Chapter Text
Frank Langdon and Mel King are doing their absolute best to keep their new relationship under wraps at the PTMC.
Frank knows the conversation is on the horizon with Robby— with everyone— but Mel is the one that suggests they hold off as long as they can.
“Yeah?” he asks, watching her face. She’s tucked into his side while they’re sitting on the couch. Frank has his arm wrapped around her and he gives her shoulder a squeeze. “Why do you say that?”
“I don’t think I feel comfortable creating problems for you at work,” she says, draping her arm across his waist. “Or if Robby is angry about it, or wants to separate us—”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks, Mel,” Frank shakes his head. “I mean it. I told you about Robby and Collins, and hell, it’s probably messier that they kept working together after they were together.” He kisses the top of her head. “It’s not affecting our work. That’s all that matters.” Another kiss, because he’s greedy. “Is that really it?”
“No,” she admits. She relaxes a little more against him and he has to remind himself not to let it get to his head. This is a serious conversation. He’s already spent months trying to memorize each and every visual cue Mel King can give with how she’s feeling, that the new territory of physical cues—of feeling them— well, it’s been driving him a little mad.
“Talk to me.”
“Okay. It’s a few things,” Mel says and sits up to face him, tucking her legs underneath her. Frank settles his arm on the back on the couch when she moves. “To start, aren’t you— I mean I don’t, um. I don’t look like someone you would be with.”
“Mel,” he reaches for one of her hands and starts massaging his thumb into her palm. He gets it, even if he also doesn’t, and his heart aches a little when she brings it up. “I am with you. So you do look like someone I would be with.”
“I know, but—”
“See, I’m on the totally opposite end here,” he says and lifts his hand from the back of the couch to tuck a few strands Mel’s hair behind her ear. She’s wearing her hair in a low, messy bun, and has no fucking idea how much he loves it when she does that. He likes unraveling them, too. “I want to show you off. I want everyone to know you’re mine.”
Mel closes her eyes and leans into his palm. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears.
He’s so glad they have her apartment to themselves tonight. So, so glad. Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Becca. Thank you, universe. He’s been working on naming his gratitude, you see. Counting his blessings.
“But I won’t pressure you about any of this. I get where you’re coming from, y’know, if people paying extra attention to us all of a sudden might get overwhelming?” He laughs under his breath. “I mean, I can already see Princess and Perlah making it a whole fucking thing. Then there’s Santos— uh, Garcia and even Mohan, honestly.”
She nods and laughs, opening her eyes. “I like that it’s— it’s just us right now.”
Frank grins and leans forward to whisper against her ear. “How come when you say something sweet it turns me on?”
“Everything does,” she feigns moving away, but stays in his grasp, so he cradles her face with both of his hands. Mel reaches up to hold onto his wrists, but there’s no tension in her touch, and it gives him a quiet thrill. He wants nothing more than to let her turn her brain off entirely while he takes care of her.
“Everything you do does,” he says. “And I like it just being us, too, but Jesus, Mel. It’s gonna kill me keeping my hands to myself.” He licks his lips. “I’ll go at your pace with this, though. I like our little bubble.”
Her cheeks redden. This is a visual cue of hers that has a physical effect on him. “We could… try that thing we talked about the other night.”
Frank frowns. He’s clearly forgotten something very important. He talks to her about fucking everything, though, so it’s hard to keep track when he’s his busy fighting off the blood flow to his groin.
“The, um, texting thing?” Mel continues and now reaches for one of his hands, moving it down to her waist. She’s repositioning herself on the couch now, inviting him to fold over on top of her. He follows her lead until he’s propped up on one elbow, hovering above her.
Oh. The fucking texting thing. Texting about fucking.
“Sexting?” He asks, kissing the column of her neck. Every time he’s with her, he has to promise himself he won’t leave a mark where anyone else will see it because she was very, very specific about that. Cross-his-heart-hope-to-die fucking promise. It’s not easy. He’s been through so much. Won’t anyone think of poor Frank Langdon?
