day 5: speech word count: 316/316 @kingdonmicrofic
“So,” Abby says dangerously.
“Dont’t start,” Langdon interrupts, feeling a headache come on.
A blisteringly fake smile has spread across Abby’s lips as she ignores his warning. “So,” she emphasizes, “You seem very familiar with Mel.”
He sighs. From the moment they ran into Mel at the park, he’s had a bad feeling. Of course, he’s always happy to see her. Everything in the world slows when he looks at Mel. She makes him softer, agreeable, eager to sing her praises and lick her wounds.
It’s just a feeling he’d rather not experience while his wife is next to him.
His children had run to her. Tanner and Penny love Mel, a fact that Abby was not previously aware of. Langdon knew from the look on her face that they would be getting into an argument at home after this.
And that was before Tanner wanted ice cream.
“Mel,” his son pleaded, tugging on her fingers, “Can we go to the ice cream place we went last time, please, pleaseeee!”
Abby glares at him, “She’s even got a special nickname for you.”
“It’s just something she picked up from the kids, they say it all the time.”
“You’re their father, Langdon, of course they say it all the time. She should call you by your name. Frank? Or, how about Dr. Langdon?”
“That’s what she says at work.”
Abby bares her teeth sarcastically, “Oh yeah? So, she only calls you Daddy at home?”
Frank groans, his hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. It’s a figure of speech.”
“That’s not what that fucking means, Langdon. She didn’t say it as a metaphor,” Abby snaps, “She said it like— like she was used to saying it.”
“Oh, I’m not sure,” Mel said. She looks up for Langdon’s approval, “Can we get ice cream after this, Daddy?”
@kingdonmicrofic day fifteen: silk | 498/498 | rating: g
Abby doesn't intend to open the package when it's delivered – it's addressed to him, after all. But she's waiting for a few things, and maybe her phone autofilled Frank's name without her noticing.
So, she opens it, is presented with an expensive-looking orange box. When she searches the company's name, she finds it produces luxury sleepwear for women. Organic mulberry silk, mother of pearl buttons. Price tags that even make Abby pause.
Almost on cue, her phone vibrates. It's Frank.
“Hey, Abs. I think I accidentally got a package delivered to the house.”
“You did,” she confirms softly.
“Can I come over and grab it after my shift? I'll try to get out on time, and –”
“Don't worry about the time. Come when you can.”
“Um. Okay. I'll be over after work.”
She decides to make dinner, this shrimp pad thai recipe that she found on Pinterest years ago, one of the first meals she cooked for him. After she puts the kids to bed, she sets the table, places the orange box next to his plate, smiling as she does. This is the kind of thing Frank used to do for her, before everything went to shit. Buy her something nice unexpectedly, to show he was paying attention.
She pours herself some wine. It's 8:30 by the time she hears keys in the front door.
“Hey,” he says as she rounds the corner to the foyer. “Sorry I'm late.”
“It's okay. I have the package. I made some food, too, if you're hungry.”
“Oh. Sure, but I can't stay too long.”
She leads him to the dining room. She feels him stop short when they reach the entryway, and when she turns, she sees his eyes locked onto the box. He shifts his gaze toward her after a moment. To her surprise, his expression is vaguely horrified.
“I love it, Frank,” she reassures him. “It's so thoughtful. And the fact that you bought it for me means –”
“Abby,” he interrupts. “We need to talk.”
“We do. I still think the separation was right for us at the time, but recently I've been –”
“I have a girlfriend.”
She almost drops her wine glass.
“You said it was okay to start seeing other people,” he mumbles in explanation.
She tears her eyes from him to the orange box that she's realized isn't for her. Oh, God, it's for his girlfriend.
“What,” she begins, and then shakes her head. “Who –”
His phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket, and grimaces.
“Sorry, I've gotta take this. Just…give me a sec.”
He walks into the kitchen, murmuring hi, baby, into the phone, leaving Abby to stare after him like an idiot.
