Archive of Our Own

~I~

Frank is no stranger to the hectic meal schedules of all emergency room doctors. There is rarely time for more than one sit-down meal, even on fifteen-hour, twenty-hour, twenty-four hour shifts. Mostly, they eat on the fly. Protein bars stuffed into their mouths while they chart, yogurt from those handy little pouches made for kids, juiceboxes for a quick blood sugar spike. 

It’s something you just have to get used to, but everyone adapts eventually. He’s seen more than one med student faint midway through the day because they haven’t yet learned how to carve out pockets of time for snacks.

Shit, when Frank first started at the Pitt, he’d lost ten pounds. And he’d been pretty scrawny back then. Barely had ten pounds to lose in the first place. It’s all that constant motion, compounded by the inability to actually sit down and eat, most days. 

Sometimes he thinks he and his coworkers have the constitution of elite athletes, but anytime he brings it up to anyone, they tell him he’s being dramatic, or big-headed, or both. McKay said he’d once again proven he moves through the world with the audacity of a white man. 

Probably fair.

But after that initial rocky patch at the start of his time at PTMC, he’d learned to build food into his routine so that he could stop walking around like a skeletal Victorian child. He learned to read his own body, figure out what hunger felt like before the typical rumbling stomach. 

Lightheaded? Drink a juicebox. Shaky hands? Have a protein bar. Snapping at interns more than usual because of the pain in his lower back? Take some pills.

Clearly, that hadn’t worked out so well for him. 

Fresh out of rehab, with a ten-month suspension from the Pitt stretching out in front of him, Frank re-learns what it feels like to take his time with a meal. 

It’s nice to take his time eating something. To concentrate on the texture of the food, the flavours on his tongue. A good distraction from the echoing sound of Abby’s wedding ring sliding across the kitchen table after she’d ripped it off her finger. Meant he didn’t have to think about Tanner’s confused face when he asked why aren’t you living with us anymore, Daddy? Took away all the ways he’d managed to blow up what had once been a very good life.

His sponsor said it was good to have a hobby, and Frank liked to keep busy. It was why he did so well in emergency medicine, but with that decidedly not happening right now, he’s had to turn to other methods. 

Physical therapy is a nice option, though there are only so many stretches a guy can do before he keels over from boredom. But at least it provides a way for him to alleviate some of that aching pain in his back. It was hard once he stopped dulling it with drugs and realised he’d have to live with that feeling forever. He’d never be able to pick up his kids again without thinking about how the action might render him immobile on a couch for the next twenty-four hours. 

Just one more way Frank Langdon had fucked everything up.

If he’d not gone and gotten addicted to benzos, he’d still be able to take regular painkillers without worrying that the sensation of a pill dissolving into his tongue would send him into a rabid, drug-induced psychosis. 

So aside from physical therapy, he has collected a thousand hobbies to fill up his time and distract him from the clusterfuck that is his new life. He reads books. Sometimes they are pretentious philosophical shit when he’s feeling like an asshole, sometimes it’s sci-fi if he wants to turn his brain off. Mostly it’s medical journals. They’re his desperate attempt to feel like he isn’t losing crucial skills,  his livelihood,  with every second that he doesn’t spend in the ER. 

He starts jogging, even though he hates it. Walking his dog, Princess Shower Curtain, is a much better form of exercise in his opinion. It’s an odd name for a dog, he knows, but Penny and Tanner had spent fifteen minutes bickering over whether the puppy should be named Princess or Shower Curtain. Eventually, he and Abby had suggested they just combine the two. Now, Princess Shower Curtain reigns supreme over Frank’s newly rented townhouse. It has a respectably-sized backyard for her to run around in, and Abby doesn’t need to see the second-to-last nail in the coffin of their marriage. 

Safe to say, Dana had been right. Impulsively purchasing a dog for his overburdened wife had been a poor choice, and Frank had been too wrapped up in his own shit to notice. By the time he got sober long enough to pull his head out of his ass, Abby had given up on him. 

It sounded bitter when he put it like that. Frank would like to make it known that he is not bitter. Abby did what was best for her, and it was Frank’s fault that staying married to him wasn’t what was best for her.

Really, she was nicer about the whole thing than she needed to be. He was still allowed to see his children, for one. He and Abby–once they got past the initial screaming/crying/yelling phase of separation–settled into a fairly comfortable co-parenting relationship. Honestly, sometimes he felt closer to her now, as friends, than he ever had in the last few years of their marriage.

Upon reflection, that was probably indicative of the state of things before their marriage ended. That whole period of his life reminds Frank of that story with the frog in the pot. It starts with, predictably, a frog in a pot. The pot is filled with room-temperature water, but it’s sitting on a stovetop, so the water is warming up. Because the water is heating so slowly, the frog doesn’t realise until it’s being boiled alive.

Not that being married to Abby was like being boiled alive. It’s just…the blissful, whirlwind romance that had carried them up the aisle in their late twenties dissipated eventually. It left him feeling like they’d turned into stage actors, playing caricatures of themselves. He was a funny and hard-working doctor. Mildly incompetent in the home because he was barely there in the first place due to the demands of the ER. She was always giving something of herself to him or the kids because there was no one else around to do it. Always resented him a little for not being around as much as she needed him to be, even though she liked the aesthetic of having a doctor for a husband. 

It was never gonna last, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt when it ended.

So Frank walks Princess Shower Curtain, and he learns to cook. He starts off with the basics. Fried rice, pasta, sausages on the grill. Then he levels things up. He has a sourdough starter named En-dough-crine that he keeps in the fridge and feeds weekly. He makes sauces from ingredients instead of tipping them straight from a jar into a pan. 

He doesn’t know pesto has nuts in it until he makes pesto pasta one day. 

The doctor part of his brain wonders how many people with nut allergies have unwittingly eaten pesto and gone into anaphylactic shock. Was the nut content in pesto public knowledge? Surely he would have known if it was.

Abby’s furious that he didn’t learn to cook until after they were separated (soon to be divorced, but that process takes longer than either of them expected). Well, she’s furious until she eats a bite of the chicken tikka masala he’s made for their Sunday family dinner, and then she just nods in quiet satisfaction. 

Quiet pride blooms in his chest. He feels like he’s finally rebuilding everything he blew apart. All the pieces go in different places now, but it’s all coming together to make something he can call a life again.

Five months into the Pitt suspension, he’s walking Princess Shower Curtain down the main street of the small collection of shops near his house. There’s this one cafe that does puppycinos, and Princess Shower Curtain tugs on her leash every day in the hopes that she will get one. She’s a spoiled brat, and the workers there treat her like royalty. Frank would find it ridiculous if he weren’t aware that Princess Shower Curtain had him wrapped around her paw. Hell, he cedes ninety per cent of his bed to her every night. 

Sighing, Frank walks into the coffee shop with Princess Shower Curtain trotting triumphantly alongside him. She’s so damn smug. 

The barista, a young twenty-something kid that Frank recognises but can’t name, squeals in delight at the sight of the dog. Princess Shower Curtain’s tail ticks up to helicopter blade levels of speed in response.

“One puppycino for her Highness, I take it? Anything for you?”

Frank’s halfway through shaking his head when a blueberry slice in the cabinet catches his eye. “Actually, yes. Can I have one of them, please.” He points at the slice and winces when he leaves a fingerprint on the glass. Hopefully, the barista is too occupied by Princess Shower Curtain’s baby browns to notice. “And, uh, a chorizo and manchego quiche.”

He tacks on the second thing because he feels bad about the smudge and because he’s a sucker for quiche. This is why he shouldn’t enter cafes. They always get him with their cabinet food. 

“Would you like a drink with that, sir?”

Why the hell not? In for a penny, in for a pound. “Yeah, just a black coffee, thanks.”

“Have here or takeaway?”

“Have here.” Princess Shower Curtain would go ballistic if he made her walk anywhere else before she had her puppycino. Besides, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to carry everything he’d ordered by himself anyway.

The barista gives him his table number, and he takes it with a smile and a nod. Princess Shower Curtain gets a pat on the head as Frank spins around, surveying the inside seating. Normally, he sits outside with the dog because even though this place is pet-friendly, he feels weird about having her inside other people’s establishments, where she could potentially make a mess. But they’re right on the tail end of winter, and it’s early enough in the morning to still be quite cold, so he wouldn’t mind sitting inside where the heaters are pumping. 

