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1.
“Dr. Robby?”
Robby looks up from his monitor to find one of the latest batch of interns – Langdon, he reminds himself. Adamson always insists that his residents know the names of their students – watching him expectantly.
He’s been here three days and Robby already knows that the kid is like a puppy. The thought had first struck him during Adamson’s introduction. From the get-go, he’s been all bright-eyed and bouncing on the balls of his feet, enough to send locks of his dark brown hair flopping into his blue eyes. Robby’s seen him assist on three patients in the last ten minutes, nipping at the heels of whatever resident he can get a hold of. Robby will give it to him, the kid is fearless.
Probably not a good idea to get attached just yet (with the Pitt’s impressive dropout rate), but Robby is dreading the case that will extinguish that guileless light behind his eyes once and for all.
“That’s me,” he says instead, straightening. He turns his eyes back up to the intake monitor, rubs his eyes and squints a little. Since when did his vision go to shit? “What can I help you with?”
“Adamson said there’s a possible cardiac victim on the way in and that you’re the guy to go to on those,” Langdon’s words come out in a rush. He’s not excited, per se, but it’s clear that the opportunity to learn something has him raring to go. “Think I could tag in?”
It sounds like a load of bullshit to Robby. He can feel his own brow furrow as he checks his watch – 2pm. Adamson is practically religious about his afternoon smoke break, and very little will tear him away from it. Figures he’d shove the kid off on Robby.
“Sure,” he says, deciding against correcting him.
For some reason, it feels like a mistake to look at him after that. The way that Langdon’s eyes go wide and bright, his grin stretching his cheeks. There’s a pang in Robby’s chest and he wonders, briefly, if he’s the actual cardiac victim, here.
“Sweet,” Langdon says, then catches himself. “Well, not sweet. But thank you. I’ll go make sure trauma one is prepped.”
“You do that,” and Robby… Robby finds himself smiling, too.
The kid bounds off, clutching the ends of the stethoscope draped over his shoulders as he dodges past a resident with his nose in a file and a patient hobbling around with an IV pole. Robby watches him until he disappears around a corner.
While he waits for their patient to arrive, eyeing the board, Robby tries to remember if he was like that as a newbie, too. He can’t imagine he was, but it’s been years since then. Years of death, and shitty coffee, and knowing that the best that you can do isn’t always enough. The good outweighs the bad, mostly. Or at least, he tries to tell himself that. But sometimes it’s a little too dark to bear.
Maybe that Langdon kid will get rotated out of the Pitt before that darkness can reach him, too. Robby sure as shit hopes so.
2.
“Don’t even think about jumping while I’m still on the clock.”
It’s a morbid joke, maybe too morbid for someone as fresh as Langdon, but Robby discovered long ago that a little bit of dark humor can ease a myriad of little hurts.
Langdon’s feet dangle off the edge of the building. He doesn’t look like he’s going to do anything stupid, not right now at least, and he lets out a wet little chuckle.
“Nah,” he says instead. “I’d make sure I’m out of our catch zone. I’ve seen what you people do at this place.”
It startles a laugh out of Robby. Shit, maybe the kid will fit in here.
Robby considers his next words as he carefully takes a seat beside him. The concrete is cold against his ass, and he doesn’t dare lean forward to look over the edge of the rooftop. The lights of the helipad reflect off the glass buildings around them, flickering blue and red and white. This time of night, Pittsburgh almost seems… pleasant. There’s the sound of an ambulance, but it’s moving away from them. That’ll be Abbot’s problem, eventually, but for now all is quiet.
“You want to talk about it?”
Losing your first patient is the rite of passage no one likes to talk about, but in Robby’s opinion it’s one of the most important experiences a med student can have during their time in the ER.
Sometimes, the students get lucky. They’ll lose someone on the first day, in the first few hours, rip off the bandaid. It’s hard – of course it’s hard – but it feels inevitable. Done, processed, moving on.
Sometimes, though, students are unlucky. Sometimes they don’t get that letdown until days or even weeks into their rotation. Langdon was one of the unlucky ones.
