Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Robby greets him at the lockers several moments after he steps foot into the ER. 

He’s given his first drug test within hospital walls which sure, is embarrassing, but is arguably nothing compared to having to hand it over to Robby. He’d gotten scarily used to pissing in a cup but something about his former mentor holding it while trying to avoid direct eye contact makes him wish he had just stayed home today. 

“Guess you drew the short straw, huh?” Frank tries to joke, and it doesn’t land because he’s pretty sure Robby still hates him, which is understandable since he still kind of hates himself too these days. There were no visits in rehab, no calls or texts before he had reached out on his own about the status of his job. He knows Robby talked to Abby several times though, so Frank tries to hold onto that knowledge that maybe one day there would be a chance to rebuild their relationship.

“Get to work, Dr. Langdon.”

Right, so today is definitely not that day which is fine, it’s fine, everything is just fine. 

It’s jammed packed as always and he gets several uncomfortable looks as he navigates back into the pit. Nurses have always been a little hypercritical but thankfully no one is outright glaring at him yet. He's not sure what he expected, balloons and a cake that said 'Congrats on the rehab!' in disgusting blue frosting? Someone spitting on his face to remind him what a horrible person he was? Or maybe just Gloria and her HR cronies telling him they changed their mind, that he was in fact fired and needed to get the fuck out of the hospital. 

The cold shoulder is kind of worse, dismissive in a way that makes his stomach roll, but then Dana gives him a smile and pats his hand, telling him there’s an ambulance en-route. There’s no one around for him to grab to come with him, so he latches on to what little motivation he has to still be here and sanitizes and downs a pair of gloves. It’s muscle memory despite the time off and something inside of him jitters and settles as he finds just enough footing to lead him to the ambulance bay. 

There’s no way to ease into the emergency department and within the first twenty minutes of his shift he’s performing CPR on a thirteen year old drowning victim. Leading a case alone, because he’s still a senior resident, but out of practice and exhausted already, half wondering if he’s going to kill this girl. 

Wouldn’t that be something. 

“Let's push another round of epi,” he orders. He’s pretty sure he cracked one of the kid’s ribs and there’s a thin line of sweat forming on his brow. Already, he’s contemplating why he decided to return to work. Maybe Robby was right; he should’ve given it another month, maybe just quit altogether. 

“Are you even allowed to do that?” someone asks. He barely glances up, they’re new, green, judgemental. Definitely a med student. 

“Epi’s in, move,” this time it’s Santos which really almost makes him laugh and he wonders if she's here to put the final nail in his coffin, but she just bodies her way in across from the patient. “Do you need me to take over?”

Her tone isn’t condescending, she’s not trying to prove something and as he feels each lifeless push under his hands, he's reminded that he's not either. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Frank agrees. “Switching in, three, two—”

Frank gets off the girl and Santos takes over, “How long has she been down for?”

“Twenty en-route with compressions, shocked, uh, twice then, five minutes with me, shocked her once, one round of epi,” he tells her. He watches the monitor, shakes his head when it looks like hieroglyphics for a second, but then nods, “Okay, let's shock her again.” 

Santos gets off the patient, hands in the air, meeting Frank’s gaze for the first time. There’s no apology there, or anger, and despite the severity of their situation the tension in his shoulders loosens. 

“Clear.”

The girl’s body jolts off the table and the monitor beeps, the entire room sighing out.

“She’s got a rhythm,” Santos says, lip quirking upwards. The med student, a pudgy white boy with thick black glasses, is still standing to her left and Santos glares at the poor kid. “Jesus, Dr. Kevorkian, go check on north three, that geezer better still be alive when I get there.” 

The student flushes head to toe and scurries away and Frank fights the urge to laugh. 

“Body temps up to 91 and oxygen is 83,” Frank says. The girl twitches on the table, her eyes fluttering wildly. “I think she’s waking up — hey, sweetheart, my name is Dr. Langdon, you’re in the hospital, can you hear me?” he listens to her heartbeat with his stethoscope, and glances up at Santos. “Dr. Kevorkian?” 

She snorts, checking the girl’s pulse ox again, “Idiot ordered 200 of propranolol instead of 100 and almost killed some guy on his first day.” 

“Jesus, where do they find these people?” Frank asks.

“I don’t know, they did let you back in here,” Santos smirks. He meets her eyes and finds them teasing, an olive branch, “Must be a real hiring shortage.” 

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure Presby just threw out my application," he retorts, which isn't even a lie, and had been super fucking depressing, but for some reason he finds himself smiling slightly. Her brash honesty was almost refreshing and after being the victim of such tentative looks this morning, he felt like a person for a second. He wants to say more to her, to ask her why she wasn't biting his head off or to ask why she even came in here at all but the patient’s eyes finally open and she moans. “You’re okay, take it easy, can you tell me your name?” 

“It’s good to have you back,” Santos offers and she’s gone before he can reply or decipher whether or not she was being sarcastic. He’s not sure she was. 

“Where am I?” the girl asks.

Frank just shakes his head to himself and does the one thing he knows how to do; work.

***

His first attempt at rehab had lasted all of six days. 

In the middle of his detox he had this revelation that this wasn’t jail, that he could leave whenever he wanted, so he did just that. His case manager tried to get him to stay but he packed up the few belongings he had, caught the bus, and ended up back home. He still had a stash of pills in the glove compartment of his truck and took three before he could rationalize just how bad of an idea it was. 

Abby had found him a few hours later, bleary eyed and high, sitting on the floor of their bedroom with the dog he had impulsively bought a few weeks ago snoring on his thigh. 

He was just glad the kids were at her mom’s house that day. 

When he came to, he remembered Abby crying, which never made him feel good, but instead of comforting her like a good husband would’ve, he bargained with her in the midst of her distress. He could get clean at home, they just had to get rid of the medication in the house. This was a one time thing and he'd never do it again. He could get himself better here. He was a doctor after all. 

Frank barely remembers that day but he knows he begged and knows at some point he threatened leaving her if she didn’t help him. 

Sometimes he wishes that she did leave him right then, if only to spare the heartache he put her through in the following months as she continually tried and failed to get him sober. She was always a better person than he was, loyal to a fault, hoping she could help him fix himself. He resented her for trying to help him, but the hatred he felt towards himself was just shy of enough to actually get him to stop using. 

For weeks he weaned himself down only to fall right back into it. No job left more time to himself, more time to just take another. Never with the kids around, told himself he was managing things just fine, that he wasn't actually hiding anything from them, lying. He found himself by the park by their house a lot, sitting on a bench staring out at the little pond, watching the water ripple as the ducks swam by. Sometimes he would wander for hours, phone off, hoping to just feel something. Abby would scream and cry when he got home after disappearing and in turn he would say horrible, awful things back to her that he knows he'll regret for the rest of his life. She cared about him but it didn't matter, because he didn't think anything would ever matter more than the feeling of being high. 

