Archive of Our Own

Even though Melissa King and Frank Langdon were just as good as gone for one another the moment they laid eyes on one another on her first day at the PTMC, it took two years and some change for him to tell her that he loved her. He had to get through rehab, almost two years of sobriety, and a separation before he could take her face in his hands, and tell her that he has loved her since he has known her. That she is the most perfect woman on Earth, that he couldn’t imagine having a life with anyone else. She says all of those things back. She has felt them for so long. They agree that it has been painful, him driving her home each day, spending evenings with her and her sister, meeting his kids, looking at her like she was the only person in the world. It was brutal, suppressing themselves for so long, and they weren’t anymore. 

It was dramatic, and it was emotional, and there was a hike they went on in order to get there. Sitting in the front seat of his car, holding her in the palm of his hands, kissing her so tenderly that she thinks she may burst into tears. He loves her, just the way she dreamed he would, and he wants her exactly as she wants him. She felt like all of her dreams had come true, all of the things that she had been convincing herself were out of the realm of possibility were in the driver’s seat pouring his heart out to her, begging her to love him back. 

It didn’t take much convincing. She had loved him already, she had loved him for so long. It was the easiest thing, she thinks, to love him. She hadn’t known that being in love would be this simple, just like breathing, like loving him was just as innate as her having blonde hair and brown eyes. 

In all of the romance movies her and Becca would watch, this is the part where they would sleep together. They would kiss in his car, and she would have him come upstairs, fade to black, and a shot of her exposed back with the morning light creeping through the window. 

That didn’t happen, though. 

Mel had to go up alone, because Becca’s boyfriend would be dropping her off momentarily, and Frank said he wished he could come up, (and that he would have picked a better time but he wasn’t planning on telling her that he loved her today, but she was just looking at him the exact right way, and she was so beautiful he couldn’t help himself. He loved telling that story) but he needed to get Tanner and Penny from Abby’s for the weekend. He’d see her tomorrow, though, because they were supposed to meet them at the park. 

But let’s not tell anyone that you’re my girlfriend yet, he asked her. He needed to talk it over with Abby, and he needed to make sure that introducing a girlfriend would be okay with her. So I’m your girlfriend? She had asked, and he had told her of course she was, if she wanted to be. 

Simple. It was all just so simple.

Well, except the sex part. Because they don’t sleep together after that. There’s plenty of times they could have but Mel always thinks up a reason why they can’t, or she says she wants to slow down and he obliges. He doesn’t ask any questions, he doesn’t press her or make her uncomfortable, he just listens to her cues those first few weeks (and every day after that, too). He touches her closer to where she’s terrified of him getting too close to, but he stops when she shifts away, and when she pries off of him he isn’t disappointed. 

She could explain herself, she knows, but he doesn’t ask. Plus, she doesn’t exactly want to. He probably thinks she is just nervous, that she isn’t quite ready, that the time doesn’t feel right. She’s almost certain that he isn’t thinking what it actually is. She’s almost certain that he doesn’t think she’s a virgin. He doesn’t touch her like he thinks she is, he doesn’t kiss her like that either, and she thinks she would rather die than have him stop treating her like that. 

So she doesn’t because it doesn’t feel important yet. They hadn’t gotten close to that yet, so she would just… put it off until further notice. Until she couldn’t ignore it anymore. 

Which came sooner rather than later, of course. Because of course it would. They had just begun a serious relationship after years of yearning and pining. They were insane about each other, it was bound to come up rather quickly.  

It’s a couple of weeks in when she’s on his lap in her living room, his hands gently placed on her hips, slipping underneath her t-shirt and gripping her bare waist. It feels good, having him touch her like that, and she’s making those soft little noises that makes him groan into her mouth. They don’t get that much time alone, since they don’t always work the same shift, and he still has partial custody of his children, and Becca is home three nights out of the week now. But ever since he told her he loved her that day in the car, they truly did have a hard time keeping their hands off of one another. 

She isn’t thinking about her looming construct of virginity, and the very real man that was kissing her with an intensity she was certain only existed in movies. She doesn’t think to tell him to stop when he starts scouring her body with his hands, scratching at bare skin, moaning into her mouth. She feels drunk, getting lost in him as she tangles her fingers in his hair, runs her hands over his chest, rocks her hips against his involuntarily. It isn’t until she feels him harden underneath her with a throaty groan that she gasps, suddenly very aware of where he believed this was heading. 

“I-I haven’t done this before,” Mel blurts out when she feels his fingers trail up her stomach, so close to her breasts that she feels a shiver run up her spine. He pulls his mouth from her neck slowly, and she winces, terrified that he’s not interested anymore. That he knows now that she hasn’t ever had sex before, he’ll feel disconnected from her, finally feel the difference between them, the massive experience gap that feels looming between them. 

“That’s okay, Mel,” he says instead, giving her that sweet smile that she fell for the very first day she saw him, the one that reached his eyes and somehow made them more blue, and tucking a couple of tendrils that had fallen out around her face behind her ears. “We can cool down, we don’t need to kiss like this or anything you don’t wanna–” Mel cuts him off with a quick wave of her hand. 

“No, no it’s not the kissing, I-I’ve done that,” she stutters out, the words feeling a bit foreign on her tongue. She hasn’t ever talked about her handful of instances where there was some heavy making out (and maybe some heavy petting) during her college years, because who didn’t do something like that? It had felt so inconsequential, such a moot point when nothing like that was even remotely happening to her. Not until now, anyways. 

“Oh, okay so um…” Frank takes his hands and places them lazily on her thigh, drumming on her exposed skin, and she tries not to think about how nervous he seems. “What exactly haven’t you done… If it’s okay I ask?” He fumbles with his words a little, so scared of fucking up, so terrified of running her off. She doesn’t know how to tell him that she would follow him to the ends of the Earth if he asked her to. 