See, no matter how much you tell yourself that it will come, it will happen, you just need to brace yourself… when you keep winning, beating death off with a stick, it starts to feel like maybe you’re different. Maybe it will never come. He’d seen it in Langdon the last couple of days; the straightness of his shoulders and the confidence in his touch speak to a confidence that wasn’t there on day one.
Now, when he looks at him out of the corner of his eye, Langdon’s shoulders are hunched.
“Not really,” he says, finally.
His eyes are on the ground. He’s chewing at his lower lip like he’s thinking about saying something else, though – Robby waits him out.
“Does it ever get any easier?”
This one was a hard one, too. The patient, a seventeen-year-old girl, came in presenting with all the signs of a bad menstrual cycle – cramping, abdominal pains, the whole nine. Overdramatic, maybe. It wasn’t until she coded on the bed that they realized they had a perf on their hands. Surgery was too late.
Langdon had stayed with her, though. Calling her name, squeezing her hand, pushing whatever he could think of to try to keep her with them, but she’d already gone septic. Robby was the one to call it.
“No,” Robby admits. It’s never the answer his students want to hear, but it’s the honest one. And the one they need to hear. “It doesn’t.”
Not if you’re going to be a good doctor, at least. And he’s got a hunch that this kid is going to be a very, very good doctor.
Langdon sighs, swaying forward toward nothingness for just a second. Robby watches him nod slowly. He already knew the answer, then.
“Yeah,” he says. “I figured.”
When Langdon turns to look at him, Robby realizes he wasn’t ready to see that look in his eyes. They’re distant, a little glassy. The blue lights hit the whites and seem to make them glow. It’s transfixing. It’s dangerous.
But Robby forces himself to look, to search for that spark he saw the other day. He’s not sure if it’s there or not. So, he tries:
“See you tomorrow?” He raises his brows, lips pressed together in a feeble attempt at a smile.
Langdon grins. There it is.
“I’ll be here.”
3.
“Dr. Langdon?”
The woman’s collarbone makes an audible crunch as Langdon readjusts her cracked sternum – the result of chest compressions done right. Still, Langdon grimaces and Robby feels the sympathetic wince on his own features.
For the moment, he’s content to watch his newly-christened resident work. Even after two years working with him, through the war zone of COVID-19 and beyond, there’s something enthralling about watching him in his element. Langdon is single-minded, and the entire room seems to tilt in toward his gravity. Some doctors take years to control a staff the way Langdon does. Some never manage it. Robby knows he should step away, leave him to it, but he can’t get his feet to move. Watching him like this is all the indulgence he allows himself.
“Little busy, Princess,” he grunts, turning his head to look at the monitor. Robby had already forgotten that she even interrupted. “Pulse is stabilizing. What’s the ETA on the other guy?”
“Two minutes,” Mateo supplies, hands full of tubes.
“Start her on a morphine drip. We need-“
“Dr. Langdon,” Princess says again, louder. Robby turns to look at her, along with every other nurse in the room. “It’s Abby.”
That gets his attention. Langdon’s head snaps to the nurse in the doorway. “What is it?”
“She’s upstairs,” the serious furrow of her brow dissolves in favor of a smile. “Apparently baby number two decided today was the day.”
For just a second, time is frozen. Langdon’s still two knuckles deep in the incision across the woman’s sternum and, inexplicably, his eyes find Robby’s first.
Not for the first time, Robby finds himself caught in their magnetic field. His lips are parted in shock. Robby’s rooted to the spot.
“Shit, um.”
It’s rare to see Langdon at a loss for words like this. Frozen, indecisive. The sight of it is enough to finally spur Robby into action.
“Go,” he says, taking two strides to the box of gloves on the wall. Langdon still hasn’t moved by the time he’s pulling them on and stepping up to the gurney. “We’ve got this. Go be with your wife.”
Langdon is still frozen, and his skin is a shade paler than it was two minutes ago. Robby’s hands find his. He applies pressure to the site and nudges Langdon’s shoulder with his own. Their faces are so close now he could count every eyelash. He doesn’t let himself.
“Go,” he repeats, and Langdon gets with the program this time.
He’s halfway out the door when he pauses, turns back.
