Chapter Text
Welcome to Trinity Santos’ Matchmaking Service!
New clients are always being considered, but as the premiere matchmaking service in Pittsburgh, the waitlist is long! Clients will be chosen by Trinity Santos, and not informed of their receipt of service until after the matchmaking has already been completed.
Trinity Santos will only take on one client at a time, and she is currently in the midst of a very impressive matchmaking project, the results of which could spell massive change to the Emergency Department of the local hospital, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre.
We thank you for your interest in this service and will be in contact should Ms Santos have successfully completed your matchmaking for her fee!
The plan came together after a girls night, she and Whitaker and Langdon all crushed together in her bed that was certainly not big enough for all three of them. But her apartment was cold and Langdon was a furnace and she would never want Whitaker to miss out on being spooned, so in the morning, when she woke up to the clingiest man alive, Frank Langdon, mostly on top of her and snoring softly in her ear, she made a plan.
Because unfortunately, in a turn of events that she could not have possibly foreseen this time a year ago when she was ratting him out for stealing meds from patients, she wanted only what was best for Frank Langdon.
And Mel King was the best.
The first thing Trinity did was put a bet down on it.
“Donnie,” she said, sidling up to him in the hall. “I hear there’s an ongoing bet about Mel and Langdon. That true?”
Donnie, who still believed Langdon to be dating Trinity, despite any confirmation of such news, eyed her carefully. “Who’s asking?”
“Me, obviously,” she retorted. “I wanna put down a bet.”
“That they’re not?” he asked. “It’s cheating to bet if you know the answer.”
She rolled her eyes and produced a few notes from her pocket. “Fifty on them being together by June.”
Donnie hesitantly took her money. “By June or in June? That’s different rates.”
“By June,” she confirmed, not one to undercut her own abilities.
Trinity figured three months was an adequate amount of time to set them up, but if she got there even faster, who wouldn’t be impressed?
FRANK LANGDON: THE MARCH MATCHMAKING ATTEMPT
He could tell Trinity was up to something, but what was anyone’s guess.
She’d had a pleased expression on her face post-girls night which never really faded. Nor did the mischievous gleam in her eye; the same one she got when she was about to say his actual first name, Francis, or reveal some longwinded prank she’d set up months before.
Langdon determined that it wouldn’t matter, because he would find out what she was up to eventually, and beyond her skills in reporting him to management, she was not much of a threat. Trinity Santos was like a kitten who thought she had claws. A housecat who thought she was a panther. A minor league nuisance who thought herself a major league menace.
And then she locked he and Mel in a cupboard.
“Uh.” Langdon twisted the doorhandle. “Santos?”
“Langdon?” her voice came from the other side of the door. The doorhandle rattled from her side. “The door won’t open!”
He tried again, failed, frowned back at Mel who was still diligently collecting the items she’d come into this storage cupboard for.
“Are you sure?” he called, though he couldn’t open it either. “I swore I heard the lock.”
“It locked itself?”
Oh, he knew that voice. She was playing dumb.
“Can you get Esme?” he asked anyway.
“Good idea!” she called back. “I’ll go get her!”
Langdon sighed, slumping back against the door.
“That’s really odd,” Mel said.
“You’re telling me,” he huffed.
“Hopefully Esme can get us out.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. The cupboard was small, kept basic supplies. There was a light overhead, so they weren’t in total darkness, but no windows. Notably, no drugs were kept in here – just bandages and suture kits to refill the various carts around the ward.
“You really think the door just locked itself?” he asked.
Mel paused, slid her collection of supplies onto the shelf. “I did,” she said, “but your tone is implying otherwise.”
“I think she locked us in here,” he told her.
Mel frowned. “Why would she do that?”
“It’s anyone’s guess.”
“Did you do something to annoy her?”
“Usually.”
Mel twisted her mouth to the side, considering. “Does she usually lock you in cupboards?”
Langdon bumped his head back against the door. “No,” he said. “This would be a first.”
He slid down the door until he was sat on the floor; watched as Mel took a place opposite him, back up against the shelves. Their feet were side by side, his then hers then his then hers. He knocked the toe of his shoe into her heel and she smiled faintly.
“We have patients,” she said.
“So I’m sure we won’t be in here long,” Langdon replied easily. “Besides, they’re all low priority.”