That’s when he sees her. 

She’s nestled in the corner of the cafe, one hand propped against her cheek and the other holding a book. He can’t quite read the title from here, but the cover is hot pink. There’s a sheet of golden hair obscuring half her face, but he’d know the shape of her anywhere. Her glasses are slipping down the bridge of her nose, and he watches as she uses one finger to push them back up. 

Dr. Melissa King.

Stupidly, cowardly, Frank’s first instinct is to run away. To leave this coffee shop and never come back, lest he be reminded of the worst day of his life before he’s ready to face it. 

Frank recently learned, though, that his instincts often represent the part of him that he’s actively trying to change. Besides, Mel was probably the best part of that worst day, and Princess Shower Curtain would probably suffocate him in his sleep if he made her leave without her puppycino. 

He takes a breath and presses each finger of his left hand against his thumb in quick succession. He does it three times before he feels brave enough to walk over there and say, “Mel King, long time no see.”

She jerks up, clearly startled. It’s only for a second before she meets his eyes and her lips peel into a blinding grin. “Dr. Langdon!” She jumps up, and her hip bumps the table hard enough to jostle the half-full chai latte sitting there. A little bit of the liquid sloshes over the lip of the mug and onto the saucer. 

“Please, Mel, we’re not at work. Call me Frank.”

She blushes a little and nods. They stand there awkwardly for a second, and Frank briefly debates whether he should let her get back to her book, which is lying face down and despondent on the table, before she plops back down and says, “would you like to sit with me?”

His knees go weak with relief, and he sinks into the unoccupied chair at her table. “Yes, thanks.” He puts down the table number the barista gave him and ties Princess Shower Curtain’s leash around the arm of his chair so he’ll have both hands free to eat.

Princess Shower Curtain snuffles at Mel’s knee from beneath the table, and Mel smiles again in that blinding way. “Oh, and who is this?”

“This is my dog, Princess Shower Curtain.”

Mel giggles. “What a unique name.”

“My kids picked it. Tanner and Penny. They’re very unique themselves.”

“Well, I like it. It gives her personality.”

“She’s got plenty of that all by herself. She’s the most spoiled creature on the planet.”

“I’m sure she gets the treatment she deserves, don’t you, baby?” Mel coos, rubbing the magic spot behind Princess Shower Curtain’s ear that makes her melt into a puddle of curly fur. 

“I didn’t know you lived around here,” Frank says.

“I think it would be weird if you knew where I live, given we met five months ago for fifteen hours.”

Frank raises a brow. “Been counting, have we?”

Mel blushes again, and he feels like an asshole for making it happen, but he swears it’s the prettiest colour he’s seen in a long while. Sometimes, when you work in a place like the Pitt for too long, you can forget all the beauty the human body is capable of. A lot of the time, it’s just blood and death, sweat and tears. It’s good to remind himself of the colour a pretty girl’s cheeks turn when she blushes. 

“It was a fairly memorable shift. My first one at the Pitt, and there was an MCI.”

Frank winces. Now he feels like a mega asshole. “Yeah, it was pretty rough.”

They lapse into silence, and Frank is about to make a poorly thought-out joke about the chances of an MCI and being caught out for his drug addiction happening on the same day. Luckily, he is saved by the barista bringing over his order.

“Thank you,” he says, smiling at the kid. He puts the puppycino down on the floor for Princess Shower Curtain and she laps daintily at the frothed milk. 

“What did you get?” Mel asks.

“Blueberry slice, chorizo and some-kind-of-cheese quiche, coffee. Do you want to try some? I got a little carried away.” 

Mel wrinkles her nose at the coffee but looks vaguely intrigued by the food, so he busies himself cutting the slice and the quiche up. He puts one half of each on a plate for her and pushes it across the table, carefully avoiding the chai latte and the book. 

“Thank you,” she says. “I always just get a drink, but I’ve been meaning to try the food for ages.”

“How often do you come here?”

“Whenever I have a day off and Becca’s at the centre. I love this place, but I can’t bring her here cause then she’ll get upset that we don’t have a dog and I’ll have to spend the next fortnight explaining that we don’t have the enough space for one. It’s not worth the hassle.”

Frank nods. It makes sense. “Is she enjoying the centre?”

“God, she loves it. It’s been great for her, and for me, too, I think. It’s given both of us a little bit of independence, which I know we needed. She’s making friends, and I’m able to make a bit of time for myself. It’s good, but a little scary.”

Frank is pleased to hear it. Mel’s right in that they’ve only known each other for about twelve hours, but the amount that he knows about Becca already is a testament to how important Becca is to Mel. 

“How’s Abby and the kids?”

Frank winces and glances down at his left hand. It’s wrapped around his coffee mug, and his lack of a wedding ring is painfully obvious. 

Mel’s eyes widen as she follows his gaze. “Oh.”

“My life has kind of…imploded since you last saw me.”

Mel nods slowly, taking a sip of her chai latte. It had to be cold by now, but that didn’t seem to faze her. “I assumed something was wrong when you didn’t come back. Robby’s just been saying you’re on leave, but…well, we work at a rumour mill. Princess said you killed a patient and run off to a non-extradition country, Shen said you had left to follow your true passion for performing on Broadway, and Perlah said you’d quit. Exciting stuff.”

Frank almost has to laugh. Of course, Princess and Perlah were saying crazy shit. And Shen had always been way too willing to gossip with those two. “Well, the real reason is more depressing than exciting.”

“Oh, I don’t want to pry.”

“No, I think…I think I’d like to practice saying it out loud. Everyone I speak to right now already knows, but when I come back–and I will come back–I’ll need to tell people. Apologise. It’s part of the process.”

“Okay,” Mel says, and he thinks he sees a glimmer of understanding in her eyes when he talks about the process.

“Geez, it’s hard though.” He huffs and runs his hands through his hair. He’s said this to himself every morning in the mirror right after he’s shaved and brushed his teeth, but it still feels like something he’s trying to settle into. A new skin he’s got to put on every day. “Uh, I was in rehab for an addiction to benzos. Robby caught me stealing drugs from patients. It is the worst thing I have ever done, and I’ve let a lot of people down because of it. I’m sorry, Mel, and I understand if you want to, um, run very far away or tell everyone at the Pitt the real reason I’m gone. But I’m sorry for letting you down.”

Her voice is gentle when she says, “you never let me down.”

Frank lets out a shaky breath and offers her half a smile. “I’m not sure how true that is, but thank you.”

“No, I mean honestly, you were probably the best part of that first day. Everything was so…overwhelming and scary. You made it better.” She says it like it’s simple, like it’s just a fact of the universe. Frank made her day better.

Frank, having only made things worse for lots of people for a very long time, clings to that like a life raft. 

They sit in the cafe for much longer than either of them usually would. Long after their mugs are drained, and the halves of blueberry slice and quiche have been reduced to crumbs.

Mel recounts her coolest cases from the Pitt, and Frank listens, enraptured. It feels like his brain is soaking up everything she says, desperate for a hit of the adrenaline that rushes through him when he steps onto the floor. Adrenaline junkie, Collins had called him on that last day. But that was true of everyone in the ER, otherwise why the hell would they be there?

Frank tells Mel about his kids, about Princess Shower Curtain, about co-parenting with Abby. Mel is a great listener. She laughs at all the feeble jokes Frank attempts, even if he has to clarify sometimes what is and is not a joke. She asks questions about Tanner’s soccer team and Penny’s new tricycle and En-dough-crine’s feeding schedule.

She tells him when her next day off is scheduled, and says, I’ll be here. 

He grins and says, me too, then. 

They exchange phone numbers and, as he leaves, she sends him a dog emoji. Frank feels warm despite the lingering chill in the air. 

~II~

Frank’s first day back at the Pitt is not when Mel thought it would be. Two weeks earlier, he’d told her the date the HR team had sent through, and it wasn’t the fourth of July. 

That’s why she’s so surprised to see him standing a little nervously in the middle of the Pitt. It’s also why her reaction is loud and probably overzealous.

