i love you (it's ruining my life), chapter three
title: i love you (it's ruining my life) fandom: the pitt pairing: frank langdon x mel king rating: e summary: abby stays. frank isn't sure that's a good thing.
chapter one: prologue chapter two: two graves, one gun
author's note: so so sorry for the wait - depression has really been kicking my ass :/
this fic will now have five total chapters (one more real chapter and an epilogue). i hope to have the next chapter up sometime next week, and the epilogue written shortly after that!
downtown lights
what if the way you hold me is actually what's holy? - guilty as sin?, taylor swift
They don’t do anything other than kiss that first night. He honestly isn’t sure how he holds back; he wants nothing more than to pull her into the backseat and undress her slowly and set up camp inside of her. He’s about to ask her if she wants that, too, but before he can steel himself and get the words out, she pulls away, looking up at him with eyes full of want, yes, but also eyes that are tired.
He knows it’s been a long day, emotionally and physically. So he kisses her one more time, long and deep, before speaking against her lips.
“You look tired.”
She pulls back just a bit, reaching one of her hands up to brush a few stray strands of hair from his forehead.
“I am,” she admits, and then smiles regretfully. “Sorry.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up, and he brings his hands up cradle her face.
“Please don’t apologize, sweetheart. You never have to apologize to me for anything.”
She bites down on her bottom lip, red and kiss-swollen, and the sight alone makes his cock jump. He can’t help leaning in again and pressing one, two, three kisses to her mouth. He brushes his thumbs along her cheekbones gently.
“Are you okay?” he murmurs, and she smiles softly.
“Yes,” she says, darting her eyes from his for a moment. “I thought that if this…ever happened, I would feel at least a little conflicted, but right now, I just feel…”
She trails off, but she doesn’t need to finish her statement for him to know what she means. It feels like relief, that they’ve finally accepted what’s been a long time coming. It’s like they’ve been standing on the edge of a diving board this entire time, since that first day, and they’ve finally let themselves jump, hands clasped, into the cool water waiting below.
Maybe he should feel like he’s drowning, but instead, she’s pulled him up the depths and brought his head out from under water. He can inhale, suddenly. He hasn’t been able to breathe this well in a long time. Since rehab. Maybe even before that. It feels like it’s been years.
When she looks at him again, she has an almost timid expression on her face. She brings her hands up to wrap them around his right wrist, letting one of her thumbs rest on his fluttering pulse.
“Are you okay?” she whispers.
He laughs gently, and leans back in to rest his forehead against hers again.
“Sweetheart, I haven’t felt this okay in a long time.”
A smile blooms on her face at that, one that he’s never seen before. It’s shy and joyous and awed and beautiful, all at once. He decides immediately that he wants to make her smile like that as often as he possibly can. He also realizes, selfishly, that he wants that smile all to himself. He wants to be the only one ever on the receiving end of it, from now on.
He wants to kiss it, too. He’s about to lean in and do so, but before he can, her phone vibrates in the cupholder, the noise making them both jump slightly.
“Oh, crap,” Mel says, pulling away from him and grabbing the phone. “That’s Becca trying to Facetime me. We always Facetime at 9:00 when she sleeps at the center.”
“Which means you need to go,” he deduces.
She sighs slightly, and nods.
“I’m sorry,” she begins, and she shakes her head when he raises his eyebrows at her. “I know you said not to apologize, but I really am sorry. Not just for you, either.”
His breath catches in his throat when he realizes what she means – that she’s disappointed that they can’t continue, too. The thought that she might want him just as much as he wants her is intoxicating, even if he doesn’t quite believe it can be true. He doesn’t think it’s possible for another person to want someone else as much as he wants Mel.
And it’s because of that want that he can’t help but lean forward to kiss her again. She smiles, and kisses him back for a moment before murmuring his name against his lips.
“Frank.”
“I know,” he murmurs, sucking her bottom lip into his mouth one more time before pulling back, their lips parting with a quiet smacking noise. “You have to go.”
Still, they sit there and stare at each other. They don’t say anything, but the air between them is thick, snapping energy passing back and forth between them. He doesn’t want to leave her. He wants to spend the rest of his night there with her, just kissing her – maybe (probably) the rest of his life. He doesn’t need anything more than that. Not if it’s her.
But then, her phone starts to vibrate again, and Mel’s eyes leave his as she reaches for her phone, swiping the screen and putting it up to ear.
“Hey, Becca!” she says, her voice a little higher and a little more breathless than it usually is.
Becca probably won’t notice – at least not over the phone – but he notices, and the thought that he’s affected her like that makes his chest swell with something like pride.
She grabs her messenger bag off the floor and opens the door.
“Yeah, I just got to building, actually – work ran late again. Can I call you when…oh, we can stay on the phone, too! That’s fine.”
She gets out of the car, but before she can close the door, he stretches over the center console and grabs her hand, pressing a long kiss to the back of it. She crouches down so she can see his face.
“Goodnight, Mel,” he says gently.
She squeezes his fingers as she reacts with soft hums to Becca’s words on the other end of the phone. Then, she lets go and closes the door.
He watches as she walks into her building. She turns her head back to him once, right before she opens the front double doors, and he swears he can see her smile at him before disappearing inside. He exhales slowly once she’s gone from his view, rubbing a hand down his face before resting his head on the steering wheel, the cool leather pressed against the hot skin of his forehead.
“Holy shit,” he whispers. “Holy fucking shit.”
* * *
He drives home slowly, a few miles under the speed limit the entire time, trying to calm down. Trying to clear his mind of Mel. Trying to pretend his whole life hasn’t changed.
Or maybe it goes back further than tonight. He’d already considered that day in September one that fundamentally altered everything about his life, splitting it into two parts – before he got caught, and after. But maybe that wasn’t the right way to label it. Maybe, in the end, the most significant part of the day hadn’t been Robby finding those pills in his locker. Maybe it was meeting Mel that would define his life, even more than the drugs have.
Maybe it would always be before Mel, and after Mel.
It takes him about ten minutes longer to get home from her apartment than it normally would. When he finally pulls into the driveway and turns off his car, he doesn’t get out right away. He knows he needs to calm down his racing heart if he wants to have any chance of acting normal in front of Abby. He tries box breathing, even though that coping skill has never remotely worked for him before. It still doesn’t, so he mutters, “Fuck it,” under his breath and snaps his hair tie against his wrist a few times in quick succession.
It doesn’t work. None of it fucking works, and he realizes suddenly that it’s probably because his problem isn’t the same as it usually is. He doesn’t feel outside of his body anymore – he isn’t dissociating. Instead, it’s the opposite. It’s like all his senses have been turned up to a new level, or that there was some sort of filter over his vision that’s been lifted, letting him see colors he never knew were there before.
He hears the faint wind blowing against the car, feels the strap of his seatbelt digging into his shoulder. He licks his lips, and can taste the remnants of Mel’s vanilla chapstick. He looks down at his hands, shaking in his lap, wills them to steady.
But how can he, when he can still feel her soft skin beneath his palms and her hot mouth on his, her fingers wrapped around that back of his neck, pulling him closer? When her soft moans keep ringing in his ears, his name a whisper against his lips.
Frank.
He flips the driver’s side visor down and opens the mirror to look at himself. He seems normal enough, he thinks. His hair is messy from her fingers, which sends a chill down his spine. He doesn’t want to fix it, is thrilled by the tangible evidence that she was there, holding him, but knows he has to. So he licks his hand and smooths down the strands reluctantly, and then grabs his backpack and gets out of the car – Abby probably heard him pull in, and the last thing he needs is her to come out here and find him having a meltdown.
He wishes it were cold outside, that maybe the chill would shock him back into the present moment. Instead, the night’s muggy warmth just makes him more restless. He stops when he gets to the front door, and starts to take three deep breaths before turning the knob, but it opens before he can even get through the first one.
Of course, Abby is standing on the other side, just like she was on the night of PittFest. She looks at him with the same worry in her eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asks, in lieu of a greeting.
He sighs, and steps inside the foyer, closing the door behind him.
“Hello to you, too, Abby,” he mutters as he toes off his shoes. “Yes, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”
He prays that he’s not being so obvious that Abby can tell there’s something going on before he even walks through the door.
“Well,” Abby begins, “you pulled in the driveway and didn’t get out of the car for fifteen minutes.”
Jesus Christ. Had it really been that long?
“Sorry,” he says, walking further into the house and putting his backpack down next to the kitchen island. “Sorry, it was just a…long fucking day.”
He lifts himself onto one of the barstools, placing his elbows on the countertop and setting his head in his hands. Abby comes and sits on the stool next to him.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” he tells her, knowing if he tells her about the fucking OD that would just give her another reason to worry about him. Another reason for her to follow him around like a nervous puppy.
That’s the last thing he needs right now. Not when her gaze is making his skin crawl and stomach churn. Not when this house is suffocating him even more than usual.
“I’m going to go get a shower,” he says, getting up from his seat and stretching slightly. “And then I think I’ll go to bed a little early.”
She sends him a regretful smile.
“A long fucking day,” she echoes. “I’ll be up before you’re done.”
He presses his lips together, nods, and then starts up the stairs. He stops in the kids’ rooms before he heads to the ensuite bathroom. Penny is dead to the world, laying on her stomach, knees curled under her and bum in the air. He stifles a laugh, walks in and pulls the thumb resting lazily on her lips down to her side. He presses his lips to her hairline and then walks out of the room, tripping a little over her crate of Barbie dolls. He curses under his breath and looks back at his daughter. She doesn’t stir even a little.
He then crosses the hall to check on Tanner. He finds his son sitting up on his twin mattress, waiting for him.