Occasionally, the ED had days where only a handful of major things happened. Sometimes, their days were spent with heartburn and colds and broken fingers. Today was one of those days. Even the march of the living dead in the morning had only resulted in two old men who had both died en route.
Langdon tried to wrack his brain for what he might’ve done to piss off Trinity to only the extent that her response would be to lock him in a room. Anything super minor and she would’ve just given him the cold shoulder, or call him Francis for a few hours. Anything super major and he would certainly know about it. She would’ve made it her life’s mission to make sure he knew about it.
If it were so bad that she was completely and totally pissed at him, she probably just would’ve asked to fuck him and get it over with.
They didn’t actually have sex anywhere near the frequency that they remembered that this was one of their joint coping mechanisms for dealing with anger (especially anger targeted towards each other), but it had been left on the table, open-ended. Like a thing they might come back to.
“I didn’t buy her a coffee this morning,” he thought aloud.
“You think that could be it?”
He hummed. “Maybe? But I didn’t get anyone a coffee. I was late getting out of the house.”
He had been late to work a lot since Abby’s accident. For almost three weeks he didn’t show up at all until the home care aide was fully in place and Tanner and Kasey were no longer crying about the thought of getting in a car and going to school. He still had to duck out around three to pick them up and drive them home, before coming back to finish his shift.
“But that wasn’t your fault,” Mel said. “I don’t think she’d blame you for that.”
He hummed, but he didn’t think so either, really. His kids were still kids; at five and three, they were fussy and picky and had little understanding of what it meant to be on time because neither of them could read a clock. He’d never had to do the school runs with consistency before; never had to sort and manage every part of their day and then make it to his job afterwards.
The learning curve was steep and he was too tired to learn at the rate he normally would.
“What about this morning?” he suggested. “She got put on chairs and asked if I would join her and I said no.”
“You hate chairs.”
“She hates chairs.”
“She didn’t ask you in a way that sounded genuine.”
Langdon considered this. Trinity had sounded like she was trying to buy his friendship. He sighed.
“I don’t know then. Maybe the lock’s really and truly broken.”
Mel shrugged. “How long until you think she’ll find Esme?”
“Maybe ten years. Maybe twenty.”
Mel hummed. “We’d probably starve to death by then.”
Langdon waved a hand. “It’s okay. You could eat my body if you want.”
“Oh, cannibalism?”
“Yeah.”
Mel considered this for a moment, head tilted to the side, eyes faintly roaming the chipped pale blue paint of the room. Langdon stopped himself from staring at her. He felt like he was always looking at her; to see her reactions, to watch her face roll through a series of expressions before landing on the one she’d present. He’d recently realised that every time someone told a joke, he looked to see if she found it funny before laughing.
He'd also realised that maybe she did the same thing, because he always found her looking back.
Mel decided, “I don’t think it’s worth eating you.”
“Oh, no?”
“You’re very skinny,” she said, and Langdon laughed, which made her do that wide smile like she was incredibly pleased to have caused it. “Not much meat.”
“Oh wow,” he said, putting a hand to his chest. “You wound me, King.”
“I would’ve thought the optimal person to eat in a cannibalism scenario is someone just above average in muscle, right? I think if you were too into exercising, you wouldn’t taste good either.”
“Oh, so you’d be the better one to eat?” he asked.
Mel hummed. “I mean, if only one of us were to survive, I’d want you to eat me, obviously.”
“Obviously,” he said, faint.
“You have the kids to look after,” she replied.
“You have Becca.”
“You are a more experienced doctor, therefore meaning you have the greatest good you could provide—”
“You have more years of learning to undertake, meaning that you would still have the two years of residency to help people. Those days are behind me – those lives have already been saved.”
Mel made a face, unconvinced. “You’re taller, which means you would pass along tall genes to help the future of the human race.”
Langdon spluttered out a laugh. “Eugenics?” he asked, incredulous. “Your argument is eugenics?”
Mel grinned at him. Langdon’s stomach swooped.
“Alright,” she said. “Maybe we wouldn’t have to keep only one of us alive, anyway. There are plenty of medical supplies in here. We could do one limb at a time and take turns. Legs first, obviously.”
“Of course.”
“My leg then yours then my leg then yours—”
“Why do you get to go first?”
“Why do you need to argue about everything?” she retorted.