“Robby-“ he starts, guilt in his eyes. Robby has to laugh.
“Get out of my ER before your wife waddles down here and kicks my ass for keeping you too long.”
Langdon’s laughing when he turns and bolts.
The rest of the shift passes in a frantic blur. They’re down a hand and there’s a ten-car pile up on the interstate. Robby doesn’t manage to check out with Abbot til it’s nearly two in the morning, and as soon as that pressure if off his shoulders he’s practically dead on his feet.
But then he remembers the text he managed to glance at – what was it, six hours ago now? – with a picture of a tired, beaming Abby and a pale blue bundle.
“Little man’s here,” Langdon’s text says. “We’re in 832 if you want to stop by and introduce yourself.”
Probably shouldn’t, Robby thinks. It’s late enough now that the happy family is asleep, visitor hours long past. He knows Abby’s parents are in town to take care of the older boy, at least. He hadn’t mentioned if his mom was coming up from Connecticut, but Robby knows better than to ask.
He should go home, shove some food down his throat, and get some sleep. He should. But, inevitably, his feet take him to the elevator instead.
The nurse’s station is empty when he lets himself out onto the eighth floor. Down the hall, he can see a resident making the rounds. An infant cries, and then the sound is muffled by a closing door.
Robby doesn’t let himself overthink it when he finds room 832 and raps his knuckles gently against the wood. With any luck, they’re both asleep and he can slip away before he does something he’ll regret.
“Come in,” Langdon’s whisper barely penetrates through the door, but Robby couldn’t miss it.
Abby’s out cold in the bed, snoring lightly. Robby allows himself a smile at the sight – sympathetic to the bone-deep exhaustion of a hard day’s work – before he’s utterly distracted by the man on the couch.
Langdon is shirtless, reclined against the armrest, legs crossed at the ankle on the cushion in front of him with the sleeping newborn draped across his chest. There are deep bags under his eyes, but they’re bright and alert and pin Robby to the spot. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen him smile with that much gentleness.
“Hey, uh,” Robby finds himself at a loss for words. He shouldn’t have come here. He’s an interloper on their marriage, their life, their little cocoon of brand-new-baby-bliss. He forces himself to keep talking. “I won’t bother you. Just wanted to say congratulations,” a chuckle works its way out of his throat. “Everyone downstairs was cooing over the pictures all day. We’re all really happy for you two.” He tilts his head toward Abby for good measure.
Langdon’s smile grows. “Thanks, boss.”
The sleeping bundle makes a soft noise of protest as Langdon shifts until he’s sitting upright on the couch. He shushes the newborn absentmindedly, pats his back. It’s clearly so natural to him Robby feels clumsy and off-kilter all over again. He needs to get out of here. Langdon’s feet are bare against the tile. Robby doesn’t know why he notices that.
“Come on,” Langdon urges, one long-fingered hand splayed across his child’s back to hold him to his chest as he pats the cushion beside him. “I told you – I want you to meet him.”
He can’t say no. He’s never been good at saying no to Langdon, anyway. Especially not when he’s looking at him with those wide, wide eyes, piercingly blue even in the shadows of the early morning. Besides, despite the roiling sense of discomfort in his gut he realizes he has no good reason to say it anyway. So, he closes the door quietly behind himself and approaches.
Their hands brush as Langdon passes over the sleeping bundle. Again, he huffs a soft noise of protest, but when Robby cradles him against his chest he goes quiet once more. Robby finds himself pressing his lips to the side of the baby’s head, lightly dusted with pale blonde hair, and breathes in the scent of newborn baby.
Robby can feel Langdon’s eyes on him but doesn’t turn to look.
“Now, before I blow your ego sky-high, ‘Michael’ is a family name, alright?”
His eyebrows lift practically to his hairline. “Oh?”
The plastic-y cushion creaks as Langdon shifts closer to him. He’s so, so aware of the bare skin just inches to his right, the rise and fall of Langdon’s chest. Jesus, Robby.
“Robby,” Langdon says, so close now he can feel his breath against the side of his face as he looks over his shoulder at his child. He reaches between them to brush his thumb over the top of the tiny, precious cheek. “Meet Oliver Michael.”