She doesn't think she'll ever forget the sight of his screen, lit up with a selfie of him pressing his lips against the cheek of a woman Abby has never met as she smiles, her name displayed across the image in bright white letters.
@kingdonmicrofic july 18, alternative prompt: bang (wc: 306/347)
cw: mature, infidelity
They did this thing, sometimes. It was weird and shameful and like nothing Mel had ever heard of before, and they didn’t do it a lot, but it went like this: first, they’d share a look. This part always just kind of happened - it’s not like they ever planned it. Frank’s face would go all intense and serious, and he’d look down at her lips, and that’s how she would know.
They would slip away then, if they could, into a closet or an empty room on a different floor. He would pull her close, an arm around her stomach, and ease his weight against her back. Then he’d rock his hips into hers like they were having sex. She’d press back and try not to make any noise, even though she was pretty sure he liked it when she did.
They never took their clothes off or anything. They never even kissed, but she still felt guilty about the way he’d groan and his hips would stutter and he’d drop his forehead to her shoulder and just breathe there for a while after. Not guilty enough to not let him do it, though.
It always felt good. One time he had lifted her up and pressed her against the door so that the handle pushed against her just right, and she’d come hard even though she was terrified the entire time that the door was going to swing open and they’d drop to the floor with a bang.
It was risky and she didn’t know what made it worth it for him because they never talked about it. There was only one time, when she was fixing her braid, that he said anything at all. This is going to be different, someday, I promise. She was still waiting to find out what that meant.
Mel used to be one of those kids, the annoying ones who would dramatically cough when someone smoking a cigarette passed by, to make them rethink their choices. She didn’t realize until later in life how black and white she saw the world back then, everything fitting neatly into the categories of good or bad.
Frank Langdon, she’d realized, was one of life’s many gray areas. He was smart, empathetic, strong; she watched him excel through the end of his residency, land a job as an attending at PTMC, and that didn’t even come close to the way he loved her. He braided her hair when she was too tired, made sure she took her medicine every morning, and had given her orgasms so mind-melting she couldn’t describe them.
He was also brash, self-doubting, and, since rehab, a smoker. He asked her out a few months after coming back, and when he picked her up for the first time, she struggled with the lingering scent of stale tobacco in his car.
“Sorry. I can quit smoking in here,” he said, rolling down the windows and blasting the AC.
“No, don’t worry,” she said, a daring hand moving to his thigh. “I’ll get used to it.”
The first time he’d kissed her, she tasted the smoke on his tongue, light and sweet. She liked the newness of it, the unfamiliarity. The first time he took her home, her face buried in his sheets, she smelled it, faint and mixed with the clean scent of his detergent, and she let out a moan.
The problem was that now, every cigarette she smelled reminded her of him. A patient came in after smoking three packs in a night, hyperventilating from nicotine overdose, and she zoned out, thinking only of his tongue against hers. When her neighbor smoked his pipe in the morning her stomach would flutter, remembering the fogged windows of his car, the pack of American Spirits that she saw in the center console when she leaned over to suck his cock.
In the ambulance bay one day, after a particularly devastating case, he lit one up while she held onto him, grounding each other until both of their breathing had returned to normal. The smell of the smoke took her brain elsewhere, watching the way it drifted from his perfect lips. She couldn’t help but lean in, kissing sloppily at his jaw when he moved to ash it.
“Woah, slow down,” he said with a smirk.
“I’m sorry,” she whined, “I can’t help it. I think the smell just drive me crazy now because it reminds me of you.”
He laughed and shook his head, taking another long drag as he stared at her.
“You can’t really be telling me that the smell of cigarettes makes you horny.”
She blushed, burying her face into the scrubs on his shoulder.
“Mel, angel,” he said, lifting up her chin, “you Pavlov’d yourself.”