“Dr. Langdon!” she practically squeals, leaping over to him and clutching his arm briefly. She feels the solid muscle of his bicep beneath her fingers before she lets go. “Sorry,” she murmurs, soft enough that only he would hear. 

He smiles at her, mouth opening to say something, before Shen butts in to yell, “sold to Dr. Langdon!”

Mel is getting really sick of John Shen. 

But she’s glad Frank’s here. Well, Dr. Langdon, because they’re at work and she’s a professional. She’s really glad Dr. Langdon is here, even if she hadn’t had time to mentally prepare herself for the return of the hottest, kindest man she knows. She’d been too distracted by the threat of the deposition. 

She’d already ranted and raved about the deposition to Frank last week, but the boiling anger she’d felt then had simmered over into a congealed, sticky lump of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Every minute, she glances at the clock, knowing there are lawyers upstairs preparing to strip away her credibility, the fragile confidence she’s built for herself in this ER over the last ten months. 

So yeah, she’s glad the kind, hot guy she’d been forming a friendship with over cups of coffee had returned today. Frank makes her feel a little safer, a little calmer, even though he’s a little shaky himself today.

After Mel gets pushed over by that guy, after the cyber attack, Becca comes in with a UTI, and after the deposition, she’s having a pretty bad day. Then, Frank comes back down from the roof with Robby, and he looks like he’d had his intestines pulled from his body. She’s not the only one having a bad day, then. Mel finds him in the breakroom. 

He still looks pretty bad. Miserable, even. 

“Hey,” she says, pulling out the chair across from him and sliding into it. “You okay?” 

He fiddles with the NA bracelet on his wrist. “I’m not sure I should have come back today. I don’t feel ready.”

“Mm, were you ever going to feel ready?”

He huffs at that. “Probably not.”

“That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”

“Kelly Clarkson,” he says, nodding sagely. He’d already made the mistake of attributing that quote to Nietzsche the last time she’d said it. The fact that he remembered made her feel a little giddy. Was this another inside thing, like Captain Scurvy?

Mel had never had many friends, never had many inside things with people other than Becca. It was nice, and that giddy feeling intensified.

“Have you eaten today?” Frank asks.

She shakes her head. The sticky anxiety had made her feel nauseous all day. She’d skipped breakfast, which wasn’t unusual for her, even though Frank had started getting on her case about it. She wasn’t used to someone watching out for her well-being, and it often caught her off guard when he asked about it. “But I’ve got some carrot sticks in the fridge and half a packet of Hi-Chew in my pocket.”

“Great, I’ve got a protein bar. If we pool our resources, we’ll hit all the major food groups.” 

“You’re a doctor, you should know that’s not true.”

“Joke, Mel.”

“Ah,” she says. Then she laughs, because the giddy feeling from before still hasn’t really faded away, and she feels it all bubbling inside her. 

“So Becca’s all squared away now? You guys good?” 

Frank might be the only person in Mel’s life who regularly asks about Becca, and though this was his first time meeting her, he’d handled it so well that Mel would’ve thought it was his hundredth. “Um, yeah. As good as it can get, you know, given everything. I’m sorry you had to get all tangled up in our weird drama.”

“I liked it. Not that you guys were upset, of course, but I liked meeting Becca, and I liked helping you both.”

“Well, thank you,” she says, and it’s awkward because Mel is awkward about most things. She gets up and grabs her container of carrot sticks from the fridge before sitting back down. The container ends up between the two of them, next to the half-eaten Hi-Chews from her pocket. Frank pulls out a crumpled protein bar and rips it open. He splits it into two uneven halves and gives her the bigger one. It’s something with oats and chocolate.

“What’s your favourite childhood memory?” Frank asks, and Mel startles.

“Oh, I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“Cause I was thinking about those carrots and how orange they are. Then I thought about my sister because orange is her favourite colour, and then I thought about how she and I used to go swimming in the creek near my house in the summertime. That’s probably one of my best memories, I use it when shit gets dark in here. So now I want to know what your favourite childhood memory is.”

She loves how ADHD his brain is, and how uninhibited it makes him at times. “Oh, well. I had a sandpit in my backyard that I really enjoyed playing in. Really, it was just a hole my dad dug in the ground, but the soil was sandy because we lived so close to the beach, so it worked.”

“I didn’t know you lived near the beach.”

“Yeah. Not like, right next to it, that’s where all the rich people put their holiday homes. But close enough that when the wind blew the right way I could smell the salt on the breeze.”

“That’s majestic as fuck,” Frank says as he crunches into a carrot stick. “Do you miss it? Not much ocean in Pittsburgh.”

Mel shrugs, taking a bite of her own carrot stick. “I never actually liked being at the beach all that much. I liked being in the sandpit because I was dry, but I hated having to go straight from the water onto the sand because then it would stick all over me.”

“Huh. I’ve only seen the beach a few times. The Allegheny’s pretty enough for me as long as I don’t have to go in it.”

“The Allegheny smells bad. That’s one thing I like about the beach. It never smells bad.” 

“One of the times I went there was a bunch of dead fish washed up on the sand. It smelled really bad then.”

“That’s…concerning,” Mel says, but she’s laughing. Frank looks pleased with himself.

“Oi, lovebirds. We need you on the floor, not in here nibbling on carrot sticks.”

That’s a new voice, and Mel turns around in her chair to see Dana leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed across her chest, looking unimpressed. Dana always looks unimpressed, though. In truth, Mel is a little afraid of her despite the gruff kindness the woman shows to patients and staff alike. 

“Aw c’mon, Dana. We’re entitled to our fifteen-minute break!”

“Shove it, Langdon, you just had ten months off. If I don’t see the two of you working on a patient in the next two minutes, I’m gonna go ballistic.”

With that, she storms off. Dana was normally a little more sensitive, but Mel supposes she and Frank aren’t the only two around here capable of having a bad day. Just look at Robby. The man was clearly seconds away from causing himself grievous bodily harm. Not that Mel was going to say anything. She’d leave that to people like McKay, or Dana, or Frank. People Robby trusts as more than a solid but often too-sensitive resident. 

With a heaving sigh, Frank pushes himself up onto his feet. “One more carrot stick for the road,” he says, grabbing the last one from the little ziploc baggy Mel had put them in this morning. He bites it in half and offers the other end to her.

She grabs it and crunches down. She doesn’t think about the shape of his lips or the taste of his saliva in her mouth, because that would be a totally unprofessional, totally weird thing to think about her coworker.

Although it had long ago been established that Mel was a weird person, so maybe she did think about it after all.

~III~

Frank has a ginormous fucking crush on Mel King, and it’s a ginormous fucking problem because it seems that everyone in his life has noticed except Mel.

It’s Mohan who corners him first. They’re in the break room at three in the morning because Mohan has mostly switched to the night shift these days, and Frank’s covering Ellis’ ass while she goes on a well-deserved weekend trip with her girlfriend. 

She’s got a mug of something hot in her hands as she leans against the counter. 

“What’s that?” Frank asks.

“Peppermint tea,” she replies. 

“Oh, Mel likes peppermint tea.” It’s an offhanded comment. He knows Mohan is friends with Mel, and he knows Mel likes peppermint tea. He hadn’t thought much about it past making that connection.

“Jesus Christ, Langdon. When are you gonna ask her out?”

Frank just…stops. His brain ceases all functionality, and his limbs lock up. Is he having a stroke?

“I’ve had to watch you moon after her for six months, Frank. Ever since you got back.” The use of his first name startles him. “It’s getting indecent.”

“I agree,” Abbot chimes in and–what the fuck? When did he even get here?

Then it’s McKay and Dana. Their approach is a little more subtle. Dana had decided there was something between him and Mel on his very first day back, when she’d called them lovebirds. That word had echoed in his head for the rest of the shift, and for several days after. 

Up until that point, he hadn’t really thought about the relationship he had with Mel. Now, it’s all he can think about. She is all he can think about. And it’s all Dana’s fault.

Both she and McKay orchestrate situations where he and Mel have to work on patients together. In Dana’s case, Frank knows it’s at least a little bit because he and Mel are a good team. Certainly one of the more efficient pairings on the day shift. 

He’d thought it’d been like that with McKay, too. That’s until she asks him to sub in for her on a CVC insertion with Mel in Trauma One.

“Don’t you know how to do one of those?” he says, because he’d watched her do a perfect one last week.