It took Tanner finding his stash for him to go back to rehab again. 

Frank thought he was being smart, hiding the pills in the downstairs half-bathroom they never finished remodeling. That door always remained closed but the kids were playing hide and seek and Tanner’s an inquisitive kid, he gets that from his father. His son had found the small bag of pills he had shoved under the sink, and he’s just grateful Tanner brought them to Frank directly with a quiet ‘Daddy what’re these?’ rather than fucking taking them. 

He’ll never get the screams and cries of the parents who have lost their children out of his head and with the realization that he could cause this within his own family, he tells Abby that night he needs to go back to rehab for real this time. 

Frank never tells her about the drugs Tanner found, he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to tell her. 

His second attempt at rehab is the worst experience of his life. His detox is significantly worse - his usage frequency had increased and his tolerance had only grown. Quitting cold turkey had led to shakes and sweats and stomach pains that he still shudders at the memory of. He remembers begging a nurse for a hit of anything, just to take the edge off. He remembers wanting to die. 

After the detox from hell, his desire to be a perfectionist finally got put to use. He’s always been good at things; he maintained a 4.5 GPA in high school despite nearly not graduating for excessive absences, he could pick up just about any sport if he gave it half his attention, learned how to play the piano in less than a year, and was almost proficient in ASL. He got a 513 on the MCAT, excelled in medical school and was at the top of his residency before he had to leave the hospital. If there was ever a time to get good at something, it was for this, and between detox and group counseling and individual therapy, he leaves rehab thirty days later with five gold stars, clean, and ready to go home. 

At home things are harder, because he has a car and he still has a medical license and a prescription pad and too much free will. 

He doesn’t act on anything, and Abby helps him flush the remaining drugs he had access to, most of them coming from inside his car. He gets a therapist that's a little too judgemental and goes to NA meetings three times a week. Sometimes four. At one of them he sees a nurse from radiology that he’s not sure recognizes him fully but meets his eyes across the scruffy church basement room enough times that Frank finds another group to fall into.  

Five months post rehab, mid-therapy, new-discussions of divorce, he calls Robby and asks if he can come back to work. 

It takes another two months for the logistics to be worked out - Robby never told anyone about the stealing which he’ll owe him a debt for the rest of his life for, but he can’t touch medications indefinitely (fine), he’ll be repeating his 4th year (also fine), and he’s been put on mandatory drug tests and a probationary period (expected). 

By the time he’s able to step foot into the hospital, he’s been nearly eight months clean, the divorce papers have been signed, and just last night, Tanner told him he hated him.

At least Abby was letting him keep the dog. 

***

Frank’s had worse shifts but at multiple points throughout the day, he finds himself staring at the exit. He bounces between patients and has stilted awkward conversations with several of his coworkers. McKay gives him a quick hug and ruffles his hair like he’s a kid despite her being only slightly older than him. Mohan squeezes his wrist and says he can always talk to her about anything, which he knows is true and he doubts he’ll ever take her up on. Whitaker, who Frank only remembers as the boy who killed a rat in the middle of the ER, forgot what Frank’s name was and Santos laughs so hard at him he’s worried she’s pulled a muscle. 

All in all it could be worse; a part of him expected the cold shoulder or for outright hatred for what he did. But he realizes only Robby and Santos know about the stealing, which somehow she’s already looked past despite being so adamantly anti-asshole, a confounding factor since he knew he was. Her response to him is the most confusing, but he’d take that over the uncomfortable looks from new faces. He can only imagine the horrible things they’ve heard about him, but surprisingly it’s not all bad. A female nurse he’s never met even comes up to him and invites him to join their little hospital group for recovering addicts. They get pizza on Thursdays. He says yes. 

Frank’s chugging a red bull, eyeing the board when he hears her. 

“You’re here!”

Frank turns in time to be met with blonde hair pressed into his mouth and glasses against his cheek, a tiny ‘oof’ passing his lips. He doesn’t have time to return the hug, as quick as she’s there, she’s gone, the scent of strawberry shampoo a phantom in his nose. 

“Sorry,” Mel laughs, adjusting her stethoscope around her neck. “I’m just so glad you’re back! I really missed you.”

Frank blinks and leans his back against the nurses station. He hasn’t seen her in months but she looks at him like no time has passed at all. 

“You did?”

“Yeah,” Mel replies with a smile. “You’re a good teacher and you know,” she shrugs, lowering her voice slightly. “What you did was very hard and you’re here, which is very admirable.” 

“Oh, well, um,” he rubs the back of his neck awkwardly but smiles slightly. “Thanks, Mel, I appreciate that.” 

“Of course,” she says. “Well, I have a patient in south 13 with two broken wrists, five broken fingers, and a broken toe,” she points over her shoulder with her thumb, her smile unwavering. “Gymnast. I could use some help?”

He blows a breath and nods, pushing himself off the nursing station to trail after her. 

“So, how have you been?” he asks, sanitizing and gloving before he enters the room with her. The patient, a college kid, muscular and miserable, has both his arms elevated on pillows with ice bags on top of them. His eyes are red rimmed and Frank feels for the kid, knowing an injury like this might’ve just thrown a wrench in his career. 

“This is Dr. Langdon, our senior resident,” Mel introduces far too easily, “We’re going to set these fingers while we wait for orthopedics to set your wrists, how’s your pain level?” she asks, sitting next to the patient who just grunts, she looks back at Frank and shrugs. “I’ve been good. I did a month rotation with ortho actually so I could probably set his wrists,” she laughs lightly but then looks at the patient with a grimace, “Uh, but I can’t technically so we do have to wait. I’m so sorry about that.”

“Whatever,” the kid mumbles. 

“But you’re back here?” Frank questions, sitting on the other side of the bed. He inspects the hand on his side, one finger definitely broken, the other most likely just a jammed knuckle. 

“Oh, yes,” Mel responds, “You’re going to feel a small pop, Andrew,” she tells their patient, setting the finger. Their patient swears and Mel makes a humming noise. “Let’s up his morphine.” 

“You have to do it,” Frank reminds her gently. Mel gets up and does it immediately, settling back down into her chair. He’s struck by how much more sure of herself she seems, not that she was timid during her first shift, just new. It makes sense that she’s gained some confidence in the past few months, she was good at this, no wonder she returned to emergency medicine. 

“I did a month with internal medicine too,” Mel continues, setting the final finger on her side. Frank hasn’t even started and the college kid has that fluttery eye look that tells him he won’t feel a damn thing. He’s jealous. Pops the finger on his side. “It was just kind of…” she waves a hand, putting a splint along the fingers, “Well, boring, frankly.” 

