hi! my name is shelby (30s, she/her) and I like to relax by making up stories about mel and frank from the pitt.
I keep my stuff pretty locked down, so please do not repost any of my fics anywhere else. I want my fics to live only where I put them :)
I always work to rate and tag my fics appropriately, as well as warn for common triggers, so please take care (and let me know if I've missed something important).
while this blog is overwhelmingly pitt and kingdon-focused, this is my only blog so I do occasionally reblog and talk about other things (random photography, other film/tv, literature, etc.)
please feel free to hop into my askbox, anon or not, with any thoughts you might have. love y'all!
@kingdonmicrofic july 18, alternative prompt: bang (wc: 306/347)
cw: mature, infidelity
They did this thing, sometimes. It was weird and shameful and like nothing Mel had ever heard of before, and they didnāt do it a lot, but it went like this: first, theyād share a look. This part always just kind of happened - itās not like they ever planned it. Frankās face would go all intense and serious, and heād look down at her lips, and thatās how she would know.Ā Ā
They would slip away then, if they could, into a closet or an empty room on a different floor. He would pull her close, an arm around her stomach, and ease his weight against her back. Then heād rock his hips into hers like they were having sex. Sheād press back and try not to make any noise, even though she was pretty sure he liked it when she did.Ā
They never took their clothes off or anything. They never even kissed, but she still felt guilty about the way heād groan and his hips would stutter and heād drop his forehead to her shoulder and just breathe there for a while after. Not guilty enough to not let him do it, though.Ā
It always felt good. One time he had lifted her up and pressed her against the door so that the handle pushed against her just right, and sheād come hard even though she was terrified the entire time that the door was going to swing open and theyād drop to the floor with a bang.Ā
It was risky and she didnāt know what made it worth it for him because they never talked about it. There was only one time, when she was fixing her braid, that he said anything at all. This is going to be different, someday, I promise. She was still waiting to find out what that meant.
There's a little crowd huddled around the nurses' station and Frank has a bad feeling about it. Javadiās in the middle with her phone out, Princess and Joy leaning in, Santos with a hand over her mouth. A few of them are laughing.
"What's up?" He shoulders his way in.Ā
Javadi hesitates - thatās a bad sign. Then she tilts her phone so he can see the screen.
He recognizes the woman they're watching immediately: itās Becca King. Theyāre watching what looks like a TikTok with Becca King front and center, and sheās doing some sort of choreography with her arms and lip syncing to the music. But behind her, only mostly in frame and also doing the dance, is Mel.
"There's like five of these," Princess says. "Mel does the-"
"Cool,ā he cuts her off, annoyed. "So we're laughing at the King sisters, then."
"Not like that," Santos starts, rolling her eyes. āAnd not Becca, anyway.āĀ
Javadi, to her credit, slips her phone in her back pocket, appearing appropriately chastened.Ā
"She's not even here today,ā he snaps, because that was where his bad mood began, when he rolled in at six-thirty and remembered Mel wasnāt scheduled this weekend. "She's off, and you're all wasting time laughing at her." None of them are looking him in the eyes. He gives up. "Whatever. Santos, your guy in North 3 started throwing up again."
Heās been practicing distancing himself from unnecessary stressors, so. He walks.Ā
Frank lives alone now, and there isnāt all that much to do, which is why he downloads TikTok as soon as he gets home. Sheās easy to find - the app has somehow gone into his contacts and pulled the profiles of what seems like everyone heās ever met.Ā
Becca has 76 followers and forty-two videos. In most of them, sheās either alone or with a man Frank assumes is Adam. Only a handful feature Mel, and he finds those quickly. He watches the one from earlier, just to see it better, just so that maybe heāll understand what was so fucking funny. Then he watches the next one. Itās the same sort of thing, Becca dancing in front, Mel behind.Ā They both know all the words, and they both look like theyāre having fun.
There are two more like that, but then there's one where the sisters accidentally bump into each other and Mel laughs with her head all the way back. Her shoulders shake. He canāt see her face but he knows how itās lit up. He canāt hear her laugh, but he knows what it sounds like.Ā
Frank doesn't get what the big deal is. They're cute.
