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After closing the door behind him, Frank sighed and sagged against it.
He felt worn. Wrung out. He felt like he had nothing left to give, because he didn’t, both literally and figuratively. He hadn’t fucked like that since his first time with Abby, when he was still half a virgin and liked her so much that he would’ve done just about anything to impress her, to get her off. After a few years of dating and then marriage, they found a familiar rhythm that they stuck to, and while that didn’t mean it was boring - it was still fun, still nice, still good, he was still in love with her and still the man that she thought he was - he forgot how great it felt to explore someone's body and really take it in without worrying about a two-year old sticking a crayon up his nose in the next room.
But now was not the time for him to be reminiscing, so he ran a hand over his face and then smacked his cheek, reminding himself why he was leaning against the door and not currently curled up in bed next to his girlfriend: he was supposed to be getting her water and a towel. He pushed himself off the door and headed for the kitchen.
The times he thought about having sex with Mel, it didn’t happen like this. It wasn’t after a long shift at work, it wasn’t at her house, it wasn’t with the watchful eyes of her mouse clock staring down at him from above her window. (The actual clock part, with the arms and the numbers, was a block of cheese in the mouse’s arms. The five seconds that Frank allowed himself to make eye contact with it while his face was buried between Mel's legs, he couldn’t help but note that the mouse looked waaay too happy about having something new to watch and listen to). There was supposed to be rose petals and jazz music, not jazz remixes of popular TikTok songs but real, actual jazz music, and the lights, all the lights, were supposed to be off. The overhead light especially was not supposed to be left on in the middle of his desperate scramble to take her pants off and toss her onto the mattress.
And all those times he thought about his first time with Mel - well, he definitely wasn’t supposed to cum in less than a minute.
From the cupboard, he grabbed a mug that read “A wise doctor once wrote” followed by a bunch of scribbles and then held his finger under the stream of water in the sink to make sure it was cold enough before he started filling the mug. Sure, Mel knew that it had been a long time since he’d last had sex; he explained to her that he and Abby hadn’t done it for at least a few months before rehab, and things between them were so tense afterwards that it wouldn’t have happened even if he wanted it to. And sure, she knew that his goal was to make her cum at least once before he fucked her - which meant that, when he made her cum a second time, she was immensely surprised, while he was not-so-secretly pleased with himself for doing so. But still… still. He wanted to be better for her. He wanted them to cum together, the sort of thing that had also mattered to him when he lost his virginity at 20. (He should’ve learned then that thinking about the concept of that when he was already so close probably didn’t help, but, unfortunately for him, he hadn't remembered.)
He stopped in the hallway to grab a towel from the linen closet before heading back to her bedroom. When he was once again in front of the door, he rested his forehead against it and took a deep breath before pushing it open.
The first thing he planned on doing was turning the light off, and he almost laughed when he noticed that it was off already, now replaced by the soft yellow light of Mel’s bedside table lamp. The woman herself was lying in bed in almost the exact same position as where he’d left her, despite the fact that she clearly got up and moved, which he also almost laughed about before she gave him a soft, tentative smile when their eyes met.
“You stole my move,” he commented as he crossed the room, pointing up at the ceiling.
Her eyes followed his finger. “So… it is a move?”
“I thought I made that clear the first ten times I did it.”
“You did. I just thought it was one of those fun little elephants that we were never going to address. Well, I’m sorry I stole your move, but… You were taking too long."
He laughed pressed a kiss to her forehead as he handed her the mug, then sat down on the mattress beside her. “Wanted to make sure the water was nice and cold for you. Drink that, please. Can I move the blanket?”
She nodded and took a dutiful sip of water, watching him carefully as he peeled the blanket off.
There were traces of him - them - smeared on the insides of her thighs from when she walked, or probably hobbled, to the light switch and back, and he wiped it away equally as dutifully as she sipped her water despite the fact that he could feel his cheeks growing hotter and hotter as he did. How, he wondered, did this feel more intimate than actually having sex with her? She came on his face and his fingers twice in the past half an hour, and touching her thighs with a layer of fabric between them and his skin felt just as much like sex as the actual sex did. It didn’t help that she was watching, either, didn’t help that she eventually raised a hand to his face and ran her thumb along the length of his ear before cupping his cheek. The tenderness of the action, along with the complete lack of her usual self-consciousness, made him groan and drop his head onto her lap.
“You’re killing me,” he grumbled into her legs. “Christ. I feel like I just had sex for the first time in my life.”
“Me too,” she agreed, but it didn’t seem like it. She actually seemed really fucking calm about the whole thing, though whether that’s because she was actually calm or because cumming twice had worn her out, he didn’t know.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” he told her as he sat back up sharply and continued cleaning. “When I left. Just had to take a breather.”