“Hi, Dad,” Tanner whispers.
He walks into the room, closes the door behind him and goes to sit on the edge of his son’s bed.
“Hey, buddy,” he says quietly. “What are you still doing up?”
“Waiting for you,” he says simply. “You weren’t home for dinner again.”
He immediately feels like a piece of shit. He tries to think back to the schedule of his day. If he’d been making out with Mel in his car while his family had been eating a meal together.
No, he deduces. He would’ve still been at work at that point. His stomach unclenches just a bit.
“Sorry, Tanner,” he says. “Work went long today.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” his son tells him, all the sincerity in the world present in his voice. “I know you have really important job. I tell Mommy that all the time, when she gets mad you aren’t home from the hospital yet.”
His eyebrows pull together.
“Mommy gets mad when I don’t get home on time?”
Tanner shrugs.
“A little bit. Sad, too. She tells Grandma on the phone that you love the hospital more than you love us.”
His heart lurches.
“She always goes into the kitchen when she calls Grandma,” he continues, “but it’s still easy to hear her.”
His blood begins to simmer. How could she say something like that in a situation where the kids could overhear? How could she do that to him?
“You know…” he begins, shaking his head to try and clear his thoughts. “You know that’s not true, right? There’s nothing in the world I love more than you and Penny.”
“And Mommy?”
The words almost choke him, but he manages to say, “And Mommy,” in a relatively normal voice.
Tanner smiles.
“I know, Dad. Mommy does too, I think. She just was really sad when you got sick and had to go away for a little bit and she doesn’t want you to have to go away again.”
He swallows.
“Well,” he says, “I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Tanner smiles, and reaches out, wraps his arms around his neck and gives him a soft hug.
“How about you go to sleep now? It’s pretty late.”
Tanner sighs, but agrees with a soft okay and lays his head back down on his pillow.
“Did you drop your friend off at home today after work?” his son asks, as he adjusts his comforter around him.
He pauses briefly as he thinks of Mel, but recovers quickly.
“Yeah, I did,” he tells Tanner, and the boy smiles.
“I’m glad you have a friend, Dad. Everybody needs a friend.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, trying to smile back at his son. “Everybody needs a friend.”
He presses his lips to Tanner’s cheek quickly, and then stands up.
“Love you, bud. Go to sleep now.”
“Love you, too, Dad. Goodnight.”
He waits for Tanner to close his eyes, and then creeps out of the room quietly, trying to pull his thoughts together.
She tells Grandma on the phone that you love the hospital more than you love us.
How could she say that? How could she fucking say that?
He’s pissed, and hurt. How could Abby even think that? After everything that’s happened, after he went to rehab twice and got clean and stayed clean. He knows he’s not supposed to be clean for other people – his therapist tells him that every fucking week – but of course a huge part of him did it for the three of them. For Abby and Tanner and Penny.
He gently pulls Tanner’s door closed behind him so it’s only left open a crack. He stands there for a moment, not moving, just staring at the carpet in disbelief.
“You shouldn’t wake him up to say goodnight when you come home this late.”
Abby’s voice makes him jump out of his fucking skin. He turns toward her, finds her standing at the top of the stairs, a disapproving frown on her face.
He gazes at her blankly, his brain still racing a mile a minute, and then scoffs softly.
“I just went in to check on him, and he was already awake,” he whispers. “I didn’t wake him up.”
“Okay,” she says, raising her hands up in front of her, palms towards him, when she hears the bite in his tone. “I’m just saying. He starts kindergarten soon and we should be trying to get him on a consistent sleep schedule.”
He stares at her, trying his best not to glare. He knows he can’t get into this with her now, not standing in the hall between their children’s rooms in the middle of the night. So he just scrubs a hand over his face and turns his head away, looking in the direction of their bedroom.
“I know,” he mutters. “I’m just…I’m going to get a shower.”
He doesn’t wait for her to answer before he starts down the hall and walks into the bedroom. He grabs a pair of underwear from his dresser and goes into the bathroom, locks the door behind him. After starting the shower, he turns and looks at himself in the mirror. The bathroom is already starting to steam up, so he quickly tries to determine if he looks any different, just like he did in the car.
He looks decidedly more upset now, he determines. And more tired. His eyes are bloodshot. His hair is messy again. He licks his lips, and Mel’s chapstick is gone. He sighs, dropping his head towards the floor for a moment before stripping and getting into the hot water.
He tries to clear his mind as he washes himself, but he can’t. Whenever he tries to make his brain go quiet, it conjures up images of him family, of Abby’s glare and Tanner and Penny with tears in their eyes.
You love the hospital more than you love us.
He huffs, and smacks the shower wall with an open palm harder than he should. It makes his hand sting, and he winces.
He’s been alone with his thoughts a lot in the past year. In rehab, his mind was his enemy, especially as more and more days passed with no word from anyone except Abby and his mom. It would chant at him, in every quiet moment (and there are plenty of quiet moments in rehab). Taunt him about how he fucked up his entire life, that he was losing everyone and everything, that even if he could get out of this place, there would be nothing and no one on the other side. He ruined everything, everything, everything.
But Abby stayed, just like she promised she would. She hunkered down and stayed. And somewhere along the way, he started to resent her for it. And now, when he thinks of her, it’s with guilt and bitterness and anger.
He sighs again, and turns the temperature of the shower up, as if the water can melt his frustration with Abby away if it’s hot enough. He closes his eyes, bites his bottom lip, implores himself to think of something else, of anything else, besides his wife.
And, in half a second, Mel’s face appears behind his lids. The mole under her right eye. Her lips, full and pink and kiss swollen and coated in vanilla chapstick. The scent of her shampoo – lavender and chamomile and something else he can’t really identify yet. The taste of her – like peppermint gum, but not overwhelmingly so. Just enough, just right. The softness of her tongue, the scrape of her blunt nails on his scalp as she carded her fingers through his hair.
He opens his eyes, leans his forehead against the wet tile. When he looks down, he finds he’s half hard. He knows he could get all the way there, easily, if he lets himself. He shouldn’t – not at home, not after promising his son that he still loves his mother, his wife. The wife who’s in the next room, waiting for him, worrying after him.
He squeezes his eyes shut again, and runs his fingers along his shaft before taking himself in his fist.
And he thinks of Mel. The feel of her underneath his hands, soft and willing and wanting. He can never find it in himself to be someone he isn’t with her. He thinks he’d hoped to scare her away at first – he thinks back to their conversation in the break room his first shift back – but he’d failed. She didn’t waver. She’d stayed. She saw right through him – saw every ugly, unsavory part of him – and she stayed anyway.
Mel stayed, too, he realizes. The thought makes his hand move over his cock more quickly, pulls a moan from his lips that he hopes is drowned out by the sound of the water.
Mel stayed, not for the kids or to save a marriage that might’ve been broken even before the drugs. She stayed for him. She wants him. Not who he used to be, not some version of him that didn’t exist anymore, that maybe never existed. She doesn’t even know that person. She knows him, she sees him, and she wants him all the same.
And he wants her. Jesus Christ, he wants her. He wants to kiss her and take her clothes off and eat her out in the back seat of his car. Then, he wants to fuck her and come inside her and hold her against him afterwards. He wants to feel her hands on his skin and her cunt around his cock. He knows it would feel real. He knows she would be real.
He bites back another moan as he releases over his fist, chest heaving as he rides out his orgasm. He opens his eyes when it’s over, registers the water has turned cold, so he quickly rinses out his hair one more time before turning off the shower.
When he’s dried himself off and pulled on his boxers, he wipes the leftover steam off the mirror with his hand – Abby will get on his case for that in the morning, for smearing the glass – and stares at his reflection yet again. Still trying to determine if he looks any different. If he looks like the kind of man who just jerked himself off to the thought of another woman while his wife waited for him in the next room.
He tries to feel bad about it, and he thinks he does, at least a little bit. But he can’t bring himself to regret it. It’s been so long since he’s let himself want something, even longer since he’s acted on that type of want. He’s a little startled when he realizes that right now – scratch that, since his first shift back on the Fourth – he wants Mel more than he ever wanted the Librium or Ativan or whatever else he could get his fucking hands on.
He didn’t know if that would ever happen again – if part of the curse of being an addict is that he would always want the drugs more than anything else in his life. But it’s happened, and it’s real. It’s so goddamn real.
* * *
She’s quiet when he picks her up in the morning, smiling at him gently as she buckles her seatbelt. He wants to reach out and take her hand, to lean over the center console and kiss her. But she doesn’t send him any signal that those are things she wants him to do, so he restrains himself and pulls out of her parking lot.
They don’t talk on the way to the hospital. She doesn’t even put on any music, instead just sitting there, scrolling on her phone. The silence between them isn’t awkward – it never is between them – but it’s not exactly comfortable, either.
He gulps, starting to think that he’s read this whole situation wrong. Maybe she regrets what they did. Maybe in the clarity of a new day, she realizes that she doesn’t want him, doesn’t want the mess that would come along with doing this with him. He wouldn’t blame her. It would break his heart, but he wouldn’t blame her.
He pulls into the parking garage and parks in his usual spot, turns the car off. Neither of them moves to get out yet, though. He sees her mouth open out of the corner of his eye, like she’s getting ready to say something. He drums his fingers against the steering wheel in quick, irregular beats.
Of course she regrets it, that voice in his head tells him. Why would someone as perfect as her want to blow her life up for a fuck up like you?