@kingdonmacrofic langdonmel, 1.1k words, prompt: gala
nsfw, melpreg, infidelity :)
“You liked her touching you?” he asks, biting hard on her thigh. “Feeling my babies inside you?”
She trembles as he licks a line up her leg, lapping up what leaked from her when she felt his eyes on her earlier, watching his wife kindly ask before touching Mel’s stomach, flattening her palm over where their two babies grew. She had no idea. He felt his blood rush downwards when he saw it, shocked at himself for it, but unable to control how hot it made him to see.
Mel was in green, a long, cap-sleeved silk dress with purple and white flowers on it, that hugged her just enough for you to see—she was pregnant, around sixteen weeks. That only went back to the start of July, right around the week he came back.
Abby saw her right away, standing by herself near the table with the charcuterie boards. “Is that Dr. King?” After their last fight, Abby had suddenly changed, becoming kind and curious about work again, trying to be a better version of herself. He noticed. Now, she even visited, bringing Tanner and Penny to see daddy at work, and she even met Mel, around a month after he came back. She was really making an effort, one Frank found grating, despite how genuinely she seemed to want to try again with him. But she hadn’t been kind about Mel before, while he was out of work. She didn’t like that he’d mention her, or Santos, or Whitaker, or Javadi, or anyone, really. She had an unwillingness to hear about that day at all. But she spat Mel’s name with a particular disdain she didn’t have for the others. Frank’s sure it’s because she could hear the way he said it, but that wasn’t something he could help.
Frank nodded and caught his breath when he saw the cut of her dress. Her stomach wasn’t all that big just yet, but she was larger than she should be for sixteen weeks, because he’d put two in her—something he was proud of.
“Yeah, that’s Mel,” he answered, and turned to find the bar at the other end of the room, spotting a few of their coworkers mingling amongst the other gala guests in the crowd. “I’ll get you a drink, your usual?”
“Yeah, thanks.” She waved him off and walked in the other direction, towards Mel.
While the bartender made her drink, he watched Abby go up to Mel and discover what they’d been keeping secret. Abby was smiling, holding a hand over her heart while she listened. He didn’t know what Mel told people, but he hoped she just told the truth if other people asked. He wished she was telling the truth right now.
Then, she touched her, and Frank thought he might black out. He had to drag Mel away, already so hard in his pants, unable to think about staying in that ballroom, or even the building, with his wife and their coworkers a second longer. He needed to get his hands on her. Abby was distracted with Dana then, the two of them laughing loudly over their drinks, so he snuck her outside of the Carnegie Music Hall and walked her around to the small loading dock, where the concrete sloped down and they’d be hidden in shadow.
“Frank,” Mel moans above him now, tugging on his hair.
He nuzzles into her crotch and inhales, sniffing deep.
“Mel, baby, you liked me telling you not to wear anything under your dress tonight?”
She bites her lip and looks down at him. She nods her head.
“Oh, fuck,” he says, immediately pulling her dress up again. He slides his hand up to the swell of her asscheek and smiles when there’s nothing, nothing at all. She’d been nervous about the cut of her underwear, the ones she’d had to start wearing because of the babies, and he’d told her to just go without. He hadn’t thought she’d do it.
“I can’t believe you actually listened to me,” he says in awe, bunching her dress up more to see her bare cunt, shiny and sticky and all his.
“I like listening to you,” Mel whimpers, struggling to stay upright against the door he’s got her against. It’s not cold out for this time of year, at least not with their hands on each other like this. She’s got goosebumps, though, everywhere.
Frank flattens his tongue and licks her like an animal, so messy and eager. His girl likes listening to him, his perfect, beautiful girl. She loves him more than anyone ever has. She’ll run up to him in front of everyone, grab hold of him and smile, refuse to take her eyes off him. She’ll trust him, she’ll forgive him. She’ll kiss him after work one day, right before he goes home to his wife and kids. She’ll give him her number and answer every time, all the time. She’ll watch him, miss him, think about him, she’ll fucking need him, in ways Abby never has. She’ll let him fuck her, she’ll beg him to come inside. She’ll get wet when his wife touches her belly, full of her husband’s babies.