“Just do it, Langdon.” Then she winks in an exaggerated, almost painful way. Suddenly, Frank understands what is happening.

But the real wake-up call is when Santos slides her wheely stool up to him as he’s charting. She looks like she’s preparing for battle. Frank’s surprised she’s not wearing war paint striped across her cheeks with the way she grits her teeth. 

“Uh, can I help you?” he asks.

“Yes, Langdon. You can help me.” 

“Oh, okay then. What do you need?”

“I need you to take Mel on a date. Like soon.”

And Frank might have frozen up if Mohan hadn’t already tried this tactic on him. He was ready this time. “Oh, Mel and I are just-”

“I swear to God, if you say friends right now I will kill you and then dance on your corpse. You are the least friendly friends I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m sorry we don’t fulfil whatever your twisted definition of friendship is, Santos, but that’s just the truth.”

“Listen here, Langdon,” Santos growls, and she scoots a little closer on her wheely stool. Frank hates to admit that he feels a little intimidated. “I know what friendship looks like. It looks like the weekly karaoke sessions that Mel and I do. It looks like the Lucky Charms cereal box Dennis buys me when it’s his turn to do the grocery shopping. It doesn’t look like wearing a spare hair tie on your wrist every single day in the hope that Mel will ask you for one, or looking at her with your freakish eyes anytime you can, or asking if she’s okay two hundred times a day, or carrying around an extra protein bar in your pocket all fucking day because you know she doesn’t eat enough, or-”

“Okay, okay, Jesus Christ. I get it.”

And he does. Get it, that is. Because while Frank has always been very good at ignoring his thoughts and kind of just doing whatever feels best in any given situation, he is also a man of science at the end of the day.

When multiple people come to the same conclusion from the same data set…well, that right there is cross-verified data analysis if he’s ever seen it. And who is he to argue with a well-presented, cross-verified data analysis?

So that’s how Frank comes to realise he has a ginormous fucking crush on Mel King. He’s only the second-to-last person in the Pitt to pick up on it, which would be embarrassing if the last person wasn’t Mel King herself. Now it’s just unfortunate. 

He knows he has to tell her, because he can’t keep living like this. Can’t keep staring at her face when she’s not looking or finding a thousand flimsy excuses to touch her in a thousand small ways. He wants to stare at her face while she is looking and touch her for no reason and every reason. 

But he rushed his romance with Abby, and the good thing about having an ex-wife is that she’s pretty vocal about what went wrong the first time around. He knows he wants, this time around, to take his time. To just appreciate existing around her first, before he tries to shake everything up. 

So maybe their coworkers just have to fucking deal with a little pining in the workplace. It keeps things interesting, at least. That’s what he thinks anytime Santos makes pointed eye contact with him and taps at her wrist like she’s checking a watch. 

He’s very content with that decision, too, until Mohan–who’s working a rare day shift due to a fuck up from scheduling–enters Central Seven where he’s inspecting a little boy’s definitely-fractured wrist. 

He can tell something is wrong with her immediately because she’s got a nervous look about her that’s so different from the calm energy she usually has. That energy is part of the reason people on day shift call her Slo-Mo–which is, unfortunately, as creative as it is mean–but Frank’s always thought that her patient satisfaction scores speak for themselves. 

“Dr. Langdon, can I speak with you outside for a sec?”

“Um, sure. Hang tight, Hector. I’ll make sure someone’s in here to take care of you again soon.”

Hector nods, happy to keep watching the YouTube video he’s got pulled up on his iPad, but Hector’s dad huffs unhappily. 

Once they’re outside the room, Frank turns to Mohan. “What’s wrong?” Because something is clearly wrong. 

“Um, did you see the trauma that came in like forty minutes ago?”

“Uh, yeah, I think. MVC? Family of four?”

Mohan nods. “Mum, dad, twin girls.”

Already, there’s a pit forming in Frank’s stomach.

“Shit. Mel was on that wasn’t she?”

It’s well-known that everyone in the Pitt has cases that hit a little harder than others. Santos has her child abuse thing, Frank himself struggles with drug overdoses and kids, and Mohan has recently developed an issue with under-resourced families after the Orlando Diaz incident. It was a fact of life in the ER, a by-product of being human. Normally, they stayed aware of everyone’s hang-ups and tried to assign cases accordingly.

However, chaos and urgency were also facts of life in the ER. Sometimes doctors had to treat patients who hit a little too close to home. Mel didn’t deal well with orphans or sisters. “Did everyone make it?”

Mohan bit her lip, shook her head. “No. The parents were DOA. One of the girls is mostly fine, but the other one had a TBI and died on the table.”

“Where is Mel?” Frank isn’t stupid. Mohan wouldn’t be here, telling him this, if Mel were still flitting about the floor like she normally did. 

“We…don’t know? She was working on the TBI with me and Robby. As soon as Robby called it I looked over to check on her and she was gone.”

Frank had made his peace with taking whatever Mel would give him, with forcing his coworkers to watch him fawn over her for however long it took for him to grow a pair of balls. Because he was very chill and calm like that. But in the moment after Mohan tells him Mel’s alone somewhere in PTMC, likely freaking the fuck out, all he can think is that he will move heaven and Earth to find her.

Not a very chill mindset, but Frank doesn’t care.

“Okay, thanks for telling me. I’ll find her. Can you take care of Hector?”

Mohan nods, reaches out and squeezes his arm. “Robby says you guys can leave early once you find her.”

Frank pauses at that. “He does?”

“Robby’s a massive dick but he’s not a monster, Frank. Our shift ends in half an hour and you’re both up to date with your charts.”

“Right, yeah.” It’s probably the nicest thing Robby has done for him since the benzos incident. Although, realistically, it’s probably for Mel. She’s rapidly risen to become Robby’s star resident. Frank doesn’t feel any complicated feelings about that at all. Even if he did, the primary feeling would be pride, which is what matters anyway.

Frank wanders aimlessly around the Pitt for a bit, looking for a blonde braid and hoping it will just show up wherever he next turns his eyes. Then his brain kicks into gear, and he starts to look in places Mel might actually be. The ambulance bay only has Whittaker in it, and he’s busy arguing with someone named Amy on the phone, so Frank can’t ask if he’s seen Mel. The stairwell where she sometimes goes to watch her lava lamp is empty, as is the breakroom. He makes random female nurses check the women’s restrooms for him, but they all come out shaking their heads.

Finally, he finds her in the locker room. 

She’s sitting right up against the wall, with her knees pressed up against her chest and her hand pushed against her mouth to muffle the sobs shaking her shoulders. She looks so small. Frank can almost see her huge, sensitive heart cracking in her chest.

“Mel, sweetheart, fuck.” It’s nonsense, but it’s the only thing he can think to say as he strides over and kneels beside her. His back twinges the way it always does at the end of a long shift, but he doesn’t pay it any mind.

Tentatively, he reaches out to hold her hand. She clutches onto it so tightly her fingers turn white. They’re wrinkled in the way everyone’s fingers get wrinkled when they have to keep gloves on for forty, fifty, sixty minutes in a complicated trauma. He knows they always return to normal in less than ten minutes, which means Mel hasn’t been alone and hurting for too long. 

“Can I hug you, Mel?”

She nods, unable to speak through the horrible, gut-wrenching sobs wracking her frame. Frank thinks about that day, almost a year ago, when he saw her in the cafe. How he’d recognised the shape of her instantly, the familiar curve of her shoulders. It hurts, now, to see those familiar shoulders caving in under the pain.

It’s a pain they all know well, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Watching someone die is the kind of thing that burrows up under a person’s ribcage and festers, infecting everything until their chest is all hollow space. He hugs Mel tightly, hoping to fill in that hole with a bit of his own warmth. He’d give her everything he has–his lungs, his diaphragm, and he’d offer his heart too, but he already gave it to her long ago.

Frank kneels on the floor and hugs her close enough that he feels sure nothing else can hurt her without him knowing about it. He whispers soft comforts into the shell of her ear, his lips brushing the delicate skin. One of his hands cups the back of her head, a mirror of the way he had when she’d been pushed over by that guy on Frank’s first day back. His other hand rubs up and down her spine. 

