Chapter Text
one. take your shoes off
It’s dreary and overcast on the day Frank earns his one-year sobriety chip. Mel convinces him to celebrate with pancakes and orange juice at a local diner after their shared night shift, and even though they finish just hours into the day, Frank can barely see the sun when he finally drops into bed just before noon.
When he wakes up that evening, a few hours before he’s set to go back to work, Frank walks into his living room and freezes.
Abby, sitting on the couch with a pile of papers in front of her, stares back.
One year and one day sober, Frank Langdon agrees to sign the divorce papers.
“You can stay with me until you find a place.”
Frank looks up from his phone. “Mel—”
She shrugs, pretending to take a bite from the protein bar he pushed towards her in the breakroom. “I mean it. Becca mostly stays at her center now, with a couple of special exceptions, so it’s basically just me.” Biting her lip, she motions in the general direction of his screen, where a listing for apartments is still visible. “Obviously, you’d want to find a bigger place for the kids and everything eventually, but until then, it’d be a lot cheaper.”
Running a hand down his jaw, Frank considers it: he doesn’t want to be under Abby’s roof any longer than he has to be. And while his soon-to-be ex-wife would never kick him out, especially as they finalize the arrangements for their coparenting, Frank wants the physical separation. And he and Mel are friends—if their professional relationship is anything like their dynamic as roommates, they should get along great.
“Okay,” says Frank carefully, trying to ignore how his heart skips a beat when Mel beams at him in response. “Let me think about it. How much would you want for rent?”
“Oh don’t worry about that,” she says, waving him off, and he frowns. “No—I don’t need your money, Frank, I know a divorce can’t be cheap.”
“I’m not staying at your place for free, Mel.”
Mel frowns back. “Then maybe you could help me around the house. You know I’m not a great cook, and there’s probably some things that need fixing that I’ve been putting off…”
It’s not the same, and they both know it, but Frank finds that at least this way, he can be useful to Mel. It makes him feel important. So he taps his chin before nodding. “I think that’s a great idea.” He tilts his head and gestures to her uneaten bar. “God knows you need someone to keep you fed anyway.”
Mel blushes and takes a larger bite of the protein bar.
Frank feels the heat deep in his chest.
Frank moves in on a Thursday afternoon—a rare day off, one that doesn’t coincide with Mel’s—and quickly catalogues all the little fixes the apartment needs. The deadbolt chain is rusted on the door, there’s only one lightbulb working in the master bathroom, the kitchen is sparsely stocked…
It doesn’t feel like enough, but it’s something. Frank has had several conversations with his therapist about his compulsion to feel needed, and even if Mel won’t accept his financial support for crashing in her guest room, he’s mollified by her acceptance of his presence. He grins when he finds Mel bought a new colored dry-erase marker for the King calendar on the fridge—green, he suspects, is his color, to go with Mel’s purple and Becca’s pink—and Frank quickly adds important schedule updates of his own. Like his days off, therapy appointments, and sobriety meetings.
By the time Mel comes home that evening, Frank has already created a meal plan and a grocery list, dusted the bookshelf with Mel’s medical journals, replaced the battery in the fire alarm by Becca’s room, and moved all his sparse belongings into the guestroom.
“Wow.” Mel shakes her head when she comes home, still in her scrubs. “You were busy.”
Sheepish, Frank rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry, I was a bit antsy.” He shows her the meal plan and grocery list. “I’m happy to go to the store after work tomorrow.”
“That would be great.” Mel bites her lip. “And we’ll split the cost, right? 50-50.”
Frank clears his throat, standing in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter. “So I was thinking, because you won’t take rent, I could at least cover the cost of groceries…”
“No.” Mel shakes her head firmly. “Am I eating these meals you’re making?”
“Well, I hope so…”
“Then I’m paying for it too.” She crosses her arms across her chest, her biceps flexing, and Frank has to swallow back a groan, finding himself suddenly very taken by the sight. “And you’re going to have to accept that, okay?”
Frank throws his hands into the air. “Fine! Fine.” He narrows his eyes. “I don’t think this is fair.”
Mel rolls her eyes. “That’s too bad.”
Mel: How much do I owe you for groceries?
Frank: $0
Mel: Frank…
Frank: Mel… why are you being so stubborn about this?