She’ll let him eat her out against the side of a building late at night in November, while their coworkers are all inside, maybe putting two and two together now.
“You’re going to stain your tux,” she warns, his spit and her slick coating his chin, dripping down onto his bowtie, that he felt fucking stupid with anyway. He doesn’t care if she soaks it.
“Come all over my tux, baby, do it,” he says, uncaring. He gives her a finger, because he knows she wants it, having learned so much about her in their time together already. “I’ll say I spilled my drink, just do it.”
Mel whines, thrusting down onto his face, riding it while he fucks into her.
“No, no,” she whines. She’s nervous. She needs a little push.
He glances up and sees the round of her belly. God. He presses his other hand to her there, where their babies are, and she shivers.
Pulling himself from her, he says, “Listen to daddy, okay? You’re carrying my babies, honey, you gotta listen to me.” He kisses at her again, again, again. “Your belly’s gonna get so big, every day, oh fuck, honey. It’s not fair that you get to walk around and people know I came in you, but I don’t get the same. Imagine Abby’s face, when she realizes I did this to you, that you’re mine and I’m yours, that we’re going to be a family. Give it to me, I want them all to know when we go back in there, Mel, please, sweetheart.”
Mel’s head hits the door behind her, and she does what she’s told.
Mel corners him at precisely 6:42 AM. Red Bull in hand, sweating and uncracked, crinkling beneath his tight grip from the way she pushes and pushes, until his shoulder blades thud against the wall and her minty breath fans up into his face in determined little puffs.
“What did that mean?” her voice, low and husky, carries an undercurrent of something sharper that Frank hasn’t had the pleasure of hearing.
He blinks at her. “What did what mean?”
Her brows pull together, lips tightening up. “Your text, last night,” she says, and moves closer, if that’s even possible. Until her chest brushes against his own and he becomes very aware of her breasts, held taut by a sports bra, thick straps barely visible on her shoulders beneath her plain t-shirt. “I sent you that picture of me at the bar, the one Samira took, and you said that you, quote, were “dying for a taste” and “ready to feast” .”
“Uh..” his jaw goes slack, utterly dumbfounded, now forced to face the consequences of his actions.
It was late, I was tired, I meant— no, he knew exactly what he was saying, that he’d been having heart palpitations over his coworker/best friend/trainee who was out drinking, looking all flushed like a spring cherry blossom and wearing a top that showed so much of what he never got to see at work. Or like, ever.
“I, um,” he swallows thickly, vision tunneled, not at all worried about anyone who may stumble upon them, solely focusing on Mel’s wiry lashes and frustrated, red tinted cheeks. “You looked.. really good. I was.. complimenting you.”
She isn’t convinced. “But that’s not what you said.”
“Right,” he’s a total fucking sleaze and here she is calling him out on it.
How truthful is he allowed to be right now? Can he say that he dreamt of her last night, with his back turned to his wife, and woke up with an insatiable urge so intense that it made him dizzy? Is he allowed to admit that he wished she’d called him for a ride home, and maybe let her hands wander during the drive? Invited him into her apartment, ignoring the evidence of a promise on his finger that he made to someone else? Can he?
The look on his face must say it all because Mel’s head tilts, and the left side of her mouth slowly turns up, satisfied.
“I see,” she says. “Did you mean it?”
“Yes,” he rasps with a weak, pitiful nod. “Yes, absolutely, yes. Of course—”
Her eyes brighten, twinkling beneath the fluorescents. “Oh, that’s so good to hear,” she says, earnest and soft. “So, you’ll come over tonight, right?”
It takes all of Frank’s strength not to sink to the floor, to nuzzle against her navel and fucking sob.
Her parting words solidify the bulge in his scrubs, dooming him to twelve hours of pure agony: “I think that outfit is much cuter in person anyway.”
