next shift was brutal in a way that made time feel physical. It pressed into your shoulders. Settled behind your eyes. Lived in your hands even after you washed them three times.
There had been a pile-up on the motorway just after seven. Three ambulances at once, then a fourth twenty minutes later. Trauma bays full. Corridors narrowed by stretchers. Blood on the floor that someone cleaned and then someone else bled over again. A child crying for a father who was still in imaging. A woman asking the same question every five minutes because shock had turned her memory into water.
You and Langdon had worked together without thinking. No bickering. No sharp comments. No seniority. No courtroom deposition.
He called for suction before you asked. You handed him gauze before he reached. He caught your eye over a patient’s chest and you knew, instantly, what he needed. You moved like the same thought split between two bodies.
It should have felt satisfying. Instead, it felt terrifying. Because the better you worked together, the harder it became to pretend it was only work.
By the time the department settled into its ruined version of calm, your scrubs felt too tight and your skin felt too aware of everything it touched. The last trauma had gone upstairs. The family had been updated. Robby had disappeared to make three phone calls you were glad you did not have to hear. The nurses moved with the blank efficiency of people who would feel all of it later, somewhere private, if they were lucky.
Langdon vanished after the final handover. You noticed because you always noticed now. You hated that about yourself. You told yourself not to look for him. You had charts to finish. Patients to reassess. A bladder scan that had been requested an hour ago and a discharge summary that might have been written in ancient code for all the sense it made to you.
You lasted six minutes. Then you found yourself walking. Not toward the breakroom first. That would have been too obvious. Not toward radiology. Not the ambulance bay. You checked the medication room. Empty. The on-call room. Empty. The small alcove by the staff lockers. Empty.
Finally, you reached the storage room at the far end of the department, the one no one used unless they needed extra blankets, spare tubing, or somewhere to fall apart for forty-five seconds between catastrophes.
The door was half open. Inside, the light was off except for the weak strip spilling in from the corridor. Langdon stood between a stack of folded sheets and a metal shelving unit lined with IV fluids. His back was to you. His head was bowed. One hand braced against the shelf. The other held his ring.
You stopped in the doorway. The air seemed to leave the room. The silver band rested in his palm, small and bright and devastatingly quiet. He must have heard you, because his shoulders tensed.
For once, he did not turn around immediately. Did not snap. Did not cover. Did not construct himself into something sharp enough to keep you back.
He only said, “I thought I locked the door.”
“You didn’t.”
“Obviously.”
His voice was flat. Worn thin.
You should have left. Everything in you knew that. You should have given him privacy. You should have turned around, walked back to the nurses’ station, and written your notes like a sensible person with appropriate boundaries and no instinct for emotional self-destruction. Instead, you stepped inside and let the door fall halfway shut behind you.
“Langdon.”
He closed his hand around the ring.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I know. You’re worse when you don’t.”
He turned then. You had seen Langdon tired before. Irritated. Wired. Brilliant. Unbearable. Pale after phone calls. Quiet in the ambulance bay. Almost gentle with patients who would never know what it cost him to be that careful.
You had not seen him like this. He looked stripped down to the bone.
His left hand was bare. The absence of the ring was louder than the ring had ever been. Your eyes dropped to it before you could stop yourself. His hand flexed once, as if he felt the nakedness there too. Langdon looked down at the ring in his hand.
“We’ve been over for a long time.”
The sentence was quiet. Direct. Terrible.
You swallowed. “Langdon…”
“I know.” His head lifted quickly. “I know what it sounds like. I know what people say. I know every version of this story makes someone look selfish or weak or cruel, and maybe I am. Maybe that’s the point. But I need you to understand that I’m not saying it because I expect anything from you.”
Your heart was beating too hard. He kept going, words gathering speed now, not quite his usual yapping, not a tangent, not a lecture. More like he had been holding them in for so long that once one escaped, the rest tore after it.
“I’m not saying it so you’ll pity me. I’m not saying it so you’ll forgive me for being difficult. I’m not saying it because I think my marriage ending is some romantic inconvenience that clears the way for—” He stopped, jaw tight, eyes shutting briefly. “God. I don’t even know what I’m saying.”
“You’re saying enough.”