@kingdonmicrofic july 16, glitter (wc: 358/227)
abby pov
cw: infidelity
Abby was reasonable. She noticed the effort her husband was making to fix things, and she was a good enough wife to be grateful for it. He was sober and he was present and when it was her birthday heād sat the kids down at the kitchen table with glue and popsicle sticks and theyād all worked together to make her a picture frame. Theyād used green glitter to decorate, and it had gotten everywhere, into Frankās scalp, his collar, in the gap between his ring and his finger. A week later it was still around. He'd pick it out from under his fingernails or shake it out of his hair like a dog and say, Iām pretty sure this is a biohazard, and she'd laugh, and it felt good, like before.Ā
Sure, Frank didnāt quite look at her the way he used to, but that would probably come back with time. He was coming back to himself more and more every day.Ā
So she decided to drop by the hospital on a Tuesday. She had forty minutes before daycare pickup and a meatball sub she knew he would appreciate, and she was thinking about the old days, when she used to show up with a homemade meal and he'd laugh and kiss her in front of everyone.
But this time, when he saw her, it was like his face went dark. He glanced over his shoulder, looking paranoid, as though he didnāt want anyone to see her there.
He came over. He asked if the kids were okay, and his demeanor didnāt get any less intense when she reassured him that they were.
A woman approached, another doctor with a blonde braid pulled over one shoulder, and he turned his body fully away from Abby to give her his full attention. She asked him something about moving a patient to a bed upstairs, told him sheād defer to his expertise, and she did not look at Abby at all. Frank answered her. He did not say, this is my wife. He didnāt look at Abby either.
The woman, smiling and obviously charmed, thanked him and turned to go.
Abby saw it there, on the back of the woman's neck, just above the collar of her scrubs: a fleck of green glitter.
Mel ran hot. She always had. There was something furnace-like inside of her and she burned from the inside.
Frank, warm and broad and newly in love, liked to hold her. He liked to pull her back against his chest and hook his chin over her shoulder and stay like that all night.
By the third night at his place she lay awake sweating with Frankās sleeping body hot against her, his arms all around her. She couldnāt believe how selfish she felt, but - she thought of her own bed with its cool satin sheets.
In the morning, she asked him: Could we sleep at my place, mostly? Just because I have the satin.
He said of course, of course, and kissed her cheek.
A week later there was a package at her door, and another, she learned, already delivered to his apartment. Silk - real silk - sheets in pearl white. Two sets. One for his bed, one for hers, so that wherever they landed, he could hold her and she could be comfortable. Expensive enough that he would have to put off furnishing his place with a washing machine for another two months at least.Ā
That night he curled around her, and she pressed herself into his warm, generous hands.
Frank was never much of a baker. But Melās birthday was Tuesday and he didnāt know if anyone else would do it for her. So he spent Monday afternoon baking a vanilla cake with some cupcakes on the side for Tanner and Penny, and didnāt mention it at all when Abby got home from work.
It wasnāt great. The cake came out pretty flat and by Tuesday the frosting was stale. Mel loved it anyway, bouncing on her toes and then hugging him so tightly he almost pressed a kiss to her head, just instinctively.Ā
He told her to take the rest home. Bring the dish back whenever. No rush.
Abby didnāt notice the missing dish until Friday, staring at the spot in the cabinet where it normally sat. Frank explained. She kept staring, with a frown that he knew meant theyād be fighting about this after the kidās bedtime.Ā
Stupid. He couldn't believe that, along with everything else, she was so concerned about a dessert dish.
Mel didn't bother arguing with Becca. It had been an excruciating thirty minutes of Becca complaining about being the only one of them with a boyfriend, so by the time she informed Mel that they were going to cast a love spell on Frank Langdon, she just shrugged her shoulders. Whatever.
She did, casually, ask why Frank. Because Becca knew Frank, and he was nice enough.Ā
Sure. It didnāt actually matter. None of it was real, anyway - a ālove spellā on Frank would affect exactly nothing, and Becca would be satisfied, and Mel could go to bed. Sure, fine, let's cast a spell.