“Frank,” she begins, but he cuts her off. He typically makes a point to never interrupt her – he loves hearing her talk, listening to her voice, knowing the thoughts in her beautiful, brilliant brain – but he can’t just sit there and listen to her…reject him, like he’s some helpless idiot that she finally, finally pities.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “I’m really fucking sorry, Mel. I know you probably regret us…doing what we did. Which is totally understandable. I think I probably presumed a lot of things, and projected my feelings onto you, which was stupid of me. I mean, how could you fucking want me, or this? I’m a married drug addict. I know that. And now – the last thing I wanted to do was ruin our friendship. It’s so important to me. You are so fucking important to me, Mel.”
He knows he’s spiraling, vaguely, somewhere in the back of his mind. But he can’t fucking stop himself. She’s usually the one who stops his descents into shame and doom, but she’s not this time. He turns to face her hesitantly, finds her gazing at him, eyebrows pulled together.
“But, yeah,” he continues. “I really hope I didn’t mess this up, but I’d understand if I did. If you don’t want to be around me anymore. Like I said, I really, really hope that’s not the case, but – “
“Frank,” she says finally.
“I just…I really fucking like you, Mel. Like, so much. And I’m sorry – “
“Frank,” she says again, more sternly this time. But she reaches over and takes his hand at the same time, twining their fingers together.
Her touch anchors him to the Earth, slows his racing heart, just like it usually does. He stops rambling, and exhales slowly.
“I don’t,” she starts, but then pauses, taking a deep breath. “So you regret kissing me?”
He balks at her, mouth open, the concept of not wanting to kiss Mel – of regretting anything at all that has to do with Mel – such a wildly foreign idea to him that he almost can’t process it. He thinks back over his words for a second, realizes what they must’ve sounded like.
“No, Mel,” he tells her earnestly. “I probably should. I know that. But…I’ve wanted to kiss you for such a long time. I’m kind of relieved I finally did, to be honest.”
The grip she has on his hand tightens at that.
“I mean, I regret it only because you regret it, and – “
“I don’t regret it,” she interrupts. “I don’t. Like you said, I should. I should feel guilty and awful, but I just…don’t. That probably makes me a bad person.”
“You’re not a bad person,” he promises her immediately. “I swear, Mel. You’re not a bad person.”
She nods slowly, and stares down at their clasped hands.
“I’ve been thinking about what I want, just like you told me to do. What I want for me. And I realized it’s you. That you’re what I want for me.”
His breath catches. His free hand snaps his hair tie, thinking he must still be in bed, dreaming. The sensation stings a bit, but he doesn’t startle awake. Instead, he just feels her palm against his, her shaky breaths in the still air of the car.
Real, he thinks. Real, real, real.
“You’re what I want for me, too,” he murmurs. “You’re everything I want, Mel.”
She bites down on her bottom lip, but it’s not due to anxiety. He sees the corners of her mouth try to curl up, like she’s tamping down a smile. It makes warmth pool in his stomach. He wants to kiss her, to pull that bottom lip out from under her teeth and between his, but before he can lean in, she’s speaking again.
“We should probably set some rules, though. To make sure…this goes as smoothly as possible. As smoothly as something like this can go, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he says with a nod. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“The first thing, the most important thing, to me,” she starts, “is that you should stop picking me up and taking me home when I’m with Becca.”
His face falls a little.
“It’s not that I don’t want you around her,” she assures him. “In fact, that’s the opposite of what I really want. But I also need to keep her as far away from this as possible. If it…goes badly, that last thing I want is for her to be caught in the middle, or for her to feel like she did something wrong.”
“Yeah, okay. That’s a good idea.”
“Okay. Another one is…does Abby know the passcode to your phone?”
He winces.
“Shit. Yeah, she does.”
Which means she could definitely check his texts at any time and figure out pretty quickly that Donnie is not the one he’s driving home from work almost every night. Shit.
“I’ll change it,” he says. “I can just tell her that Tanner figured out the code was his birthday.”
“Okay,” she answers, nodding. “But just in case, you shouldn’t text me anything explicit.”
He grins at that. He can’t help it.
“What, like a dick pic?”
Her eyes widen, and an immediate, furious blush flushes her cheeks. She goes to pull her hand from his, but he doesn’t let her.
“That’s not what I meant,” she tells him, covering her eyes with her palm. “I meant anything suspicious sounding.”
He knows what she meant. But he can’t help but tease her a little. She’s so cute when she’s embarrassed.
“So, no sexting. Disappointing, but understandable”
“Frank,” she scolds. “I didn’t mean…sexting.”
Her voice drops on the last word, like it’s something taboo or forbidden.
“I know, I know,” he says, a smile still curling up his lips. “You meant suspicious.”
“Please take this seriously, Frank. This is an important rule.”
He sighs, but wipes the grin off his face, nods once to show that he understands.
“Thank you,” she says. “Also, we shouldn’t do anything at work. We need to keep acting just like we always have. So we don’t have to avoid each other, suddenly, because that might make people talk, too. Just, no making out in supply closets or anything like that.”
He actually pouts at that one. He has definitely thought about making out with her (and more) in a supply closet and other inappropriate places, like the on-call rooms and patient rooms and the couch in the lounge and in the middle of the ED where everyone could see and –
“Frank,” she scolds again, as if she can read his thoughts.
“Okay, okay,” he says, but he lifts their joined hands and presses a kiss to the back of hers quickly. “Separation of church and state. Got it. But I’m just saying – if we’re going to have an affair, we might as well go all out. Really Grey’s Anatomy that shit.”
He hears her gasp gently, and he’s acutely aware that this is the first time either one of them has said the A word out loud. It sends a shiver through him that settles at the base of his spine. He tries to think of anything else other than fucking her against the wall in a supply closet. He pictures car crashes, an open chest cavity, Abby. That last one helps, finally. Separation of church of state. He can do that.
“I’ve never seen Grey’s Anatomy,” she tells him, “but unless you’re prepared for Dr. Al-Hashimi to report to Robby that you’re having an extramarital affair with your subordinate when he gets back from leave, no funny business at work.”
Funny business. God, she’s so fucking adorable. He likes her so much.
“I’m pretty sure Robby would love to hear that since it might finally give him a reason to kick me out for good, but, you’re right. Nothing at work.”
She grins slightly, satisfied that he’s agreed.
“Anything else?” he asks, but she shakes her head.
“Those are the three big ones I thought of last night. I couldn’t sleep, so I wrote up a few things in my notes app, and – “
“Wait, you have a note on your phone with these rules?”
She shrugs.
“Well, it’s not just the rules. I also thought about some…logistical stuff. Like, I didn’t know if you’d want to come into my apartment? I honestly don’t know how stuff like this works. But we also can’t do anything in the parking lot of my building. The kissing was bad enough, and…”
She trails off when she realizes how intently he’s staring at her.
“Are you okay?” she questions, and he gulps.
“I’m great, Mel,” he says, half strangled. “Please continue.”
She peers at him strangely for a moment more, then keeps going.
“Well, about three miles from my apartment, there’s a building that’s getting renovated. So, obviously, no one is there at night. And they have a parking lot in the back, so I thought…maybe…Why are you looking at me like that?”
He clears his throat. His voice is rough, gravelly, when he speaks.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to…pounce on me, or something.”
“Because I do,” he says honestly, easily. “You have a fucking note in your phone planning our affair. That’s fucking hot, Mel.”
“Really?” she asks, brightening and squeezing his hand. “I was afraid you might think it was weird, or something.”
“Well, it is a little weird,” he tells her with a smile, and she uses her free hand to shove his shoulder lightly. “But it’s way more hot than weird. So, yeah, I want to pounce on you. And do about a million fucking other things to you.”
“Oh,” she breathes.
“But no fucking funny business at work. So.”
She stares at him, and he can practically hear the wheels turning in her brain. He thinks she might be reconsidering her last rule, but then, her phone lights up, and she jumps, glancing down.
“Oh, crap. It’s 6:55. We need to go.”
She goes to pick her bag up, but his grip on her tightens. He pulls her towards him slightly, still smiling.
“Can I kiss you, at least? Before we go in. The parking garage doesn’t count as work, does it?”
“It actually does,” she informs him. “But, I guess since you can’t pounce on me, maybe just this one time.”
She barely has time to get the last word of her sentence out before he presses his mouth to hers. Their teeth knock together gently, because they’re both still grinning. But then, his tongue runs along her bottom lip, and she inhales, bringing one of her hands up to play with the hair at the nape of his neck.
She pulls away much too quickly for his liking – she’s definitely the more responsible one out of the two of them, but he already knew that – but rests her forehead on his for a moment as she catches her breath. He’s just about to lean back in (he really can’t help himself) when she lets go of his hand and places a finger on his lips.
“Nope,” she tells him. “Time for work.”
He sighs dramatically, then kisses the tip of her finger.
“Fine. Time for work.”
They get out of the car. He rushes around the vehicle so he can close her door, and she makes a remark about him being so polite that’s supposed to be teasing, he knows, but still makes warmth bloom in his chest. He glances around the floor quickly to see that they’re the only ones there, so he grabs her hand, slotting their fingers together while they start their walk to the stairwell.
And, after glancing around herself, she doesn’t pull away. Instead, she tugs him a bit closer, sinking into his side.
* * *
He doesn’t get to drive her to her apartment after that shift because she’s picking up Becca on the way home. He’s disappointed, of course, but he swallows down his feelings because the Becca rule is a good one. The absolute last thing he wants to do is mix Becca up in any of this. Plus, he’ll follow any rule Mel gives him, really, if that means he gets to have her in some capacity.
So he behaves around her the way he normally would at work, which, luckily for him, still means a lot of hovering. A lot of orbiting. And if he presses his palm to her lower back to guide her during the traumas they work together a few times more than he usually does, well, who could blame him? She doesn’t; in fact, she does the same to him, a careful hand to his hip to scoot him out of the way as she’s moving around a gurney. A tap against his shoulder to accompany her soft Dr. Langdonwhen she wants to get his attention. A deliberate brush against his fingers as they pass a protein bar back and forth during a five-minute break in her stairwell.