“Oh,” she said. Her eyebrows were furrowed when he glanced at her. He didn’t notice them usually, because her glasses were always in the way - not a complaint, obviously, he loved her glasses - but now that he could actually see her eyebrows, they seemed especially pronounced, which meant her slight confusion seemed much more pronounced, too. “Are you - um - is everything alright?”
“Super,” he replied, nudging her thigh with his fingers so she spread her legs a little wider and allowed him to clean a little higher.
“Super duper?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said with a breathless grin, “yeah, absolutely.”
She smiled and tugged on his earlobe, then went back to holding her mug with two hands.
Mel always did that. Well, not holding her mug with two hands - although she did do that, mostly because her hands were so tiny that she was probably afraid of dropping it. But she made him think twice about things he never thought before. His bedside manner (which could always be improved, even if he had gotten a lot better) and his eating habits (“You’re a doctor, Frank, how are you not washing your fruits and veggies before you eat them?”) and all the parts of his body that could be touched and held and kissed. Abby didn’t do a lot of holding - she preferred to be held. But Mel liked to cradle Frank’s head like it was a baby, kiss the length of his eyebrows and nose at the baby fat under his chin that he had been insecure about ever since he hit 30 and realized it was never going away.
He folded the towel when he was done with his cleaning and tossed it in the direction of the laundry basket. It didn’t exactly land inside the laundry basket, but clinging to the edge seemed close enough. She beamed at him as he shifted in bed so they were facing the same direction, then leaned her head on his shoulder once he’d settled back against the head board while he pulled the blanket over both of their laps. (He was wearing boxers, but she was still completely naked and he knew very well that she would’ve done it herself if he didn’t beat her to it.)
“Mmm.” She hummed and held the mug up to his face. “Drink, please.”
“I brought that for you.”
“Yes, and now I’m sharing it with you because you didn’t get your own and I’m too sleepy to get up and bring you one myself.” She shook the mug at him to emphasize. “Drink, please. Frankie.”
“Frankie” was the magic word. Both of them knew it. He placed his hand over hers so she couldn’t let go of the mug and took a sip before directing her hand back to her lap.
From here he had a perfect vantage point of her bedroom, and while her breaths grew shallower and shallower, he allowed himself to take another, more detailed look than he’d ever taken before. (Most of the time he spent here was when he was asleep.) She had one of those wind-up jewelry boxes on her dresser, popped open to reveal the ballerina inside, and a bunch of other trinkets that he guessed were from her childhood - porcelain angels, a cat made of rainbow blown glass, a picture of her and Becca with the phrase “Sisters by Birth, Friends by Choice” written out in Scrabble tiles on the top and bottom of the picture frame. A jewelry tree with no jewelry, another basket of laundry with the clothes inside various shades of purple and pink and blue.
A mirror in the corner, thankfully turned away from the bed, a - what was it called? A cross stitch pattern in yet another frame, this one a simple pale wood, and beside it a single necklace hanging from a peg in the wall that from this distance looked like a beige blob, but when he squinted, he noticed that it was a piece of toast with peanut butter on it. Then, of course, there was the mouse clock, hung above the window to the right of them. If he didn’t know better, he would think that she - it was a girl, he realized then, she had a purple polka dot bow between her ears - was looking at him with some sort of judgment.
And he did know enough, in general, to realize he was kinda panicking.
It wasn’t the type of panic he saw in Mel, when she’d get shaky and nervous and start humming to herself or rambling to anybody who would listen or go selectively mute for anywhere from three to ten minutes. It was more of a sinking feeling in his gut, a tightness in his throat like he was going to cry but there was nothing in his actual tear ducts, an emotional UTI. He rested his cheek on her head, closed his eyes, and tried to take a deep breath, but something had given him away, because before he knew it she was reaching for his hand on the blanket and squeezing it.
“Frank?” she asked. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” he said as nonchalantly as he could manage. “I’m good.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
It became clear that she was not going to let him get away with a third deflection when she asked, in a small voice, “Did I do something?”
“No,” he protested, opening his eyes and looking down at her to find her already peering up at him, dark eyebrows knitted together in concern. "Of course not. Why would you think that?"
"You're being very quiet," she commented. "Are you upset with me?"
“No, sweetheart, it’s nothing like that.”
She frowned, squeezing his hand again, shaking it the same way she shook her mug - for emphasis. “Then what is it?”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. How was he supposed to explain what was wrong? How was he supposed to explain that he wanted their first time to be romantic, for it to be more romantic than him and Abby having sex in some random dude’s bedroom during a frat party, for it to be more romantic than them having sex at Mel’s house on some random Tuesday in October? How was he supposed to explain that the stupid, competitive part of him liked when she told him “That’s the first time anyone’s done that for me”, that he wanted them finishing together to be another - to be the most important instance of that? He felt 20 again. He felt like a caveman. He felt stupid. He didn’t normally get hung up on shit like this, but he was so sentimental these days, especially when it came to her. It was like with the lights - he wanted everything to be good for her, all the time, all the ways.