“Who knew you were such an adrenaline junkie,” Frank jokes, finishing up on his side. He probably shouldn’t be making jokes like that, but Mel isn’t fazed, just continues working. He forgot that he liked that about her. He lifts the ice on his wrist to make sure there’s no blood compartmentalizing and sets it back down. 

Mel does the same on her side and she only shrugs again. 

“I like the triage, and I like that I can handle a crisis,” she tells him, “And someone once told me that the ER needed sensitive people so…” her lips twitch like she’s trying not to smile but she loses fairly quickly. “I feel like I’m needed here.” 

“You are,” Frank says immediately. He remembers every detail of his last shift with agonizing clarity and even though there were parts of it he wanted to forget desperately, he was glad he could recall the cases they worked together that day, glad something he said had even stuck with her. 

This time she doesn’t try to tamper down her smile and she stands, stretching her hands over her head briefly. 

“I heard there’s donuts in the lounge,” she states. Then looks at the patient, “Your fingers are all set and orthopedics should be here within the next few hours. How’s your pain level?”

“M’all good, lady,” he mumbles, shutting his eyes with a content smile. 

“Lower the morphine?” Frank suggests and Mel nods, lowering the drip and disposing of her gloves. Mel doesn’t check to see if Frank’s following her to their break room but he’s right behind her anyway, fiddling with the empty space where his wedding band used to be. 

There’s two nurses in the lounge when they enter and it’s clear they don’t realize who’s entered the room since they’re both able to catch the tail end of the conversation.

“...early for someone like that to come back, what the hell was Robby thinking?” 

“It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Mel’s hand twitches on the box of donuts and she coughs uncomfortably to let their presence be known. The nurses don’t bother to look embarrassed but thankfully they both leave before Frank does something stupid like cry… or throw up… or cry and throw up. 

Mel nibbles on a glazed donut and slides the box towards Frank wordlessly and he finds himself one with chocolate frosting, Tanner’s favorite. As he takes a bite he remembers the angry tears in Tanner’s eyes the other night when Frank was trying to tuck him into bed. 

He didn’t understand why his daddy wasn’t sleeping in mommy’s room anymore or why he was starting to pack his things up. Erin was younger so she had less questions, but Tanner didn’t do well with change as it was, and his father moving out was practically world-ending. 

“People still talk about me being kind of… off putting,” Mel offers, “If it makes you feel better.”

Frank frowns, swallowing, the sugar heavy in his throat. 

“It doesn’t,” Frank replies sincerely. “You’re not off putting, what is wrong with them?”

Mel shrugs, unbothered. 

“You get used to it,” she admits, “Between me and my sister, I’ve never been exactly, well, popular. But you get good at finding people who like you for you, and who don’t judge you for things you can’t control.” 

“Some would argue I could control my addiction,” he says quietly. 

“Well, they’d be wrong,” Mel says simply. He’s struck again by how sure of herself she seems and he wonders just how much she’s been through in these past few months during her residency, how many patients she’s lost, how many victims of abuse she watched return home with their abuser, how many kids she witnessed get torn from their parents. She’s remained empathic, but it’s accompanied by a harder shell than when he first met her. It’s admirable and he finds himself envious. 

She finishes her donut and cleans her hands with a napkin.

“Come on, we should go pick someone up from waiting before Robby finds a clever nickname to call us slow,” she says.

"You don't have to do that, you know," he finds himself saying and she just looks at him with a frown, "Work with me. I don't want you to feel like, obligated."

"Why would I feel obligated to work with you Dr. Langdon?"

She sounds genuinely confused and he takes another bite of his donut, grimacing as he chews. 

"Because, like," he says, mouth full. He swallows and sighs. "I'm the drug addict charity case and you're too nice to let me suffer out there alone. Even though I fucking deserve it." 

"I'm not that nice," she tries. "Trinity asked me for a chocolate pudding cup the other day and I told her the cafeteria ran out but I really had the last one," her cheeks flush slightly at her admittance, and she holds her hands up in mock surrender, "I had a bad shift that day. A patient threw up on my shoes." 

"Pudding hoarding was definitely warranted then," Frank concurs, then sighs again. "But Mel—"

She holds up a hand at him so he'll stop, "I think we work well together and this isn't out of pity. You're a good doctor and you listen to me when I talk. Or at least you did. Are you still going to?"

So at odds with the girl he remembered but months in the ER would do that to the right person. He didn't even really know her and yet he was proud of her. 

"Yeah, yes."

Mel grins.

"Then let's go."

She motions for him to join her and Frank throws the remaining bit of his donut away and wipes his hands on his pants, following after her yet again.

He finds himself sticking to her side the remainder of their shift; she is easy to work with and for the first time in a while he feels like himself again. He was good at being a doctor, in some ways he knew he was better at this than being a father. And Mel’s presence is soothing; she’s so calm it forces the parts of his brain that are ready to bounce between six different streams of consciousness at once to settle. He can tell she choosing lighter cases for them but he doesn't care, doing CPR first thing this morning was enough for him on his first day back. He'd gladly help her do sutures, give two teenagers a safe sex talk, and remove a tick. 

Before he knows it the night shift is rolling in where he gets a ‘Yo, Dr. Langdon, I thought you died!’ from Shen and a ‘Dude, you look like shit, glad you’re back’ from Ellis. Abbot just grunts at him but claps him on the back during the handover so all-in-all it wasn’t a bad first day. 

At the lockers his hand tenses slightly when he tries to open it, remembering the last time he collected his things. He reminds himself that this is different and Mel’s by his side before the spiral can ever truly start. 

“Are you working tomorrow?” she asks, leaning against the lockers next to him. She’s got her hair out of her braid and a hoodie on, comfortable in a way that’s at odds with the archetypes he’s created for her in his mind. 

“Um, yeah,” he replies, sliding his own jacket on, “I’ll be in tomorrow.”

“Mel!” Santos calls out near the exit and they both turn. “Trivia?”

Mel’s nose scrunches and she shakes her head. 

“Not tonight, sorry, Trinity.”

Santos groans and hikes her backpack up on her shoulder. 

“We always lose when it’s just me and Huckleberry,” she complains lightly but then she waves a hand. “But yeah, see ya tomorrow,” she says, then meets Frank’s eyes. “Garcia said our drowning girl’s gonna make a full recovery.”

And then she’s gone out the doors before he can reply, instead he just nibbles on the inside of his cheek. 

He’s surprised Mel waits for him to finish at his locker and more surprised when she walks quietly next to him out of the building. The sun is fighting to stay out as the last bits of winter cling on to the blooming changes of spring but the air is still chilly so he shoves his hands into his pockets. 