Abby shifted, rolling over and taking half of the covers with her, blinking sleepily over at him, “Who is calling you at midnight?”
read on ao3!
or here:
Abby shifted, rolling over and taking half of the covers with her, blinking sleepily over at him, “Who is calling you at midnight?”
Frank froze, snatching his buzzing phone off of the nightstand before Abby could catch a glimpse of the contact ID flashing on his screen: Mel PTMC
“... It’s the hospital. I better take this. Could be an emergency.”
Abby shrugged, too tired to argue, and went back to sleep.
As cautiously as he could, he crept out of the room and shut the door before answering the phone.
“Mel?” He asked, voice low, concerned.
There was a sniff, then a sound like she was clearing her throat. Oh, shit, Frank thought, she was crying.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
A moment of silence, and then she finally said, voice hoarse, “Um, hi, Dr. Langdon. I’m sorry for calling so late… you were probably sleeping! I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay, it’s okay, hey,” He tried to assuage her, “I never sleep, okay? You’re fine. What’s up?”
“I just, um,” More sniffing, he could imagine her wiping her face off with her sleeves, her red-rimmed eyes, “I wasn’t feeling great today at work. And, I didn’t want to go home, so Dana tried to give me some Zofran, but, you know I hate taking medicine— sorry, hold on, I’m rambling,” he could hear her take a big deep breath.
“It’s okay. Just, say whatever you need to say.”
“Um, anyway, she asked me if there was—” Another big, shuddery breath, “any chance I could be pregnant."
Frank stopped cold, back against the wall.
They weren’t even dating. This wasn’t an affair. It was one time in the back of his car after a particularly rough shift. It wasn’t romantic, it had actually been kind of desperate. And afterwards, he had said she could call him any time if she needed him.
He supposed she had come to collect.
“I’m sorry,” Mel began to cry again, “I didn’t know what else to do!”
“Slow down, slow down,” he said after a moment of recalibration, mind going a thousand miles an hour, “Did you take a test at home?”
“Um, yes, I got about twelve of them–”
“Twelve? How did you have enough pee for twelve pregnancy tests?”
“I know,” She said miserably, “I’m sorry. It was my fault, I thought it would be okay.”
“It is going to be okay. No matter what, it’s going to be okay. And it’s not your fault. It’s my fault, for sure.” He was the one who had touched her leg in the passenger seat, had taken her face into his hands and kissed her.
“It’s just something that would happen to me. My first time ever having sex, and,” A puff of breath, dejected, “Of course.”
“Hold on, that was your first time? In the back of my car?”
When she dropped out of her Master’s program, she sat Frank down in front of his favorite movie, and hot popcorn in hand, broke the news.
When the kids got into the fancy preschool they couldn't actually afford, she waited until he was pulling his worn-out credit card from his wallet at the expensive sushi place to tell him.
So when she texts, “Making a big dinner, try to get out on time!” he sighs loud enough that Mel, nestled against his chest, looks up.
“What's wrong?” Her voice is sleepy the way it only gets after they've spent all day in bed together, touching and laughing and napping in turn.
She sounds relaxed, exactly how he feels when he's with her. And he doesn't want to ever leave.
“I have to leave earlier than usual tonight,” he says.
Abby thinks he's at work, and there are only so many shifts he can “work overtime” before she catches on.
“Nooo.” Mel always draws out the whine when she really doesn't want him to go. It's so fucking cute he can't stand it.
“I know, baby. I love you,” he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead before leaning down to press another to the tiny swell of her tummy. “And I love you, too.”
When he walks into his house a while later, Abby immediately ushers him to the dining room.
She’s lit candles, has music playing, and there's a feast of his favorite foods on the table. She sits down and looks up at him expectantly, but he can't force himself to sit.
Whatever it is, it's big, and it's expensive.
“Just tell me,” he whispers.
She frowns a little, the way she does when he's said something wrong.