His eyes opened. That hit him. You saw it hit him. He looked at you like he had expected judgement, or interruption, or the clean, clinical slicing of your intelligence through whatever mess he had dragged into the room.
His voice lowered. “We’re separating.”
“It’s been coming for months,” he said. “Longer, probably. We just got very good at living around the truth. Different rooms. Different schedules. Conversations that sounded like logistics because anything else would have been war.” He looked down at his bare hand. “I kept wearing it because taking it off felt like admitting failure. Then keeping it on started feeling like lying.”
You did not know what to say. There were a dozen things you could have said. I’m sorry. That must be hard. Are you okay? What happened? How long? Why didn’t you tell anyone?
“I won’t be the reason.”
His eyes lifted to yours immediately.
“You’re not,” he said.
“Langdon-”
“You’re not.” He stepped closer, then stopped himself, like the movement had escaped before he could decide whether he was allowed to want it. “I need you to know that. Whatever this is, whatever I’ve been-” He broke off, breath unsteady. “You are not the reason.”
You believed him because you had seen the shape of the pain before you ever became part of it. You had seen the calls, the silence, the way home pulled colour out of him. You had seen him twist that ring like a man trying to keep a door shut with his bare hands.
“Then why are you telling me?” you asked.
He looked at you for a long moment. The storage room felt too small. Too warm. Too crowded with things neither of you had said. His hand closed tighter around the ring.
“Because lately,” he said, “when something happens, you’re the first person I look for.”
He laughed softly, almost in disbelief at himself. “I don’t know when it started. Maybe when you argued with me in trauma two and somehow made the correct call while insulting my entire personality. Maybe when you noticed the ring and didn’t ask. Maybe when I realised the ER could be on fire and I’d still know exactly where you were standing.”
You could not look away from him. He looked ruined by his own honesty.
“I know where you stand,” he said. “That’s the problem. I know which computer you go to when you’re annoyed. I know you forget to eat when paeds is bad. I know you pretend not to care when someone underestimates you, but you do. I know you take one sugar and then act like it’s a moral failing when I remember.” His mouth twitched, pained. “I know when you’re about to argue because you breathe in like you’re loading a weapon.”
Despite everything, your eyes stung. “Langdon.”
“I know your hands are steady when mine want to be. I know you’re kind when you’re exhausted, which is infuriating because I can barely manage civil. I know I trust you before I have time to decide whether I should.”
He stopped. The silence after was immense. You stared at him, at the bare hand, at the ring trapped in his fist, at the man who had spent weeks making seniority into a wall only to stand in front of you now with nothing left to hide behind.
“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” you whispered.
“I know.”
“You’re still—”
“I know.”
“We work together.”
“I know.”
“You’re my senior.”
That made him let out one broken, breathless laugh.
“By one miserable year.”
The laugh almost undid you. Almost. You crossed your arms tightly, not because you were angry, but because you did not trust your hands. “I can’t be where you run because your life is falling apart.”
“You’re not.”
“I won’t be your escape.”
“You aren’t.” His voice roughened. “You’re the first thing that’s made me want to stop escaping.”
The words hit so hard that for a second you forgot how to breathe. Langdon looked like he regretted them instantly. Not because they were untrue. Because they were too true. He turned away, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow. The ring glinted between his fingers.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No,” you said.
He froze. You stepped closer. Not all the way. Just enough that the air between you changed.
“No,” you repeated, quieter. “You probably shouldn’t have.”
He turned back slowly.His eyes found yours. That was when the room became impossible. You had stood close before. Shoulder to shoulder at computers. Hip to hip beside bedsides. Elbows touching over notes. His hand reaching past yours for the mouse. Yours brushing his when you passed him a pen.
All of that had been deniable. This was not. The distance between you was a decision now. Langdon’s gaze dropped to your mouth. Only for a second. Long enough to set your whole body alight. Then he looked back at your eyes, and the restraint there was almost worse than wanting. He was waiting. Not taking. Not assuming. Holding himself so still it looked painful.
“Tell me to leave,” he said.
Your voice barely worked. “This is a storage room.”
“Then tell me to stop looking at you like this.”
Langdon crossed the distance between you and then stopped with barely an inch left, close enough that you could feel the heat of him, close enough that his breath stirred against your cheek.