“Where are you parked?” he asks, because his mother didn’t raise him to be a complete asshole and the least he could do after she was so kind to him today would be to walk her to her car. 

“Oh, I take the bus,” she says, shrugging. “Nothing really beats the metro but it’s not that inconvenient.” 

He doesn’t really believe her and raises an eyebrow. 

“You’re from New York?”

She shakes her head, “No, here actually, but I went to Georgetown.” 

“Oh, Abby’s from Ashburn,” he finds himself saying and Mel’s eyebrows draw together in confusion, “My wife, ex-wife,” he cringes, “Anyway, do you, uh, I can give you a ride?” 

“You don’t even know where I live,” she replies, clearly amused. It’s not a ‘no’ and he just sighs, waving a hand for her to follow him to his car. 

His truck is kind of a mess but Mel doesn’t say anything about the various take-out wrappers littering the floor, only moves her feet so she’s not touching them. He’ll have to clean that out tomorrow morning. 

He hands her his phone to plug her address into (an 'awe, cute kids!' at his homescreen of Tanner and Erin smushed together in what he referred to as forced sibling get-along-time) and asks her what kind of music she listens to which turns into a light-hearted argument over her surprising taste in what Frank dubs ‘frat basement music’. 

“I’ve never even attended a frat party!”

“Now that I believe.” 

He pulls up to Mel’s house, a house not an apartment, with a clearly hand painted pink mailbox and tulips that are sprouting too early in the season. It’s small and victorian, with a huge porch that’s cluttered with bikes and gardening tools, the light above the door flickering a warm amber. It looks lived in.

“I hope this wasn’t too out of the way for you,” she says as he idles. 

“It’s actually pretty close to the hotel I’m staying at.”

It’s out of his mouth before he can take it back and Mel frowns so deeply he wants to reach across the console and smooth it with his thumb. 

“You’re staying at a hotel?” she asks gently. It’s the voice she uses when she’s talking to a patient that’s been crying, he heard it just a few hours ago when they were sitting with a girl that tried to OD on a bunch of pills. He’s not sure he likes being on the other end of it.

“Yeah, uh, just until I can find somewhere,” he says awkwardly. “It’s fucking criminal how much they’re charging for a one bedroom in this stupid city.”

Mel hums and she opens her mouth to say something that will no doubt be the nicest thing he’s ever heard so he interrupts her before she can say anything. He doesn’t deserve anymore of her kindness today. 

“It’s fine, Mel, really,” he tells her, even though it’s not and it’s embarrassing and he hates his life, “Just, uh, could you not tell anyone about this?” 

“Of course,” she replies earnestly. He can tell she wants to say more but she shakes her head slightly and then just smiles at him. “Thanks for the ride. It really is great to have you back Dr. Langdon.”

“Thanks for today, Mel,” he tells her seriously. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

She nods and gets out of his car, turning and giving a little wave as she goes. He waits until she’s walked through her front door to pull away and heads straight to a meeting. 

***

Mel knew he was returning today but seeing him there had floored her. 

That shift was still burned into her memory and revisited her often like a livewire. It was riddled with the worst moments of her life and some of the best, a conundrum she was still trying to work out with her therapist. 

Finding out he was a drug addict had been upsetting, finding out he wasn’t in rehab and there was no way to contact him had been impossible. She didn’t know what she would’ve said anyway, they didn’t know each other, not really. But she wanted to, had journaled about it too much, these things that tangled around her brain far too often. 

Thank you for supporting me that day. 

Did you only do it because you were high? 

She had only found out he had gone to rehab when she overheard Dr. Robby telling Dr. Collins that he might be returning to PTMC. Mel had sat in the lounge for a very long time until Santos found her and dragged to help with a MVC. She had pushed that odd excitement and nerves she felt into a neat little box until it was re-opened a few months later when Dr. Robby officially announced to the staff Dr. Langdon was returning. 

That day was horrible. Most people either didn't care or were close enough to Dr. Langdon that they were happy for his return, but too many people were far too vocal in their discomfort with an addict working with them. She remembers finding Dr. McKay crying in a stairwell and offering her a tissue. Dana had threatened to switch several people to night shift and Dr. Robby was so frustrated by the entire ordeal he left halfway through his shift. She hated that day. 

The anger faded by the time he did actually return, which she was beyond grateful for. She’s glad he’s back, she’s glad she gets to work with him again and hopefully to become his friend, in the same, surprising way, she had become friends with Trinity and Dennis and Samira. It had always been difficult for her to meet people that tolerated her, let alone liked her. She was hoping Dr. Langdon would be one of them too. 

As Mel walks around the house to dispose of her work bag she's met with the sound of her own echoing footsteps and her hands start to shake slightly. 

She's not to due to pick up Becca for another hour but she leaves the house anyway and decides to walk; it’s only fifteen minutes but there’s a bench outside that’s not filled with so many memories and the absence of her mother’s laughter. 

Mel would give anything to fill the silence again.  

Chapter Text

It takes him three weeks to settle into a routine. 

He’s only ever scheduled for the day shift, and while he’s definitely not complaining, he knows it's so there’s more eyes to watch him. Things get sticky between the hours of two and four am, Frank knows it, found it the easiest to get drugs that way too. 

Mel’s only ever on day as well which he’s weirdly grateful for but it's still a surprise for an R3. He asked her about it when they ended up clocking in at the same time for the fifth day in a row and apparently the hospital actually worked with her around her sister’s schedule rather than trying to fuck her over (his words, not hers) with night shifts she’d never be able to trade off. The night birds were a different breed, rarely did they ever want to deal with the morning crowd. Or the sunlight. 

He sticks with her most days, and if not her then Mohan who he’s always liked but didn’t really get to bother to know past how smart she was. They have more in common than he thought - like to run, hate the beach, both have estranged brothers - and he kind of likes how crazy she gets in the last hour of her shift, like all the adrenaline of the day finally piled onto her at once. She’s kind of a nerd, yet cool and he wished he had noticed a little sooner. 

The combination of sobriety and therapy made him realize how self absorbed he was, though he knows some of that will never truly go away. He was a doctor so an enlarged ego was already a given but the drugs didn’t help any, only seemed to inflate this concept he had of himself. His therapist said there’s a lot he needs to unlearn. It’s a work in progress. 

He misses working with Robby and Collins. Robby can barely stand to be in the same room with him for more than five minutes but Collins is just… pregnant. She’s not that far along but he guesses she’s a little older (he refuses to ask) so her shifts have been cut in half meaning he rarely sees her anymore. It hurts more than it should - they started together and were supposed to end up attendings together and now thanks to his own failure, they weren't. At least the few times he has seen her, she’s been nice to him, gently poking and prodding in that could-be-his-sister kind of way. 