Mel: I let you pack me lunch. You made dinner last night too!
Frank: you also cleaned up after…
Mel: Tell me how much the groceries were or else I’m just going to Venmo you money every week.
Frank: Don’t you dare!
Mel King has sent you $55.55 for groceries
Frank Langdon has sent you $69.69 for friendship
Mel King has sent you $75.00 for mentorship, friendship, and groceries
Frank: Mel! C’mon.
Mel: I can do this all day.
On a Sunday evening, after a particularly tough shift, Frank drives them both home.
“I’m sorry about that last one who coded on you,” says Frank as he turns out of the parking lot. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Mel shakes her head. “No, I’m fine.” She’s not, but she needs to deal with it on her own, because she’s almost an R4 and should be able to deal with it by herself. “Or, I will be.”
Frank sends her a quick look, but before she can study him, he turns back to the road. “Okay,” he says, simply, voice soft. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
Mel releases a breathy laugh. “Yeah, right next door.” His smile matches hers, slow and teasing, and she feels her stomach flutter. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For just… being a good friend.” It’s not what she really wants to say; she wants to thank him for always being there, for understanding what she needs even when she can’t say it aloud. Professionally, personally. Somehow, Frank has the decoder to her hieroglyphic mind, and she can’t be anything but grateful.
It’s partially why she won’t—can’t—accept his offers to pay rent.
Adding a financial component to their friendship feels… wrong.
Once home, Mel strips off her top and bra, sighing in relief. She quickly escapes to her room to shower and change, but freezes halfway before removing her pants. Instead, she grabs a hoodie and throws it back on.
When she returns to the living room, Frank is frozen at the apartment entrance, eyes glazed and face red, rubbing the back of his neck. “Uh—”
“I forgot,” Mel says bluntly, blushing too. She shifts her weight back and forth on her heels. “I’m so used to not worrying about—”
“No, it’s your home, I don’t want to make you change what you’re used to—”
“But it’s your place too, now, and I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable—”
“It’s okay, Mel, really.” Frank’s face clears for a moment, breaking out into a small smile, sincere and warm and familiar. Her stomach flips. His eyes hover somewhere just above her ear. “I’m just going to take a shower, if you’re good—”
Mel clears her throat. “Uh, no, go ahead.”
When Frank slips into their shared bathroom—there’s another attached to Becca’s bedroom, but it didn’t feel right for Frank to use it, so now they’re sharing instead, and Mel tries not to think about Frank’s shampoo and soap nestled beside her body wash and facial cleansers—Mel pretends to occupy herself in the kitchen. She should have a snack, but she’s not hungry.
Not for food, anyway.
It’s not unusual for Mel to feel urges. They’re not as frequent as her roommates in college would profess to having, waxing about the hook-ups and one-night-stands they’d have at parties or on the weekends. Sometime during med school, Mel finally accepted that while the concept of sex was appealing—the idea of connection and intimacy and someone so close, seeing her at her most vulnerable—was also incredibly scary. And it felt like something that Mel needed to build up to, not something that could just happen with a stranger; Mel needed to know them, to trust them, she learned, to really feel that flood of warmth pooling in her stomach, that dull ache between her legs.
But Frank isn’t just someone and the memory of the look in his eye—eyes turned navy, searching, shocked, and filled with desire—gives Mel shivers. She knows what that looks means—objectively, physical attraction at the sight of a human body is normal. She’s just slightly surprised Frank is attracted to her.
Biting her lip and giving up on the pretense of making a snack, Mel tries to escape back to her room before Frank is done in the shower. She also tries not to imagine him in there—naked and wet, steam billowing around his body. She’s seen him walk around in just a towel, hanging off his hips and held together by a single fist, and the image just sticks with her. She thinks of the vibrator hidden in her nightstand and idly wonders if Frank would be able to hear it if she could get herself off tonight…
“Oh fuck, Mel…”
Mel freezes just outside the bathroom. There’s a sharp inhale and the squeak of the pipes, as if switching from hot to cold water. A part of her wonders if she’d imagined it—her name, falling from his lips in a deep moan, sounding exactly like what she might fantasize while trying to get off with her vibrator. It’s always his voice, anyway, but this is—her name.
