Chapter Text
Mel had never been to a bar, but she figured tonight was as good a night as any to start.
Iggy’s was a small and grimy pub about a block away from the Pitt. Dana claimed the drinks were overpriced, but Princess confided that in actuality, Dana had a disagreement with the bartender one night and refused to return. None of the nurses would go out of solidarity, which meant there would be less gossip, should anyone see Mel.
Mel intended to get very drunk.
She’d never gotten drunk before. She’d avoided it, as a matter of fact. She had med school and Becca to think of, then her internship and residency after that. She’d seen enough alcohol-related incidents in the emergency room to be wary of imbibing. It just wasn’t something that interested her, particularly.
That, however, had changed the moment she learned her little baby sister was having sex.
It wasn’t the sex, exactly. It wasn’t even the realization that Mel had been almost infantilizing her younger sister. It was the fact that her autistic younger sister, who required special care and accommodation all her life, had more life experiences than Mel herself.
Becca hadn’t meant to shame Mel in that way, but shame was all she felt.
She couldn’t tell if it was the calm, matter-of-fact tone Becca had used or the abstract concept that she had a boyfriend that disturbed Mel so deeply. Even worse, Mel was pretty sure she felt a clear resentment in the pit of her stomach. Becca had a boyfriend, but Mel never had.
Becca had sex–was having sex–and Mel was a virgin.
The bartender placed something fruity and pink in front of her. Mel had explained quite seriously about her lack of alcoholic experience, which had earned an eyeroll from the bartender. At first, she thought it meant that he wouldn’t serve her, but a few moments later, this drink appeared.
Mel tasted it. It was sweet and tart, but immediately made her feel lightheaded. She took a longer sip in determination.
“Mel?!”
Mel jerked at the familiar voice. She turned in her seat to see Frank Langdon, staring at her in absolute shock.
“Oh,” She gave a half-hearted wave. “Hi.”
“Hi,” He blinked at her in bewilderment. “What are you doing here?”
Something about his tone annoyed Mel. “Why shouldn’t I be here?” She took a pointed gulp of her drink. “I’m off my shift and I have the day off tomorrow.”
Langdon nodded slowly. “You usually spend your days off with your sister, though.”
“She doesn’t want to spend the day with me,” Mel responded tightly. “She wants to hang out with her boyfriend.” Not to mention that Becca was still angry at Mel.
Langdon made his way towards her and took a seat next to her. He signaled the bartender, who apparently knew Langdon’s usual drink, and brought over a Guinness. Mel watched the interaction carefully. Ah, yes. Guinness. Dark beer. An adult beverage, something cool and cultured for him. She was pretty sure beer would make her gag; she couldn’t stand the smell of it.
“Are you okay?” Langdon asked her. “You had a rough day today, what with the deposition and Becca’s visit…”
“M’fine,” Mel mumbled. “The lawyer said it was fine. Becca said she was fine. Everyone is fine.”
“Okay, but you didn’t say that you were fine,” Langdon pointed out.
Mel plucked the alcohol-soaked strawberry from her drink and chomped it determinedly. Langdon waited patiently for her to say something, taking a small sip of his own drink.
“Do you come here often?” Mel asked suddenly.
Langdon choked on his drink. “Wait, what?!”
“Do you come here often?” Mel repeated. “The bartender knew your drink.”
“Oh! You were actually asking–right. Um, yeah, I stop by sometimes after work.” For some reason, his cheeks were flushed and Mel tried to determine why.
“I’ve never been,” She explained. “I’ve never actually gotten drunk, as a matter of fact.”
Mel took another large sip. “Or partied.”
Another gulp. “Or had a boyfriend.”
She downed the drink. “Or even had sex.”
For a second time, Langdon choked on his Guinness, but his attack of coughs and sputters lasted far longer than the first. Mel kept her eyes on her empty glass. He was probably shocked at her pathetic lack of experience. Maybe he was even laughing at her…but that wasn’t fair. He never laughed at Mel and always took her seriously. There was never mockery in his tone. It was why she’d always nursed a small crush on him.