She wriggles a little underneath him, and her leg rubs against his growing hard-on. Frank makes a stupid, pathetic sound at the contact, dropping his forehead against Mel’s.
The aforementioned ‘texting’ conversation had come about when Mel admitted she felt shy giving him direction about what she wanted him to do. None of her previous partners, she had said, seemed all that interested in hearing about what she desired or what she liked. ‘Fucking losers,’ Frank had called them. She said there weren’t many of them, and they hadn’t done that much, whatever the hell that meant, but he told her each one was a fucking loser.
Frank is, well, talkative. Before, during, after. He has always liked knowing what’s going on in someone’s mind when he’s focused on making them feel good and Mel is no exception. In fact, he’d put money on it being something he’s a little desperate to chase out of her. And it isn’t as though he hasn’t been an ardent student of Mel’s non-verbal direction, but—
She wanted to tell him what to do, and what she wanted, but said she felt awkward. She was overthinking it and the more she tried, the worse she felt about what she was saying and how she was saying it. He had tried reassuring her, but she said he’s too good at it, and she wanted to make him feel how he made her feel, and that whole exchange had gone directly to his dick, so they hadn’t gotten far with the conversation.
But Melissa King, in all of her infinite wisdom when facing a challenge, had researched how to tell Frank what she wants. She’d found a middle ground to start with: a safer-feeling option for her while she adjusted to speaking any of it aloud.
Frank moves his hand from her waist up and under her t-shirt— his fucking t-shirt, actually, which will never get old— rolling his thumb over one of her nipples. He feels it harden under his touch. He’s learned she’s ultra-sensitive here, so he’s careful about the pressure when he squeezes her breast.
“Yes,” she gasps. “Sexting.”
“You wanna sext me at work?” He leans back, raising his eyebrows. “That’s part of your plan to help me deal with keeping my hands to myself there?”
“I-I guess you’re right. I just thought it’s one of the only times we’re not— well, we’re not like this. Maybe that isn’t— I mean, if it’s a problem we can just—”
“It’s not a problem,” he cuts her off with his mouth.
A week passes and Mel makes no mention of their second— or was it third? conversation about the texting thing. Frank has nearly forgotten all about it, again, when his phone buzzes in his pocket.
He ignores it for the time being. Whitaker is going over a case with him, trying to get his opinion on how to deal with a patient’s overbearing family member. Frank is leaning against the nurses’ station, waiting for Dana to hand him discharge papers for another case.
It’s still early.
“And every single time I open my mouth, or my patient opens their mouth, their dad just—” Whitaker gestures like he’s vomiting. “Nonstop. Yadda, yadda, ‘you can’t put ideas in my kid’s head’—”
Frank nods. “Yeah, I get it. Do you need me to pop in? Or, uh—” He looks around. “I don’t see Robby anywhere. Dana, you have eyes on Robby?”
“Nope,” comes her curt reply.
“Honestly, Doctor Langdon, if you wouldn’t mind—” Whitaker starts.
“What’re you dipshits talking about?” Santos rounds the corner, handing off a clipboard to Dana.
“Actually,” Whitaker straightens up. “Doctor Santos, do you wanna shut someone’s dad up for me?”
“Say less,” she claps her hands. “Say so much less, Ponyboy.”
Frank shakes his head and turns back to Dana.
She’s staring at him over her glasses, like she knows something is amiss. She’s been doing that a little too much lately. Is it because he and Mel carpool to work sometimes? That doesn’t make sense. He’s given a lift to plenty of people before. He was doing it for Mel long before things changed between them, even, at least officially. He swallows, then starts lightly drumming his fingers across the desk between them. She doesn’t turn away, or start smalltalk, or give him a single inch, so—
His phone buzzes from his neglected notifications. Perfect.
Frank reaches into his pocket, trying not to look like he’s actually a little fucking scared of Dana Evans right now, and sees Mel’s name pop up. Two missed messages.
Hi.
The first message makes him smile.
I have a confession. The reason I was late getting to your car this morning was because my bedsheets still smelled like you, and us, and I couldn’t help but get worked up over it. I had to touch myself.