“Yeah, that’s okay,” she reassures him with a sigh, lacing her fingers together behind his neck. “I just haven’t… I haven’t had sex before,” she admits, feeling a little ashamed somehow. She had told people this before, and it was never much of an ordeal, but right now it felt like admitting to a crime or a sin. It was one thing when she would talk with friends or acquaintances about things like this, but it felt so different to be talking to her boyfriend about it. Her older and divorced boyfriend, nonetheless. “Or… anything that involves… being naked,” she sighs, taking her hands and covering her face, feeling like if he kept looking at her like this she would combust into a million tiny pieces. 

“Hey, c’mon,” he says softly, taking her wrists and pulling them from her eyes. “It’s okay, that’s perfectly okay, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he promises, taking her cheek in the palm of his hand again. “We can slow down a little. You just tell me what you’re comfortable with and when, okay?” he suggests, and she wants to throw up with how sweet he’s looking at her. 

“I want you to be… satisfied, I understand if it makes you feel diff–” He stops her abruptly, and she should have known better. They may have only been together for a little bit, but she had known him for two years now. She knew the type of man he was, and he was certainly not one to decide she wasn’t what he wanted anymore because she wanted to wait to have sex. 

“Mel,” he warns, and she doesn’t even try to argue. She never could when he said her name like that. “Just being with you is enough for me, just loving you is enough for me. Never worry about that, okay? I mean it, we don’t do anything until you’re sure,” he declared, very serious, his tone the same as he used at work. She nods, because what else was she to do except to agree with him? 

“It doesn’t bother you that I haven’t been with anyone else?” she asks, and she hopes it doesn’t annoy him too much. Sometimes she needs direct reassurance, an answer to the precise question she needs. He knows that about her by now, so it doesn’t phase him all that much to provide her just an extra bit of comfort. 

“Of course not, honey,” he insists, taking her knuckles and pressing them to his lips. “I actually kind of like the idea of being your first. I… I like thinking about being the first person to make you… feel good. Whenever you’re ready, of course.” He looks up at her with those ridiculously blue eyes, and she feels a warm pit forming in her stomach and God she feels better now. She feels warm inside, sure, but definitely better. "I love you," he finishes, because he can never say it too many times. 

“Okay,” she relents, “I love you too,” she adds, because she always says it back. “Can we keep kissing, though?” she requests with the smallest of smiles. 

“Oh God,” he groans, taking her thigh in one of his hands again. “I thought you’d never ask.” 

____

She doesn’t think about it all that much over the course of the next few months. Well, she thinks about it, of course, but it doesn’t plague her thoughts or anything. Or, yeah it kinda does, but it’s fine. It’s completely fine, and she doesn’t think about what he would look like naked or how his fingers would feel inside of her, and it doesn’t affect her day at all. She doesn’t stare at the veins in his forearms for too long, and she doesn’t fixate on his lips whenever he talks to her at work, and she does not at all consider the fact that his hand covers such a large portion of her thigh. 

It doesn’t matter, though. She isn’t ready. Or at least, that’s what she tells herself in order to quiet her head. She doesn’t like thinking about having to tell him outright how badly she wants him, so if she pretends like she just isn’t ready, it doesn’t feel so bad. 

She doesn’t talk about it, so it’s not real. 

Well, until she goes out with Samira, Trinity, and Victoria about five months into her relationship. She goes out with them semi-frequently, and she likes it. They’re nice to her, and they remember details about her that she isn’t used to anyone but Frank remembering, and over the last couple of years she would ever consider herself close with Samira and getting there with Trinity. Victoria was nice, but she was young, so she did the best she could. 

A lot of times, their sex lives would come up. Before Mel was with Frank, they were always nice enough to not press her for details, knowing she wasn’t one for casual sex. Sometimes, when it was becoming disgustingly obvious how into one another they were, they’d ask how that was going, nothing sexual though. Only Trinity asking her if she’d hit that yet, which was a pretty gross way of putting it. Once they were together, that didn’t really change. She tried to keep it a secret, but that lasted for about a month before she became absolutely insufferably awkward about it, and she just cut her losses. Frank didn’t mind, he said that just about everyone in the ER was sure anyway, the HR paperwork was filed so the attendings knew, and everyone else wasn’t fucking stupid. The nurses had already ended the betting pool of when they’d get together, anyways. 

So yeah, she just let the girls know, it made the nights out easier anyways.  They’d go around the circle and share whatever escapades they had gotten into since the last time they got drinks after a shift, and they’d just kind of gloss over Mel. She appreciated it, because they didn’t do it in a rude way, just in a way that said they only wanted to hear what information she had to offer up. 

But tonight, Trinity is drunker than usual. Her mystery older woman who she said that they couldn’t waterboard out of her (but Mel knew it was Yolanda, Frank had let it slip one day, but she didn’t ever want to make Trinity feel uncomfortable) hadn’t texted her in a week and then her rebound sex had been so good but she got ghosted by her too. She was in rare form and far bolder than usual, which had been funny for most of the night as she had some rather interesting remarks to make about Samira and Victoria’s respective work paramours. But Mel had felt the attention getting dragged to her periodically throughout the night. Trinity had made a couple quips here and there about Frank, but nothing of note just yet, although she could feel it coming. 

“You’ve been real quiet, why don’t you go?” Trinity nudges Mel after she finishes a rather lengthy tale about the crazy shit the girl from the karaoke bar down the street could do with her tongue. “Actually, hold that thought, I don’t really know if I want to know what Langdon is like,” Trinity shutters a little, taking a swig of her vodka cranberry. “Can you like… Use metaphors or something?” 

“What he’s like?” Mel cocks her head a little bit. “Like… in bed?” Mel narrows her eyes a little, not in an angry way, but in a sincerely confused kind of way. It really hadn’t dawned on her why anyone would be asking her this, why this was even a topic of discussion. They had talked about their sex lives so often, and Mel’s had never really been one they tried to pry on. She thought at this point everyone had taken the hint. 

“Have you even been here this entire time?” Trinity scoffs, knocking her shoulder against Mel’s a little sloppily. “Yes, what he’s like in bed, sheesh. As much as I don’t wanna hear about it, it’s only fair after you listened to us so many times,” Trinity laughs a little, and everyone joins in. 

“I-I um… It doesn’t really feel professional, to talk about him like that,” Mel stutters a bit, pushing her glasses on her nose nervously. She tries to rack her brain for more excuses, because she knows they won’t let up just yet, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to tell them just how inexperienced she was. 

