Chapter Text
Mel smoked her first cigarette at Anette Wheeler’s birthday bash sophomore year of High School, eighteen months before her mother died of lung cancer.
Mom told her never to take anything if she didn’t know where it came from, especially if it was offered to her by a boy at a party, but her aunt was strict about southern hospitality, which dictated she must bring something to any party and accept whatever the host offered in exchange.
Mel brought brownies.
People seemed really enthused by them when she first showed up, forming a circle around her, but deflated pretty quickly after she excitedly revealed to them it was her aunt's special double fudge recipe. Mel was feeling a lot more nervous standing in the middle of the group like that, especially once they started pulling lighters and packs out of their pockets, but when Anette —who was both a girl and the host— offered her a cigarette too, Mel said yes.
It tasted foul, like charred cooking herbs. When she coughed violently and dropped the cigarette on the floor after the first inhale, the whole circle laughed.
Mel laughed too, hesitant to be left out, but she secretly felt a little bad about it.
_
She’s pretty sure the smoking is new.
The worst part about him being gone —after she found out he was really coming back, Dr.King, of course, but we can’t reveal personal information about other employees— was the forgetfulness.
She remembers Tyler, of course. Their very first save, his confident reassurance the family was going to be just fine. In most of the other cases before the MVC, too, she can consult old charts in case the memories start to go, run her fingers over both of their names in the bottom of the chart, just to make sure it was real. But they didn’t use traditional charts during Pittfest, he was gone for a while —an omen— and she was starting to forget the details.
What did they talk about, before arriving at those diagnosis? Was he left-handed? Did anyone call him Frank on the floor? She hadn’t learned his first name until she went snooping around for his whereabouts.
What exact words did he use to calm her down so well, and how can she replicate that feeling by herself, to use when a bad case or a rough shift rattles her bones?
Was he taller than Dr.Robby? He used to drink Redbull, she knows, and pop candies, but she can’t remember the flavour or color. She couldn’t remember the exact moment they’d met, either. What sequence of words or actions made them both feel so comfortable around each other right off the bat? She would like to have some of that goodwill with her other bosses too.
By the time he comes back, a long ten months after that first day, Mel is not so sure what are the things she actually recalls about Dr.Langdon and what are the ones she made up in her mind because she missed him.
_
It’s not fair of her to crash his smoke break and prevent him from smoking. Althought it is a bad habit, very harmful for his overall health, and isn’t he a marathon runner? But she is not going to say anything about it. There are plenty of worse habits.
But he tends to put out the cigarette when she comes out to join him on breaks anyway, and that’s counterproductive. Dr.Langdon is having a tough time getting back into the swing of things, his cold war with Dr. Robby not helping the overall mood of the ED. She is fine with some brief second-hand smoking if it means she gets five minutes alone with him, hopefully to cheer him up a bit before they step back into the fray.
Mel shifts her weight, getting closer. He hasn’t noticed her standing around yet, which corroborates her theory that he is really in a worse shape than it looks. Usually, every time she makes the decision to go looking for him, he’s already staring at her in silent invitation.
“Dr. Langdon? Are you alright?”
He startles so bad at the sound of her voice his head smashes on the sill, looking over between her and the cigarette in alarm. “Oh, don’t wo-”
She figures he means to put it out, but when Mel opens her mouth to speak again, Dr. Langdon makes a weird, jerky hand motion, ultimately stretching out his arm toward her, offering the cigarette between his fingers.
Mel blinked.
She knew it was just for habit’s sake. Langdon tended to offer her first pick of anything that reached his hands: gloves, gowns, cereal bars. Only once, a can of Redbull; the weirder, a bezoar; the most memorable, a ten blade.
He definitely knew she wasn’t a smoker. Sure enough, he flung his hand back violently, gazing up to her, worried. As if she was going to be offended to be offered a smoke.
“I’m fine, thank you” she says primly.
Langdon grimaced.
“Right, of course. I knew that, obviously” he muttered, shuffling his feet. It was very endearing. “It’s just that I've been…”
“-a little off kilter?” she offers, coming close enough to bump their shoulders together. She was kidding herself, the smell is nasty.
He doesn’t move away. “Yeah, you could call it that”.