There wasnāt much to it - Mel suspected that Becca was making it up as she went. A circle of lit candles (mostly the cheap Yankee Candle knock-offs from the drugstore) and a strip of paper with Frank's name in Mel's handwriting, because it had to be hers, Becca said. Mel sat in the circle and held the paper to one of the flames. It caught fast, curling in on itself, and the smoke came off it gray and acrid-smelling. She jumped up to drop the burning paper into the sink, and opened the window.Ā
"So what's supposed to happen now," Mel asked.Ā
Becca pulled the window shut. "Now he's in love with you." She grinned wide, explaining, matter-of-fact: āItāll be like me and Adam. He'll want to know how your day is going - all the time, every day. He'll remember things you said weeks ago. He'll show up when you need him. Heāll text you all the time, and heāll send good morning and good night texts, too.ā
Mel rolled her eyes. Ridiculous.Ā
Frank already did text her all the time. He asked about her day and then asked follow-up questions. And some of those things - well, heād been doing them since the start. Heād been there for her since her first day at PTMC, heād remembered their inside jokes after months away. That didnāt mean he was in love with her. He didnāt even know her back then.
He was just a good guy. When she left her taxes almost too late, heād turned up at her house and filed them for her. He got dressed up to go to the ren faire with her because he wanted her to have fun and he knew she wouldnāt do it alone - it was nice of him, but it didnāt mean anything. Thatās what friends do.
āTrust me, Mel. Heās going to start doing those things and then you can ask him to be your boyfriend! Heāll definitely say yes.ā
She blew out the candles one by one. Becca didnāt get it.Ā
@kingdonmicrofic Day 12: Gold (481 words, explicit, tw: infidelity)
Abby wanted their rings to match. Gold on gold. Her grandmotherās diamond paired with a classic band for him.
Frank never liked the ring he chose, but it was the one they could afford. He looked wistfully at the sleeker, more stately platinum option and still went with the bright yellow gold that practically glowed under florescent lighting. Abby smirked when he complained about it.
āGood,ā she laughed, pulling her dark hair away from her face. āItās like a warning sign. Stay away, heās taken.ā
She never thought he would be the one sheād have to worry about.
No one knew it actually came from Caitlin Redwine, the lifeguard at the Science Hill Community Pool. She was nineteen when Frank was thirteen, and he was well into his twenties when she stopped being the first person in his mind when he wrapped his hand around his cock, the freckles across her nose and long braid down her back.
He did a double-take at Mel her first day, that same shade of dirty blonde woven tightly together, a little mole below her eye. It was his teenage crush all over again, and when he thought about her midway through his second rehab stint, hand down the front of his boxers after Abby missed visitation again, Frank came within seconds.
A fantasy, he told himself, reaching past his ring for the box of tissues on his nightstand. Nothing more.
***
Abby started wearing her rings again in June, and Frank did the same.
It was odd, cold to the touch and heavy. By August, it started to feel normal again when Frank would wear it more places than around the house and the hospital, when he stopped slipping it on and off in the parking lot, wondering if that morningās fight was the last straw.
He thought he might never take it off again, but that was before he kissed Mel King, giving into his fantasy outside a 24/7 diner; before her eyes went dark, and she told him that she lived just on the next block; before he followed her up past the front door and into her bedroom, clothes in a pile on the floor.
āLeave it on,ā Mel panted against his lips as he started to remove his ring. āYou might forget it.ā
Frank nodded and kissed her again, pressing her down against the mattress, exploring her soft, slick folds and teasing her entrance before sliding his finger in up to the last knuckle. She whined, hips bucking up against his hand. He slipped in another finger, and her tight cunt clenched around him, the shiny metal of his ring tangled up in her soaked curls.
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@kingdonmicrofic july 12, gold (418/340)
future fic
cw: emotional infidelity
Penny was an official, honest-to-god Girl Scout, with the sash and the cookies and everything. There was a song she learned that she sang for a week straight, and one afternoon she made Frank sing it with her in a round: Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.Ā
Frank found himself idly considering the message, and sorting the people in his life into the song's two columns - he couldnāt make them all fit in just right.