A small, tiny, harmless crush. Crushes in the workplace were perfectly normal. She’d gone through several Reddit threads to confirm this. They didn’t make you a bad person, you just needed to make sure it didn’t affect your work or make your crush uncomfortable. Particularly if that crush was married. But it was normal.
When Langdon regained oxygen, he spoke. “You’re…upset that Becca has done those things?”
Mel hesitated. “Not upset, exactly…” It was difficult to verbalize her feelings. Becca had every right to live her own life. Autistic advocacy meant sexual liberation for a lot of folks and apparently, Mel’s baby sister had embraced it.
“I’m…I’m jealous,” Mel said quietly.
Langdon’s brows rose. “Jealous?”
“Yeah,” Mel swirled a cube of ice around her empty glass. “I know it sounds petty and stupid, but–”
“It doesn’t!” Langdon said quickly. “I–”
“I’ve just–never had that,” She couldn’t meet his gaze, instead she looked directly at a grinning toucan sign in front of her. “And I always told myself that there would be time for it later, after college, after med school, after my internship, after Becca was settled at the care facility…and I guess I thought that applied to her too. But it doesn’t. She was always more social than me anyway.”
Mel couldn’t help but give a dry laugh at the idea.
“Do you want that?”
Langdon’s voice was quiet and there was a strange quality in his tone. But Mel was too wrapped up in her own tidal wave of conflicted emotions to notice.
“Well, everyone wants that, don’t they?” Mel asked pleadingly. “I mean–I know some people aren’t, obviously–I don’t know–I do. I do! Of course, I do…but I’ve never had the opportunity.”
“Nobody’s ever asked you out?” Another brow raise from Langdon. “I find that hard to believe.”
“No, they have, but usually after a few dates it just…fizzles out,” Mel admitted. “Or something comes up with Becca and they get freaked out and just…”
She shook herself a little. “It’s not even just that! I don’t need a boyfriend, you know? I don’t have time for one, honestly. But it’d be nice to just…have a–have a night with someone. See what…all the fuss is about.”
In a moment of slightly tipsy revelation, Mel remembered she was talking to her senior resident. She flushed in embarrassment and chastised herself–this was perhaps the most unprofessional conversation you could have with a superior.
“Sorry,” She mumbled. “I’m–making you uncomfortable right now and being incredibly inappropriate–”
“I’ve heard way worse,” Langdon assured her. “You know when I was an intern, some of the cardiac surgeons had a score card for how many nurses they could sleep with?”
Mel wrinkled in disgust at the idea. The bartender brought her another pink drink and Langdon looked as though he wanted to tell her not to have it. Even more jarring, Mel realized if he told her not to, she would willingly comply. It felt sort of natural to submit to Langdon’s authority, as perverse as it sounded. But he said nothing, so she took another gulp of the tart buzz.
He took a thoughtful drink alongside her. “Okay, so you’re here to get drunk and…what, get laid too?”
Mel blushed bright red. “Um, I don’t think any of the men in this bar would be interested in me.”
Langdon looked utterly perplexed at this statement. “Why?”
She glanced around her. Most of the men at the bar were in their late fifties or sixties, but there was a crowd of young men gathering at the pool table. She didn’t think they worked at the h
hospital, but they were pretty attractive. A young man in his mid-twenties with blonde hair and charming dimples glanced over at her and smiled.
“I’m not…their type…” Mel explained.
“I think they’d disagree with that,” Langdon said wryly.
Maybe he was right. She was the only girl around their age in the bar…but then again, maybe that was the reason they cast flirtatious looks towards her and slightly probing glances at Langdon.
“Beer goggles,” She said decidedly and Langdon rolled his eyes at this declaration. She giggled thoughtfully, her second drink starting to make her light-headed.
“Maybe I should just get it over with,” Mel eyed the young men. “At least I’d stop feeling like such a loser.”
Langdon looked at her like she was crazy. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” She wondered, unaffected by Langdon’s expression. “I don’t want a boyfriend right now but…I would like to–spend the night with someone. Maybe I’ll get really drunk tonight and just go for it.”
“Okay, but don’t go home with them,” He said in disgust, as though she’d suggested courting a warthog.
“Why not?”