Mel humms. “Maybe… we could just stand here for a bit, until it settles”.
Dr Langdon snorted. “That would be a long, long time, sweetheart”.
The Pittsburgh wind is chilly, but Mel feels warm all over. The cold bite can’t reach her when they stand like this, her hidden by his slouched frame.
“Probably” Mel agrees. “Then we’ll stay until someone else starts dying over there”.
“Deal”
_
It’s funny, Mel muses, how the brain can trick you into remembering something so clearly, even if the truth it’s somewhere to the right.
Cigarettes are not that bad, at least not the kind Dr.Langdon smokes. All she can taste is heat and want, the clementine she had for lunch setting off the bitterness of his mouth, the wet glide of their tongues sending sparks behind her eyelids.
Smell and taste are very closely related, aren’t they?
Then his hand moves to wrap around her neck, ring finger digging into her cheekbone and she thinks about nothing at all, for a very long time.
_
The light sneaking in from the window affords a surreal quality to the scene. Mel never considered sex a daytime activity, but again, she hasn`t had enough of it for the subclassifiers.
The sweat drying on their skin will start to bother her very soon, but right now she is the most relaxed she`s been all month, splayed out on top of Frank, hand over his chest feeling his heartbeat slow down. He is half propped up in the headboard, playing mindlessly with her hair.
It`s fascinating to watch. The more his breathing slows, the twitchier he gets. He is tapping his foot against the bedframe, fingers in the other hand roving in the air. It`s the same thing he does, it strikes her suddenly, when they walk out of a trauma room after a hard case, when he is dying for a cigarette.
“You can smoke, if you want to” she murmurs against his shoulder blade, rubbing her cheek on the firm muscle. He runs so hot, Mel barely remembers where she used to keep the electric blankets.
“Of course not, I'm good.” He stops fidgeting immediately, which means she is right.
“It’s ok” she repeats it reassuringly “I don’t mind”
Frank turns his neck sideways to squint at her, tousled hair falling over his forehead and narrowly missing his right eye. He is so handsome like this. All the time, really.
“Mel, i am not going to light a cig inside your bedroom” he sounds appalled. It 's sweet.
“The window is open” she insists, kissing the tiny scar on his shoulder. She means to ask about that one.
Frank looks conflicted, but he is subtly eyeing the discarded jeans on the ground.
And that was a lie. Mel very much minds. The air circulation in the apartment it’s not great to begin with, her lone bedroom window is all the way across the room and she is out of scented candles. But it’s very cinematic. Just like the white sheets, or wearing his shirt around afterwards. All those little rituals she watched in TV shows or heard fellow students and colleagues whispering about with behind their hands.
Romance.
Mel doesn’t think anyone else has ever enjoyed sex with her enough to want a cigarette right after, so.
Frank took one last long look at her face, lingering by the red marks on her neck and collarbone, before pressing a kiss to the top of her head and standing up.
He groaned when he stretched out his back, letting a grumbly old man noise on his way to open the window all the way. Mel appreciated the unobstructed view of the taut muscles on his ass when he bent down to rummage through the pockets on his jeans. No dice.
She took pity on him after the second one came up empty, sliding over the mattress to pick up the jacket bunched up on her nightstand. There, a half crumbled pack and his scuffed silver lighter, the one he stole from Garcia in undergrad.
She waited until he gave up looking, picking up a slim cigarette and swirling on her fingers, running a nail over the funny texture in the filter.
Frank hummed unhappily when he realized, throwing himself down the foot of the bed and crawling up to her on his forearms. It was a little ridiculous, but mostly sexy. He took over before she could flick open the lighter, hunching over her body on his elbows and leaning down so she could fit the cigarette between his parted lips.
Mel touched his damp upper lip with her fingertips and he sucked on her fingers, the pack entirely forgotten.
_
Three days after Frank Langdon relapses for the third time and goes back to in-patient rehabilitation, Melissa King walks into the convenience store next to the center and asks for a pack of American Spirits.
She lights up in the parking lot, unwilling to let Becca see her smoke. This time she doesn’t cough, inhales deep and steady, feels her muscles immediately relaxing when the nicotine reaches her bloodstream.
It’s only her second ever cigarette, but what can you do?
Mel’s got a craving.