He did not touch you yet. That restraint was the final undoing. You reached for him first. Your fingers caught the front of his scrub top, and he inhaled sharply, eyes closing for half a second as if the contact hurt. Then his mouth was on yours.
The kiss was not gentle. It tried to be. For one brief, trembling second, it was careful, uncertain, a question asked against your lips. Then you answered. And it caught fire.
Langdon made a sound low in his throat, one hand coming to your waist, the other still closed around the ring like he did not know how to let go of anything. He backed you against the shelving unit with enough care not to hurt you and enough urgency to make your head spin. Your hands slid up to his shoulders, then into his hair, and he kissed you harder, like restraint had been a language he was fluent in until you touched him.
He tasted like bad coffee and exhaustion. He kissed like a man who had spent weeks arguing because wanting you quietly had become impossible. You pulled back for air and he followed, mouth finding the corner of yours, your cheek, the line of your jaw, stopping himself there with a sharp breath.
“Tell me this is a bad idea,” he said against your skin.
“It’s a terrible idea.”
He kissed you again. You let him. For a moment, there was no ER. No ring. No one-year seniority. No Robby. No charts. No impossible circumstances waiting outside the door.
There was only Langdon’s hand at your waist, his body warm against yours, the hitch in his breath when you tugged lightly at his hair. Your fingers slid down his arm, and yes, even now, some absurd part of you noticed the muscle beneath your palm. He noticed you noticing. Even like this, even breathless, ruined, mouth swollen from yours, he found the energy to be unbearable.
“Are you still clinically observing my arms?”
You laughed against his mouth. “Shut up.”
His forehead dropped against yours. For a few seconds, you both stood there breathing the same air, half-laughing, half-shaken, holding on to each other like the floor had tilted beneath you.
Then the world returned. A cart rattled past outside. Someone called for extra blankets. The department beyond the door kept living, kept needing, kept demanding.
He looked at you then, and the kiss had not solved anything. That was the terrible, honest thing. It had not made the circumstances simple. It had not erased the hurt or the timing or the consequences. If anything, it had made everything sharper. But it had also made lying impossible. Langdon opened his hand. The ring sat in his palm.
“I’m going to do this properly,” he said. “Not because of you. Not for you. For me. Because it should have been done before I ever looked at you like this.”
Your chest ached. “And until then?” you asked.
His jaw tightened. “Until then, I behave.”
You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “You?”
“I said behave. Not become likeable.”
That almost made you smile. He stepped closer again, but this time he did not touch you. The space between you was deliberate. Painful. Necessary.
“I meant what I said,” he told you. “You’re the first person I look for.”
You looked at him for a long moment.
Then you reached out and touched his bare left hand, just once, your fingers brushing the place where the ring had been.
“I know.”
For a second, neither of you moved.
Your fingers were still against his hand, resting over the pale strip of skin where the ring had been. It was such a small place to touch him. Barely anything. Barely pressure. And yet Langdon looked at you like you had put your hand around his throat.
His breath changed first. A quiet inhale. Unsteady. Controlled only because he was forcing it to be. Then his eyes dropped to your mouth. His eyes came back to yours, darker now, the last of his restraint trembling visibly at the edges. For one breath, he just stared at you. Then something in him snapped.
Langdon crossed the space between you in one hard step, his hand catching your waist as his mouth found yours again. The kiss was rougher this time, less question than surrender, and the force of it drove you back until your shoulders met the storage room wall.
The impact was soft, cushioned by his hand sliding behind you just in time. You made a sound against his mouth, half surprise, half relief, and his grip tightened like it had undone him. His body pressed close, heat and tension and the sharp, clean scent of hospital soap beneath exhaustion. One hand stayed at your waist.
You felt the thought pass through him too. For one second, his mouth slowed. You caught his lower lip between yours before he could retreat. Langdon groaned. It was low, helpless, and completely unlike any sound you had ever heard from him. It went straight through you. His forehead tipped against yours, breath uneven.
“You’re going to ruin me,” he said.
“You’re very dramatic.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Then he kissed you again. This one was slower, somehow worse. His mouth moved over yours like he was trying to learn you and forget you at the same time, like every second of contact was both a mistake and the only honest thing left in the room. Your hands slid up his chest, over the tense line of his shoulders, into his hair. He shuddered when your fingers curled there.