He suspected Mel, shiny and gold, had her own columns. He wondered where he fit.Ā
Mel's new boyfriend was short. His name was Will and he worked with computers. Played D&D with his buddies on Sundays. He was a nice guy who laughed at everyoneās jokes, including his own. Thin hair, weak handshake, and within four months he somehow had landed a drawer at Mel's place.Ā
Frank had met Will for the first time when he suddenly appeared at central next to Dana, carrying a boxed salad and a passionfruit iced tea. Surprise! Mel had been flustered. She dropped her tablet and went red in the ears. It pissed Frank off, watching her scramble. None of them had time for this, not in the middle of a shift. Even Dana was rolling her eyes. But Mel wanted it to go well. He could feel without even making eye contact how much she wanted it to go well. So he shook Will's pathetic little hand and found somewhere else to be for the next five minutes.
Listen, he had Abby, sure. She didnāt leave him when she had every right to, and he wasnāt planning on leaving her, even though the relationship had long since gone a little cold and metallic-feeling. So itās not like this new guy was actually keeping him from anything. But he often caught himself, in his own head, in a different life: a bedroom with both his and Melās things in it. The way theyād work out the custody schedule with Abby, the days that he and Mel would pick Tanner and Penny up from school. And kids of their own, too, that were anxious but brave like her, and smart but short-sighted like him. In his head, there was a glow to all of it, a perpetual golden hour, which he knew wasnāt realistic. Still, he lived in that world a lot.Ā
He and Penny started the song over from the top, chasing each otherās voices around the round.
Itās a slow day, so she thinks he'll duck out at seven sharp, home to the wife and the two little kids sheās heard about and never seen. But he stays three hours past sign-out with the overdose teen whose parents never showed, speaking in a low voice with the lights out until the boy sleeps.
She tries not to stand too close to him because she knows everyone thinks she has a crush. But some asshole in triage lunges for her and Frank steps right in the middle, takes a fist to the jaw, and apologizes to her after for the way he had knocked into her shoulder.
She won't ask about his marriage because it's none of her business and she doesnāt think she wants to know the truth anyway. But some days he wears the ring and some days he doesnāt.
Sheāll never get to kiss him. She's pretty sure of that. But she notices when he first sees the plastic mistletoe Princess hung in the breakroom and instinctively turns his head to look at her, absentmindedly running a hand through his hair.Ā
@kingdonmicrofic july 10, feast (wc: 470/301)
(dedicated to noah wyle)
Privately, Robby likes to keep a pretty close score. Itās for the best. If his sabbatical taught him anything, itās that he canāt handle the loneliness and the disappointment anymore, so he has to do this, for his own sake, he has to keep count, a mental tally on who he can trust and who he canāt.Ā
Frank Langdon, heās learned, he canāt trust. Not by quite a large margin.Ā
Which is maybe why he gets so annoyed when Langdon turns up at the Friendsgiving thing. He wasnāt even in the groupchat, the one Shen had started and called feastie boysš- it was just supposed to be the fuck-ups with nowhere better to be. Robby certainly qualifies, single and childless. But Langdon has a wife. Two kids, a dog, medical debt, a long recovery road ahead of him. Itās the holiday weekend and Langdon is supposed to be at home. He shouldnāt be here, and he really shouldnāt be all pressed up against Dr. King as if thereās not plenty of room around the table at this shitty all-you-can-eat homestyle buffet place.Ā
He canāt stand it: Langdon keeps leaning in and King just smiles at him, probably doesnāt even realize heās flirting. Itās egregious.Ā
He should pull Langdon aside. Be careful, he should say, You've got enough on your plate. Don't blow everything up over a woman who sees you as a brother at best. But then Langdon would snap at him, make some snarky comment about his extended sabbatical. Because, as much as he wishes otherwise, people don't really change. Not at their core, even when they try.Ā
By the time they all go around and say what theyāre thankful for, Robby has to take a second to swallow down all the bitterness before he can say heās grateful to be sleeping in his own bed again without sounding like a psycho.
Langdon says he's grateful for his support system. He says heās lucky to have his friendships. He's looking at King when he says his life has been āgreatly, greatly enrichedā these past few months. That he's learning to be a better father. A better man.
No better husband. Robby notices, adds it to the tally.Ā
Itās ridiculous, and no one else seems bothered, which makes him wonder if this is just the new normal since heās been gone. This is why he shouldnāt have left, he should have been here to make sure Langdon was staying the course.Ā
The fucker is just so - relaxed. Itās like he doesnāt care, or like heās not struggling, which is absurd. When he smiles his face looks completely different, like heās a whole new person.