“Oh come on, I just went on about hooking up with Mateo last week!” Victoria squeals a little, a little too excitable, just the way she always is when she drinks a little too much. It makes the hair on the back of Mel’s neck stand up a little. It felt weird, given that everyone else was in their mid to late twenties and she was… so young, but it felt a little mean to exclude her. Or at least, that’s what Mel said. 

“That’s different, Doctor Langdon is one of our superiors, I really shouldn’t be talking about this at all,” Mel tries to play it off with a laugh, but no one is really laughing, they’re all just looking at her like she has two heads. 

“I mean, not really,” Samira furrows her eyebrows a little. “I mean, it’s no worse than me and Abbot. It’s actually like objectively better,” she tries to lighten the mood a little bit, but no one is really catching on. The air in the bar still feels a little thick, and all three pairs of eyes are still staring at her. “But if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to, Mel,” Samira reaches over and grasps her forearm to show some kind of solidarity. Victoria nods vigorously, even though only moments before she had been squealing about it, but she was drunk so it was fine. Trinity was straight up rolling her eyes. 

“I just… I don’t know I don’t feel like I should talk about this, it’s an invasion of privacy and I really don’t think he would like me talking about this with his colleagues and I–” Mel rambles for a bit, but Trinity cuts her off. She should have known better, she was such a horrible liar and she was so bad at keeping a secret. She had been actively listening and interacting the whole conversation, she obviously didn’t have an ethical issue with this. She was so fucking obvious. 

“Oh my God, you haven’t even fucked him, have you?” Trinity gasps slamming her palms on the table. Victoria and Samira both wince a little, and Samira even pinches the bridge of her nose. Mel turns an absurd shade of red. She can’t really fathom how there could even be a more embarrassing situation. “Are you kidding you two have been together for what? Like four months?” Trinity presses, obviously not picking up on the palpable discomfort of the room. Mel doesn’t argue, which she knows hammers the nails into the coffin. 

“Five,” Mel quietly corrects. 

“Five months, oh my God, King! Not to mention you have been ogling at him for like a year before that!” she exclaims, beginning to make an uncomfortable show of it all. 

“I-I wasn’t… ogling at him.” She crinkles her nose a little, feeling nauseous even though she hadn’t even touched any alcohol. 

“Trinity,” Samira warns, shooting daggers at a very tipsy Trinity Santos. She wasn’t paying attention, though, she was still laughing like she was front row at a crowd work comedy show. 

“I don’t mean anything by it!” Trinity throws her hands up, but it wasn’t exactly believable. “I’m just saying it’s like sort of fucking insane, I’m sorry,” she chuckles a little, but no one is really joining in, and Mel feels bad so she smiles a bit, trying to make it better. 

“I mean… If you think about it it’s kinda… sweet,” Victoria tries, and Mel knows it’s in an attempt to make this nightmare just a bit better, but it only makes it so much worse. “Like they’re waiting, it’s sweet, it’s about being together not just sex. It feels like every relationship starts with hooking up, it’s nice that it’s not centered around that,” she smiles, and it sounds half sincere and half backhanded, but Mel knows that she wasn’t trying for it to sound that way. 

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Trinity reaches over and lightly swats Victoria, and she flinches, but it doesn’t seem like it really hurts all that much. “Like, you’re telling me that fucking Langdon is just perfectly fucking fine with not having sex? A guy like that is just chill with being fucking celibate?” she cackles, and for the first time, Mel feels genuinely angry with Trinity. There were times she would make little digs at Frank that she didn’t necessarily care for, but he would do the same towards her, so it was just a mild annoyance at best. 

What Trinity hadn’t done was call into question an aspect of Frank that has to do with her. She hasn’t made a dig about how he treats Mel, what kind of partner he is, how much he loves her, and it feels like she had done all of those things with one comment. She didn’t like it, she didn’t like when someone talked about him negatively at all, but she knew this was too far. She was always so bad when it came to confrontation, she always tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but she felt like she couldn’t right now. 

“Please don’t talk about him like that,” Mel requests, a little more forceful than she usually would. It clearly takes Trinity aback, because her eyes widen and she laughs again and it feels like nails on a chalk board. 

“King, c’mon, this is not about you, you’re like perfect angel and he’s just a fucking pig–” Samira cuts her off before she can continue, and Mel thinks she could leap across the table and hug her. She didn’t really have it within herself to fight back intensely, especially not against a very drunk Trinity Santos. Thank god someone else had the internal willpower to do so. 

“Trinity, stop,” Samira hisses a little. “That’s so fucked up, oh my God.” It gets quiet, and no one says anything. Trinity snaps her mouth shut and looks around at everyone at the table, and they’re all looking at her with a varying degree of discomfort and anger. 

“My bad,” she relents with a scoff. “I was just talking shit, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything. You know him Mel, not me,” she tries, but it feels really strange. At first she thinks it’s some kind of empty apology, but then she sees the redness creeping up her neck, and she can tell that she feels pretty badly, or at the very least, embarrassed. She just isn’t exactly the type for a sincere apology, much less in front of everyone else. 

“It’s okay,” Mel sighs, giving her a weak smile. “Let’s just not talk about Doctor Langdon anymore, please,” she asks, and everyone agrees. 

They don’t stay out for too much longer. It’s fine, and no one says anything untoward, and the conversation doesn’t veer into horribly uncomfortable territory anymore, but there’s still a looming thickness in the air. They were all looking at her a little differently, and she hated it. Or maybe they weren’t looking at her differently, they were thinking of her relationship differently. She doesn’t think if she were single or with someone who wasn’t Frank Langdon it would feel like this, if they would be sneaking pitying glances her way whenever anything to do with relationships came up. She isn’t even entirely sure it is just in her head, the way things like this normally are. 