And when they say goodnight that evening by the lockers, if his gaze lingers on her retreating form a little longer than necessary, no one seems to notice.
He gets home in time for dinner that night. He plays with Tanner and Penny afterwards, and then helps to tuck them into bed. And when he falls asleep, as usual, he dreams of Mel.
* * *
He doesn’t see her alone for nearly two weeks after that.
It’s not intentional. Definitely not on his part, and he doesn’t think on her part, either – not after their conversation in his car.
For the first time since he came back in July, their schedules don’t line up for almost a week. And then, when they start to sync again, Becca gets a mild case of the flu, and Mel has to take two personal days to stay home with her. When she does finally come back, she’s still dropping off and picking up Becca, until the two of them feel comfortable with her staying overnight again. And by that point, he does start avoiding her at work just a bit. He still takes cases with her, of course, but he tries not to touch her, doesn’t let himself take breaks at the same time as she does, especially in places where he could fall under the illusion that they’re alone, like the ambulance bay or stairwell.
So even when they’re both in the Pitt, they’re like two ships passing in the night – in each other’s presence, but not circling each other as much as they usually do. Together, but so far apart at the same time. He’s afraid that if he gets anything more than that, he’ll end up breaking her nothing at work rule.
He puts part of the blame for his bad mood on Wednesday on this.
It’s his one day off this week, and despite the situation with Mel, he wakes up in the morning excited to spend the late summer day with his kids. Maybe they could take Tanner and Penny to the spray park in Shadyside, or the Science Center, and pretend to be a normal, functioning family. He checks his phone, and sees that there’s a Pirates game this evening, too, one of the ones where they sell hot dogs for one dollar. He’s smirking, thinking of the kids potentially eating their weight in hot dogs, when Abby comes into their bedroom, already dressed for the day.
“Good morning,” she says to him when she sees he’s awake, with a small smile.
“Morning,” he answers, sitting up in bed and gazing at her in confusion. “Where are you already off to at 7:30 AM?”
“Oh, uh. After I drop off the kids at daycare, I was going to run to Trader Joe’s.”
His brow furrows.
“Wait, what? Why?”
She tilts her head at him.
“To pick up a few things for dinner,” she says slowly. “Why, did you want to come?”
“No, Abs,” he tells her, with a shake of his head. “That’s not what I meant. Why are you taking the kids to daycare?”
She stares at him blankly.
“Um. Because the kids go to daycare on Wednesdays?”
“No, I know that,” he says. He’d made it a point to memorize the weekly daycare schedule after he got out of rehab, to make himself feel like a more involved father. “But we’re both home today.”
She stares at him for a moment, then sighs, walking to her nightstand and picking up her phone.
“Look, it’s sweet you want to spend more time with Tanner and Penny. But they have a schedule, Frank. And we can’t just mess it up all the time when it’s convenient for us. Especially since Tanner starts kindergarten in a couple weeks. He needs – “
“But that’s what I’m saying,” he tells her. “Tanner is starting school soon, so I’m not going to be able to spend all my days off with him. So let’s take the time I do have and actually fucking utilize it. It’s a beautiful day outside. Maybe we could take them to the spray park or something, and then go to lunch. There’s a baseball game tonight, too, so if we – “
“Frank,” she interrupts. “I’m sorry, but Tanner, Penny and I can’t always adjust our entire lives around all your whims and ideas.”
“Jesus Christ, Abs. I’m not asking you guys to move across the country. I’m asking you not to send them to daycare for one fucking day.”
“And I’m telling you that I can’t just let you – “
“Let me?” he asks incredulously, his eyebrows shooting up. “Why are you acting like they’re not my kids, too?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then please enlighten me, Abby. What did you mean?”
“I meant,” she begins, her voice sharp, “that maybe if you made more an effort to be here for us all the time, instead of just when it’s convenient for you, I would be more willing to give in when this kind of stuff happens.”
He goes to say something, but pauses when he realizes that this is exactly the type of fight they used to have before…everything. Before rehab, before PittFest, before his life blew up. Not that they fought that often, but when they did, it always sounded something like this.
His stomach drops a little, and suddenly, the fight drains out of his. A wave of sadness and endless frustration washes over him.
Because Abby stayed. Abby stayed, and he went to rehab, and therapy, and NA meetings. He spent more time at home, he memorized his kids’ daycare schedule, he relearned so many of Abby’s wants and signals. He was present, he was focused, he made himself be there. And it worked with Tanner and Penny. He swears it did; he’s never felt closer to his children. But with Abby, somehow, horrifyingly, he’s come full circle, in the worst way.
(How did this happen? How is this happening? How the fuck did we get here?)
Abby must sense the change in his demeanor, because her next words are softer.
“Frank, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You,” he starts, but stops immediately. He doesn’t even really know what he wants to say anymore. He feels so exhausted all of a sudden, any semblance of the good mood he was in when he woke up gone and ground to dust. He sighs, and drops his head into his hands.
After a minute, he murmurs, “Just take the kids to daycare.”
Abby doesn’t respond right away, and when he lifts his head to look at her, she’s looking at him like she always does. Worry and pity and trepidation and even more fucking pity.
“Maybe we can work out the Pirates game tonight,” she offers quietly.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Abby stares at him for a moment longer, and then shakes her head just the tiniest bit as she leaves the room, leaving the door open only a smidge. He sighs and lays back down in bed, curling onto his side and pulling the covers up around him before closing his eyes, willing himself to go back to sleep. Maybe this is all a bad dream. Maybe if he wakes up a second time, the entire morning will reset.
But sleep doesn’t come. And a few minutes later, he hears the kids in the hall as Abby tries to usher them towards the stairs.
“Say bye to Daddy?” Penny asks, in her small voice that’s somehow gentle and eager all at the same time.
“Yeah,” Tanner agrees. “Can we say goodbye to Daddy?”
Something about their words makes him want to cry.
You love the hospital more than you love us.
“It’s Daddy’s day off,” Abby tells them. “Remember, we let Daddy sleep in on his days off. Besides, we’re already late.”
Abby’s voice is soft, but her tone is firm in a way that makes it clear her mind won’t change. It should piss him off, but he’s so tired. He hears two quiet okays from his children, and then footsteps on the stairs. The front door opens and closes, and then the house goes silent.
And he’s alone with his thoughts.
Not that he can even decipher them at this point. Somehow his brain is frantically jumbled and sluggish all at the same time. All he can figure out – the only things concrete – are the feelings. He’s upset; of course he’s upset. Sometimes he thinks maybe the house is cursed. Maybe they need to move and start from scratch, in different part of town with different names and different pasts.
But that’s impossible. Plus, he knows it’s not the house. It’s just him. Who’s so royally screwed up that he ruins everything in his life – even the parts where he had a second chance.
His vision blurs, and he hops out of bed in a rush, knowing if he just keeps lying here and thinking, things could take a turn for the worst. He pulls on a t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts and socks, and then heads downstairs, walking into the kitchen and pouring himself some coffee from the pot Abby already made. He drinks it immediately, and it’s too hot. He realizes, in the back of his mind, that the liquid is burning his tongue, but he doesn’t feel it. Not really.
When he finishes, he puts his mug in the sink. He feels like he’s floating above his body. He snaps his hair tie, then snaps it again and again. He snaps it until it finally, actually hurts, and when he looks down, the inside of his wrist is an angry red color. Fuck.
“Fuck!” he yells, the sound echoing off the walls of the empty house.
He bangs his fist against the side of his head twice, and then reaches into his pocket, pulling out his phone. He should probably call his therapist or sponsor.
He opens his text messages, and clicks on Mel’s name. Before he can think, he’s typing.
i miss you.
is that message against the rules?
He places his phone on the counter after he glances at the time – 8:17. There in the middle of the morning rush still. There’s no way she can text him back anytime soon.
He drums his fingers against the marble countertop, frantically glancing around the room for something, anything, that will capture his attention. He’s just about to go put something stupid and loud on the TV – hell, maybe he’ll put on The Patriot and fast forward to one of the battle scenes – when his phone vibrates. He sighs, and picks it up, dreading a text from Abby.
Instead, it’s Mel.
I don’t know. Maybe.
She’s still typing, so he waits.
I miss you too.
His heart jumps, and he almost laughs, even though the message finally makes a tear fall from the corner of his left eye. He brings up a shaking finger and traces her message on the screen. He wishes that it was somehow engraved into the glass, that he could feel the words beneath his fingertips.
He walks over to the kitchen island and sits down on one of the stools, placing his phone down in front of him, his conversation with Mel still pulled up. He stares at the letters, willing them to ground him, and thinks of her. Of her hair and her eyes and her lips and her smile and her voice and her hands and –
The front door opens. He looks in the direction of the foyer. He can’t see Abby yet, but he can hear her shuffling in and taking off her shoes. When she rounds the corner, there are no grocery bags in her hands.
“I thought you were going to the store,” he murmurs lamely.
She shrugs.
“I was going to, but it seemed like you weren’t doing so great before I left. So I figured I’d come home and make sure you were okay first.”
He doesn’t say anything right away, just dims his phone screen so she doesn’t see what he has pulled up. She comes into the kitchen and stands on the other side of the island, across from him. He can’t bring himself to look at her.
“Are you okay, Frank?”
No, he should probably say. I hate myself and I hate it here and I think I might hate you, too, even though you stayed.
“Tanner told me that you tell your mom that I love my job at the hospital more than I love all of you,” he tells her instead.