At the end of each shift, he finds himself driving Mel home. He didn’t really plan it after that first time, but she had been at her locker packing her things and he found himself offering before he could overthink it. He likes that he has someone to walk out of the doors with, to discuss the days cases the other worked on, and to be exposed to her eclectic taste in music. SZA is starting to grow on him but he prefers the days she plays Depeche Mode or quite hilariously, the Beastie Boys. 

This new tradition of course, is only if she’s not hanging out with Santos, which he’s still trying to make sense of. Then again Mel chooses to spend time with him so maybe she really is just the most patient person on the planet. Santos is an enigma to him - she’s still a sarcastic asshole but she’s not mean. Some days he wants to throttle her and ask if her kindness, even if it is the weirdest way anyone’s ever shown him kindness, is some sort of punishment or test he needs to figure out. Mel tells him he’s overthinking it, which probably isn’t wrong, so he just keeps complaining about it to her or his therapist. He only feels like one of them is really listening to that particular non-problem and it’s not the one who’s getting paid. 

In the evenings, he alternates between packing his things, spending time with his kids, and going to NA meetings. He’s still working on getting a sponsor, but the entire thing seems weird when he already has a therapist. The only addicts he knows are related to him and very much still addicts so that’s out of the question. Cassie was nice enough to give him some resources which had led him to asking if she would do it. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen a person laugh that hard in his life. 

The pamphlets she gave him sit idly in his glove compartment where Mel kindly placed them for ‘when he was ready’ though he’s not sure he’ll ever be. He wonders just how many people he’s meant to talk to about this apparent disease he has and at what point he can return to safely bottling up his emotions inside without having to dump them all over someone else. 

Sometimes he feels a little rusty at work, that despite everyone telling him it’ll be like riding a bike, it feels like getting on the bike drunk and with one arm tied behind his back. Maybe with his eyes closed. Or without feet. The knowledge comes back to him in waves, some of it second nature and others like he was trying to recall ninth grade geometry. He feels a little bit like a student again, and Mohan and Mel both pick up on it fairly quickly, often asking prompting questions to him about the case, always, always without anyone else around. He knows his brain is sluggish but he’s grateful his coworkers have given him some space to sort it out. 

Well, almost everyone. 

“Dude, if you go any slower with this intubation he’s gonna croak,” Santos tells him. “I’m pretty sure Dr. Kevorkian can move faster than this.” 

“Oh, I could try—” the intern jumps in.

“No, you can’t,” Santos cuts off, returning her gaze to Frank. “Do you got it, or what, Walter White?” 

“I wasn’t on meth,” Frank bites. They really do not need to be having this conversation right now, especially when their intern’s eyes go wide and Frank knows the kid is going to be telling his little intern friends all about the drug addict resident he’s stuck working with. He finally gets clear visualization on the chords and slides the tube in, “I’m in.”

“About time,” Santos grunts, handing him the bag. He squeezes the bag and Santos nods, “Yellow. Let’s do 100 of propofol,” she orders, glancing at Frank who nods his head in agreement. She looks back at their intern with her eyebrows raised rudely, “Why are you still standing here, go get an attending.”

Frank shakes his head but stays quiet, handing off the bag to Jesse so he can get to work sewing closed their patient's nasty cut on his arm. Santos has an even worse gash on her side and she settles across from him with her suture kit.  

“You said this guy fell on a job site, right?” Frank asks, inspecting the wound. “Could’ve been metal, probably needs a tetanus shot.” 

“I got it,” Mateo offers. 

“Wait,” Frank groans, looking at Santos across the patient. 

“Oh, right, uh, yeah let's order a tetanus shot,” she tells Mateo. It has to be her name under the chart for any drug orders, despite Frank’s name being on the patient file. She returns her attention back to Frank. “This is going to get old fast, when is your probation up?”

“Indefinitely,” he replies, starting his first stitch. “I mean, do you blame them?” 

“No, but it’s annoying for us, me,” Santos replies. She pulls out a thin metal barb from the patient’s arm on her side. “Well would you look at that,” she hums, then shakes her head, “You can’t really shoot up with a tetanus shot.” 

“I wasn’t shooting up at all,” Frank sighs. Jesse doesn’t say anything but he looks like he’s trying not to laugh, the bastard. Frank knows Jesse has his own AA chip in his pocket though so he doesn’t say anything to him. 

Santos shrugs, indifferent and Mel enters the room with their intern. He really needs to learn the kid's name because he cannot accidentally call him Dr. Kevorkian in front of a patient. He’ll ask Mel later. 

“I said an attending, does this look like an attending to you?” Santos deadpans. 

“Rude,” Frank offers, “Mel looks more professional than you do it's no wonder he got confused.” 

Mel shakes her head, amused, and just downs her own gloves. She comes to Frank’s side, first eyeing the monitor and then at his work. 

“Yeesh,” she says, poking lightly outside of the wound, “What did he fall on exactly?” 

“Not totally sure, passed out in the ambulance,” Santos says, but she holds up one of the barbs with her tweezers to show Mel. “Fencing, maybe? We ordered a tetanus shot.”

“You ordered a tetanus shot,” Frank reminds her. 

“Whatever,” Santos replies. She continues stitching on her side and then looks back at the monitor, “Hang another unit of blood.” 

Jesse’s still getting their patient hooked up to the breathing machine so Mel goes ahead to hang the bag. 

“Are you still coming over later?” Santos asks Mel. “Whitaker wants to try some new Thai place around the corner. I don’t know when he got so cultured.”

“Oh, Pad Thai would be great,” Mel says with a grin, “They would have that right?” 

“Yeah, Melanoma,” Santos says. She nudges her slightly with her hip, the barest hint of a smile, “We’re good here, go grab something fun for me.” 

Mel shakes her head fondly and Frank is just stuck watching the entire interaction in awe. 

He remembers when he started and just how different things were for him. COVID hit almost immediately after his first rotation and their entire class was thrown into the deep end with barely enough knowledge or practice for them to help. Abby stayed with her parents for months, pregnant and scared out of her mind, stuck speaking with him exclusively through facetime, sending him constant pictures and updates on Tanner. It was the loneliest he’d ever been in his life and sometimes when he goes to bed he’s still plagued with thoughts of the piled bodies in refrigerated trucks right outside the hospital. That makeshift morgue still haunts him and even though it’s been a few years, he still can’t believe just how many people they lost. Sometimes he swears he still feels the indents of his N94 mask on his face. 

Everything was emergency medicine, it was triage, end of life care. Trying to console grieving families over the phone because they still weren’t allowed inside the hospital and arguing over which patients deserved to get which resources. Certainly no time to hang out with his coworkers for take out and beers after a shift. 