The night comes to a natural close, the conversation lulls and Samira gets a call from Jack Abbot, one that she simply cannot ignore, and Victoria starts to get a little sleepy. Mel was grateful she wasn't the first to suggest they leave, but it was getting late, and she was the designated driver and Frank would be over early the next morning to spend their day off together. Thankfully, Abbot says he will pick Samira up, and she’s the first to go, and once she peels off in a very sleek range rover, the three remaining women pile into Mel’s 2014 Jeep Cherokee. She insists on Mel dropping her off just a bit down the street, though she doesn’t want her mother seeing her with residents, for whatever reason. 

Then, it’s just her and Trinity in the car. Usually, Mel wouldn’t feel too perturbed by Trinity being alone with her in the car, but it felt a little loaded this time. It was like both of them had something that was chewing at the back of their throat that they wanted to say. They don’t talk all that much on the fifteen minute drive to Trinity’s apartment, the one that she shared with Dennis, and for a second Mel wishes that Trinity had had the decency to call him to come and pick her up. Not that Mel minded driving, it was on the way home anyways. 

Trinity mumbled a thank you as she undid the passenger seatbelt, because of course she still insisted on sitting in the passenger seat. Mel nodded curtly, just wanting the night to be over so everyone could move on and go back to being normal. Or whatever version of normal they were all capable of. Mel thinks that she’s just going to get out of the car and trot off into the night, but she hesitates over the car door handle, and she feels her heart drop a little. 

“Listen, what I said was kinda fucked up, I know,” Trinity grumbles, and Mel doesn’t have a great feeling about this. “I just sometimes think you’re too nice for Langdon, okay? Like, I know he isn’t, I was just worried he was pressuring you–” Mel cuts her off, and it’s probably ruder than she needs to be, but she can’t really take it right now. She’s tired, and she’s annoyed, and she’s a bit over talking to drunk people tonight. 

“Please, can you just… stop?” she sighs, gripping the steering wheel so tight that her knuckles start to turn white. “I appreciate you worrying about me, but I’m fine. He doesn’t pressure me, he doesn’t think it’s weird, and he’s very nice about it. There’s nothing to be concerned about, alright?” Mel bites a little, and she doesn’t want to sound angry, she really doesn’t, she doesn’t even want to sound annoyed, but she does. 

“Whatever you say.” Trinity sucks on her teeth a little, and then she’s out of the car door and off to her building. Mel feels like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders, but she still doesn’t exactly feel calm. 

It doesn’t really bother her what Trinity said about Frank, because it wasn’t true. She knew it wasn’t true; he had never even touched her too aggressively or pulled at her clothes. He never went any further than what she had explicitly said was okay with her, and he hasn’t so much as questioned if she was willing to do more. He didn’t hint at anything, he didn’t make lewd jokes, he was a perfect gentleman at all times. She knew that. 

She knew he wouldn’t leave her or make her feel like she was less than. That wasn’t the problem, that was never the problem. 

It was that she had wanted to be intimate with him for weeks, probably months now. She had felt his erection against her enough times and had a hard time not grinding herself against him, that she knew that was what she wanted. She knew he loved her, she knew that he wasn’t going anywhere, she knew that if there was anyone she would want to be with that way it would be him. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind. 

But she didn’t know how to go about it. She was still terrified of what she would be like, if she would be any good at it, if he would even like it with her after being with someone for so long. She was nervous as fuck, for lack of better words, and she had absolutely no clue how to go about telling her very first real boyfriend that she wanted to have sex with him without it ruining the mood, and if he agrees to have sex with her, she has even less of a clue what the fuck to do. 

Hell, she doesn’t even know how to bring sex up at all. She didn’t even know how to talk to her friends or her own sister about sex. How on Earth is she supposed to bring it up to him? She feels like she may be letting him down, that she’s being unnecessarily cruel holding off this way when she wanted it, and she knew he must want it. 

This wasn’t about anything Trinity had said, as much as she wanted to really like her, her opinion of Frank meant just about nothing. All she could think about was that maybe it was strange that they weren’t having sex, and maybe she was disappointing him. It didn’t matter how untrue she knew it was, sometimes those worst thoughts were hard to push back in once the can of worms had opened. 

God, she sounds so fucking stupid. She’s a doctor, isn’t she? She should be able to talk about these things without being such a freak, wouldn’t you think? 

____

Well, you’d be wrong. Mel racks her brain for hours when she gets home on how to bring it up with him casually the next day. Nothing comes to mind, and throughout the day that they spend together, doing mindless tasks like grocery shopping and taking a quick walk around the park because Frank always insisted that sunlight was good for her (which she agreed with, but sometimes she liked doing nothing at all on her day off), still not a single idea crossed her mind. 

So, instead of broaching the topic in a very normal way, she decides to bring it up while they’re watching a romantic comedy that she hadn’t seen in years (because it was her turn to pick the movie) and Frank pretends to hate it. He was cracking jokes about how stupid it was that Reese Witherspoon was leaving a very nice and rich Patrick Dempsey for her high school boyfriend, and Mel argued with him a little about true love, but she sorta agreed with him. There was about half an hour left in the movie when the little jabs lulled, and she couldn’t help but let the chewing at her brain stem win. 

“Does it make you feel bad?” Mel asks him as his hand sits comfortably on her knee, not too high and not too low. Just the right amount of touch to make her feel like she’s close to him, but not so much that her stomach flips and a heat forms in the pit of her stomach. It drives her nuts how careful he is with her, how he’s always so mindful when it comes to her, as if he doesn’t know all of the rules and stipulations she has applied to everyone else but him. 

“Feel bad about what?” he questions, turning to her and cocking his head a little, his fingers squeezing her knee just a bit. God, he was so earnest, so kind that it made her skin melt. 

“That we… you know…. haven’t…” Mel bites her bottom lip, refusing to turn to face him. They were alone in the apartment, Becca was at her boyfriend’s house, and it was only the two of them sitting on her couch. Still, somehow, it felt like she couldn’t say it out loud. She felt like a child, a stupid teenager who couldn’t even get the fucking words out, and she refused to let that feeling seep into her bones. “Had sex,” she finishes with a bit of a wince, still speaking quieter than she probably needed to be. She pulls her knees up to her chest and buries her face in them, just a bit mortified. She can even tell he’s a little disappointed that she pulled her leg away from him.  