He glances up at her, just in time to see her flinch. She sighs, and brings her hand up to tuck a loose piece of her hair behind her ear.
“He wasn’t supposed to hear that.”
He scoffs.
“He told me you talk to her in the kitchen, Abby,” he says, motioning with his hand around the large, open room. “If you haven’t noticed, we don’t exactly have a closed floorplan.”
“What do you want me to say, Frank?” she asks with a huff, before pushing herself off the countertop and walking over to the coffee pot. “I’m sorry, okay? He really wasn’t supposed to hear that. I would never intentionally badmouth you in front of the kids.”
“Well, you did,” he mutters. “And now I have Tanner asking me if I still love you guys, so. Thanks for that.”
“Again, I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful going forward.”
“Going forward?” he asks incredulously. “So you’re going to continue to tell your mom that I don’t love you. But, hey, at least the kids won’t be around to hear it this time, if we’re lucky!”
“Again, I don’t know what you want me to say,” Abby tells him as she pours a cup of coffee before setting the pot back on the burner. He can see her hands shaking as she does. “You keep telling me that I’m allowed to be mad at you, but now you’re upset that I am?”
“I thought you be upset to my face, at least. Not to your fucking mother. And I thought you would complain about normal things, like me leaving dishes in the sink or not folding my laundry quickly enough, not that I don’t love you anymore. Jesus Christ, Abs.”
“Okay, but, do you love me anymore, Frank?” she asks loudly, placing her mug down and quickly spinning to face him. “You act like me questioning that is the most ridiculous fucking thing, but you almost never come home on time. And then when you are here, sometimes you look like you’re about three seconds from bolting out the door again. You act like it’s a crime that I worry about you. You avoid touching me whenever possible, and when I try to initiate anything, you look like you could get sick. God, Frank, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think…”
She trails off, picking up her mug and taking a drink. He thinks he sees tears in her eyes.
“You’d think what?” he breathes, his heart pounding in his chest.
“That you’re going to leave me,” she mutters, looking down at her coffee, like she’s embarrassed to say it. “Give up and leave us.”
“I’m not…” he begins, and he gazes past her before running a hand through his hair and then tugging on it. He’s about to continue, but Abby speaks before he can.
“I know you’re not. Even I don’t think you’re stupid enough to do that.”
He doesn’t answer right away. When he glances back at her, her expression has changed. It’s harder, now, and more angry than sad. Or maybe angry isn’t the right word. There’s a harsher edge to it, one he’s never seen from her before. Almost threatening, in a way.
“Because you know you wouldn’t get them, don’t you?” she tells him lowly. His stomach churns. “You’re a fucking drug addict who used around them and hid pills in the house. You would not get them.”
He winces like she just hit him. That’s probably the meanest thing Abby has said to him since this whole shit show began. Since that awful day last September.
“Abby, I would never try to take the kids from you.”
She nods once, curtly. And he asks, because he has to.
“Would you try to take the kids from me?”
She doesn’t say anything, and he can feel all the blood drain from his face.
“What the fuck, Abby?”
“I would do anything for Tanner and Penny,” she says, using that same low tone that’s making his skin crawl. “Whatever’s best for them, that’s what I would do.”
“And you think what’s best for them is to take them from their dad?”
“I think what’s best for them is to have two loving parents who are together and present. I think what’s best for them is to not completely upend their lives because you don’t want to put the effort in – “
“Since when do I not put the fucking effort in to be the best I can be for all three of you?” he asks incredulously. “Every single fucking thing I do is for you, to the point that I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore!”
Her eyes narrow.
“You don’t know who you are, Frank? You’re a father. And a husband. And you’re definitely making it a priority to make sure you’re still a doctor.”
“I mean outside of those things,” he tries to explain, in the calmest voice he can manage. “My therapist says that I need to figure out who I want to be for myself. What I want for myself. She even recommended this book – “
“Since when do you listen to your therapist more than you listen to me?” she asks him. “You’re always saying how full of shit she is.”
He looks down, taps his fingers against the counter nervously.
“I don’t know. Some of the stuff she’s been saying lately…makes sense.”
“Of course it does,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “She only gets your perspective, so she’s reinforcing all of your worst tendencies. Who knows what shit you’re telling her.”
“You think I’m lying to her?”
“I don’t know, Frank. You have a history of being a pretty good liar.”
He laughs. He can’t help himself. And she glares at him.
“What could possibly be funny right now?”
“This,” he tells her, motioning between the two of them. “Us. This stupid, ridiculous conversation. Somehow, even though you’re the one talking shit about me in front of the kids, I’m the lying, drug addicted bad guy who is only around his kids because of your absolutely selfless generosity.”
She doesn’t answer him, and he exhales loudly.
“Be honest, Abby. If this is, apparently, what you think of me, what are you still doing here? Why the fuck did you stay?”
She bites her lip, stares down at her coffee cup.
“I thought we would be fine,” she whispers. “I thought we could fix this. We’re Frank and Abby. How could we not fix this?”
He cringes at the tone she uses when she says their names. It’s the way they used to talk about themselves, back when they were younger and less jaded and thought nothing could touch them. Sure, the world might make their friends’ marriages and relationships deteriorate and disappear, but not theirs. They were Frank and Abby. They had their shit together.
“I don’t think we’ve been Frank and Abby for a long time,” he says quietly.
She doesn’t respond. A heavy silence settles over them. He feels it clinging to his skin, weighing him down and smothering him. He gets up and heads towards the foyer.
“And you’re running away again,” she tells him.
“If that’s what you insist on fucking calling it, Abby, then I guess I am.”
He shoves his feet into his shoes and grabs his car keys, leaves, shutting the front door behind him before he can hear what, if anything, Abby has to say.
He manages to wait until he’s settled in the car to shout. He drops his head down onto the steering wheel, and feels tears prick the corner of his eyes once again.
* * *
He ends up in Mellon Park, sitting on a bench by the spray park, watching kids run back and forth through the water, with smiles on their faces. It’s an absolutely perfect day, the sun shining down from the cloudless sky and laughter in the air.
He feels like absolute shit. He’s been on the verge of outright sobbing for the past hour and a half – ever since he left the house – and doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to hold out. And the worst thing, the most awful fucking thing, is how much he wants the drugs.
Just one, that terrible voice inside of himself says. It’s the same one that tells him that he’s worthless, that he’s probably better off dead, that the drugs are the only thing that will define him for the rest of his life anyway so what’s the harm in leaning into it. You haven’t taken any in so long. Just one will take the edge off.
He doesn’t have any way to get them, not really. He wasn’t deep enough into it that he had a dealer or anything – he was just very good at rationing what he managed to take from the hospital.
Still, he needs to call his sponsor. Or at the very least, his therapist. He takes his phone out of his pocket, but finds him opening his conversation with Mel again. He’s wanted to talk to her since the fight, almost texted her as soon as he got in the car. But he hadn’t wanted to bother her at work. He shouldn’t bother her at work.
He looks at her last message.
I miss you too.
And he can’t help himself.
hey.
can i call you?
He sets his phone down on the bench, face up so he can see his screen light up if she responds. He checks the time, sees it’s a little before 11:00. Still not late enough for whatever tiny lunch break she might get, if she even gets one today. He hopes she does. He hopes she’s eaten something today; he has to remind her sometimes.
The sun beats down on the back of his neck, beads of sweat beginning to gather on his temples. This would have been the best day to bring the kids here. He can almost hear the way they would laugh alongside everyone, can so clearly picture the smiles on their faces. A few tears leak from the corners of his eyes, and he lets out a shaky breath.
He taps his phone screen to look at the time. 11:22. He’ll give her eight more minutes, and then he’ll call someone else. He needs to, he knows. His hands are shaking. His mind is spiraling. He’s a fuck up, he’s such a fuck up, he’s going to lose everything, everything that’s important and everything he ever cared about. Everything he ever loved. Just get it over with. Just get it over with, you fucking piece of shit.
His phone vibrates.
Sorry for not responding more quickly. It’s already a mess here. Is everything ok?
He smiles just a bit, even just from seeing her message on the screen. His first instinct is to lie, to tell her everything is fine, to not worry her – he can almost see the wrinkle between her furrowed brows as she stares down at her phone from here. But if he’s just going to lie to her, then why did he reach out to her in the first place? Lying won’t get you anywhere, he tells himself. Lying is what ruined your life in the first place.
no.
Her response is immediate.
Ok. Give me five minutes.
His phone starts to ring in three. He doesn’t say anything when he swipes across his screen and puts the device to his ear. He can hear a shuffling around in the background, the sound of vehicle doors opening and closing. She must be in the ambulance bay.
“Frank?” he hears, after a moment.
The sound of her voice makes more tears fall down his cheeks. When he opens his mouth to respond, a sob finally rips from his chest.
“Frank,” she murmurs.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he answers finally, his voice breaking.
“Are you okay?” she asks quickly. “Did you…did you – “
She stumbles over her words before she can finish her question, but he knows what she’s getting at. She wants to know if he used. It breaks his heart, drives him fucking insane that that will always be the first question he’s asked whenever he’s mid-crisis, but he knows it’s a legitimate concern. Hell, he might’ve used today, if he only had access to some fucking pills.
“No,” he tells her. “But – Christ, Mel, I want to. I really fucking want to.”
“Okay,” she says. He can hear the worry in her voice, and he hates it, despises himself for putting it there. “What do you need from me?”
He needs her. He needs to see her, to smell her. To hear her voice in his ear not through a fucking telephone. But how can he ask that of her? He can’t ask her to do that. He won’t.
But his silence is an answer enough, for her.
“Where are you?” she asks. “Are you okay to drive?”