“Careful,” he murmured against your mouth.
“Why?”
“Because if you keep doing that, I’m going to stop pretending I have any self-control.”
You tugged lightly. His answer was immediate. His hand dropped from the wall to your hip, pulling you more firmly against him, and the kiss turned hungry. You could feel the hard line of his body against yours, the restless energy he carried everywhere finally given somewhere to go. His mouth left yours, dragging along your cheek, your jaw, stopping at the side of your neck with another sharp breath.
He did not kiss you there at first. He hovered. Waiting. Asking without words. You tilted your head. That was all the permission he needed.
His mouth pressed to your neck, hot and deliberate, and your fingers tightened in his hair before you could stop them. He kissed you there once, twice, then lingered like he was trying to brand the moment into memory. His hand at your waist flexed.
“Langdon,” you breathed.
He pulled back just enough to look at you.
The sight of him nearly finished you.
His hair was disordered from your hands. His mouth was swollen. His eyes were bright and wrecked and fixed on you like the entire ER could collapse outside the door and he would still need one more second. Instead, you kissed him.
He answered like he had been waiting his whole life to be interrupted. The shelf beside you rattled as he pressed you harder into the wall, his hand sliding from your waist to your back, holding you there, close enough that you could feel every uneven breath he took. You arched into him without meaning to, and his control slipped visibly.
His hand moved to your face then, thumb brushing your cheek with a tenderness so sudden it made the heat in your chest turn painful. The contrast was unbearable: the press of him against you, the urgency of his mouth, and then that careful touch, like even now he was afraid of taking more than you wanted to give.
You covered his hand with yours. For a moment, the kiss softened. Not cooled. But deepened into something more dangerous than want. Something that knew names. Habits. Coffee orders. The exact place the other person stood in a crowded room.
Langdon pulled away first, but only barely. His mouth hovered over yours. His eyes shut for half a second, tortured.
Then he laughed under his breath, low and disbelieving. “I’m behaving terribly.”
“You warned me you wouldn’t become likeable.”
“That was different.”
“You’re still not likeable.”
His eyes opened. There he was again beneath all of it. Infuriating. Brilliant. Yours to argue with, though not yours to keep. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The uncertainty made the moment sharper. But his smile, small and breathless, was real.
“You say that,” he murmured, “but your hands are still in my hair.”
You immediately started to pull them away. He caught your wrist.
“Don’t.”
For one more impossible moment, you stayed pinned between Langdon and the wall, your hand in his hair, his mouth close enough to yours that every breath felt stolen. Then voices passed outside the storage room.
The hospital. The shift. The ring still in his hand. The fact that his left hand was bare because he had chosen honesty too late and too close to you.
Langdon stepped back slowly, like it cost him. The air rushed cold between you. But his eyes dropped to your mouth again, and you hated him a little for how badly you wanted him to ignore his own promise.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to make me forget every decent thought I’ve ever had.”
You gave a shaky laugh. “That many?”
“Three. Maybe four.”
“Impressive for you.”
His smile faded into something softer. Then, carefully, deliberately, he reached up and smoothed his thumb over your lower lip, as if erasing the evidence of himself and failing completely.
The voices outside faded completely, but the tension in the small storage room only thickened, charged and electric. Langdon’s thumb lingered on your lower lip a second longer, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide with want. The ring was still clutched in his other hand like a talisman he refused to let go of, but the way he was looking at you said the “properly” he’d promised was about to be tested to its breaking point.
His smile faded into something softer. Then, carefully, deliberately, he reached up and smoothed his thumb over your lower lip, as if trying to erase the evidence of himself and failing completely. The pad of his thumb lingered, tracing the curve of your mouth like he was memorizing it. Like he was already mourning the loss of this moment before it had even ended.
You watched his eyes darken. Watched something shift behind them, the last thread of restraint finally snapping.
Then his hands were on you again, sliding under your scrub top, palms flat against your ribs, possessive and sure. His fingers splayed wide, spanning the curve of your waist like he was claiming territory. His thumbs pressed into the soft skin just below your breasts, and you gasped at the contact, at the heat of his hands against your flushed skin.
"One minute," he muttered, voice gravel-rough, his mouth already dropping to your throat. "I just need one goddamn minute of you."