“What? No, no it doesn’t make me feel bad at all,” he shakes his head, turning his whole body towards her while he swiftly clicks the television to mute. He doesn’t push her too much, because he never does. He never wraps his arms around her in situations like this where she is clearly a bit distressed until she leans into him. Right now wasn’t one of those times. “We’ve talked about this, why would you even ask me that?” He props his elbow up on the back of the couch, and even out of the corner of her eye she can tell just how concerned he was. He always was when she was even a little upset. 

“I don’t know,” she shakes her head a little, but this isn’t the end because she couldn’t really lie to him. “When I… I went out with some people from work last night… it came up,” she admits, like she was confessing to a crime. 

“Did someone say something?” His jaw sets a bit, and she groans a little. She understands why he feels this innate need to protect her, that anyone who hurts her feelings or makes her feel badly about anything, but sometimes he could be a little intense about it.

“I mean yes,” she fiddles with her own fingers, because he’s going to press her to get it out of her, and whenever she prolongs the process of what’s bothering her it just makes both of them on edge, so she’s gotten better about just telling him before the interrogation starts. “It wasn’t that bad. They just were kinda shocked we haven’t done anything, and that… that you were okay with that,” she mumbles the last part, because she knew it would upset him. 

“Who the fuck said that?” he snaps, because she knows him better than she knows anyone else. “Was it fucking Santos?” he narrows his eyes, and he looks like he sees red. She shakes her head, not because she was going to deny it, because she really wasn’t in the mood to discuss his disdain for her work friend, and she really wasn’t keen on having an entire discussion on how her boundaries had been crossed. That was for another day; she had other things in mind now. 

“No, stop, that isn’t what I wanna talk about,” she waves him off just a little. “We just haven’t talked about it since we started dating and I didn’t know if you still felt that way. I guess I just thought they sounded… I don’t know right. Being together for this long after… feeling the way we did for so long feels… A little ridiculous, I guess, from an… from an outside perspective.” She tried not to ramble, but she was panicking, and she knew none of it was necessarily true, but sometimes hearing someone else say her fears out loud made them feel more real than she would ever care for them to be. 

“Well, I don’t think it’s anyone’s business,” Frank quips a little, taking the tendril that has fallen in front of her face and tucking it behind her ear. Just the smallest touch makes her feel like she’s going to melt, or cry, or both. “Whenever you’re ready is when it’ll happen. I’m not in any rush, Mel, I meant it when I said loving you was enough” he reassures her, keeping his hand on her head, moving it to hold her cheek in his palm when she seems to press herself into him. 

“What if I am ready?” Mel whispers, but not out of embarrassment this time, because she feels like these words need to be kept private. She turns her head to face him, pressing the cheek that isn’t currently occupied by his hand onto her kneecap. “I-I love you, and I think… I think I want to be with you like that.” His eyes widen, and they look darker than they normally do, more like deep ocean water than a clear lake. 

“Mel, I love you too and I want that, but you don’t need to say that just because you felt pressured by your friends,” Frank starts, taking his hand away from her face so he could appropriately talk with his hands. He was so passionate about everything he said and everything he did. She couldn’t help but smile a little bit. 

“I’m not just saying that,” Mel insists, finally letting her legs fall so she can move herself to face him on the couch like he’s facing her. “I’ve… I’ve been ready, I guess I just… I didn’t know how to bring it up, and I didn’t how how someone would even initiate that, so I guess I just… I don’t know didn’t do anything?” She crinkles her nose a bit. “It sounds really dumb when I say it out loud.” She shakes her head a little. 

“Honey,” Frank hums, his fingers going back to her knee, but this time they were creeping up her leg, higher than he normally did. There were a couple times his long fingers moved over her thighs like this when she would sit on his lap and kiss him, but he would always stop it before it got too intense. It always disappointed her, but she never could be sure if he was stopping for her sake or his own, so she didn’t argue. “I’ll do anything you ask me, just say the word. You don’t need to be worried about asking me anything, okay?” He leans forward every so carefully, pressing a soft kiss to her jaw. “Or, you don’t need to ask anything at all. Whatever you want,” he tacks on, never too much, never too little. Just how she liked it. 

“I know, I want this, I’ve wanted this, I just…” She whines a little, feeling his lips trail down to her neck, pressing his mouth to the sweet spot he knows she likes so much. “I haven’t really… I haven’t really done this,” she babbles, and Frank coos a little at her, placing one of his hands on the side of her face, his mouth still working at her. Her stomach was heating up, and she started feeling like she would start involuntarily moving her hips. 

“I know, baby,” he mumbles into her skin, and god, she loves it when he calls her that. “Why don’t you let me take care of you?” He detaches and meets her eyes again, his thumb rubbing circles on her cheek. Her stomach is doing cartwheels at this point. He hasn’t ever suggested anything before, not even before he knew she was a virgin. He was so sweet with her, so patient, like he could have spent the rest of his life only kissing her. 

She had been so worried that when she finally managed to tell him she was ready, he would be too accommodating, because there was such a thing. He was so good to her that she was concerned that he would be too nervous, would hold back, treat her like she was fragile. She didn’t want that, not even one bit. She didn’t mind him being careful, but she didn’t want to be treated with kid gloves. 

He wasn’t, though. He was digging the pads of his fingers into the meat of her thigh, he was nipping at the sweet spot on her neck, he was moaning. He was being gentle, but he wasn’t touching her like she was made of glass. He isn’t acting like he’s scared of breaking her, he wants her, and he wants to take care of her and it feels like she could cry. 

“What do you… What do you want to do?” she gulps a little. It’s awkward, she knows, to be asking such stupid questions like that, that she should just start kissing him and see what happens, that is what always happened in the movies, wasn’t it? They would kiss for a while, and the clothes would get discarded, and it just… happened. If Mel were someone else, maybe she could do that, maybe she could have done that before with someone else, but she wasn’t. She was her, and this was the only way she could possibly imagine doing something like this. 

She typically didn’t need to be guided through life, she had been a caretaker for so long. She was always so put together, so responsible, in charge in every situation. She liked it that way, she liked being the one everyone in the room relied on, she liked being smart and independent. She would always prefer it that way. 