Mel calms quickly because she’s always been quick to self-regulate, ever since he’s known her. She’s got the kind of coping strategies that would send his therapist into a state of ecstasy, probably.

“Ready to leave, sweetheart?”

“Shift’s not over yet,” she murmurs, and he has to strain his ears to hear it because her mouth is still pressed into his chest. He can feel a wet patch on his scrubs from where her tears have soaked through.

“Robby’s given both of us an early mark. Courtesy of being his star resident, hey,” he says gently, poking at her arm with his finger. 

She cracks a smile. He can feel the spread of her lips against his chest, separated from his skin by just a couple of layers of fabric. It’s not enough and too much, and Frank needs to get it together because Mel needs him to be strong and not a pervert right now. 

“Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry,” she says, finally pulling her head up to look him in the face. Her eyes are red and puffy. There’s a smudge of blood on her forehead that Frank knows he’s going to try to wipe off with one of the baby wipes in his locker, hopefully without her noticing. 

“You should be, too. We just worked for twelve hours.”

“I am a little hungry.”

“Yeah? You up for diner food? I know one nearby that always hits the spot after a shift like this one.”

She nods again, and her trust in him is so implicit it hurts. Frank always feels like he’s balancing on the edge of the life he’s rebuilt. One wrong step will send him falling back down to rock bottom, every piece he’s put back together tumbling down after him. Her trust tells him that the fall, if it happens again, will destroy him more than it did last time.

Still, he pulls her up from the floor and succeeds in getting her to wipe her face with a baby wipe under the guise of freshening up. The blood is gone, and they’re bundled in their coats and out the door just before their shift would have ended anyway. Still an early mark, by all accounts.

They stop to throw their bags in Frank’s car. He drove her to work that morning, and he would drive her back once they were done with dinner. Briefly, the biting cold makes him consider driving to the diner, too, but it’s only a block away, and Mel says she’d like the walk.

She’s wearing a practical green puffer jacket, and he can see a few of the feathers poking out of the seams. They wave and twist in the winter wind. His fingers twitch with the desire to reach out and pull at them one by one, but she’s already yelled at him for doing that once. Apparently, pulling the stray ones out only makes it easier for the others to get out. You are not prolonging the longevity of my coat, Frank.

To give his hands something to do, he pulls hers into his own. They’re like little blocks of ice, already red from the cold. He rubs them between his own, which are always warm, no matter what the temperature is. It’s a blessing in winter, but a curse in summer. 

In the diner, they order half the menu. It’s the kind of place that serves everything all day long, so they get milkshakes and pancakes and regular fries and sweet potato fries and a burger and a plate of hashbrowns and a slice of blueberry pie and two forks. 

When all the food arrives, Frank teaches Mel to dip her fries into the frothy milk of her strawberry milkshake. She tries it, and then wrinkles her nose. “That’s awful. How do you eat that?”

“I’ve never actually tried it with strawberry. I always get chocolate. Try it with mine.” He slides the tall metal tumbler over to her, and it leaves a trail of wet condensation on the yellow laminate tabletop.  

She does, and immediately nods in approval. “Yes, you’re right. That’s exquisite. I’m stealing this one now.” 

“Rude,” he pouts. Still, he lets her drink his chocolate milkshake and contents himself with a couple of stolen sips. Beneath the table, his knees brush against hers. 

Frank watches Mel deconstruct their burger so the individual ingredients aren’t touching and groans in disgust. “They’re meant to be enjoyed together!”

“I enjoy them just fine separately. Besides, I tried your fry-milkshake concoction. You can try this.”

Frank does, because he’ll do anything she asks with little to no regard for his own preferences or dignity. He makes a show of hating it when she makes him eat half a plain patty, but it’s pretty good. Not as great as when all the ingredients are stacked together, but a burger patty is really just meat. Frank likes meat. 

Eventually, they can’t physically fit anything more in their stomachs. 

“Wow,” Mel says. “I am so full right now.”

Frank asks the waitress for a couple of boxes to take everything home in. “You can take the leftover pancakes for Becca to eat when she comes home tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she says. “She’ll be so happy. I hope it distracts her long enough that I don’t have to watch Elf.”

“Well, how long has it been since you guys watched it together. Like a week?”

Mel nods. Becca has been on a trip to Michigan with Adam and his family for the last week. “It’s a new King sister record.”

“Becca’s so brave for lasting that long without Elf.”

“Oh, don’t worry, she’s getting plenty of Elf. She and Adam have watched it every night, or so I hear.”

“Their devotion inspires us all.”

Mel snorts, and something heavy in Frank’s chest lightens at the sound. 

He walks her back to his car. She almost slips on a patch of ice, and then he gets to spend the rest of the walk with his arm intertwined with hers so he can guarantee she won’t fall over and bust her skull open. 

“Thank you, Frank,” she whispers, looking up at him in the dim light of the parking lot. The cold has turned her nose red and her eyes are still a little bloodshot from all the crying. “I’m glad you were here today, and I’m sorry I cried all over your scrub top.”

He smiles at her, his throat sticky and aching. Hey, Mel. I’m kind of obsessed with you, and everyone at our work knows except you, so please just put me out of my misery by either killing me or dating me.

That’s what he’d say if he were the kind of asshole who confesses his feelings to a girl immediately after she breaks down at work. But Frank is a step above that asshole, at least. All he did was essentially take her on a date to distract her from the aforementioned breakdown.

The point is that he doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, he opens her car door so she can get inside and stop shivering.

Gentlemanly. Calm. Not weird. 

Perfect.

~IV~

Mel’s no idiot, but she’s also not great at reading social cues. She, intellectually, knows that smiles mean happy, tears mean sad, and a frown can mean anything from confused to angry. It just gets a bit harder when people start smiling and saying everything’s fine, but then won't speak to her for several days, as her high school best friend, Tanya, did. Or when people laugh so hard they cry, like Frank did when he watched a home video of her and Becca performing their annual Christmas gymnastics routine. 

These things all have one meaning on paper, but it gets much harder to parse when they become 3D and are exploited by people with extra thoughts and feelings bubbling under the surface. 

Like the way Samira keeps smiling at her. It’s not her usual smile, though, and Mel hasn’t been able to figure out what’s causing it yet. Trinity keeps making kissy faces at her, too, which Mel originally interpreted as Trinity’s way of displaying affection. Mel blows air kisses back, out of kindness, but it just makes Trinity roll her eyes, so Mel stops. 

Mel’s not good at social cues, but she’s also not an idiot. These interactions were weird when they happened, and they’re still weird now. She knows that, but she just can’t figure out what they mean, so she asks her closest friend at the Pitt.

“Have Samira and Trinity been weird around you lately?”

Frank cuts her a startled glance, which is weird, too. Normally, when he’s driving, he doesn’t take his eyes off the road. Not for anything. He’s a very safe driver, which Mel appreciates about him. 

“Uh, no. No. Not weird at all. They’ve actually been overly normal, if anything.”

“Overly normal,” Mel echoes slowly, with her eyebrows raised. Yeah. Something’s up. 

When Mel was younger, she was a big fan of Nancy Drew. In fact, if Mel hadn’t discovered an affinity for science in the ninth grade, she’d probably have tried to become a detective. Mel was good at recognising patterns, connecting dots, noticing the things other people missed because their brains didn’t work quite the same way her’s did. 

A good mystery entices her. She likes crime fiction books, though she’s hard-pressed to find one she can’t guess the plot of halfway through. Even Nancy Drew let her down once Mel figured out the author’s style. In real life, she usually gets her fill of mysteries in the ER. Now that she thinks about it, emergency medicine is basically just being a medical detective, because patients lie just the same way criminals do.

But Samira’s being weird, Trinity’s being weird, and now Frank’s being weird, too. Detective mode: engaged. 

“Do you have any plans tonight?” she asks casually, knowing full well Frank has zero plans tonight because she’d overheard him complaining about the emptiness of bachelor life to Donnie earlier today.

Predictably, he shakes his head.

“Wanna eat dinner at mine? We can watch a movie or something.” This is a regular occurrence. With Becca more independent and Frank divorced, both of them had struggled with the new holes in their schedules. The sudden vacuum probably would’ve pulled them both down if it weren’t for the amount of time they spent together. 

More importantly, she can use the time to investigate.