The two of them smiled at each other, devolving into laughter. Langdon bounced his head back at the door.
“Hm, speaking of legs—”
“Nice segue.”
Mel grinned. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Becca’s got that community race thing this weekend. She wanted me to ask you if you’d like to come watch.”
Langdon slipped out his phone. “Let me check my calendar.”
He briefly scrolled through his notifications when they popped up – nurses in recovery chat discussing a book they’d all been reading, as it slowly devolved into a book club (Langdon had read the book at their behest; it was very good); four texts from Abby confirming on four separate occasions that she was fine, do not worry, this is just another text to confirm as much before you start thinking about it when you should be doing something else; and one text from Trinity, only minutes ago that said enjoy your time in there ;) I’ll come get you out in fifteen (which was curious, and confounding, and he couldn’t get distracted by that right now because he had to look at his calendar) – and then found the date.
“Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“I’m off,” he said. “You think it’s the kind of thing I could bring the kids to?”
Mel nodded. “It’s at the park down by the facility. They’re doing a whole afternoon fair with a bake sale and everything.”
“Sounds good,” he said with a nod. “Text me the details and we’ll be there.”
Mel’s smile was like sunshine. A metaphor he was hesitant to use for her, because it was the same one he’d used for Abby – but who could blame him if that was what he liked? He did not care for hair colour or hobbies or if they owned a bird fact-themed board game (Mel did; Abby did not), what Frank Langdon liked was a radiant smile like the joy couldn’t help but burst out. They always made his chest warm.
It was that, in the end, that distracted him from Trinity’s nefarious text, so much so that he’d forgotten he’d even seen it by the time Trinity unlocked the door, and Langdon stood, and she was on the other side waving the key.
“Esme was hard to find,” she said, “and the key even harder.”
He did not believe her for a second, but instead turned and held out his hands to Mel, who took them with only a little hesitation. He helped her up, let her leave the cupboard first, and then watched as she stopped, returned inside, and grabbed her collection of supplies from the shelf before going again.
When Langdon was back in the corridor, he frowned at Trinity.
“Are you really so annoyed I didn’t have time to get you a coffee this morning?”
Trinity’s face dropped, and her eyes rolled back, and she heaved out a sigh.
“You didn’t have any interesting conversations in there?” she asked.
Langdon raised an eyebrow, shrugged. “We talked about who would be the better victim of cannibalism if we starved to death in there.”
“Fucking hell,” she said. “You’re useless.”
Langdon just watched her stomp away.
FRANK LANGDON: THE MARCH COMMUNITY RACE
Becca did not win, but she was grinning and giggling afterwards anyway. Probably because her arch nemesis, Marla, didn’t win either, and if she had they would be dealing with a totally different Becca. Instead, Becca was up for fair games and raffles, following Tanner and Kasey with impressive speed as they ran around the park, looking at all the stands.
Langdon, who had their allowance in his pocket and a difficulty saying no to them, watched with amusement as they looked at toys and books and cakes and all the different games they could play. He and Mel wandered around behind them, the early spring not as cold as it once was, but the layers still packed on. They talked idly, laughed at the kids, stopped to speak to facility staff who recognised Mel, or other family members Mel recognised.
Tanner and Kasey were bad at Hook A Duck, at Cornhole, at the incredibly obscure Whack A Rat game, but Becca was like some kind of master.
“I think she must’ve practised,” Mel said to him softly, pressing up on her tiptoes as he leant down to hear. “All the games have been in the facility for the last week or so.”
Becca retrieved her third large toy of the fair. Langdon had been given one of them to hold; Mel the other. The kids had each won small bears and monkeys the size of their palms. They didn’t even seem annoyed that they couldn’t win the big things like Becca; just amazed at her seemingly innate talent.
At the tombola, it was Tanner’s time to shine. Langdon’s son had incredible luck on tombolas and raffles for seemingly no reason. As always, he won two bottles of wine and a DVD of National Treasure. Langdon laughed with the old lady behind the stand, took the prizes, resorted to putting them in Mel’s backpack because he couldn’t really hold anything else.
After a while, Mel and Langdon found a spot in the grass to hang out with all the prizes. They could see the bouncy castle where the kids were playing, and the bake stall where Becca was chatting with her friends.