“In Mellon Park. I…I think I can drive. Yeah, I can drive.”
“Come pick me up,” she tells him immediately. “I…can tell them I’m sick. By the time you drive across town, I should be able to get out of here.”
“Mel, I,” he begins, his voice cracking again. “I can’t make you do that. I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking me,” she insists, “and you’re not making me. I’m offering.”
“But, Mel – “
“Please, Frank,” she interrupts. “Let me do this for you. I want to do this for you.”
He inhales sharply, at the idea of someone taking care of him. Of someone thinking he’s important enough to be taken care of.
Of Mel thinking that. Sweet, beautiful, perfect Mel.
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay, I can…I’ll come get you.”
“Promise?”
And he laughs at that, lightly, at the earnestness in her voice.
“Yeah, sweetheart. I promise.”
“Good. I can – oh wait,” she says. When she speaks again, it’s quieter, like she’s pulled her phone away from her ear. “Crap. I was going to say I could stay on the phone with you until you got to your car, but Santos just texted me to ask where I am.”
“Go ahead,” he tells her. “I’ll be there. I swear, Mel.”
“Okay. See you soon, then.”
He nods to himself, and stands up from the bench.
“See you soon,” he repeats back to her.
“Okay. Bye, Frank.”
“Bye, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and takes one more glance around the park as he hangs up his phone.
* * *
She’s already outside when he arrives, standing on the sidewalk with her bag at her feet and looking down at her phone, chewing on her bottom lip. Her head snaps up when he pulls up to the curb, and she smiles at him gently for a moment before her expression folds into one of deep concern.
She gets into the car, placing the bag on the floor as she closes the passenger door behind her. She looks at him immediately, that wrinkle between her eyebrows that he imagined in the park right in front of him now. He reaches out, tries to smooth it with the pad of his thumb.
“Frank,” she murmurs.
“I’m okay,” he says, answering her unspoken question. “I just…I need to talk to you. I think I just need to talk to you.”
“We can go back to the park,” she offers. “Or if you’re hungry, we can go to that diner on Western Avenue.”
He nods, not knowing how to tell her that neither of those places sound appealing to him. He wants to be with her – just her. He isn’t even really sure where they could go. It’s daytime, and there are probably renovators at the spot she mentioned during their conversation about rules the other day. Shit, maybe this was a bad idea, maybe he should’ve –
“We could go to my apartment.”
His hand tightens around the steering wheel. He doesn’t really know why he didn’t consider it. He never would’ve brought up going there himself; somehow, that would feel like asking her for too much, even though he knows she would have agreed without hesitation.
Let me do this for you, she’d said. I want to do this for you.
Even now, the words make something inside his stomach flutter.
“Frank?”
Her voice pulls him from his thoughts, and he realizes his hand is still on her face, now cradling her jaw even though the concerned crease between her brows is still there. He tries to smile at her, wants to lean over and kiss her even though they’re still in front of the hospital. He almost does, but then a car behind him honks before swerving around him quickly.
“I have my flashers on, jackass,” he mutters under his breath, even as he shifts the car into drive and begins to pull away from the curb.
He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, manages to send her grin that almost reaches his eyes. The frown on her face doesn’t budge, though. Neither does the silence that’s settled over her.
He can navigate to her apartment almost on autopilot at this point, after driving her home so many times, so he spends their drive trying to decode the thoughts going through her brain. He can feel her gaze on him through most of the trip, but he keeps his eyes on the road. The air between them is tense, almost, sets him on edge. He tries to keep the bad thoughts – the ones that overcame him with Abby and at the park – but they fester at the edges of his mind, like they always do. Fuck up, fuck up, good-for-nothing fuck up.
When he pulls into her parking spot and shuts the car off, he turns towards her.
“I didn’t use,” he assures her, even though he already told her that over the phone. “I – I wanted to. But I didn’t.”
Her eyebrows pull even further together, the crease that he’d smoothed back and even more pronounced than before. He immediately takes it as a sign of her skepticism, and is about to open his mouth again, to almost beg her to believe him, but she speaks before he can.
“You already told me that, when you were in the park.”
“I know,” he says. “I know that. I thought you might not…believe me.”
He darts his eyes towards the floor, not able to look at her anymore, afraid that he might find confirmation of his statement in her eyes. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and his stomach begins to churn.
“Frank,” she murmurs, and then she’s reaching over, taking his hand. He looks up at her, her expression soft and open and full. “I trust you.”
“You do?” he breathes, so quietly, almost like he’s afraid that saying something out loud will make her change her mind.
She squeezes his hand more tightly.
“Of course I do. We don’t lie to each other, right?”
He thinks back to that first day back, when he’d admitted to her that he’d diverted drugs in the break room. How she’d looked back at him, unflinching, and proceeded to read him like her favorite book.
“Right,” he tells her.
No, he doesn’t lie to her. He’s spent so much of his recent past lying to anyone who would listen, to himself, and he’s not supposed to do that anymore. With her, it would be pointless for him to try, he knows, but it’s more than that. He doesn’t want to lie to her. He never has. Those few hours on July 4th between his initial apology to her and his admission about stealing drugs had eaten away at him.
She deserves his honesty. She deserves all he has to give.
“Come on,” she says, letting go of his hand and reaching for her bag on the floor. “It’s getting hot in here.”
So he follows her, out of the car and through the double doors of her apartment building. When they get to her door, she opens it, sets her bag down on a stool in the corner, and immediately kicks off her shoes, putting on a pair of fluffy purple slippers in the entranceway. She asks him to take his shoes off too, so he does, trying to surreptitiously glance around her place as he does. He stays near the door while she walks further into her home, but she turns around when she feels him hesitate, grabbing his hand and pulling him along with her.
He’s being awkward – he knows he is – but he can’t help but feel like he’s walking into some sacred place. Mel’s place, where she can be the most authentic version of herself. The apartment isn’t bright – she didn’t flick her floor lamp on when she walked in, so the only light shining in comes from the windows in the kitchen and living room through the dusty pink, semi-sheer curtains, embroidered with delicate flowers and leaves. There’s a pile of blankets stacked neatly on the couch, two floor pillows set on opposite sides of the coffee table. He glances into the kitchen, sees a refrigerator covered in colorful magnets and two calendars – one clearly labeled Mel and another clearly labeled Becca.
“I’m going to shower quickly,” she tells him, pulling him from his thoughts. “Make yourself at home. There’s water and 7-Up and caffeine free Coke in the fridge if you’re thirsty. And we have a few snacks in the corner cupboard.”
He nods at her, eyes still wide and a little overwhelmed at how inexplicably safe he already feels here. She smiles, and then walks across the room and down the hall, the bathroom door shutting behind her after a moment.
He glances around the apartment once more before walking into the living room and settling on the couch. He tries to relax, but he can’t, instead leaning forward on the cushion and resting his forearms on his thighs, hand clasped tightly. His left leg bounces incessantly, and he closes his eyes to see if that will calm him, but realizes that he can hear the water in the shower running if he listens closely enough. This immediately conjures up images of Mel in the shower, and he shakes his head while biting the inside of his cheek as his eyes fly open. That’s not why he called her. Fuck, that’s not what he came here for.
So instead, he hums to himself and looks at the end table to his right, finds several books piled up next to the TV remote. He glances at the spines, finds mostly medical journals with colorful tabs sticking out between the pages. On the top, however, are two beat-up paperbacks: The Lord of the Rings and Jane Eyre. He picks up Jane Eyre, flips through mindlessly and then opens to a random page, reading the first paragraph he sees.
Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my presence. An unusual — to me — a perfectly new character I suspected was yours: I desired to search it deeper and know it better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent: you were quaintly dressed — much as you are now. I made you talk: ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your interlocutor’s face: there was penetration and power in each glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillized your manner: snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe.
“Frank?”
He jumps slightly at the sound of her voice, looks up at her as he closes and sets down the book, watching as she stares back at him with a bemused smile on her face.
“Sorry,” he tells her. “I was just…”
“Catching up on some reading?” she teases, as she sits down on the couch close to him, folding her legs beneath her and turning her whole body towards him. “I didn’t peg you as someone who liked nineteenth century gothic romance.”
He doesn’t answer, because his brain is too busy taking her in. Her glasses are perched on her nose and her wet hair is loosely braided over her shoulder. She’s wearing a pair of black leggings and an oversized gray sweatshirt with faded letters that spell out Richmond Flying Squirrels across the chest. He smirks.
“Well, I didn’t peg you as someone who liked minor league baseball.”
She looks at him in confusion for a moment, and he motions to her sweatshirt.
“Oh. Oh,” she says, sending him a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and she looks back down at the sweatshirt after a moment, picking at a loose string near the hem. “I…am, kind of. But it was mainly my dad. This is his. Sorry. I wear it so much that sometimes I don’t even realize I have it on.”
He doesn’t speak right away, instead reaching out a placing a hand on her lower thigh, brushing his thumb over the knobs of her kneecap.
“He used to take me to games when I was younger. Becca never liked going because of all the sounds and smells, but he taught me how to keep score, and I absolutely loved it. He had season tickets, so we used to go at least once a week after school was out.”
He can see her lips turn up at the memory, and she reaches down to place her hand over his.
“I haven’t been to a baseball game in a long time.”
“I’ll take you,” he tells her. “Whenever you want.”
She smiles wider, taps her index finger on the back of his hand.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The Pirates are actually doing well this year, too, if you can believe it.”
She laughs lightly, and then murmurs, “Thank you.”
He squeezes her knee, and she lets her hand linger over his. A silence falls over them, one that’s only uncomfortable because it’s expectant. She’s waiting for him, he knows, for him to tell her why he pulled her out of work not even halfway through her shift, desperate.