The second message makes his throat dry up. It makes his dick twitch. It makes him want to die, actually. He feels a little insane and pathetic, because he’s jealous of Mel getting to touch Mel, and what the fuck is that?
Frank snaps his head up and looks around, probably a little too frantically— like his text messages might have gotten bluetoothed to the board for everyone to see— and Dana clears her throat.
“You okay, kid?” She asks, then finally hands him the discharge papers he’s been waiting for. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Yeah, he thinks. The ghost of my remaining dignity.
“I’m good,” and it’s the least-convicing he’s ever sounded, and that has way too many risky connotations to it. He swallows, then nods, then finds Dana’s eyes. He hopes to god he doesn’t look like a deer caught in headlights, and probably blinks too many times, and hasn’t really stopped nodding. Nice job, said absolutely no one. “I’m good,” he repeats. A little more himself there. “I, uh, honestly didn’t sleep all that great.”
That’s half-true. There’s room for him to try to workshop a little more, but it fits. He couldn’t stay with Mel last night because he’d had a meeting and the NA place is closer to his apartment, and he’s gotten a little too used to the fact he sleeps a lot better when they’re all tangled up, but not too long because Mel gets sweaty, but they always wind up closer again later on, and—
“I think there’s a Red Bull waiting for you in the fridge,” Dana says with a knowing wink, interrupting the spiraling in Frank’s head. “Stocked it up this morning.”
That’s sweet of her, he thinks, cooling down a little. That’s good. That’s really good, because now he won’t have to fix his dick in his scrubs when he walks to the breakroom.
“You’re a lifesaver. Thank you,” he says. He turns to the breakroom, then remembers he needs to discharge his patient first, so he pivots hard enough that his sneakers squeak on the floor. If ever there was a sound that could kill a boner, that’s certainly gotta be it.
Things pick up a little more around mid-morning, but at some point, Frank manages to fire off a few texts to Mel.
wtf Mel
Seriously. Haven’t seen you in a bit. Did you really do that this morning?
Somewhere between South 8 and a MVC in one of the Trauma rooms, he texts her again.
Did you really make yourself come before you got in my car?
His neck feels warm, like there’s a hot iron vice wrapped around it, and he anchors his hands onto his stethoscope. He nearly walks into Donnie at some point, then catches a glimpse of a honey-blonde braid whipping by one of the Behavioral Health rooms. Frank glances back at the board, sees where she’s headed, and follows.
“Doctor Langdon,” comes McKay’s voice. Nevermind.
Ten minutes later, he’s standing in the ambulance bay for a breather, checking his phone on and off. One of the times he pulls it out of his pocket, Mel texts him.
Sorry. :( today is busy.
He’s quick to respond:
Missing you. I’m getting air if you’re around?
Ahmad walks by, muttering a hello to Frank, who’s still staring at Mel’s incoming messages.
On my way!
Oh, I hate autocorrect. I don’t type it like that.
“What’s got you smiling, Doctor Langdon?”
“Uh,” he looks over to Ahmad. “Nothing,” he says.
“Bullshit,” Ahmad laughs, and knowingly knocks his fist into Frank’s shoulder. “Who is she, man?”
Mel appears from around the corner and Frank grins at her timing.
“Doctor King,” Ahmad greets her.
“Hi,” she smiles, giving a quick wave.
Frank crosses his arms while Ahmad and Mel have a brief conversation about her current playlist. His heart swells a little while watching how animated she gets talking about it with someone. It’s a decent enough distraction from the other text message that’s still burning a hole in his pocket.
When they’re finally alone, Mel links her hands together behind her back and steps closer to him.
“So,” he says.
“I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to answer you,” she says, her voice quiet. She’s looking down and he stares at the small mole by her right eye, a new favorite thing of his— and valiantly, he fights the urge to take her glasses off and kiss it.
“Hey, don’t apologize. It’s been busy.”
A moment passes before Mel speaks again. “But to answer you, I didn’t. Um. I almost did.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Oh.”
Fucking hell.