Mel, propped up by her hands behind her in the grass, tipped her head back. A giant dolphin plushie was sat on her lap, looking at Langdon. Almost judging him for studying the curve of her nose, the splay of her eyelashes when she closed her eyes.
He heard a squeal and looked away. Kasey was laughing on the bouncy castle; his heartrate slowed again.
“This was fun,” he said after a moment. “Thanks for inviting us.”
Mel hummed lightly. “Becca invited you.”
“Well, that implies you didn’t want us here.”
Mel opened her eyes, straightening immediately. “Oh, no, not at all,” she rushed. “I would never—oh. Joke?”
“Joke.”
She sighed, but there was a smile.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No, no. I’ll catch it next time. You’re having fun, though?”
Langdon nodded. He dragged his gaze from her to the kids. “More fun than we’ve had in a while,” he admitted.
Mel’s arm nudged against his. He always noticed that for someone so touch averse around everyone else, she was always doing that; small brushes. Short, soft.
“Everything going alright at home?”
“Eh.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just—I don’t know. It’s been good. Being at home with them, seeing them every day. Which sucks, because the only reason it happened was because Abby got hurt. And I’m not going to be needed there for much longer.”
“You’re moving back out?”
“Can’t stay with Abby forever. It’s weird. I think we’re both making each other a little sad again. And neither of us want that, you know?”
Mel frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
Langdon blew out a breath. “How do I explain it? Well—the insurance money from the crash is due next week. Abby’s already been sent the number and it’s enough to temporarily hire a nanny to look after the kids until she’s back on her feet. I told her I could handle it, but well—I haven’t totally been handling it. You’ve seen.”
“I think you’re doing really well,” Mel said. “Your situation has been rough.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing the best I could be. I’m tired every day at work, the house becomes a mess in two seconds flat, Abby is still having to look after the kids between three and seven, when she can’t even get out of her chair by herself, and the home care aide is only paid to look after her, so doesn’t do much more than exactly that. So, she wants a nanny or a babysitter or something to fill in the gaps I can’t cover. I have them going to breakfast club before school every single day because I have to be at the hospital for seven AM. They’re exhausted, I’m exhausted—”
“Sounds like maybe you do need the help.”
He sighed. “Yeah, but I don’t want it, you know? And then there’s the whole we’re making each other sad thing. But that’s probably just because we’re sleeping in the same bed but we’re divorced and we still love each other but there’s a very firm boundary there now, so all we’re really doing is hurting ourselves every single night.”
Mel seemed to think about this point for a while.
“I think I’m confused,” she said. “That sounds really hard to deal with – I don’t—why are you sleeping in the same bed?”
“Because she needs to be in a bed for her injuries and if I slept on the sofa my back seizes and then I can’t do anything. So we both just—agreed.”
Mel seemed very concerned about this, but at that moment, Becca called over, “Langdon! Can you help carry this please!” and he pushed himself up, calling back, “Sure thing, Bec!” and so totally missed it when Mel asked, “Why are you sleeping in the same bed as your ex-wife when you’re dating Santos?”
By the time he came back, he was on a totally different topic, and she didn’t ask the question again.
TRINITY SANTOS: MARCH STATUS REPORT
“Ladies and gentlemen of the board,” she said, and Whitaker, the only person on the sofa in their apartment, looked around as if he wasn’t supposed to be alone. “In March, we started Operation: Kingdon, a nice little portmanteau I worked up of King and Langdon.”
“I actually figured that out by myself,” Whitaker commented.
Trinity lifted a hand, silencing him. “No questions until after the feature presentation.”
She paced back and forth in front of the TV, which showed a picture of Mel and Langdon from Mel’s Instagram: the two of them laden with plushies and prizes from a fair they seemingly attended together without Trinity’s knowledge.
“In Part One of this Operation, we locked them in a cupboard. While in there, they discussed who would get cannibalised first. While this seemed to be a failed mission, they did then attend a fair together that weekend. One could assume, Operation: Kingdon led to this major advancement of their relationship.”
Whitaker pulled a face.
“What, Huckleberry?”
“The two could have nothing to do with each other,” he said. “They might’ve planned to go to the fair before getting locked in a cupboard together. Also, the other photos in the post clearly show that they went with their families, and don’t they hang out all the time? How is this an advancement?”
Trinity glared at him. Whitaker looked placidly back.
She huffed. “End of status report. Would it kill you to play along?”