The water shuts off before Mel can decide how to react. In the split-second before the door swings open and she’s faced with a half-naked Frank, a plan quickly forms in her mind: her hidden spreadsheet, Frank’s reassuring smile, his need to pay her for rent, the surprising hot build of desire deep within, threatening to spill out.
Maybe…
The bathroom door swings open, and Frank gapes when Mel stares back at him. “What—”
“I heard you.” Mel has never understood why people weren’t more honest. Frank blinks, mouth still open, so she takes her opportunity to continue. “I heard you just now—how you moaned my name.” A choking sound leaves his throat, and Mel lifts her hand to stop him from interrupting. “And I think I have an idea.”
“Should I be dressed for this conversation?”
Mel blinks, finally letting her gaze snatch on his bare chest, covered in a surprising amount of hair, the rest of him only covered by a gray towel—one of hers she lent him, held up by one large fist—and Mel swallows before snapping her eyes back onto his. The image is seared into her brain anyway.
“Yeah—yes, that’s a good idea.”
Frank isn’t sure what to expect when he returns—no longer naked, but in sweatpants and a worn-in t-shirt his mom once bought in a bundle at Costco—and sits down across from Mel at the dining table. Mel has her laptop in front of her, biting her lip, only looking up when he tries to peer over.
Slowly, she turns the screen so he can see. “Back in undergrad, I made a list.” Her fingers tap against the table and she avoids his eyes. “I want you to help me go through it. Together.”
Swallowing, Frank skims over the spreadsheet. Naturally, Mel has organized it with tabs and color-coded conditional formatting. Earlier, as he dressed, a pit had grown in his stomach when he realized that Mel had heard him jerking off in the shower—thinking about the expanse of Mel’s bare back, her blonde hair tickling the curve of her spine, imagining running his hands down her skin and pressing red marks with fingers. But now that pit melts, his stomach burns hot, as he absorbs the contents of Mel’s list.
The To-Do column has various cells marked in green and yellow. Choking, bondage, on a counter. Two bolded cells make his blood hot: lose my virginity and free use.
Each new kink or position or wish makes his throat drier. He skips over to the shorter Completed column—first kiss, blowjob, cunnilingus. There’s a comment next to the last one: didn’t enjoy—might want to try again with a different partner?
Frank doesn’t know if he wants to fall to his knees or scream.
“Mel,” he says, slowly, voice cracking. “I need you to be really clear with me, sweetheart. Can you repeat what you want?”
She straightens in her chair, placing both of her hands on his arm. “I know you feel like you need to pay me back for staying here.” Somehow, he doesn’t shift in his seat. Instead, she leans closer. “I don’t want your money. Your friendship is enough. But…” She clears her throat, squeezing his arm, before sighing and studying the veins she lightly strokes with her fingers. “I know you’re attracted to me. I heard you,” she repeats, and Frank clears his throat, trying his best not to blush, and Mel finally looks at him. “And I—I’ve never had someone like you before.”
“Someone like me?” His voice sounds gravely. Deep. His mind can’t latch onto one coherent thought, flying too quickly over the possibilities in front of him—the opportunity that Mel places in his lap, the consequences, the implications. He tries to focus on the present, though. “What do you mean?”
“Someone I trust.” Biting her lip again, she shifts in her seat, clearly nervous. But slowly, firmly, she says, “Frank, I want you to help me get through my fantasy list.”
During rehab, Frank was assigned a therapist and mandatory sessions. He found a new therapist after the second stint in the interim before rejoining the Pitt, but he still goes to therapy. And one of the skills he’s been working on is to think first, speak second.
So that’s the only reason he doesn’t immediately blurt out his response: fuck yeah, I’ll fuck you.
Instead, he inhales deeply and closes his eyes. He can still see the list: virginity and free use flashing behind his eyelids like a siren. It’s heady, how much power Mel seems to want to give him. To authorize him with her desires, her body.
It’s terrifying.
But when he opens his eyes and finds Mel staring back at him, his mind doesn’t change. He takes both her hands in his and leans forward to catch her gaze, intent and serious. He ignores how the air seems to shift around them, like this moment is special and important, because he can’t think about those implications right now.
Not when he’s probably about to make a terrible mistake.
Instead, he nods. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
She grins, bright and relieved, and Frank decides it can’t be a mistake—not when he can make Mel smile like that.