His teeth grazed your pulse point, and your head fell back against the wall with a dull thud. His mouth was everywhere, hot, insistent, trailing fire down the column of your neck. His fingers found the hem of your scrub top and pushed it higher, exposing your stomach to the cool air of the storage room.
"Langdon-"
"Don't." His voice was muffled against your collarbone. "Don't say my name like you're about to talk sense into me. Not now."
He dropped to his knees. The sight of him there, brilliant, infuriating Langdon, on his knees in a hospital storage room, looking up at you with hunger and devotion tangled together in his dark eyes, nearly undid you completely.
"You have no idea," he murmured, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to your hipbone, "how much I've thought of this." His fingers hooked into the waistband of your scrub pants, tugging them down with agonizing slowness. "Of you."
He kissed lower, his lips tracing a path along your stomach, your hips, the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. His breath was hot against you, and you could feel the tremor in his hands as they gripped your thighs, spreading you open for him.
"So pretty," he breathed against your skin. His tongue traced a slow, deliberate line along your inner thigh, and your knees nearly buckled. "So fucking smart. Do you know what you do to me? The way you argue with me in front of the whole department, like you're not the only thing I can see?"
You opened your mouth to respond, but whatever you might have said dissolved into a sharp cry as his mouth found you. He was thorough. Unhurried despite the urgency that had driven him to his knees. He took his time, learning you with his tongue, his fingers, the occasional scrape of his teeth that made you gasp and grip his hair. Your fingers tangled in the dark strands, tugging, and he groaned against you, a low, desperate sound that vibrated through your entire body.
"Langdon-" His name was a broken plea on your lips.
He pulled back just enough to look up at you. His mouth was slick, his eyes dark and hungry. "Tell me what you need."
"You. Just please-"
He rose then, fluid and commanding, guiding you backward until your knees hit the narrow exam table. He lifted you onto it, the paper crinkling beneath you, and positioned himself between your thighs in a single, decisive movement.
His hands found your hips, pulling you to the edge of the table. He kicked his own pants down just enough, and then he was there, pressing against you, the heat of him making you ache.
"Look at me," he ordered, his voice low and dominant. One hand pinned your wrist above your head, fingers lacing with yours. His other hand gripped your hip, steadying you. "I want to watch every second I'm finally inside you."
He pushed in slowly. Deliberately. Inch by agonizing inch, giving you time to feel every stretch, every pulse of heat. Your back arched off the table as he filled you completely, and he groaned, a raw, guttural sound that seemed torn from somewhere deep in his chest.
"Jesus," he breathed, pressing his forehead to yours. "You feel, God, you feel like you were made for this."
Then he moved. Deep. Rough. Commanding. Each stroke drove you higher, the table creaking beneath you as he set a relentless rhythm. His hand released your hip to find your breast, thumb circling your nipple through the thin fabric of your scrub top. His mouth found your throat, your jaw, the corner of your mouth.
"Eyes on me," he reminded you, voice strained. "I want to see you. All of you."
You obeyed, meeting his gaze as he drove into you again and again. His expression was wrecked. All pretence gone, every carefully constructed wall reduced to rubble. The composed, infuriating man who could diagnose a cardiac arrest with clinical detachment was nowhere to be found. In his place was someone raw, undone, completely at your mercy despite being the one driving into you with commanding precision.
His hips snapped against yours, each thrust deep and deliberate, angling to hit that perfect spot inside you that made stars burst behind your eyes. The narrow exam table creaked beneath you, its thin paper crinkling with every movement. One of his hands remained wrapped around your wrist, pinning it above your head against the thin mattress. The other gripped your hip hard enough to leave bruises, and you wanted them. You wanted every mark he would leave on you.
"Look at me," he ordered again, his voice strained and wrecked. "Don't look away. Not now."
His pace quickened, growing more urgent. The sound of skin meeting skin filled the small room, obscene and perfect. His jaw was tight, a muscle jumping in his cheek as he fought for control and lost, over and over. Sweat beaded at his temples, and a lock of dark hair had fallen across his forehead, making him look younger.
"I thought about this every night," he confessed, his voice breaking as he thrust deep, holding there for a moment before pulling back and driving into you again. "When I was with her." The word came out bitter, almost angry. "It was always you.”