“Dude, you good?” Santos asks, drawing him from his thoughts. He blinks at her and realizes she’s finished with her sutures already. He draws a breath and gets back to his. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, then clears his throat. “So you and the Whitaker kid hang out a lot, huh?”

“Yeah, we live together,” Santos replies. She takes off her gloves and gown, disposing of them. 

“Oh, really? Are you guys like… together?” He didn’t really think Santos was into men, but Whitaker was kind of mousy so maybe it just depended. The way she starts laughing immediately though tells him he should’ve trusted his initial instincts. 

“Oh my god,” she cackles. “You think— Huckleberry? That’s fucking hilarious,” she’s borderline wheezing and Frank wishes he kept his mouth shut. “Huckleberry, fuck. That’s, wow, you know what? I’m glad you’re back, truly.” 

Her laughter follows her out of the room and he’s left in the silence with his patient. 

It’s not until a few hours later that Whitaker finds him in the breakroom to tell him he is not dating Santos and then very politely asks he not tell Santos he was so offended by the thought of dating her, but that he just wasn’t interested. 

“Right, sorry,” Frank says, half slumped into the couch. “Cone of silence.”

“Thanks, Dr. uh… Langdon, right, I gotta—”

He scurries out of the room so quickly he almost knocks Mel off her feet and she huffs at him, her hands wringing in front of her nervously.

“You okay?” Frank asks immediately, sitting up. She looks a little dazed, eyes flitting about the room but not quite meeting his. 

“Do you, uh, can I shut off this light?” she asks. She squeezes her hands pretty roughly together and he slides over on the couch to give her space in case she wants to sit down. 

“Sure, Mel.”

She sighs gratefully and turns them off, sinking into the spot on the couch he just vacated. His eyes take a second to adjust to the sudden darkness, but once they do he watches her place her hands on her knees and move them back and forth along her pants, her eyes shutting. 

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks gently and she shakes her head just enough to let him know he could stay. He’s seen enough panic attacks to know she’s on the verge of one. “Do you want me to talk or be quiet?” 

This, she contemplates for a second but then nods, still moving her hands in the same motion. 

“Talk,” she affirms, each breath shaky. “Please.” 

“Right,” Frank sighs, leaning back into the couch. He racks his brain, worried a patient story might make things worse, so instead settles on one about his kids. “When Tanner was three we took him to Hershey Park, which you know, kind of stupid since he was a toddler and it was definitely a total waste of money, but he’s the first kid so we did a lot of expensive shit we shouldn't have with him.”

Mel doesn’t acknowledge he’s talking but he continues on, watching her face carefully. 

“Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve ever been there but like their characters or whatever are just giant anamorphic candy bars? Which is super creepy as an adult but even scarier to a child. So we, of course, trying to be this perfect family tried to get Tanner to take a picture with this giant Hershey chocolate bar. But the thing had like eyes and face and Tanner starts screaming, like he’s getting kidnapped levels of screaming, and I’m trying to calm him down and Ab’s is trying to calm him down, but that kid is stubborn as fuck, worse than me if you can believe.”

Her hands slow on her legs and Frank’s lips quirk. 

“And so here we are trying to get this kid to calm down when all of a sudden he breaks away into a sprint and Mel, I swear to god, he punched this Hershey bar right in his nuts.”

Mel’s eyes open and she turns her head to him, blinking. 

“He—I’m sorry, what?” she asks, voice hoarse.

“Like as much as a little toddler punch could pack,” Frank says, hands up defensively, “Literally nailed the poor guy in the dick. We grabbed Tanner and ran out of there. I’m pretty sure we were there for an hour.”

Mel lets out a surprised giggle and covers her mouth with it, the tension draining from her eyes. 

“I have another story about Erin and a rubber chicken but I’ll save that for another time,” he teases gently. Mel lowers her hand from her mouth and she’s still smiling, despite it being a little sad. He nudges his knee just barely against hers. “You wanna talk about it?” 

“Hm,” Mel hums, she leans back into the couch fully and folds her hands together in her lap. “I had a nineteen year old who was sexually assaulted. She let me do a full exam so she was medically okay but refused the rape kit. I tried to get Kiara to talk to her but when we got back she was gone,” Mel sniffs, her bottom lip quivering, “I should’ve stayed with her.”

Frank sighs, sad for Mel, sad for the girl, and sad for all the similar cases he had in the past too. 

“Those ones don’t ever get easier,” Frank states plainly. They’re the faces he’d never forget, the cases that came back to him just about as often as when they lost a child. “Did you get any indication whether she knew the guy who did it?”

Mel shakes her head, “No, she wouldn’t say. I don’t even think she gave us her real name.” 

“It happens,” he sighs. “Was she your first?”

“First that left,” Mel replies, which explains enough for him to press his knee back into hers. She wipes a stray tear and then smiles slightly at him, “Thank you for telling me that story. Tanner seems like a funny kid.”

“He is,” Frank says and he tries to smile but all he can think about is how little Tanner wanted to do with him the other night when he tried to build a fort with him and Erin. Erin was game, Tanner not so much. “I think I’m screwing up his childhood.” 

“What, why?” Mel asks quietly. “Because of the-the divorce?” 

“No, yes,” Frank huffs. “I don’t know. I—we shouldn’t be talking about this,” he resigns, and at Mel’s slightly hurt face he clarifies. “Not that I don’t want to, but that I’m making this about me right now which my therapist says I have a problem with.”

“You’re in therapy?”

“Yeah, between that and the child support and rehab and my med school loans, I’m broke as hell. I’ll be lucky if I can afford a studio apartment,” Frank runs a hand down his face and laughs again, “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay,” Mel chuckles. “Why don’t you get a roommate?” 

“I’m thirty-two.”

“And?” Mel questions. She turns to face him fully and her direct attention always makes him nervous for some reason. Probably because he’s not used to someone caring so much. “Roommates at an older age is normal for this generation. Honestly what’s more abnormal is you had enough money to buy a house.”

“You have a house,” Frank finds himself saying. 

“Yes, it was left to me in a will,” Mel states matter-of-factly. He didn’t know she had lost a parent and he wants to say something, apologize for being an asshole, but she places a tentative hand on his arm and he stares at it in brief surprise before he meets her eyes again. “Listen, there’s no shame in needing help right now. You’ve put in so much work into getting better, this is just another step towards that goal.”

“You know, it’s not too late to go into psychiatry, Dr. King,” he jokes lamely. She gives him a knowing look and removes her hand, much to his dismay. “You’re right, it's just, I don’t know, it feels like I’m going backwards, like, I did the house and the kids and now what, I’m gonna shack up in a two bedroom with some guy I find on Craigslist?”

Mel bites on her bottom lip roughly to the point that he almost tells her to stop. 