But it was nice when Frank would take care of things, and would take care of her. She liked when he would drive her to work, when he would cook for her, when he would help her clean up after a long week. She thinks this may be another one of those times where she liked him taking care of her. She didn’t think she would mind him calling the shots, showing her how good she can feel, how good he can feel. 

“Why don’t we go into your room,” he starts, taking her glasses off of her face and placing them on the coffee table, then his lips moving back up to her jaw. “And I take off these pajama pants, and I can take off your panties,” he goes on, and fuck she’s starting to get wet. Is it embarrassing to be incredibly wet before even taking your clothes off? “And I’ll go down on you,” he whispers just before pressing his lips just underneath her ear. Shivers run down her spine, and she thinks she may just soak through her pajama pants. 

“I-I think I’d like that,” she swallows, and she hopes he isn’t internally judging her for sounding so scared. She wasn’t scared, not exactly, but even if she was she was just as excited. “And after that we… Do we have sex?” she squeaked out. He hums a little, and she can hear the smile, and she melts when he moves back to look her in the eyes and she sees it for herself. 

God, he’s so fucking handsome. 

“Why don’t I make you come first, and then we see how you feel?” he suggests, and God she loves him so much. She loves him more than she could probably ever tell him, and she wants him more than she could probably ever put into words. No one’s ever done this to her, no one’s ever done this for her and she wants to feel petrified, and she thinks she is on the brink of changing her mind, but she’s more sure of this than she has been of anything in her life. 

So she agrees, and he stands up and he offers her his hand, even though she doesn’t exactly need help up from her own couch, and she certainly doesn’t need him to lead her to her bedroom, but she lets him because it’s more romantic this way. She feels like a giddy teenager, bounding into her room with a smirk plastered on her lips, one that he kisses away the second her bedroom door clicks behind them. Thankfully, he’s been in her room a handful of times before, and even slept in her bed a few times (with only actual sleeping) so the anxiety of him seeing her room for the first time isn’t present. He just looks around at her overstuffed bookshelf and her framed movie posters and her absurd amount of blankets and pillows with a fond look in his eye, but it doesn’t distract him too much. 

After just a few moments, he presses her onto the bed, hovering on top of her, and fuck they’ve never kissed like this before. Very gingerly, he moves his lips down to that sweet spot on her neck that she loves so much, and he pulls at the waistband of her pajama pants, and she kicks them off as quickly as she can. She thinks they’ll keep kissing for a moment, but they don’t. He starts to move down her body instead, reaching under her t-shirt, his fingers grazing just under her breasts and she’s suddenly very grateful she’s not wearing a bra, but also kind of embarrassed because he can certainly see her nipples harden. 

“Have you ever come before?” he asks her, positioning his head between her thighs, and dear god she thinks her whole body is going to formulate into jell-o. 

“I mean… by myself, yeah,” she admits, her cheeks heating up, and at this point she feels like her entire body may begin to boil. 

“What do you do to make yourself come, honey?” he presses, hooking his fingers on the elastic of her panties. She hates herself just a little for not picking out something nicer than basic beige cotton ones, but she hadn’t exactly planned on this happening. 

“Just my… my fingers.” She’s breathing heavily, looking down at him, but he isn’t looking at her face right now. He’s looking at the wet spot that was on her panties, and she thinks for just a moment that his mouth is watering.

“Fuck,” he whispers, starting to tug the flimsy fabric down her thighs. “Can I take these off?” He makes sure before exposing her, but she doesn’t even finish nodding before he’s pulling them off her calves and discarding them on the floor. “Oh my god,” he groans a little when he sees her bare, nipping a bit at her thighs, inhaling sharply. She worries for just a moment that she hasn’t shaved in a couple weeks, but from how he’s looking at her dripping onto her bedsheets like he’s a man starved, she doesn’t think he minds all that much. “Tell me if you don’t like anything at all… and tell me if you really like something, too, okay?” he requests, wrapping his forearms under her thighs and placing his hands on her stomach, caging her in. She nods, completely incapable of forming a coherent thought at this moment, and thankfully he doesn’t make her verbalize it. 

With one last wet kiss to her inner thigh, he moves his mouth to her core and presses his tongue against her clit and

Oh. 

She feels like she is turning to static. She’s suddenly very grateful that his arms are pressing her hips down to the bed, keeping her firmly in place. She was squirming so much, and if he wasn’t holding onto her she may as well be thrashing. She’s whimpering and whining his name, and at one point her hand goes into his hair, tugging just enough to make him moan into her, and god she swears she sees stars. 

“God, you taste so good,” he groans, removing his mouth from her just a second, her juices coating his upper lip and holy fuck he’s so gorgeous like this. He looked so drunk on her, like he had drunk her in and it overtook his body. He licks his lip, like he can’t get enough of her, and she swears that was enough to make her finish right then and there. “I’m gonna finger you now, okay?” he coos, placing his thumb on her clit when he notices it was twitching a little bit from the loss of his touch. “Just to stretch you out a little and get you ready in case you want me later,” he adds on, and she bucks her hips into his hand, whining some more, incoherently forcing his name out. 

He was taking such good care of her, making her feel so good. She didn’t know it felt this good. She had touched herself plenty of times, and it did feel nice. But it was nothing compared to what Frank was doing right now between her thighs. She thinks her heart could stop right now and she wouldn’t mind. She couldn’t imagine a better feeling than this. 

When she finally manages out a yes in her incessant babbling, he slips his middle finger inside of her and she gasps. She rocks her hips into his hand, but he still has his other one pressed flat on her stomach so she can’t move too much.

“That feel good?” he asks, and she moans in response, biting down on her lip so hard she’s worried she may draw blood. “I’m gonna add one more, okay?” He seems so pleased with himself, and he should be. She was putty in his hands, an absolute mess for him, and she loved every second of it. 

He pressed his ring finger inside of her, and he let her arch her back this time as he curled his fingers inside of her, hitting a spot she didn’t even know he could reach with just his fingers. She thinks she’s starting to get dizzy, but then he wraps his lips around her clit again, sucking so softly as to not overstimulate her, she thinks she may just pass out. He hums against her, and with that bit of vibration, she feels a knot form in her stomach. One that was familiar, but not quite like this. 