Even with the preface, the name still hits him like a punch to the gut. Robby feels tears gathering at the corners of his eyes and hopes that Langdon will excuse his sniffle as he rubs his face against the shoulder of his sweatshirt.
‘He’s beautiful, Frank,” he manages, voice choked. Robby risks a glance, and finds Langdon still watching him steadily. “You did good, kid.”
Langdon beams. Four minutes later, Robby passes Oliver back to his father and flees the room.
4.
There’s no such thing as a “slow day” in the ER. No such thing as an “off-season,” either, but today has to be the closest they’ll ever get to one. For the first time in recent memory, the waiting room is cleared and Robby has half a dozen beds up for the taking.
He can’t shake the sinking feeling that he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Half the staff has been sent home for the time being, warned to keep their phones on in case there’s an influx, but it hasn’t happened yet. It leaves the space eerily quiet, devoid of its usual noise.
For probably the dozenth time in the past hour, he finds himself at the nurses’ station, elbows propped on the counter and eyes trained on the intake monitor over the rim of his glasses (the readers he finally gave in and got a year and a half ago. Anyone who tried to tease him about them got a stern glare over the frames, but it just made them laugh more. Langdon was the biggest culprit). It’s not like he’s willing another case to arrive, God knows he’s not about to send that kind of karmic energy in the world (he’s not sure he believes in karma, but it feels safer to err on the side of caution).
“Man,” Langdon’s voice close to his side startles Robby out of his musings on the merits of karmic justice. “Absolute snoozefest around here today, huh?”
Robby barely refrains from startling when he feels the length of Langdon’s arm press up against his own, he’s standing that close. Even through the thick fabric of his sweatshirt, he can feel the heat of him. Shoulder to elbow one long line of warmth.
“I hope you’re not trying to jinx us,” he forces himself to say, voice light, and buys himself time pocketing his glasses before he commits to the mistake of turning to look at him.
This close, Robby can see the thin sheen of sweat along Langdon’s hairline and tracks it down to the length of his neck. Despite the A/C they blast the place with, it seems that he’s always running warm.
Tearing his focus away from his throat (skin, so much skin and the distracting bob of his Adam’s apple) he finds Langdon’s gaze already trained on him – disarming and unwavering.
“I would never,” Langdon is saying, and there’s an earnest sincerity in his expression that has Robby’s breath catching in his throat. His voice is barely above a whisper. Since when were they whispering?
Robby’s throat is so, so dry all of a sudden. He licks his lips. Langdon’s eyes track the movement.
“Sure you wouldn’t,” Robby manages, absent.
‘’Course not,” Langdon continues, like he doesn’t have any idea of the mental avenues Robby is forcibly keeping his mind from traveling down. “I’m just… wondering.”
There’s a pause. Robby finds himself leaning toward him, even closer, close enough to smell the mint on his breath from the gum he’s got a terrible habit of chewing on shift no matter how many times Robby tells him off for it.
He can’t help it. He takes the bait. “Wondering what?”
“If you’re as desperate for something to do around here as I am.”
Robby’s eyes go wide. Is this really happening? Is Langdon propositioning him? Right here in the ER, wedding band still on his finger, the weight of their entire history together and Robby’s stupid, inappropriate thoughts pressing against his back?
He barely refrains from spluttering. Instead, he chokes out a half-hearted laugh and asks: ‘What?”
It’s a mistake to keep looking at Langdon like this, this close. From here, Robby gets to watch the way his eyes widen the same way they do when he sees an exciting new case pop on the board. The way his lips pull up at the edges, his grin so sharp his canines are on display.
Then, as quickly as the moment began, it ends.
“Shit,” Langdon says, straightening abruptly. He rolls his head, hair flopping over his forehead in the process, and pushes away from the nurses’ station. “I was supposed to check in on toenail guy an hour ago.”
Robby blinks at him.
Langdon’s still smiling, guileless and open, when he claps a hand on his shoulder. “Let me know if anything fun comes through.”
By the time Robby has a response, Langdon has bounded out of sight. Robby allows himself a second to wonder where he gets all that energy from before Dana is distracting him with an incoming trauma patient.