“As long as I can cook. You’re an awful chef.”

“I am not,” she says, genuinely offended. “You’ve never even seen me cook!” 

“Becca has told me enough to know I never want to.” 

Mel hisses. “Betrayal. Don’t listen to her. I’m cooking.”

Frank frowns, and Mel doesn’t need to be good at reading social cues to know he’s seriously doubting her capabilities.

He’s right. 

She sets her kitchen on fire.

“You didn’t set it on fire,” Frank says, comfortingly. He rubs a hand up and down her back and knocks his knee into hers. They’re perched on the curb across the road from her apartment building, along with half the occupants. The other half have already rolled their eyes at the palaver and gone back inside.

Mel waves a dismayed hand at the firetruck parked across from them. Its lights are flashing red and blue in the dark of the night, though it thankfully turned its siren off once the fire captain realised the danger was nonexistent. The broccolini she’d tried to pan fry had caused enough smoke to set off the fire alarm, but there hadn’t been any actual flames. 

“I don’t think I want to try cooking again tonight.”

“Understandable,” Frank says. He’s been very charitable about the whole thing, considering. He only said I told you so twice. 

“Do you want to just go get a pizza?”

Frank nods, despite the fact that they’re both dressed in their pyjamas. Mel always gets into hers as soon as she gets home. After seeing her do it a few times, Frank brought over his own pair. He’d been experiencing pyjama-induced FOMO, apparently. Now, they live in her drawers, and every time she sees the navy plaid tucked in beside the neat pile of her own pyjama pants, she feels something fuzzy bloom in her chest. 

She’s wearing fluffy bunny rabbit slippers, and his feet are crammed into her Birkenstocks. The shoes definitely don’t fit, but they’d been in a rush to get out of the apartment for obvious reasons. 

“Becca’s gonna be so mad,” Mel groans as they walk down the footpath. It’s a dewy night, the pavement a little damp, a light fog hanging in the air. Normally, she’d be a little on edge, because every woman knows the kind of things that can happen on a night like this. Frank has his arm hooked around her shoulders, though, which makes her feel safe and brings that fuzzy feeling back into her chest. 

“Becca won’t be mad. She’ll just be glad you’re okay.”

“I think you’re underestimating how much Becca hates the smell of smoke.”

“Is it more than she loves you?”

“Honestly…maybe?”

“Shit, okay. We’d better save a slice or two of pizza for her, then.”

They do, because Frank is a man of his word, even though they’re both starving after a long shift at the hospital and could probably have polished off the giant pepperoni all on their own. He’s the kind of freak that folds his pizza slices to eat them, but it’s okay because Mel is the kind of freak who eats her pizza with a knife and fork. 

Mostly, it’s because she doesn’t like how the oil feels on her fingers, but she enjoys the way it makes Frank laugh every time, too. She would do a lot to make him laugh because it is a clear, uncomplicated sound. Frank never laughs for any reason other than that he finds something funny. 

“Are you gonna eat that?” he asks, gesturing with his finger at the crusts she’s neatly piled off to the side of her paper plate.

She scowls because he’s still got food in his mouth when he asks, and she doesn’t think she will ever find anyone speaking with their mouth full attractive. It is, objectively, one of the most disgusting traits on the planet. No matter how attractive Frank Langdon normally is, not even he can get away with speaking with his mouth full. 

He takes her scowl for assent, which is true but not what a scowl usually means. How do people do this social cue thing? It’s infuriating, but it also reminds her of the mystery she was supposed to be unravelling before she almost burned her apartment building down.

“So. Samira and Trinity have been acting overly normal around you?”

Frank pauses with one of her crusts halfway to his mouth. “Yeah, I said that, right? Yes.”

“What does overly normal look like? I’m not sure I’m familiar.”

“Oh, you know.”

“I do not know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Mel,” he huffs. His mouth is full again, but thankfully he swallows before he says, “do you want to come to family dinner next Sunday?”

That particular conversational tactic is called, Mel believes, a deflection. However, it’s so effective that she blinks and just has to ask, “what?”

“Family dinner. You know how Abby and the kids and I have a family dinner every Sunday?”

“Yeah,” Mel says, because she’s aware, but she doesn’t understand why she’s being invited along. She’d be excited to meet Tanner and Penny. They seem great, but Abby? Mm, maybe not. 

“Well, Abby’s bringing her new boy toy, Hank. I need emotional support.”

“Hold on, Abby’s new boyfriend is called Hank and you, her ex-husband, are Frank.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Frank rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, so she knows he’s not mad at her. “The jokes write themselves, and I’ve already made all of them twice.”

“Well, I guess if it’s for emotional support I can be there. I’d like to meet Tanner and Penny.” 

“They’d like to meet you, too. Penny saw the photobooth strip I hung on my fridge and she’s been calling you Rapunzel ever since.”

Ah, the photobooth strip. They’d taken those at about one in the morning after a particularly alcohol-fuelled (for Mel) karaoke night. Frank didn’t usually tag along, but he had on that occasion because Mel wanted to get drunk, and he wanted to drive her home. She certainly wouldn’t have had the confidence to pull some of those poses if she’d been sober.

And Frank’s daughter had seen them and thought she looked like a princess. That was flattering, if a little mortifying. 

So that was how Mel agreed to attend Frank’s family dinner–even though she was neither family nor good at cooking–with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, Hank.

Great.

~V~

Frank spends several hours slow-roasting the beef brisket and getting the perfect crispy potatoes. As an afterthought, he boils some peas so that at least one green thing appears on their plates and Abby won't blow a gasket. 

The family dinner is at his new townhouse because it was his weekend to have the kids, and Abby will take them back to the house they used to share once dinner is over. He’s excited for the brisket, and he’s excited to see Mel, but that’s about it.

It will be his first time meeting Hank, and it will be Abby’s first time meeting Mel. The text message conversation where he’d asked Abby if she was okay with Mel coming along had gone something like this: 

Hey, Abs.

Franken-Weenie, how may I help you?

I wish you’d stop calling me that.

I have to differentiate between you and Hank somehow.

Right. 

Anyway. Can I bring Mel to family dinner?

Who is Mel? Have you been holding out on me, Frank?

She’s a coworker. I’ve told you about her. Dr. King?

Oh, yes! I’m so proud of you, finally making a move. 

Everyone will be so pleased.

Wait, what? Who is everyone?

Dana, when I tell her. Everyone else, once Dana tells them.

You still message Dana?

Obviously. She’s my idol. 

Well, don’t tell Dana shit about my personal life.

Is it really personal if you’re seconds away from proposing to her in the workplace?

Jesus, Abby.

Don’t shoot the messenger. 

But for real it’s fine to bring Mel. I’ve been wanting to meet her for ages.

Ok. I will. 

Loverboy ;)

So, essentially, she’d bullied him, revealed Dana was a massive traitor, and then let him bring Mel anyway. 

It all works out in his favour, because Mel shows up at his door wearing a pretty satin top and a pair of jeans that hug her body in a way scrubs or pyjamas just…don’t. He’s embarrassingly speechless for a few seconds until she presses a loaf of still-warm bread into his hands. He’s grateful she thought to bring it because Frank hasn’t had the chance to turn En-dough-crine into an edible loaf of bread today.

“It’s from a bakery, don’t worry. I still haven’t attempted to cook. I think my kitchen is cursed now.”

“What have you been eating, then?” he asks, genuinely concerned, because her welfare is always going to be his first concern. 

“A lot of take away. Frozen peas, one night. That was quite sad.” She says it in an off-handed, distracted manner because Princess Shower Curtain has trotted up to demand tummy rubs, and Mel is happily obliging. 

“I’ll come over soon and cook something for you. That will break the curse.”

“I’d like that,” she says.

Tanner and Penny are playing with Hot Wheels on the shaggy plum rug spread across his living room floor, but they jump up when he walks in with Mel. 

“Rapunzel!” Penny screams with all the fanaticism of a Disney-obsessed four-year-old. Her clumsy toddler mouth lisps around the word, but Mel grins and says hello in a soft voice that makes Frank’s knees weak. 