She’s just about to open her mouth when someone enters the room and sees them sitting on the couch with the lights out. The lights are turned on and it's Santos, which he’s weirdly grateful for because he thinks anyone else would immediately jump to the wrong conclusion. Not that there was any conclusion to jump to. 

“I was looking all over for you,” Santos sighs, hands on her hips. “You good? Dana told me your girl left.”

“Yeah, better now,” Mel says, giving Frank a sideways smile. She stands up and shakes her legs out, arms going high over her head to stretch. When she lowers them she gives Santos a look before turning back to Frank, “Are you doing anything later?”

“Um, NA meeting,” he says roughly. 

“Oh, well, I know you were present when we were discussing having Thai food at Santos’ place, so if you want to stop by, you should,” she states as Santos says, “What, you’re just inviting people into my home?” but she doesn’t look angry, just exasperated. He wonders how many strays Mel’s brought over before. 

“Maybe for a little while,” he concedes. He stands too and his knees pop which makes Santos call him an old man before she returns back out to the ER. “I can drive you if you want,” he offers. “Unless you want to ride with Santos.”

“I’ll go with you,” Mel says easily. “I like your car better anyway, hers is so… messy.” 

She shudders and Frank finds himself smiling. His wasn’t much better, but he had made an effort to clean it after the first ride he gave her. He weirdly hopes she noticed.

“Thank you, again,” Mel says. She gives him a small smile and disappears out the door, lost in the sea of doctors of patients. Frank needs to find the courage himself to get back into the thick of it and he cracks his neck, putting one foot in front of the other. 

The rest of his shift passes in a blur, two vomitters which are always gross and one old guy with a head lack that he hangs out with for a while until he can get a CT. There are other patient's he could try and see but he doesn't have it in him and Robby doesn't say a word to him about it either. A part of him was hoping he would but he's not surprised at the continued silence from his former mentor. 

When he clocks out after turnover, he meets Mel by the lockers like he always does when he drives her home but he can tell she’s slightly excited by their evening plans. 

“When did you and Santos even become friends?” he finds himself asking as they get into his truck. Mel just shrugs, doing her buckle. 

“It took about a month for us to hang out outside of work,” she says. “I wasn’t sure she liked me at first but Trinity’s kind of like a marshmallow once you get to know her.”

Frank’s not sure about that, can’t help but think that she was the only one that had the guts to say anything to Robby about what he was doing. In a few hours of knowing him she had caught on to what his coworkers either didn’t notice or completely ignored. It was easier that way but Santos took the harder road. 

If she had been wrong about him he’s sure she never would’ve returned to PTMC. She took a risk and he was just glad it paid off. He doesn’t know if he should thank her because they still haven’t really talked and now he was supposed to eat noodles in her apartment with Mel, who he liked, and Whitaker, who sometimes reminded him of a baby deer. 

They pull up to Santos’ apartment complex and Frank puts the car in park, his palms suddenly sweating against the steering wheel. He drums against it and sighs. 

“I, um,” he swallows. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

“Oh,” Mel says, and she’s not upset or angry, just offers him a tiny smile. “That’s okay, maybe another time? I appreciate you driving me anyway. Is your meeting nearby at least?” 

He has no idea how far away the church is but he just waves a hand. 

“It’s totally fine,” he promises. “Thanks for, you know, trying with me.”

Mel gives him another smile and grabs the door handle to leave but she hesitates. She blinks a few times and he watches her turn to face him again. 

“Dr. Langdon?” Mel says and Frank snorts. 

“Mel, you can call me Frank, we’re friends,” he states, because they are oddly, thankfully, and her grin widens for a second but it’s gone pretty quickly, replaced instead with a nervous look. 

“I don’t want you to take this in a weird way,” she starts, and she pauses but he waits because whatever it is she’s going to say he already knows is important, “but I have a spare room, well two actually, it’s a big house. But if you wanted, um, like if it was okay with you, you could um, well move in.” 

Frank stares at her and doesn’t know what to say, a part of him worried Mel’s too nice for her own good. A rational person would tell her no, politely decline and tell her that he’ll just settle with a studio but—

“I mean, it’s just we have a big yard, and me and Becca both love dogs and there would be plenty of space for you and we could even set up the other room as the kids room if that’s what you want,” she rambles, “And Becca spends a lot of time at the center so sometimes it’s kind of quiet there and I don’t totally like being on my own and well—”

“Mel,” he tries. 

“I just think it makes sense, because we’re friends, like you said, and we already share shifts most of the time,” she continues. She waves her hands in front of her and Frank starts smiling, “I’m also an excellent roommate and Becca honestly loves meeting new people so I know she’ll like you, though she might actually try and steal the dog when you eventually move out,” she takes a breath, eyes wide, “Not that I’m saying you’d have to leave quickly or anything! Like you know, if you have to leave or want to or—“

“Mel, Mel, stop,” he says a little louder. And she finally breathes in deep, her cheeks flushed red. “I would love to move in with you, if you’re really offering, I would— I think this could work.” 

“Wait, seriously?”

Frank lets out a laugh and clenches on his steering wheel once and nods, slow but sure. 

“Yeah, I mean, you’re kind of doing me an enormous favor here, you realize that right?” he says. He turns to her more, eyes scanning her face. “You get I’m a recovering addict, though? That bringing me into your house could be dangerous. It’s a risk. For both you and your sister.”

“I trust you,” she says earnestly, which is the worst possible thing that could ever leave her lips. She can sense his worry and lays a gentle hand on his forearm. “I do trust you. And if you do—if you do ever relapse again I’ll help you. We all would.” 

He doesn’t know how he ended up here, with people in his corner that he didn’t quite expect. A year ago he would’ve thought it was just him and Abby against the world, could maybe count on Robby in an emergency but even that wasn’t totally secure. 

Mel though, he thinks Mel would walk through fire for the people she cares about and that scares the shit out of him. 

Frank’s been on the other end of love but never this type of unwavering dedication.  

“I’m going to,” she laughs, pointing at Santos’ apartment, “I’ll um, see you tomorrow? We can figure out the logistics then?” 

She sounds hopeful as if Frank was doing her a favor of moving in rather than her offering him the kindness. 

“Yeah, we can, um, we’ll talk,” he agrees. “Have fun, tell ‘em I said hey, I guess?”

“Sure,” Mel chuckles, her eyes ducking down and her cheeks flushing. “See you, Frank.”

He blinks at her and watches her leave, realizing how much he likes the sound of his name from her lips.

***

Mel's nervous. 

She and Becca had one roommate while Mel attended college; they had just enough money for a townhouse close to campus but found very quickly they needed to rent one of the rooms to make ends meet. Annie was cool, grew up in DC, went to Georgetown as well, had three cats. 