“It’s your first time,” He said impatiently. “It should be with someone who cares about you. Someone who’ll make sure you have a good first time. Those guys won’t, they’ll just…”
“Hump and dump,” Mel finished–she heard the phrase from Trinity once, but the phrase seemed to horrify Langdon.
“You don’t want that,” Langdon said firmly. “You deserve better.”
He was probably right, but it eliminated the option of losing her virginity tonight, which was becoming increasingly more attractive.
“I’m gonna go talk to them,” Mel decided. “As soon as I finish this–”
Langdon snatched the third pink drink from her. “You will not!”
“I want to!” Mel insisted. “Seriously, I want to. I can do this.”
“It’s not about can, it’s about should,” Langdon told her. “You should be with someone who knows you, who will–who will take care of you.”
“There’s no one here that wants to do that,” Mel sulked. “Nobody knows me in this bar–except you.”
There was an odd little pause at that and Langdon just looked at her, with a slightly raised eyebrow. She felt herself flush in embarrassment at the implication.
They both spoke at the same time.
“I didn’t mean to imply–-”
“If you wanted to--”
Both parties froze.
Mel’s eyes widened. “If I wanted to…but…” Her gaze focused on his left hand and she realized his ring finger was bare.
Langdon flexed his hand unconsciously. “My wife and I are separated. We have been separated for ten months now. She wants to file for divorce…I just haven’t told anyone in the Pitt yet.”
He took a long sip of Guinness. “Abby’s already seeing someone. An accountant. She says it’s serious.”
“I–I’m sorry,” Mel stammered.
Langdon waved a hand. “It’s okay. We were…we’ve been on the rocks for a while. My addiction was just her breaking point and I don’t blame her for it at all. We’re just trying to figure out the whole co-parenting thing now…and I just haven’t had the nerve to tell anyone yet.”
“Oh,” Mel said in a very small voice. How much further could she humiliate herself in front of Langdon? But…she’d been the one to backtrack, and he’d said…
If you wanted to…
“Um–” Mel swallowed hard. “I–interrupted you. What were you saying?”
His blue-gray eyes met hers. “I said if you wanted to…you could go home with me.”
All at once, the noisy pub became a lot quieter. The only thing Mel could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat, pounding double-time. Was he serious? No, he must be joking…damn it, she was awful at distinguishing jokes from statements…this had to be like the Burr hole, when she’d thumped her head that time…
She tried a half-hearted chuckle. “Well, if you’re offering…” See! She could joke too. Even if this joke had a terrifyingly flirtatious undertone that she couldn’t quite define.
“I am,” Langdon said quietly. “Don’t go home with one of those assholes, Mel. If you’re going to go home with anyone, it should be me.”
Mel grabbed her drink and gulped it down with reckless abandon. She was officially three drinks in, standing on the bridge between tipsy and drunk…but Langdon’s offer was sobering up her senses.
“We can also forget this conversation ever happened,” Langdon said quickly. “Just promise me you won’t do something stupid with someone you don’t know. If you’re going to do something stupid, do me.”
Mel was in Wonderland. It was the only explanation. Or she had fallen in some insane parallel universe…that made a lot more sense than her senior resident offering to take her virginity.
Take her virginity…she hated that phrase. It wasn’t something to be taken. She wasn’t a plucked flower. She was a woman and she wanted to have sex. That was normal! It was the most normal thing in the world. Sleeping with a coworker was also relatively normal, though perhaps ill-advised. But it was Langdon. He had a point, there was no guarantee one of the random men at the bar would treat her gently or kindly…but Langdon surely would, just as carefully as he taught or guided her during a complicated surgery.
“Okay,” She whispered.
Langdon’s eyes widened. She realized with sudden clarity that he hadn’t actually expected her to take him up on it. But why would he ask, then? She had always wondered if he suspected her small crush on him. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might feel the same way.
“Okay,” He replied with a note of finality. They both silently returned to their drinks, unsure of step two. What was the right thing to say?
“You ready to go?”
Thank God, she didn’t need to speak! He was looking at her expectantly, but with a half-heartedness, as if he expected her to back out at any moment.
When in fact, Mel had been daydreaming about this since her first day.
“Yes,” She breathed quietly and hopped off the bar stool. Langdon paid her tab and the two of them walked out of the bar.