He watches the woman of his dreams play Hot Wheels with his kids for what feels like hours but is probably only ten or fifteen minutes. Tanner keeps telling him to get down and play with them because he makes the best explosion noises, but Frank’s feet are rooted to the spot. He can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think. Just watches the way Penny slots herself into Mel’s lap and Mel curves her body protectively around his daughter like she’s always been there. A girl with his dark hair and blue eyes in Mel’s arms. 

The doorbell rings, and then Abby lets herself in with her key, so Frank’s not sure why she bothered ringing the bell. She yells, “where are my babies?” and Peny and Tanner rocket into the hallway towards their mother.

Mel comes up behind him, shifting nervously. He reaches out and squeezes her hand.

Abby comes into view and gives Frank a hug with the arm that’s not holding onto Penny. “Hi, Frank. So glad to see the children are still alive.”

Then she turns to Mel and squeals in delight. “Oh, you’re gorgeous. So lovely to finally meet you, Melissa. I’m Abigail, but you can call me Abby,” and then she tugs Mel into a hug identical to the one she inflicted on Frank.

Frank sighs, knowing Mel has complicated feelings around touch from strangers, but she seems to handle it well. There’s a smile on her face when she says, “It’s very nice to meet you, too, Abby. Call me Mel.”

“Oh, and this is Hank!” Abby says, reaching behind her to pull the man who’d been lurking in the background forward. “Say hi, Hank.”

“Nice to meet you, man,” Hank says, offering a handshake to Frank with a good-natured smile. He is, almost comically, the exact opposite of Frank. He’s got bright red hair, several shades lighter than Abby’s auburn, and is a bit shorter but much stockier than Frank. There’s a faint Irish accent riding the vowels in his words. 

“You too, Hank,” Frank says without laughing, because he’s mature. 

“And you, Mel. I’ve heard so much about you from Abby,” Hank adds, shaking Mel’s hand, too.

It is, generally, a very successful dinner. 

Frank’s brisket is a smash hit, his potatoes are the perfect level of crispy, and the peas are…green. There’s a moment of silence around the table because everyone is so busy shoving food into their faces, which is pretty much the greatest compliment a chef can get. 

They cut up Mel’s bread to have on the side, and Frank grabs two pieces and butters one for himself and one for Mel. She takes it from him when he offers it to her, smiling happily. She, Abby, and Hank have cracked open a bottle of Cab Sav, and it looks like the wine has stained the tips of her ears and flushed her cheeks because they’re both tinged pink. 

Abby’s laughing tipsily, her hand resting on Hank’s arm. 

“Do you want my peas, Frank?” Mel whispers to him, gesturing with her fork.

“Sure. You don’t like ‘em?” he asks, reaching over to stab a couple off her plate and pop them in his mouth.

“I’ve had enough of peas to last me for a month. They were my dinner last night.”

“Ah, your frozen peas. Got it. Want a potato, then?”

“No, no, I know you like potatoes.”

“Yeah, but I’m stealing your peas. You can have a potato.” He dumps it on her plate before you can argue.

Eventually, Tanner and Penny get bored of watching the adults chat. They abscond to the living room to watch Despicable Me, judging from what Frank can hear from the dining table.

They talk without incident for some time. Hank is Irish, as Frank initially thought. He’s a personal trainer at Abby’s gym, which is how they met. He used to be a professional gymnast before a rotator cuff injury took him out of the game. Frank and Mel ask too many invasive, doctor-y questions about the rotator cuff injury before Abby decides to change the subject.

“So, Mel, how long have you and Frank been together? He doesn’t tell me anything.”

Frank freezes. So does Mel. Shit shit shitshitshitshitshit.

He’d assumed Abby was just teasing him when they were messaging. He realises now, far too late, that she had genuinely thought he had made a move. Abby was entirely unaware that the only person not aware of Frank’s ginormous crush on Mel was Mel, though it seemed like that was about to change. 

“Oh, we’re not, um…” Mel trails off, and her cheeks are truly red now, not just tinged with a dreamy pink.

Abby has always been a little bit of a bulldozer in social situations. She tends to plough over the top of someone when she has an idea in her head. “You’re not putting a label on it? That’s very modern, very chic. Hank and I are using partners because it feels a bit more mature than boyfriend and girlfriend. Like, I’m in my thirties, I don’t want to be using the same terms I used in high school.”

“It’s not really like that.” 

Frank is retreating further and further into himself with each of Mel’s quiet denials. Shoulders bunching up by his ears and his head hanging low.

“Are you guys just keeping it casual for now? I would not have pegged you as a casual girl, Mel.”

“I’m not, really.”

“So what are you guys, then?” Finally, Abby seems to clock that both Frank and Mel look like they’re contemplating the merits of stabbing a steak knife through their frontal lobes. “You guys are together, right? Dana said…”

“What did Dana say? That we’re dating?” Frank asks, and it sounds like the words are being torn out of him. They are guttural and angry, because he’s so sick of these people meddling in the beautiful, private thing he has with Mel. It’s just theirs, but everyone seems to think it’s okay to butt in with their opinions, and it’s driving him fucking crazy.

All he wants is Mel, in whatever way she will let him have her. 

He glances over at her, and she looks so small, curled into herself at his dining table. He’s transported back to the locker room at the Pitt, where he’d found her after that awful MVC. All he wants now is to hold her the same way he had then, so he reaches for her.

She shies away and then shoots to her feet. “Sorry, I think I need to go.”

“What? Mel, no.” His voice is rough in his throat.

“Yes, I need to go. Now.”

“Well, let me drive you, at least. You’ve had a few.”

“I know,” she mutters, and it’s not the cute fed-up tone she usually uses on him when he tries to take care of her. It’s bitter and angry and he’s so confused because something is wrong, but he doesn’t know what. 

He is a fixer. He always has been. That’s why he went to med school, and that’s why he worked so hard to put his life back together when it all fell apart. He knows there is something here that needs fixing, but the last few minutes have passed so quickly, layers and layers of miscommunication he cannot even begin to untangle. 

“I’ll get the bus.”

“Absolutely not!” He’s desperate now, because something is wrong and there’s alarm bells ringing in his head at the thought of Mel, his Mel, walking alone at nine o’clock at night. 

“Mel, I don’t really think it’s safe to get the bus at this time of night,” Abby chimes in, her voice cautious.

“I think you’ve contributed enough to this conversation, Abby,” Frank spits, which is unfair because everyone is operating on all the information they have, and clearly, no one has enough. 

“Hey, man, that’s not cool,” Hank says, reaching for Abby with one hand and holding up his other towards Frank in a cautionary gesture. It’s actually a really decent thing to do, and Frank is glad Abby’s found the kind of guy who’ll do that for her, but Frank is freaking out a little, so he just turns back to Mel. 

It takes his brain a second to compute that she’s gone. The sound of the front door closing echoes in the silence.

“Fuck,” Frank says. “Sorry, Abby, Hank. That was unfair.”

“Shut up, Frank. Go get your girl. And for the love of God, tell her how you feel.” Abby, bulldozer. Sometimes it is useful.

“Will you take care of the kids and lock up behind you?”

“Of course.”

He drives through the streets for a few minutes until he finds Mel stalking in the direction of the nearest bus stop. She’s got her arms wrapped around her even though it’s not terribly cold, so he knows it’s more of a self-soothing thing. 

He pulls up next to her and winds the window down. “Mel!” he yells. She glances over at him and seems to deflate. Anger morphs into a tired sadness. “Get in!”

She does.

“That was a really scary two minute walk,” she says, once she’s buckled in. 

“Were you actually going to get the bus?”

“No, I was probably going to call Becca and ask if she and Adam could pick me up. He has a car, did you know?” 

“I didn’t know, but I’ll be honest, Mel, that’s not what I’m really worried about right now.”

“Can this conversation wait until we get to my apartment? I want hot chocolate.”

“Anything for you, Mel.”

~VI~

When they get to her apartment, Mel doesn’t let Frank say a word until she is sitting at her kitchen counter with a mug of hot chocolate cupped in her hands. It’s her favourite mug. A navy blue UMich one that her dad bought her when she got her acceptance letter in the mail. He died about two weeks later. 

Frank is across from her, leaning against the counter with his own mug of hot chocolate. He’s the first one to speak, which she is grateful for. Her instinct is still to turn and run away from this conversation, from something she knows will hurt.