His mouth found yours, bruising, desperate, consuming. He kissed you like he was drowning and you were air. His tongue swept into your mouth, and you tasted yourself on him, tasted the salt of his sweat, tasted the raw honesty he'd never given anyone else.
"I imagined you," he continued against your lips, each word punctuated by another thrust. "All the time. Every time I closed my eyes, it was you." His hand slid from your hip up your side, pushing your scrub top higher until your breasts were exposed. His thumb found your nipple, circling it with devastating precision. "The way you argue with me. The way you challenge me. The way you look at me like I'm not just some broken asshole."
His pace grew punishing. Relentless. Each stroke drove you higher, your body clenching around him, drawing desperate groans from his throat.
"I'd be inside her," he said, voice dropping to a ragged whisper, "and I'd close my eyes, and I'd see you. Feel you. Imagine it was your legs wrapped around me, your mouth on mine, your voice telling me to go harder, faster, more."
His rhythm faltered slightly, the only crack in his commanding facade. His forehead dropped to yours, eyes screwed shut, breath coming in harsh pants against your lips.
"And when I finished," he breathed, "I'd say your name. Every fucking time. I'd whisper it into her hair and pretend I hadn't. Pretend it didn't mean anything."
He opened his eyes then, and what you saw in them nearly undid you. Guilt. Desire. Years of suppressed want finally unleashed. He looked at you like you were the only thing anchoring him to earth—like without you, he'd spin off into nothing.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered, and the apology wasn't for the confession. It was for the weight of it. The admission that he'd been carrying you in his chest while lying beside someone else. "I'm sorry I couldn't." His voice cracked. "I should have left her the first time I said your name. I should have found you. Should have told you-"
You silenced him with a kiss, arching up into him. His hand found your free wrist, pinning both above your head now, and he drove into you with renewed intensity. The admission had shattered something inside you, something you hadn't even known was holding you back.
Your release hit like a wave, unexpected and overwhelming, pulling you under as you cried out his name. Your body clenched around him, pulsing, drawing him deeper. Your back arched off the table, and he watched you fall apart with an expression of pure reverence, like he was witnessing something sacred.
His control broke completely. He followed with a guttural groan, burying himself deep as he finished, his forehead pressed to yours. His hips stuttered against you, his body shuddering, and he buried his face in the curve of your neck as he came undone. You felt every tremor, every gasp, every ragged breath he took against your skin.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. He stayed inside you, his breathing harsh and uneven, his weight pressing you into the thin mattress. One of his hands released your wrists, sliding down to cup your face. His thumb traced your cheek, and when he finally lifted his head, his eyes were wet.
"Say something," he whispered. "Please. Tell me I didn't just ruin everything."
You reached up, brushing the dampness from his cheek. "You didn't ruin anything."
He let out a shaky breath, pressing his forehead to yours again. His body was still trembling, still connected to yours in the most intimate way possible.
"I'm yours," he said quietly, the words almost lost against your lips. "I've been yours since the first time you told me I was an insufferable asshole."
You laughed weakly. "You are an insufferable asshole."
For a long moment, neither of you moved. He stayed inside you, breathing ragged, his hand still tangled with yours. The only sounds were your mingled breaths and the distant hum of the hospital beyond the door.
Then, slowly, he eased out of you. The loss of him made you ache, but he didn't leave you empty for long. He reached for a spare scrub top from a nearby shelf and cleaned you both with surprising gentleness, his touch reverent. He pressed a soft kiss to your stomach, your hip, the inside of your knee.
Then he gathered you into his lap on the edge of the table, pulling your scrub pants back up before wrapping his arms around you. One hand stroked slow, soothing circles down your back, tracing your spine through the thin fabric.
Then, softer, almost reverent. He kissed you slowly, tenderly, the roughness melting into Langdon stayed inside you for a few more heartbeats, then eased out carefully. He cleaned you both with a spare scrub top, surprisingly gentle despite the roughness from minutes earlier. He pulled you into his lap on the edge of the table, arms wrapped around you, one hand stroking slow circles down your back.
“You okay?” he murmured against your hair.
“More than okay,” you whispered, still catching your breath.