He sighs heavily, removes his hand from her and runs it through his hair before dropping it to his still-bouncing leg, drumming his thumb against the fabric of his shorts. She waits, quietly and patiently, running her fingers over her braid mindlessly.
“Abby and I had a fight,” he says finally, staring straight ahead at the powered-off television. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her still.
When he doesn’t offer anything else, she asks softly, “Was it bad?”
“Yeah,” he tells her through a humorless laugh. “Yeah, Mel, it was…pretty fucking bad.”
She waits again, and suddenly words fall from his lips in waves, like a dam has broken inside him.
“Mel, it was so stupid at first. All I wanted to do was take the kids to the park for the day, but she insisted on sending them to daycare because she didn’t want to mess up their schedules, especially since Tanner is going to start kindergarten soon. Which I get, kind of, but I just really wanted to spend the day with them, and the way she said no just made me feel like I didn’t understand the kids or her at all, even though I’ve been trying so fucking hard. It made me feel like shit, and I started spiraling, which made like twelve thousand other issues come up, and…”
He sighs again, leaning back against the couch finally, closing his eyes.
“Tanner told me – he overheard Abby the other day on the phone with her mother, saying that I love my job more than I love them.”
She inhales sharply.
“It’s so fucking unfair, Mel,” he tells her, and he squeezes his eyes shut more tightly as he feels the pressure building behind them. “I did this all for them – going to rehab, getting clean, staying clean, hell, going back to work. Everything I did, everything I’m doing, I do for the kids and Abby. And it’s not enough. None of it is ever fucking enough, and I don’t know what more I’m supposed to do.”
Suddenly, he feels the tips of her fingers on his face, wiping at a tear that managed to escape from behind his closed eyelid. He leans into the touch, and then opens his eyes to find her on her knees and leaning over him. His gaze begins to blur as he stares at her.
“And then, the worst part,” he says, his voice low and rough. “The worst fucking part is that she told me that if we ever got divorced, she would take the kids from me.”
Her fingers still against his skin.
“Frank,” she breathes.
“I can’t do that,” he murmurs, swallowing thickly. “I can’t lose my kids. It would…it would kill me, Mel.”
“Frank,” she repeats, and he can hear the pain in her voice, for him.
“Which means,” he begins, but the words get caught in his throat when he glances over and sees her wide brown eyes, full of unselfish concern, solely focused on him. He blinks, more tears falling from his eyes, and he lets out a shaky exhale. “Which means, I can’t leave her. Even if I wanted to, I can’t leave her.”
He doesn’t tell her that he wants to leave her. That when he woke up this morning, if Mel had asked him to leave his wife, he would’ve done so in an instant. He doesn’t want to startle her – he’s still afraid of scaring her off with the enormity of what he feels for her – so he keeps those words to himself.
They don’t matter now, anyway.
“Which also means,” she says gently, so softly, as she pulls her hand back, “that we can’t…keep doing what we’re doing.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her clench her fists before lacing her fingers together and bringing them to loop behind her neck. She’s chewing on her bottom lip, and he swears he can see her eyes begin to shine.
“Mel,” he whispers, and she blinks – once, twice – before glancing up at him.
He reaches out, trails his fingers down her braid before tugging gently on it, playing with the ends of her hair.
“It means that I can’t have you the way I want you. That I can’t…treat you like you deserve. That I can’t take care of you the way you deserve to be taken care of.”
Her eyebrows pull together in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“Mel.”
“What?”
“You deserve everything, Mel,” he tells her earnestly. “You deserve someone who can take you out and show you off and love you out in the open. Someone who doesn’t treat you like someone they have to hide.”
She frowns, pulling away from him slightly.
“I don’t care about any of that. You know I don’t care about any of that.”
“You should,” he murmurs desperately. “I want you to be with someone who can be with you the right way.”
“Well, I don’t,” she insists. “I don’t want any of that if it’s not with you.”
Her words take his breath away, and she’s speaking again before he can gather himself.
“I told you the other day, Frank. I’ve decided what I want for me, and it’s you. Even if I can’t have you in all the ways I wish I could, I’ll take whatever parts I can get.”
He stares at her as she moves towards him and crawls into his lap, slotting him between her thighs. She leans her forehead against his, and he can feel the breath of her next words wash over his lips.
“I want you, Frank. Whatever you can manage to give me.”
He should tell her no, that it doesn’t matter. He should stand up and leave, go home to Abby and resign himself to the life that awaits him, no matter how much he wishes things were different. He should mark Mel down as a what could have been, if he was luckier and smarter and maybe a different person.
But he’s selfish, and stubborn, and a little stupid. Three habits that had stuck, even after he’d kicked the drug one. And he’s never been good at denying himself what he wants.
So he leans up slowly, so he can see her eyes close in anticipation. He stops when his lips are only centimeters from hers, so he can feel her skin brush against his as he speaks.
“It would have to be a secret,” he warns her. “It’s not like we were planning on telling anyone, I know, but we especially can’t tell anyone now. Not even Becca.”
She opens her eyes for a moment, biting her bottom lip. He can feel her teeth against his Cupid’s bow. He wants to devour her.
“I’ve always been good at keeping secrets,” she whispers to him.
And he kisses her. Kisses her, hard and desperate, his tongue slipping into her mouth and his teeth scraping against her lips. He kisses her, even as his pulse races, his lungs burn. He only stops to pull her sweatshirt over her head, and he doesn’t even have a moment to appreciate the fact that she isn’t wearing a bra underneath before she’s pulling at his t-shirt. He rips it over his head in a flash, shivers when she splays her hands against his torso, kisses her again before pulling away with a loud smacking noise and trailing his mouth along her cheekbone.
He presses sloppy kisses onto her jaw, down her neck, stopping at her collarbone to suck a mark onto it as one of his hands comes up to palm her breast. She lets out a shaky moan, shifts her hips over him and gasps when he can’t help but thrust up against her, his cock already painfully hard.
“Frank.”
He groans against her, uses his other hand to slip under the waistband of her leggings, when she wraps her hand around that wrist, stopping him.
“Wait, Frank.”
He pauses, and then pulls away, looking up at her curiously.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she assures him, but the word comes out just a little too quickly and high-pitched, and she cringes. “I just…I need to tell you something, but it’s kind of embarrassing, and I don’t want to freak you out or anything.”
“Baby,” he says, “I don’t think there’s anything you could say or do right now that would get me off this couch.”
She flushes an even deeper shade of red, a mix of arousal and embarrassment. Her lips are swollen, and he can see his teeth marks on her collarbone. God, he wants her more than he’s ever wanted anything. The pain meds and benzos were nothing comparedto the feelings coursing through him now.
“I just…” she begins before trailing off and darting her eyes away.
“Mel,” he murmurs, squeezing her waist to get her attention. “What is it?”
“I’ve never done this before,” she says, her words coming out in a rush, and they do, admittedly, make him pause.
“You’ve…never had sex before?” he asks slowly, his brain trying to catch up to what’s happening.
“No,” she mutters, and when he doesn’t answer her, she groans, falling forward until her face is tucked into the crook of his neck. “I just…never had time, I guess? Between med school and my mom dying and taking care of Becca. It was never a priority, and so it just didn’t happen. God, I made it weird now, didn’t I?”
“No,” he manages to assure her, even though his brain is on the brink of short-circuiting. “No, it’s not weird. It’s...”
He stumbles over his words a bit, and she immediately murmurs, “Embarrassing,” against his skin.
“Mel, sweetheart,” he breathes, his voice strained, his mind suddenly moving at one million miles per hour. “It’s not embarrassing. I promise. I’m just trying to figure how to tell you how that makes me feel without sounding like a total creep.”
She pulls back at that, a puzzled expression on her face.
“How does it make you feel?”
He laughs breathlessly.
“Mel. The fact that I get to be the first one to take care of you like that – the only one who’s ever seen you like this – is so fucking hot I’m having trouble thinking.”
She blushes again.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, sweetheart. Oh.”
Something like a smile begins to curl her lips upwards, and she leans back, reaching down to grab his wrist, pulling his hand back to the waistband of her leggings. He trails his fingers along her stomach, feels the muscles tense under his touch.
“By all means, then,” she tells him, letting out a slight giggle that quickly turns into a moan when his mouth finds her nipple. She tangles her fingers in his hair as he finally dips his hand under her leggings and into her underwear, moaning as he runs his fingers through her folds.
“Jesus Christ, Mel,” he says, pulling off her breast with a soft pop. “You’re so fucking wet for me, baby.”
“Frank,” she gasps, eyes closed, voice shaky.
“Do you ever touch yourself?” he asks softly, as his thumb begins to trace patterns over her clit.
She nods, her eyes still shut as her hips begin to shift against his hand.
“What do you do when you touch yourself?”
“I…” she tries, but her words are caught up and choked back when she moans again and starts to grind against his thigh. “I rub my clit, and…”
“Do you finger yourself?” he asks, when she trails off again.
She shakes her head.
“No. I can…I can never get it to feel good.”
“That’s alright,” he murmurs. “We’ll fix that. I’ll fix it for you, baby.”
She whimpers, and falls against him again, her nails pressing deep half moons into his biceps. Her hips start to move faster, and he circles her clit more firmly.
“Come on, Mel. Give me one, right here. Right now.”
She gasps loudly, and then he feels her shake against him as she orgasms. He holds her as she comes down, pressing kisses against her temple over and over.
“Holy shit,” she murmurs, and he smiles against her skin. He slips his fingers out of her pants, licks her wetness off his fingers.
“I’m going to take your leggings off now, okay?”