Karma, he guesses.
5.
“Please, Robby,” he pleads, gripping the edges of Robby’s sweatshirt. Robby tries to shove him away, fails, tries again. No use. “Just- let me take care of this myself.”
They’ve talked about this. Over, and over, and over again. But Robby knows there’s no point in arguing anymore. Besides, the board has all the power, now. He can’t take back his statement even if he wanted to.
Pharmaceutical abuse is not something the trustees takes lightly.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” he says. He can imagine the way that Langdon is looking at him, all wide-eyed and pleading. The man ducks his head, tries to force himself into Robby’s line of sight. He imagines the way he’d fold under that gaze and keeps his eyes averted. “This is for your own good.”
That does the trick. Langdon steps away from him like he’s been burned, throws his hands up in the air dramatically. He’s manic. God, how did Robby not see it before? He should have seen it, should have seen it a hundred times over. Why wasn’t he looking?
“What do you know about my own good? I’m going to lose my license! My kids.”
Maybe so, Robby thinks. But at least he’ll be alive for it.
“I’m sorry, Frank.’
+1
It’s Langdon that finds Robby on the edge of the roof this time. Still early evening, still half an hour before the night shift arrives, but Robby needed some air and had to trust the rest of the team could handle it for a few minutes. It’s just- sometimes it’s too much.
The guy on the gurney hadn’t looked like Langdon, not really, but he’d been close enough. Same age, same build, just blonde instead of brunette. Green eyes instead of blue.
Fucking benzos overdose.
When they’d pulled his ID, Dana had found a picture of two toe-headed little kids tucked behind it in his wallet.
To his credit, Langdon had handled it better than Robby. He’d gritted his teeth and got to work, did every resuscitation measure in the book despite the fact the guy was DOA.
Robby had taken one look at the patient’s vacant face and had to excuse himself.
“I won’t do either of us the disservice of asking if you’re alright,” he says, settling onto the edge of the roof beside Robby. He spreads his leg as he leans back on his hands, lets his knee knock against Robby’s. “But I will request that you wait until my shift is over before doing anything stupid.”
He doesn’t entirely appreciate Langdon turning the roles on him, but he laughs nonetheless.
“I promise.”
When he finally turns to look at him, Robby is reminded just how good sobriety looks on Langdon. His skin is a little more tan, a lot less waxy. No semi-permanent sheen of sweat. He doesn’t snap at the students as often (only the ones who deserve it). His eyes are sharper.
He turns them on him, now. Robby doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he’s staring.
It’s been almost a year since Santos’ discovery, a year since the shift from hell. It had taken time. And arguments – a lot of arguments – and board hearings and a hospital-issued sponsor, but Langdon had made it. He tries to keep the chips hidden, but Robby has seen them tucked away in the corner of his locker, has seen the way he’ll rub his thumb over the latest one when there’s an especially tough case.
He’s been the one to retrieve a patient’s meds from the APM when Langdon’s having a particularly hard day. Robby’s so fucking proud of him every time he asks.
They’re still staring at each other.
“It could have been you,” Robby hears himself saying, and flinches, dropping his gaze. “Shit, sorry-“
“No,” Langdon stops him. “You’re right.”
For as healthy as Langdon is now, as clean as he is, their relationship hasn’t seemed to recover to quite the same extent. Their easy working partnership, the comfortable conversations around Robby’s station and in the staff lounge, none of it has returned. Langdon doesn’t linger, the way he used to. He doesn’t push himself into Robby’s space and demand his attention. He does his job, keeps his nose down, and then he goes home to the bachelor’s apartment he’d found after the divorce.
(Robby hasn’t seen it, himself. He only heard about it from Dana’s whispered update and the ring missing from his finger.)
Robby misses it like a phantom limb, but there are some wounds that even he can’t heal.
He leans forward, eyes the drop off.
“Thank you,” Langdon’s voice is barely audible over the howling wind of the rooftop.
Robby turns to him. Blinks. “What?”