He has to take a long, deep breath to compose himself. He knows he can, because despite how he feels with Mel, he isn’t a teenager, but he also feels a little like he’s being waterboarded. It seems like Mel can’t bring herself to look at him, which only turns him on even more. How sweet to know they’re enduring a shared struggle. What a team.
“You must feel frustrated then,” he says, sweeping his eyes around them.
She makes a sound, not entirely unlike a sound he’d heard her make with her face pressed into her pillows a few nights ago, then briefly squeezes her eyes shut. Frank’s about to make a very stupid suggestion when an ambulance comes wailing around the corner. Saved by the siren.
Cockblocked by the siren.
Depends on who you ask, really.
An hour goes by and the department descends into a familiar chaos. Eventually Frank finds himself in the restroom, splashing water on his face. He needs to head back to the break room and kill the rest of his Red Bull. The day feels like it’s dragging and he’s barely had any time with, near, or around Mel.
His phone buzzes.
I am frustrated.
I keep wanting your hands on me.
Frank rolls his tongue over his bottom teeth. His hands don’t feel shaky, but he has to consciously steady his breath before he responds.
I love touching you, baby. Where do you want me to touch you? Tell me what you like.
He decides to wait, hopeful that maybe they both have the same well-timed stolen moment. He watches the ellipses bubble and wonders where she is— if her pulse is speeding up, if her breathing is getting shallow. Or is she just standing in the middle of a conversation somewhere, with a perfect game-face on, secretly sending Frank Langdon to an early grave?
He isn’t sure which scenario gets him going more.
All over. I love when you push my knees apart and hold me still to look at me…
Fuck, Mel. Sweetheart. You are gonna kill me today.
I love watching your hands when you touch me or tease me… when you’re moving me around into another position. I just really love watching your hands, Frank.
Okay, he thinks. She’s, uh, really good with typing it out after all— no one, not a single idiot she got handsy with before had ever unlocked this Mel King perk? And that part, the part where this is just for him, really makes his head swim. A sense of pride for Mel trying something new with him fills his chest and Frank starts clearing his throat. He wants to stay glued to his phone, wants to see what else she’ll give him, but he needs to get back out there. Lives can’t hang in the balance because he wants to drag his girlfriend into a supply closet and turn her inside-out with his hands and his tongue.
He takes a deep breath, pockets his phone, and splashes more water on his face for good luck.
To his great credit, no one dies because Frank Langdon is wound up beyond fucking belief.
And also to his credit, because he wishes Robby could see how well he’s doing with all of this, truly, even if the context is certainly a little fucked up, Frank is even able to keep perfect composure while he winds up in a patient’s room with Mel. It’s a simple enough case; a clumsy Doordash cyclist with a clear CT that needs a few stitches on his thigh.
Frank’s about to exit the room and leave this one entirely to Mel, until the guy takes a long look at Mel’s profile as she’s turned away. She’s asking Emma for something, and the guy is just— well, he’s fucking staring.
Frank lingers in the doorway.
“Hey, Doc?” Curtis, the patient, asks. He’s Mel’s age, Frank remembers as much when they were getting his info for his chart. Curtis said he went back to school for night classes and the delivery thing was his day gig for extra cash.
“Mmm?” Mel turns back to him. She’s just about to start dressing his sutured wound.
Frank looks over his shoulder for a half-second, which is long enough to ascertain he’s not immediately needed. Emma was too busy to notice he’s still standing there, but when she does, she slows down a little while pushing the tray of gauze to Mel.
“You order food a lot?”
Well, that’s a fucking line, Frank thinks.
“Oh, um.” Mel, the perfect angel that she is, doesn’t recognize it as such. “I guess that depends on the kind of day I’ve had. Sometimes.” She taps the guy’s thigh, and suddenly Frank realizes how close that is and how little he likes it. “Still feeling good? No pain? I’m about to get you wrapped up.”
“Feeling great,” the patient replies. “Listen, when do you, like, get off of work because—”
“Doctor King,” Frank can’t help himself. Scratch that on the whole look-at-me-Robby-I’m-doing-great thing. “Can I borrow you?”