A beat of silence. Then the absurdity of it all—hiding in a storage room, half-dressed, the weight of everything still hanging between you—hit at the same time. A small laugh bubbled out of you. Langdon’s chest shook with a low chuckle that turned into quiet, helpless laughter against your shoulder. The shared sound broke the heavy tension like a release valve, warm and real.
From the hallway, Robby’s voice carried through the door.
“Whoever stole my extra blankets, I am choosing violence.”
You and Langdon both looked toward the sound. Then at each other. Despite everything, despite the ache and the ring and the kiss still burning on your mouth, you laughed. Langdon’s smile faded first, but only because something softer replaced it.
“I should go first,” he said.
“Probably.”
“People will talk.”
“People already talk.”
“Yes, but usually because you’re impossible to work with.”
“You’re confusing me with yourself.”
“There she is.”
You rolled your eyes, but your hand lingered near his for one second longer. Then he stepped back. At the door, he paused, the ring still held in his hand.
“Just so we’re clear,” he said, voice low, “this changes nothing at work.”
“Obviously.”
“We remain professional.”
“Painfully.”
“No favouritism.”
“You’re still wrong half the time.”
“A third at most.”
“And you’re still only one year ahead of me.”
His mouth curved. This time, when he looked at you, he did not hide any of it.
can't stop thinking about the concept of robby getting home from sabbatical dead dog tired, the middle of the night. jamming his keys in his door. toeing off his boots at his entrance after he shuts the door behind him, not bothering to really put them aside. shrugging his coat off to the floor.
padding to his bedroom, just wanting to pass out for the night, for forever, maybe. if he should be so lucky. stripping to his boxers on the way, grunting a little as he steps out of his jeans, leaving a trail of dirty laundry he just can't be assed about. he never used to be messy. that came with the burnout.
but in his bed, curled up and breathing soft, is a bundle of warm dennis whitaker. looking sweet, looking peaceful, painfully domestic. if robby was a good man, he'd quietly back out of the room, go sleep on the couch, let the mouse awkwardly squeak his way out of the house in the morning. but robby hasn't considered himself a good man in a long time, and he wants his comfortable mattress, and he can't pretend he doesn't like the fact that his favorite intern is on top of it.
so he lifts up the covers, shuffles underneath with a sigh, watches lazily as dennis stirs a little, yawns. cute. the air conditioner hums, a quiet white noise, too quiet for robby's taste. there's a nightlight plugged into the wall that's not his, making the room glow softly orange, just enough to be cozy, just enough to not be dark. he wonders if the kid is scared of the dark. he watches as blue eyes peek open, bleary in the dim light, and find his.
dennis must be as tired as him, exhausted, because he doesn't react. not in any startled manner, not in the way robby was expecting. the kid's usually so jumpy around him, wide-eyed, even months later, even with that new edge of confidence robby can't help but enjoy. but not tonight. his voice is a little raspy as he asks s'this a dream? and his only response is a soft hum when robby tells him no, whitaker, I'm afraid not.
are you okay? wasn't the follow-up that robby expected, but it makes sense, from earnest, sweet whitaker. whitaker who worries too much about him, but it doesn't make robby feel particularly special— the kid worries about everyone. wants to help everyone. robby, at best, is an interesting case. haven't been in a long time, kid, is his honest reply, and he's not sure why he doesn't lie to him. maybe it's because dennis is being so intimately normal, so weirdly easy to be around. maybe it's because he's tired of saying "I'm fine."
dennis is a little hesitant in his movements. ginger and careful, cuddling up to robby's side, laying his cheek on robby's chest. skin against skin, robby remembers his discarded shirt, and is pervertedly glad for it. dennis's cheek is soft. the contact is warm, impossibly nice. dennis's arm comes up to lay itself around robby's waist, the boy snuggling closer, huffing out a breath like an exhausted little puppy. robby is endeared. he's always fucking endeared by this kid. he's stopped trying not to be.
normally he'd feel like crying. or he'd start to spiral, overthink. maybe he should. maybe he should force himself to face why the hell this is so easy, why the hell this domesticity that he's been craving his entire life came to him tonight, this random fucking night, in the form of an intern he should not be laying in bed with. but robby is tired. and sleep tugs him under easier than it has in years, warm in his bed, not alone, not alone, not alone. dennis's breaths brush softly across his skin. robby is hopelessly and stupidly attached.