Robby keeps his mouth shut and eats his food. He doesn't know what to make of any of it.
He and Abby have a huge, blow-out fight over the air fryer.Ā
Mel had bought it for his birthday. She spent more money than she should have, and the thing is enormous. The box was too big to bring into the hospital, so they walked out to her car after work, and she popped the trunk with a āTa-da!ā
Frank already has an air fryer. He and Abby have a Breville at home, dual basket, top of the line from Williams Sonoma three Christmases ago. Mel doesn't know that, though - she only knows that he complains about the breakroom microwave and that heās always ordering in crispy, fried chicken wings for lunch.Ā
He couldnāt think of a good reason to tell her. She was smiling so wide.
Abby's having none of it. Who buys a coworker an air fryer, she wants to know. Who is this woman? They already have one, a much nicer one, and thereās a gift receipt from Walmart so they can take it back for store credit, easy, done.Ā
He says it was a nice gesture. He wants to keep it. Itās deeper but thinner and they could use the extra counter space.
They fight about it for an hour or so and the fight stops being about the air fryer somewhere in there, the way these things do. They end up compromising, because theyāve been practicing that in marriage counseling. Melās air fryer goes down to the basement, unopened, stuffed in with all the holiday decorations. The Breville stays on the counter, the first thing you see when you enter the kitchen.
He tells Mel the fryer changed his life. She lights up and asks if he's tried the dehydrator setting yet, and he says yeah, thatās his favorite. Nobody at work teases him about the obvious lies. Nobody at work even notices.
Two years later he's loading the U-Haul on his own while Abby watches. He takes almost nothing. He doesnāt give a fuck.Ā
But Melās air fryer comes up from the basement still sealed, gift receipt still taped to the side. He sets it on the front seat next to him, belts it in so it doesnāt slide forward and tip over on the drive.
Mel's already at the new house when he pulls up. Sheās smiling so wide.
The first time, she thinks itās a mistake. She says Hello? twice and then Dr. Langdon? once and when he doesnāt respond, she hangs up. She mentions it at work the next day, and he isnāt looking her in the eyes when he says āHuh,ā and changes the subject.Ā
The second time, she only says hello once, and then waits with the phone pressed hard to her ear. Thereās nothing - then a deep, quiet inhale. She thinks she would have known it was him even without the caller ID. She can visualize him: his drawn-out breaths, his mouth hanging open, probably laying in bed with his back to his wife.Ā
She doesnāt know why he does this, and she doesnāt ask. Now, when he calls, she says nothing at all.Ā
Itās mostly breathing. But sometimes - sometimes, he makes little sounds. Tonight, he startles her: she thinks heās crying. Itās a shallow whimper, something desperate sounding. But then, right as sheās about to ask if heās okay, he makes a low-pitched, filthy moaning sound.Ā
She can really hear him now. For the first time, Mel can hear the wet pumping sound of his hand on his cock. His groans crackle down the line, into her ear, through her entire body. She wonders if heās done this every time that heās called, and if he has, why heās being so much louder about it now.
She presses her thighs together and squeezes her eyes shut. They wonāt ever talk about this - they never do. So she slips a hand under the waistband of her sleep shorts.Ā
She has two fingers on her clit for maybe five seconds before sheās mewling. Heās grunting in her ear and sheās rubbing circles, her hips rolling, her fingertips getting wetter. Maybe he can hear it, the slick sound of her teasing.Ā
Heās never spoken aloud on one of these calls before, but heās full of words now: āOh, yeah, God, Mel, fuck, fuck, fuck.āĀ
She doesnāt know if heās in bed with his sleeping wife, or if heās cooped up in his bathroom, or if he went out to sit in his car. She doesnāt care. Right now, heās with her.Ā
āAre you - can you - Iām gonna come, baby, Iām gonna come,ā he says, his voice hoarse. He lets out one loud gasp, and then goes silent. Or maybe Mel just canāt hear him for the way she cries out, the way her head goes fuzzy and her whole body trembles.Ā
By the time she stops shaking, heās hung up.Ā
In the light of day, Mel thinks that maybe she imagined the entire thing. Then theyāre weighing their options on a treatment plan and she says, āItās your call,ā and he startles.Ā
When he calls her later, sheās already got one hand under the covers and the other on her phone.