“I-I think I’m…” she tries to manage, but it doesn’t work. She doesn’t know how to speak right now, she’s never felt this good before. 

“You’re close, baby?” He looks up at her for a moment, and she doesn’t know if she’s ever been more in love with him than in this moment. He looks like he might as well be bathed in sunlight right now, how he’s glowing with his face buried in her like this. 

“Mhm,” she whimpers, because that’s just about all she can get out right now. 

“Come for me,” he orders, and she was always so very good at following directions. It only takes another few seconds or so for her to come undone on his mouth, rolling her hips onto his mouth, him taking her juices in so intensely she is almost sure she can hear slurping sounds over the buzzing in her ears. She cries out his name, tugging on his hair, making him groan even more. 

He doesn’t overstimulate her too much. He lets her ride out her high, but he doesn’t keep going until she has to pry him off. She’s astounded by how well he knows her already. He doesn’t climb up next to her yet, he stays between her thighs, resting his chin on her stomach. He doesn’t even seem to mind that she is almost certainly seeping onto his shirt. 

“Was that good for you?” he asks softly, pulling up her t-shirt just a little bit, drawing shapes on the skin of her stomach absentmindedly. It feels so obvious, of course she liked it, he had basically made her go nonverbal. 

“I want you inside of me,” she answers, even though that wasn’t what he was asking, but she thinks that answers the question. He stops abruptly, looking up at her with a furrow in his eyebrows, but he was far more amused than he was confused. 

“Yeah?” he chuckles a little, but it’s somehow dark and sultry as he moves up to his knees to pull his shirt off from the neck. She crinkles her nose a bit, thinking about how aggressively men took their shirts off. It was somehow so hot when he did it, but really anything he did was unreasonably hot. Even the amount of chest hair he had was fucking maddening because she had famously always thought chest hair was a little gross, but he somehow looked so good. She even wants to run her fingers through it, feel it pressed against her bare chest while he grinds into her, fucks into her, and she thinks she may be going insane. She’s never thought like this before, never had her brain turn to mush when looking at him like this, and she thinks she may be a little scared at first, but she realizes she likes it a little. 

“Yeah,” she smiles a little, the warmth in her chest spreading to her entire body. “You’re beautiful, you know that, right?” she asks him, and she feels just a little embarrassed. She hadn’t exactly thought about it, it just came out. She hadn’t even considered what she was saying, she just… said exactly as she was feeling. She meant it, though, and she would say it a million times over if he’d let her. She thinks he may get a little shy, maybe shrug her off, or maybe even get weird, because some men would get weird about their younger girlfriend calling them beautiful. 

He wasn’t that kind of man, though. He just quirks his lips a little, leans over her, pulling her t-shirt (that was actually one of his old t-shirts from undergrad) up just a little bit, and says “Thank you, honey. So are you.” While he pulls the t-shirt up and over her head, leaving her entirely bare in front of him. “So, so beautiful,” he murmurs, gazing down at her, not exactly with a lustful expression, but one that was laced with intense desire. He runs his hands over her body so carefully, his fingers brushing past her pebbled nipples which makes both of them let out a noise from the back of their throats. 

He tugs his pants off, his boxers going along with them, and she sees his erection hit his stomach. It makes her whole body boil seeing how he was already incredibly hard after just eating her out and touching her body. She had never seen herself as someone who could have that effect on someone, but she sometimes seemed to underestimate just how much Frank Langdon wanted her, how much he loved her. He reaches down to pump his length a couple of times, but she sits up and swats him away, taking him in her own hand. She doesn’t exactly know what she’s doing, but she thought he would like it if she touched him. It seems like she’s doing a good job, considering how he threw his head back in ecstasy. 

“C-Couple things,” he sighs, moving his eyes back down to watch her sloppily stroke him. She had only been doing so for a little bit, but her hand was already hurting. “D-Do you have any condoms?” he asks, and she shakes her head. 

“Birth control,” she tells him, focusing hard on her wrist movements, because that seemed to be what made him twitch in her hand the most. “Cramps,” she adds when she realizes it probably confused him to hear she was on birth control when she has never had sex before, but then again his girlfriend was touching him for the first time, she doubts he is forming much of any thoughts right now. 

“O-Okay good. Fuck, Mel,” he moans, taking one of his hands and putting it on the back of her head to steady himself. “I’m… I haven’t done this in… Jesus fuck, I haven’t done this in… in over three years,” he admits, and she isn’t shocked. She just as well knew this, considering he hadn’t been having sex with his ex wife for quite some time, and he had made it clear she was the only woman he had even considered since before he even separated from his ex wife. Still, it felt good to hear. “I’m… I’m not going to last long, so… so stop,” he chuckles a little, grabbing her wrist and moving it off of him. “Lay down for me, Mel,” he softly suggests, and God, how she loved following his directions. 

He hovers over her, pulling her thighs up to his hips, gripping them so tight she hopes he leaves bruises for her to remember him by when he isn’t there. He leans down to kiss her, softly parting her lips with his tongue, and she can taste herself on him still. She thought she would hate that, but it’s actually quite nice, knowing she was in his mouth like this, knowing that he liked it. “I love you,” he tells her, and she knows, but she thinks she could hear him say it a million times over and she’d never get tired of it. 

“I love you,” she says back, because she means it more than she’s meant anything before. Because she knows he feels the same way she does. 

“Tell me if anything hurts, or if you want me to slow down or stop, okay?” he tells her, feathering kisses into her hairline. 

“Okay,” she agrees. He nods, like he’s telling himself that it’s okay before lining up his tip with her entrance. He looks at her for just a moment, just to make sure one more time, and she dips her chin one last time.