“I normally last a lot longer than that,” he said.
She was silent for a second. Then she pulled away, clutching the blanket to her chest, eyebrows still furrowed in concern. “That’s what you’re upset about?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes,” he replied, running his hand through his hair again. “I wanted to savor it, y’know, I wanted us to really... be in that moment, together, but I finished before the moment even really started and… Christ, I sound like an idiot.”
“What part of me seemed like it wasn’t in that moment?”
No part of her wasn’t in that moment. All parts of her had been so clearly, identifiably present - her soft whimpers, her ankles hooked together at the small of his back, her hair tickling his nose, the smell of her shampoo on the pillows that he bit down on when he came. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I wanted us to cum together. And we didn’t.”
Silence again. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, now looking slightly less concerned and more thoughtful, which was somehow an even more agonizing silence. He rubbed his hands over his face. Brie was probably having a fucking field day, watching this. Watching him fall apart. Again.
“Frank,” Mel began softly, “I think I should probably tell you that sex… isn’t about that for me.”
“But -”
“Frank,” she repeated. “Please let me finish.” He stared at her for a moment, then mimed zipping his lips shut. “Sex with you is about sex with you. It’s not - I told you, didn’t I, that I don’t have a very high libido? I told you that?”
He nodded. He remembered that night very clearly - her telling him she didn’t have a high libido after they made out for two minutes and he was already as hard as a rock.
“So I don’t really feel the need for that… um… release. Like other people do. I mean - I appreciate it. And you’re very… um… good at it. Like… wow, y’know, you are… very good at it. But… I don’t need to finish every time.” She poked his thigh, too close to his dick not to make it jump just a little despite how serious the conversation was. “I like being intimate with you. I like being in a way that you aren’t with other people. I don’t need anything else from you.”
He paused for a moment, then raised one hand while pointing to his mouth with the other.
“Yes,” she said, smiling, “you can - talk now.”
He unzipped his lips.
“I appreciate you telling me that,” he told her, once her giggles had subsided. “And I respect that, I do. But… I wanna make you cum. Because it feels good, right? When it happens?” She nodded. “Yeah, right. All I want is to make you feel good, Mel. That’s what makes me feel good. That’s why I…” He shook his head. “I mean - you were - you were so wet, and you were making such pretty noises, and - I’m surprised I didn’t cum just from eating you out, honestly.”
“Frank.”
“I’m serious.” He grabbed her hand again, the hand that wasn’t clutching the blanket to her chest, and ran his thumb across the back of it. “I want to be good for you, Mel.”
“You are good for me. You’re good to me. You always have been.”
“Yeah. But I can always be better.”
“Well, Dr. Langdon,” she said, “I would like to see you try.”
He raised an eyebrow. Her face flushed.
“No, no,” she protested, but he was already leaning forward and dragging her towards him, “I didn’t mean -”
“So you don’t want to?”
“No, I -”
“You don’t want my hands on you?” He set her down in his lap - she was so easy to move, even with what was apparently the heaviest fucking blanket in the world wrapped around her - and ran his fingers along her arms until he could feel goosebumps. “You don’t want my teeth on you?”
“Frankie.” Her protest went mostly ignored as he started mouthing at the column of her neck. He would move down to her tits in about thirty seconds - he had not given them the appreciation they deserved earlier. “I thought - th-that you would want to - I-I thought that, um, you would be tired. We worked today, and y-you had to get up at 5 to take the kids to -”
He pulled back and looked her straight in the eye. “If you don’t want to do anything, tell me.” He ducked his head when her gaze flicked to the side, trying to catch it between her own frantic blinks. “If you’re good, then I’m good.”
She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t say that. I just… Um, are you…?”
“I have a surprisingly short refractory period when it comes to you, apparently.” He smiled and took her hand under the blanket. “Do you want to feel?”
Her only response was a wordless nod.
So he guided her hand to his dick, which was already half-hard in his boxers. He should’ve been embarrassed about this, too, about how fast he could get turned on just from touching her, but with the way her eyes widened, the way her breath caught, he could only be thankful. “Frank,” she whispered, rocking back and forth a little, her gaze caught on the middle of his chest, halfway between his mouth and his lap, “I want - I want -”
“What, sweetheart?” he asked, trying to catch her eye again. “What do you want?”
She finally looked back at him. “I want everything.”
This. This is exactly what he had missed earlier, exactly what he had been wanting. He had wanted more action, more mutual participation, a little bit of cat and mouse and - no, fuck you, Brie, he thought as he flipped Mel onto her back and pulled the blanket over their heads. This was between the two of them, him and the girl he loved so much, the girl who made him better. He would be better for her. And since it was still Tuesday, and she was still naked, and she hadn’t even left the bed - their first time still wasn’t over. The moment wasn’t lost. And this time he would give them what they both wanted and then some.