Mel had thought maybe it would be - it had been kind of Santos to invite her to karaoke, and Mel thought they had fun screaming that Alanis Morrisette song together.Ā
But itās like it never happened. Santos is as bristly as ever, and when Mel floats the idea of getting some more of those chili fries they had the other night, she just says, "Yeah, no, I drank way too much. Not doing that again.ā She doesn't even bother looking up from her computer screen.Ā
2. Javadi and Whitaker share a look, and Mel catches it, which makes her wonder if there have been times when she hasnāt.
She's been talking for a while, and sure, she's talking fast, and yeah, her hands are twisting - and Javadi's eyes slide to Whitaker and Whitaker's eyebrows go up, just a little.
Mel knows what that means.Ā
3. Sheād thought she might have better luck with Cassie, who is always nice to her.
But: "Oh - no, I can't," she says, before Mel has even finished asking if sheād like to go check out that new bookstore across the street. "I've got Harrison."
"Right," Mel says. "Of course."
"Rain check," Cassie says, and she squeezes Mel's arm on her way past.
Cassie does have a kid. That's a real reason. It's just that the no came so fast.
4. Robby comes back from sabbatical smiling and saying good morning to everyone, and Mel is glad to see him.Ā
But heās more closed off than before, somehow. She tells him about the most interesting case she worked while he was gone but his eyes are somewhere beyond her and he doesnāt react to the parts of the story that she thought he would.Ā
She trails off and he claps her on the shoulder and says, "Good stuff.ā
5. Frank has been getting happier every day.
Itās not, like, completely linear - he still gets frustrated sometimes, and he really doesnāt enjoy a few of the people they work with, but all things considered his mood has been trending upwards.Ā
Theyāre at the lockers and sheās taking her hair down. She's talking and heās really listening, laughing and frowning in turn at all the right bits. She combs her fingers through her braid, and then fiddles with her hair tie after itās all come loose.
"Hey," he says, looking at the maroon elastic between her fingers. "Could I have that? Sorry. That's weird. I just-ā
"Sure," she says. He used to wear a black one on his wrist, for a few weeks after he came back to work, but he must have lost it. She would have given him one of hers sooner, if heād asked.
She hands it over, and he just holds it for a second. Then he slips it onto his wrist and pushes it up, snug against his black beaded bracelet.
Heās pleased: āHey, thanks. Itāll be nice to always have a bit of you around, you know?ā
@kingdonmicrofic july 6, laughter (wc: 357/325)
warning: explicit
Frank has always been a little cocksure. He knows itās not his best quality, so heās working on it, but itās a challenge: his upbringing encouraged it. His parents and his coaches always nurtured his confidence, and all the kids at school seemed to like him better when he insisted he knew what he was doing (especially because he usually did, in fact, know what he was doing).
So, really, itās hardly his fault that heās so convinced he knows exactly how he could make Mel King come.
He's pretty sure she's never been fucked. Itās not like theyāve ever talked about it, but he's pretty sure. He thinks sheās maybe never even had an orgasm, so he knows it would be intense. It would be a lot, for both of them, and he thinks about that, her eyes going shocked-wide, her body flushing red.
But she'd be nervous. She'd be so nervous, wound up tense and tight, overthinking everything, and that would make it worse for her, and he can't stand the idea of it being worse for her.Ā
So heās going to make her laugh. That's the plan, if he ever gets the chance.Ā
He'll find some ticklish spot on her thighs with his tongue and hold her hips while she shrieks. He'll find a way to make some stupid joke - an inside one, something theyāve laughed about before so he knows sheāll laugh at it again. He'll keep going until sheās laughing so hard her whole body shakes. Heāll go crazy for that, her shaking underneath him, all that tightness rattling loose until there's nothing left in her body but good good more please. Then heāll press into her and his cock will drag just right and sheāll gasp and her hips will snap and -Ā
That's what it will be like with them. He's weirdly sure of it.Ā
(Itās dangerous, though, being so certain of this, because sometimes theyāre at work and he makes her laugh without meaning to, and she puts her hands over her mouth and squeaks while her shoulders shake, and then he has to slip into the bathroom and spit into his palm.)Ā