“I—” Mel starts, looking from the patient, to Emma, to Frank. She definitely didn’t realize he was standing in the doorway. “I was just—”
“I think Emma could handle a dressing, yeah?” Frank nods to Emma, whose brain seems to be buffering during this whole interaction, before she agrees she can take over for Mel.
“Can I at least give you my number?” Curtis asks when Mel stands and removes her gloves.
“Didn’t— I mean it’s in your chart, did we not take it?” Mel frowns and looks at Emma. Then Frank. Then the computer in the corner of the room.
“No, Doc, like, I mean—”
“Doctor King,” Frank says again, knowing full well that he’s a little louder this time, because Mel gives him a worried look. He realizes he’s clenching his jaw when she does, then realizes he can’t quite unclench. “I just need—” He tilts his head in another direction.
Mel is quick to join him in the doorway, still beautifully oblivious to what an immature shit he’s being, so he chances a stern look in the patient’s direction. Curtis folds, immediately looking away, and Frank knows he’s a prick, but he feels good about that. Maybe next time he’ll just start whooping and pounding on his own chest or something. He starts walking with Mel at his side, not at all having thought through any of this, and steers her by her elbow toward the doors by the staircase. It’s the first place he sees where no one is congregating.
“What’s going on?” Mel asks, searching his face.
“Hang on,” he says, looking through the small window before he holds the door open for Mel.
“Doctor Langdon?”
After they’re both through, he takes Mel by the shoulders and backs her slowly into the wall that juts out by the doors. From here, he can see through the window into the Pitt, at an angle where no one would know he’s not alone. He boxes her in, holding one palm flat against the wall by her neck, then gives one more cursory glance through the window before he looks at her.
The tile is cool against his palm; it’s grounding. That’s good.
“I really— I mean, really— did not like watching that guy fucking undress you with his eyes, Mel.” He shakes his head, fighting off how stupid he feels, hoping to god she doesn’t get angry with him for risking it all or whatever on account of being territorial.
“He wasn’t—”
“Mm, no, he was,” he interrupts. “If I’m gonna last the day without dragging you into the first empty room I see, I really can’t watch someone else hit on you, Mel.” He lowers his voice and leans close to her face, breathing against her ear. “Unless you want me to do that, you know. Drag you into a room.”
Mel lets out a long, shuddering breath.
“I can’t stop thinking about what you said, about my hands? Christ, Mel. And you’re stuck here, frustrated, because you couldn’t come this morning. What am I supposed to do?”
“I want you to—” Mel starts, then stops. “I’m sorry, I’m still not good at—”
He looks toward the door. Still good. Not a soul nearby. Thank fuck.
“You’re really good,” he says and softly kisses her temple. “Really, really good at sending me the kind of texts that make me want to find a way to fuck you at work, Mel.” He leans back and traces her jawline with his thumb before tilting her chin up. “Or maybe you just wanna ride my hand?”
“W-Why not both?” She asks, licking her lips and glancing at Frank’s mouth.
“Jesus,” he hisses through his teeth. “I, uh— holy shit, Mel,” Frank shakes his head and pushes off the wall. He drags his palms down his face, hard, like he might be able to rip his own fucking skin off and hang it up on a coat rack or something.
Her cheeks are bright red and she wrings her hands out in front of her, which he selfishly decides to interrupt.
“Hey,” he says, gently pulling her hands apart. He gets close again, with barely an inch between them, and holds Mel’s hand flush against the growing hard-on in his scrubs. His cock throbs at the contact and Mel gasps, but it’s a needy sort of sound, and that helps nothing at all. “See what you’re doing to me? You have no fucking idea, baby.”
Her pupils look a little blown out when he watches her face. The gears are turning, he knows that much. Then she gropes him and he nearly chokes on his own tongue.
Finally, she asks, “This, um, hasn’t lasted longer than four hours, has it?”
He grabs her face and kisses her, laughing against her lips, and sort of wants to die. But she’s right to turn down the temperature on this, because a flurry of voices erupt in shouts on the other side of the door. He barely makes out Dana’s spiel about a pile-up on the parkway before they’re both shaking it off somehow, and rushing back onto the ED floor.