She nods, and he shifts their bodies so she’s lying below him, back against the sofa cushions. He pulls her pants and underwear down in one swoop, tosses them to the floor and stares at her helplessly, skin pink, chest heaving with quick breaths, and soaked. All for him. Just for him.
“You’re so fucking perfect, baby,” he tells her. “I’ve never seen anything so perfect.”
“Frank,” she whines, reaching for him, pulling his mouth to hers desperately. She drops her hands from his cheeks to the tie on his shorts, but he pulls his hips away from her hand. She whines again, and he smiles.
“Just a minute. I promise, baby, just a minute. I’m gonna open you up now, okay?”
“Okay,” she exhales, sliding her fingers up his abdomen and over his nipples until they twist in the dark hair on his chest. He closes his eyes at that, at her touch, at the sight of her naked and panting and beautiful under him. He bites his tongue, swallows hard once, trying to calm himself down. He can feel himself on the edge already, even though his pants aren’t even off.
He slots himself between her thighs, trails his fingers through her folds again, over her slit. His index finger circles her opening before pressing inside easily. He moans; she’s so warm and wet and tight, even around one of his fingers.
He pumps in and out of her, tells her that he’s going to add another one, waits for her nod before inserting his middle finger alongside the first one. She makes a noise in the back of her throat, and he waits until he feels her relax around him, and then begins to fuck into her, upping his speed when she begins to moan more freely, when he knows he’s making her feel good instead of overwhelmed. When he crooks his fingers just the right way, she gasps, her back arching slightly.
“Frank.”
“That’s so good, baby,” he tells her. “You’re doing so good. Can you take another one for me?”
“Yes,” she breathes, and he adds a third finger slowly, once again waiting for her to relax before beginning to pump into her in earnest.
“Of course you can take another one for me. My perfect girl. Does that feel good, Mel?”
“Yes,” she says again. “It feels so good. You feel…you feel so good.”
She moves her hands from his chest to his hair, tugging and groaning when he hits that spot inside her once again, which makes him moan. He can feel himself leaking in his underwear, his cock throbbing, searching for any sort of touch. He thrusts into nothing, uselessly, before honing his attention back on Mel.
He can feel her walls tightening around his fingers, knows she’s close. He uses the palm of his hand to press against her clit, but she shakes her head slightly.
“No, I want to,” she begins, forcing herself to open her eyes, locking her gaze with his. “I want to…with you. With you inside me.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, dropping his head and closing his eyes briefly as her words make his cock jump. “Just give me one more. Come for me right here, and then…”
He doesn’t even get a chance to finish his sentence before she moans loudly, clenching around his fingers with his name on her lips. He waits for her to ride it out before removing his fingers from her. He lifts his hand to her face, presses his fingers to the seam of her mouth. She opens her eyes, stares up at him as she opens, as her tongue runs over his knuckles and fingertips. She moans, the sound vibrating along his skin. She pulls back, but kisses the pad of his index finger before letting him go completely.
He replaces his fingers in her mouth with his lips and tongue, and her hands quickly make their way back to the waistband of his pants. This time, when she goes to push the fabric past his hips and ass, he lets her, getting up only to kick the clothing off his ankles and onto the floor. When he crawls back onto the couch and goes to kiss her again, he finds her staring unabashedly at his tented boxers, at the wet spot on the fabric.
He lets out a shaky breath before whispering her name. She glances up at him briefly before dropping her hand again, running her fingers along him over the fabric of his underwear. He slams his eyes shut, lets out a quiet fuck when she pulls her hand back, his hips thrusting to try to follow her touch.
“Frank,” she murmurs.
He opens his eyes, looks at her as she dips her fingers beneath his boxers, her hands grasping his hips before pushing his boxers down his legs and onto the floor to join his shorts. She smiles at him gently, bringing her hand up and drifting her fingers across his cheekbones, down his jaw and over the dimple in his chin. She presses her fingertips against his carotid pulse.
“Slightly tachy,” she tells him softly, smirking. “You should probably get that checked out.”
He laughs breathlessly.
“I know just the doctor for the job,” he retorts, and her answering smile knocks him off his feet with its ease and beauty. He decides this the way he always wants to see her, in his mind’s eye – smiling and blushing and happy.
“You’re so pretty, baby,” he says, because it’s true and he can’t help himself.
He reaches behind her shoulder, tugs at her hair tie and places it on his wrist, above the black one he always wears. He watches as she lifts her head slightly, undoing the plait of her braid and carding her fingers through her wavy, half-dry hair. When she lays back down, her blonde hair is splayed beneath and around her head like a halo.
“My beautiful girl,” he breathes, and frowns when he watches her eyes get glassy.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she promises, finally letting her hand drift from his neck and along his collarbone, pressing her hand flat against the plane of his chest. “Nothing. I just…want you.”
“You have me,” he swears to her, wiping at a tear that’s threatening to fall from the corner of her eye. “You have me.”
She nods, and her hand continues its journey downward, along his abdomen and down the trail of dark hair from his navel to his groin. She touches him, finally, her fingers trailing along his shaft. His cock twitches, wetness continuing to gather at his tip, and she swipes her index finger over his slit, gathering the liquid on her fingertip. The motion makes him groan, and his hips buck again. He reaches down, grabs her hand on him and laces their fingers together.
“I want all of you,” she whispers, as she shifts her hips beneath him, hitching one of her ankles up and around his waist. “Every part.”
He nods.
“Okay,” he tells her. “Okay.”
He swipes his fingers through her arousal once more, spreads the wetness over his shaft before lining himself up with her entrance.
“Tell me if anything feels uncomfortable, or wrong, or if you just don’t like something,” he urges, and she nods at him.
“I will.”
He gazes at her for another moment before leaning down and kissing her as he begins to press into her. She inhales sharply against his mouth.
“Frank.”
He inches in slowly, always waiting for her to relax completely before pushing further. They both moan when their hips meet, when he’s fully seated inside her, and he drops his head again, his forehead resting against her chin. He takes a deep breath, and then another, trying to steady himself. After a moment, she brings her lips to his ear.
“You can move now.”
So he begins to rock his hips, thrusting inside her, groaning as all his senses are overwhelmed by her. By Mel. It feels even better than he imagined, being with her like this, her cunt around his cock, her bare skin against his, her moans and quick breaths in his ear. It feels exhilarating and brand new and yet comforting and safe, all at the same time.
It feels like coming home, being with her. Like coming home for the first time.
“Tell me how it feels, Mel,” he murmurs. “Tell me how you feel.”
“It feels…so good,” she tells him, gasping. “You feel so good.”
He speeds the rhythm of his thrusts up at her words, intoxicated with the knowledge that he’s the one with her like this, making her feel like this. He reaches, guides her to lift the leg not around his waist and hook it over his shoulder, opening her up even more.
He can feel himself nearing the edge already. He kisses her, and then moves his lips to the shell of her ear, instructing her gently.
“Touch yourself, baby. Reach down and touch yourself.”
She groans, and does as he says, slipping a shaky hand between their bodies and starting to rub at her clit. Her walls tighten around him even more, and he drops his head into the crook of her neck, sloppily pressing his mouth to her skin, letting his teeth graze her jugular vein.
“What do you usually think of, when you touch yourself?”
“You,” she answers immediately, and he moans. “You, and your voice and your eyes and your hands.”
He feels her hand speed up between them.
“How good of a doctor you are. The way you look at me,” she continues, her words strained. “The way you take care of me. You. Everything about – “
The rest of her words are swallowed up as she gasps, and he feels her muscles spasm around his cock as her hand sinks into his hair, her fingers tangling in the strands and tugging. He moans again, at the feeling of her cunt around him, warm and wet and perfect, like she was made for him. Like they were made for each other.
He breathes heavily as she comes down, is about to pull back and check in with her, but her hands keep his head in place, his forehead against her collarbone.
“Now you,” she murmurs, and he can feel her low voice rumble in her chest. “I want to feel you. Please, Frank.”
And who is he to deny her what she wants?
He picks up the pace of his hips once again, and her hands slide down his neck and to his back, her nails digging into his muscles. He can feel his orgasm approaching, deep in his gut. He’s close, so close.
“Let go, Frank,” she breathes.
And he does. He lets go of everything – his anxieties, his obligations. The Pitt, the drugs, Abby. How much he hates himself, how afraid he is that nothing in his life will be right ever again. He lets go of everything that isn’t Mel. Mel, and her voice and her hands and her heart and her mind. The way she chews on her bottom lip when she’s nervous, and how her glasses fall down her nose sometimes when she’s concentrating. Her glasses and her braid and her socks that always match her shirt.
Mel. His Mel.
He lets go until she’s the only thing. Until his only responsibility is her – fucking her and holding her and loving her.
He moans – loudly, brokenly – as his thrusts stutter, and then his hips surge forward once more as he starts to come, spilling himself inside her. She whispers to him as he does, words he can’t really make out but comfort him all the same, just because they’re coming from her. His hips move once more, gently, almost lazily, before his whole body relaxes, and he collapses on top of her.
They don’t speak right away. After he recovers a bit, he goes to shift himself off of her, afraid he’s hurting her with his weight, but her grip on him tightens. So he remains there, still inside her, every plane of his body pressed against her.
“Can you stay?” she whispers.
He closes his eyes. He should tell her no, that he has to go back to his house, try to smooth things over. That he’ll never be able to stay, not really. Not in the way he wants to. Not forever.
Instead, he presses his lips against her sternum, pulls back just enough so that he can kiss along her jaw, her cheekbones, the bridge of her nose, the mole beneath her eye and then, finally, her lips.
“Yeah,” he says quietly, against her mouth. “I can stay.”