Ever so slowly, he slides inside of her so easily, because she’s already so wet from his spit and coming only minutes before. It still stings just a little, because she’s never been full like this, she’s never had someone else inside of her. Even his fingers had been an adjustment, and his cock was so much bigger than his fingers. She whimpers a little as he presses deeper inside of her, hitting the back of her cervix. He doesn’t move for a moment, giving her a few minutes to adjust. It doesn’t take long, because he feels so good and he’s groaning into her ear, and she’s wrapping her legs around his hips and it feels like she’s part of him and he’s part of her, so she says, “You can move now,” 

And he does. Slowly, at first, just thrusting carefully and slowly, sure not to hurt her while she was still getting used to what he felt like inside of her. “You feel so good, honey, fuck you feel so good,” he moans into her ear, picking up the pace just a slight bit. 

“It… It feels so good,” she whines, her hands going to hold onto his back, probably leaving scratches as she clutches onto him. He takes one of her hands for just a moment, and he places it on her stomach, pressing it down just a bit and 

Oh god. 

She can feel him in her stomach, moving in and out of her at a painstaking rate, and she feels like she is going to black out. “You feel how deep I am inside of you, baby?” he asks her softly, and she cries out a little. He shushes her, even though there’s no one else there to hear them, but she listens. She would always listen to him, she thinks. “Tell me how it feels,” he orders. 

“I-It feels good,” she squeaks out, but she knows that isn’t good enough. 

“I know it feels good, baby, God, I know it feels good.” His movements are getting sloppy, and she knows he’s getting closer, but he’s holding back as much as he can. “Tell me how good it feels.” He reaches in between them and starts rubbing sloppy circles on her clit. She knows now he’s getting close, because she is certain that he wouldn’t want to finish without her finishing around him. She knows he would sooner die than come without her. However, she has no idea how on Earth she should be expected to form a single sentence. 

“Fuck, it feels so good. It feels so fucking good, you feel so good. You’re so fucking deep,” she huffs out, her hips rolling against his, and he bites out a moan. 

“I’m getting close, honey,” he whines just a little, and she wonders if he’ll always be like that, get so needy and whiney when he’s so close to finishing. She hopes he always will.

“Please come inside of me,” she pleads against her better judgement. She knows he should pull out, that was the best option even with the birth control, but she didn’t care. It didn’t matter that they were doctors and they knew what those probabilities looked like, she wanted him to fill her like that. 

“Jesus, fuck,” he whines again, and she thinks it sounds as close to the angels singing as you could get on Earth. “Are you sure?” he questions. 

“Yes, please, come inside of me, please.” She’s begging now, and she doesn’t care. She can tell he likes it from how much louder he’s getting, how the curses and terms of endearment and mindless babbling falls from his lips, and she can’t even comprehend how hot it is how vocal he is. 

“Only if you come around me first,” he challenges with a soft smirk, and that is not a very hard deal to hold up. She nods vigorously, and he flicks her clit just a few more times, and almost involuntarily she comes undone around him, her walls fluttering while she writhes and grasps onto him. He follows within seconds, spilling inside of her, his hips stuttering and his moans becoming higher pitched, exactly how she wanted him to. 

When it’s over, he cleans her up and he kisses her and tells her he loves her, he tells her how good she was, how beautiful she is. He promises her he will always take care of her. She believes him, she believes every last word, and she tells him all of the same things back. He believes her too. They clean each other up, they hold one another, and it feels like they’ve completed a jigsaw puzzle, although it was one that was still evolving, they were sure they’d always find the pieces. 

She doesn’t feel disappointed that it took this long. She doesn’t feel stupid from holding herself off from this, from feeling this close to him, from feeling this good. She actually thinks it was well worth the wait. She thinks he agrees. 

____

“So what are you gonna tell your friends tomorrow?” Frank teases, pinching at her sides a little as they face one another, their limbs completely intertwined with one another. It’s been a couple of hours since he came inside of her (the first time, they did go for a round two that ended about a half an hour ago where he showed her how to ride him, which she liked way more than she thought she would, and was glad this was an option now for when his back was bothering him) and they still haven’t put on their clothes yet, whispering sweet nothings into the sheets and the pillowcases. She crinkles her nose at the joke, and she shakes her head a little. 

“Nothing,” she insists. “I’ll tell them nothing,” 

“What?” He feigns offense. “You’re not excited to participate in the girl talk now? I know I gave you plenty of material,” he teases, pulling her closer to him even though that felt almost impossible. She would need to crawl inside of his skin to get any closer. 

“I mean, it’ll be nice to at least understand what they’re talking about. Like you know, what it feels like to do that stuff,” she admits, and she wonders if she will always feel strange about referring to sex acts specifically, but at this point she doesn’t really care anymore. “But… I don’t know, I just want to keep this for us. I don’t want to share any of it, no one else needs to know about it. I just… I want this part of you just for me,” she confesses like she is at an altar, and he breathes it in like the smoke of the candles. 

“You have all of me to yourself, Mel, you know that I’m yours,” he tells her, squeezing her hip, and she does know that, but it isn’t what she meant, even though it’s nice to hear that. “But I get it,” he goes on before she could let him know what she was getting at. “I know what you’re saying, and I agree. I want this part of you just for me, too,” he finishes, and she feels the butterflies form in her stomach. 

“What parts of me do you want just for you?” she whispers, because she’s tired and she feels bold and like she could get anything she wants right now if she asked for it, and she thinks he would do everything in his power to give it to her. 

“The way you… the way you whimper my name when I touch you,” he starts, and his voice is shaky, like he’s nervous, like he is aware of how he is on display right now, even more so than when he was splayed out underneath her, helping her slide himself inside of her. “How your hair falls out of your braid when you ride me. How your hips twitch when you’re about to come. How you tell me you love me like it’s some kind of prayer. How wet you get just from me kissing you,” he’s only inches from her face, and she didn’t even realize he was that close. “I want you all to myself, Mel,” he says to her, like it is the simplest thing in the world, and maybe it is, because loving him was the easiest thing she had ever done, wasn't it?  

“You’ve had me all to yourself,” she tells him, looking into his eyes in a way she isn’t sure she has before. She thinks about how beautiful he is, about how kind he is, about how lucky they are to have found one another, how she had never known being in love could feel this way. She thinks it was all worth it for him. She wouldn’t do a thing differently, she thinks, if it means she would end up here, with him, in this moment. “For longer than you’ve known, I think.”