Langdon isn’t looking at him, but from this angle Robby can see the wry twist to his lips. “I said ‘thank you.’” He repeats. “Because you’re right. That could have been me in there if you hadn’t gotten me help.”
They’ve never addressed this, not since Langdon had turned his back and walked out of the board hearing. It feels bizarre to talk about it now, like he’d stepped through the stairwell’s threshold and into another world. Still, Robby manages to say: “Of course.”
What he means to say, is: “I’d do anything to keep you on this earth. Just to get you to look at me a little bit longer.”
When silences stretches again, Robby struggles with the urge to break it. He can’t hear Langdon’s breathing beside him, too quiet against the sounds of the city, but he imagines it anyway, glances over every few seconds just to see the reassuring rise and fall of his chest. His knee is still pressed against Robby’s.
“Robby?” He asks. Robby makes a noise to show that he’s listening. “I divorced Abby.”
He knows that. Of course he does. But why is he telling him this now?
He can’t look at him. He nods. “Yeah, I gathered.”
It must not have been the response he was looking for, because he lapses into silence. Robby just tries not to let himself fall victim to the urge to seek out those eyes of his again.
“My sponsor keeps telling me that now’s not a good time in my recovery to start up a new relationship.”
The non-sequitur spins his head around. Langdon’s watching him steadily, eyes earnest and patient. Apparently, it’s Robby’s turn to feel out of control here. His words fail him.
“But, this,” Langdon presses on, his voice low and steady. Between them, his hand finds Robby’s – Langdon breaks eye contact to watch his own finger trail over Robby’s knuckles, the touch feather-light and enough to send a shiver through Robby’s body. “Doesn’t really feel like a new relationship, does it?”
Robby’s dreaming. He has to be. There’s no way that he’s sitting up here on this roof, with Langdon, and Langdon is saying that- that-
Maybe he already jumped.
“Frank,” he forces himself to say around the numbness freezing him in place. “I need you to be very, very clear with me right now.” It’s cowardly, maybe, but he’s- he can’t risk a misunderstanding. Not with this.
Langdon nods like he was expecting that. He drops his hand, now covering Robby’s with his own, and looks out at the horizon again. “We didn’t divorce because of my addiction. I mean – not just my addiction. I guess we were heading there for a long time.”
Robby never would have imagined. Never would have guessed, not even in his wildest fantasies. They were so solid, so secure. He frowns. Langdon keeps talking.
“And I know you think I’ve been avoiding you because I’m angry. And at first I was, I was so fucking angry. I blamed you, I blamed-“ his voice cuts out for a moment, emotion overpowering his speech. “I blamed everyone except myself. And that wasn’t fair. But when I sobered up, got some help, I wasn’t angry anymore. Not with you.”
Robby doesn’t understand. If he’s not angry-
“I was afraid,” he supplies before Robby can ask. “I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to hide whatever was going on between us behind the drugs, once I sobered up. I wasn’t ready for that.”
It’s too much to hope. The tentative ball of heat in Robby’s chest feels like it’s going to swallow him whole. “And you’re ready now?”
“I don’t know,” he admits, and that raw honesty soothes over a crack in Robby’s chest that he hadn’t even realized was there. Langdon’s eyes are on him again. Robby wants to drown in them. “But seeing that guy- in there- it made me want to stop being a coward and find out.”
Their fingers are laced together now. Robby isn’t sure if that’s his own pulse or Langdon’s thundering through his palm.
“Frank…” he says, but there are no words. Not right now.
Now, there’s only the pull of liquid blue eyes, so bright and so captivating that they’ve kept Robby up at night for the better part of five years. So familiar to him he would know them anywhere. And now… now they’re trained on Robby’s lips.
There’s no way of knowing which of them finally closes the distance. All Robby knows is that the first press of Langdon’s lips against his own feels like breathing for the first time. He cups his cheek and feels Langdon’s cheek stretch with the force of his smile.
They have to pull away eventually, to pull in lungfuls of air. They’ll have to rise to their feet, trudge back down to the Pitt, pass off patients and instructions. They’ll have to trudge home – maybe together, maybe not. They’ll have to come back the next day. But, for now, Langdon is still looking at him, and Robby gets to look right back at him.