She thinks of the venom with which he had said we’re dating? and aches. She’d been foolish, grown complacent. The universe had already taught her this lesson twice over: good things end, and kind people leave. It was her fault, really, for falling head over heels into the orbit of Frank Langdon. 

Frank was the first new person she’d really let in since she and Becca had lost their mother. She had allowed herself to think maybe she’d get to keep him, too. Forever. That the gentle thing between them was more than a friendship. 

But good things end, and kind people leave.

Frank isn’t the kind of guy who dates girls like Mel. Frank is the kind of guy whose ex-wife could have been a supermodel if she wanted to. Abby is funny and outgoing. She dances gracefully through conversations while Mel stumbles along, off-beat and several steps behind. 

Frank had made it very clear what he thought about dating Mel. Dana said what? The anger, verging on disgust, in his voice had made her feel sick. 

Good things end, and kind people leave. Frank will never be hers, and she will have to watch him fall in love with another supermodel. These are facts of the universe. 

“Mel, I think there has been an unfortunate series of miscommunications between us.”

“It’s okay, Frank, I get it.”

“See, you say you get it, but your face is not reacting how I’d hope it would react if you really did understand. Unless I’m being presumptuous. Shit, maybe you do get it.”

“Frank, I am understanding less and less the more you say.” She had thought he was going to try and break the news to her, gently, that he did not like her, would never like her. She was a homely lump of clay, and girls like Abby were beautifully crafted vases. Who would choose clay over a beautiful vase?

“Okay. You like direct communication. I appreciate that about you, so I’m just going to come right out and say it, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” 

“I have a ginormous fucking crush on you, Mel. Like, high school puberty hormone levels of crush.”

There’s a sound that plays in Mel’s mind when things do not compute. A kind of record scratch, which is probably a sign she’s watched too many eighties and nineties movies. “What?”

“Not a resoundingly positive response like I’d hoped, but that’s okay. We’ll attribute that to the confusion.” Frank nods to himself and takes a deep breath. “So, it seems everyone in our life knows about the ginormous fucking crush I have on you except for you. I was fine with that, because I wanted to take things slow and just see what you were comfortable giving me. But everyone else was being very fucking unsubtle about the whole thing.”

A few things click into place, then. Samira had been smiling weirdly at her for previously unknown reasons. But it was always after Frank had done something to bring out that fuzzy feeling in Mel’s chest, like passing over a pair of gloves in her size without her asking, or standing right behind her while he talked her through a procedure in Trauma One. Oh, and Trinity’s kissy faces happened practically anytime she saw Mel and Frank interact!

Very unsubtle indeed. And it had sailed right over Mel’s head, despite her self-proclaimed Nancy Drew tendencies. 

“But then why did you sound so disgusted when you asked Abby what Dana said about us?” Her voice is small despite the connections she had made, still unsure.

“Mel, Mel, no.” He reaches out with one hand and grabs onto hers. “I was just really sick of everyone butting into our business. You’re so special to me, sweetheart, and it pissed me off that people weren’t just letting us be.”

“Oh.”

“Were you really that ready to accept that I’d be disgusted by the thought of dating you?” He sounds incredulous, and she gets a little defensive.

“It’s not too much to accept after sitting across from your gorgeous ex-wife for three hours, Frank. She’s living proof that guys like you don’t date girls like me.” 

“I happen to think you’re the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen, but beyond that, Mel. What is a guy like me, really? I’m just a massive fucking dork at the end of the day. We could have a beautiful dork-for-dork relationship.”

“Yeah, you’re a dork, but you’re also…”

“I’m what?”

“You’re hot, Frank! You have to know how crazy I’ve been going, watching you just exist. It’s indecent,” she almost pleading now, though she’s not sure if she’s asking him to understand what she’s saying or reach out and touch her.

He does both. He strides around the counter, hot chocolate forgotten, and wedges himself between her legs. He’s wearing a blue cotton button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of casual slacks. “That makes two of us, Mel. I’ve been going crazy right alongside you. We have both been suffering in silence when we could have just talked. Do you know how dumb that makes us?”

“Pretty dumb,” she whispers. His hair hangs over his forehead like it always does. Every time she looks at it, she wants to run her hands through it. She has always stopped herself.

She doesn’t this time. 

Mel rakes her hand through his hair, and he closes his eyes. She anchors her fingers into the soft strands and uses them to tug his lips to hers. He lets out a huff of laughter into her mouth, and it tastes like hot chocolate.

“What are you laughing about?” she asks, pulling back slightly.

“I just can’t believe Abby is technically going to be the reason we get together.”

“Are we together?”

He looks down at their bodies, pressed together under the glow of her kitchen light. “We seem pretty together, but let me make it official. Melissa King, will you make me the happiest man alive by being my girlfriend?”

“Sure,” she whispers.

He raises his eyebrows. “Sure? That’s all you have to say?”

She cuts him off with another kiss, and he melts happily into her lips. His hands run down her spine and splay out across her hips, toying with the little sliver of skin between the hem of her shirt and the top of her jeans. It sends goosebumps rippling across her body, and she shivers in delight at the sensation, but she pulls away again.

“I hope you know you have to take me on at least one date before you get me in your bed.”

And though he whines playfully at her words, he does take her on a date. They go to the Fort Pitt Museum and watch the colonial reenactors like the dorks they are. Mel thinks it’s perfect. She watches the sun shine on Frank’s dark hair, turning it a chocolatey shade of brown that matches the ice cream cone he’s licking away at. Her’s is a vanilla cone, and he tries to steal a bite of it. She manages to bat his attacks away. 

He’s wearing the same cotton shirt he wore when they had that disastrous family dinner, and she makes fun of him for it. “Don’t you have any other nice clothes?”

“I asked Abby what to wear and she told me it brings out my eyes!” 

Abby’s correct, as usual. It’s a lovely shirt, and it does make his dark blue eyes shine in the sunlight. He kisses her in front of the Point State Park Fountain, and it’s disgustingly cliché. Mel’s never been one for PDA, but she thinks she doesn’t quite mind as much when it’s Frank doing it. 

He takes her back to her apartment, and they watch Over the Hedge because Santos had said the raccoon bears a striking resemblance to Frank. Mel laughs and laughs for most of the movie–it’s uncanny, really–while Frank sulks. 

Mel makes him feel better, once the movie is over, by tugging him in for a deep kiss. He makes a noise that stirs something deep in her abdomen. 

Want to go to my room?” She asks, and Frank pauses for a second to pull away. It’s great because she gets to watch the way his pupils dilate and his throat swallows convulsively.  

“Yeah, yes. Please.” 

He actually picks her up then, hands under her thighs, and she squeals in surprise. It’s a quick trip, though. He deposits her on the striped green comforter she put on her bed this morning. She reaches up and tugs at the hem of his lovely cotton shirt. She’d miss the way it brings out his eyes, but right now she has other priorities. “Off.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He complies, and suddenly she gets to stare at Frank Langdon’s leanly muscled torso for as long as she wants, rather than grabbing sneaky glances anytime he lifts his arms above his head. Honestly, if he didn’t start pulling at her own top, she’d probably have been content to stare at him for the rest of the day. 

The air hits her skin, and she feels a little self-conscious until Frank’s pupils get impossibly bigger and he murmurs a muffled wow against her lips.

She tugs him on top of her by his belt loops, and he goes willingly, easily. His arms bracket her, strong and rigid when she runs her palms along them. He’s kissing a line down her neck, sucking and nipping at all the right parts like he’s been given a map to her body and studied it all his life. 

She spends a long time that day making her own map of Frank Langdon.

When they go into work the next day, Samira and Trinity squeal at the purple mark that pokes up from beneath her shirt collar when she reaches to open her locker. Frank was supposed to have been a little more conscious of where he left his marks, like she was, but he got a little carried away. 

Trinity high-fives Frank, and Samira hugs Mel. Frank tries to ream them both out for being nosy before Mel stops them with a hand on his arm.

“If it weren’t for them, we’d still be suffering in silence right now instead of kissing and dating and everything.”

“Kissing and dating and everything,” Trinity says with a mock gasp. “I didn’t think you idiots had it in you.”

“Rude,” Frank says. “Mel’s not an idiot.”

Mel laughs, and Frank makes sure he hears that sound at least once a day for the rest of his life.