But Annie was very much not a divorced father of two with a drug problem who just so happened to work with her. 

Mel knew the dynamic might be a little odd at first, but the thought of him living out of boxes in a hotel room made her so unbelievably sad she just had to offer him something. Anything. 

There's a nagging part of her that knows she's being selfish too, because while she knows she asked Frank to help him, she also asked him for her. 

She knows this could be risky, with how fresh his rehabilitation is and how uncertain things are at work, but she also knows this could be a good thing for both of them. 

Mel hopes it's a good thing. 

***

It’s an odd feeling that he can pack up the better half of a decade into the back of his pickup truck. 

He doesn’t have a whole lot. He and Abby realized pretty early on most of ‘his’ things were actually ‘theirs’. He didn’t care for most of it but they had fought tooth and nail over a Blink-182 record from college that he ultimately conceded at. She said it was reparations for stealing her last two Xanax right before her period started. He ended up letting her keep all the records after that. 

A lot of his stuff is staying behind in storage bins in the garage; he had asked Abby if she wanted him to get it out of the house but she had just waved a hand and made a joke about how he could keep using the garage until she found another man to. It was light and it was teasing and it should’ve hurt more but it didn’t. 

Abby, for the longest time, was the only person he wanted to do anything with. They met way too early in college when they were both trying and failing to meet new people, to have careless sex, to makeout with unknown faces at parties that were too loud, too annoying, too much. It felt empty and hollow and he remembers sitting with Abby in the corner of some frat party after vaguely recognizing her from his psych class. She was petting a cat and drinking a beer and after chatting about emo bands for a half hour, they left to grab milkshakes in the dining hall. It had been one of the best nights of his life, second to when Tanner was born and he got to hold him for the first time. 

Frank didn’t have friends in high school, only people he smoked weed with. And he didn’t have friends in college either, he just had Abby. She had been lonely too, she was homeschooled and bullied and had a hard time connecting with others. He sometimes wonders if they were always meant to only be friends, but just fell into a marriage and a life together because they were all they had. 

He knows they were in love, he’s just not sure if it was the way they were supposed to be.  

She helps him load up his truck and when it’s done she just stands there in front of their house, her nose a little red from the cold. She’s got on a hoodie he’s pretty sure is his and a contemplative look on her face that looks startlingly like their daughter’s. 

“Are we making a mistake?” she asks suddenly. 

“Maybe,” Frank admits, shrugging his shoulders. He leans against the bed of his truck and crosses his arms over his chest, looking at the house as if he could see into it. “But you and I both grew up in houses where our parents hated each other. I don’t want that to be us.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I don’t know why,” he says, “But you know what I mean.”

Abby nibbles her bottom lip and nods, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear. 

“It’s going to be weird not having you here,” she admits. “Are you sure you don’t want to just stay in the spare room? It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing we ever did.” 

Frank laughs and shakes his head. They had discussed it already, what would be the best for the kids as they navigated their divorce, how to make this transition easier for them. It had led them here and Frank just opens his arms for Abby to tuck her head right under his chin. 

“I know you hate it when I get all sappy with you, but thank you,” he says into her hair. He can hear the sniff she lets out and knows she’s crying a little so he rocks her side to side. “Seriously, Abs, thank you.”

All things considered their divorce had been easy - the house had always been in her name thanks to the loan from her dad, the cars were old and paid off, and he even ended up with joint custody which was more than he probably deserved. Their lawyer had brought up mandatory supervised visits which would’ve dwindled the already precious moments he got to have with his children but Abby didn’t want to punish him. He’ll always be grateful for the kindness she showed him, even if they weren’t in love anymore. 

He lets her go and wipes the tears from her eyes, kissing her forehead briefly. 

“Fuck,” she says, laughing slightly. “You weren’t supposed to make me cry again.” 

She’s not wrong, she’d shed more than enough tears for him already. 

“Do you want to say goodbye to the kids?” she asks but he just gives a final look at the house and shakes his head. He needs to go because if he goes back inside he’s not sure if he’ll be able to leave and he knows she gets that, her brows drawn together with delicate care. She gives his wrist one final squeeze and he gets into his car, which causes his dog to yip excitedly and lean over the console to lick at Frank’s hand. 

“Easy, Rocky,” he chuckles, petting her head. He cracks the passenger window and Rocky shoves her snout out the window, sniffing happily. 

The drive to Mel’s is short, which is good, gives him less time to consider turning around. He tries and fails not to worry about what he’s doing right now. That if this is the right decision after all or if he should beg Abby for another chance. 

Frank knows that wouldn’t end well, that even his therapist agreed this separation was for the best. His stomach is in knots by the time he pulls up to Mel’s house, this place he’s also supposed to call his own now too. He hasn’t had a roommate since college; Carl who works in finance and posts vague ring-wing conspiracies on Facebook. He can only hope that his new shared-space situation is better than his last. 

He idles at the curb for a few minutes and just breathes, eyes closed until he can feel his heartbeat settling. When he finally feels ready, he shoots her a text that he’s here and is surprised to see both Santos and Mel walking out of the front door. They’re both in jeans which is a little unnerving at first, Mel in a worn Georgetown hoodie and Santos in a t-shirt that says ‘Midwest Princess’ across the front which doesn’t make sense since he’s pretty sure Santos is from Newark. 

Frank gets out of the car in time to hear Santos gasping over the fact that no one told her he had a dog. She ignores him and moves right to the passenger door, opening it and borderline giggling when she starts scratching under Rocky’s chin. 

“Oh, aren’t you to cutest fucking thing in the world,” she coos. Frank and Mel share a look and he shoves his hands into his pockets, swaying slightly. 

“Enlisted in some help?” he asks, nodding towards Santos. 

“Yeah, I hope that was okay,” Mel replies, “My upper body strength is kind of… minimal.” 

“And she’s that much better?” Frank teases. 

“I’m a former gymnast, asshole,” Santos scoffs. 

She grab’s Rocky’s leash and latches it onto the collar, helping the collie out of the car. Rocky starts sniffing around the lawn excitedly and Mel leans down to pet her when she trots over. 

“Well, hello there,” Mel greets, “What’s her name again?”

“Rocky,” Frank replies and smirks when Santos groans. 

“Like Balboa?” Santos questions in disdain. “This is Pittsburgh, and she’s a girl.”

“I thought your generation was supposed to be, what’s it called? ‘Woke’?” 

“Please never say that again,” Santos warns. She ignores Mel’s giggling and just hands her the leash, moving to the back of the truck to lower the bed. “Is this it? This is kind of depressing, man.”

Mel must give her a look because Santos puts her hands up in defense, pulling at one of his boxes. He grabs one too and follows after her, Mel and Rocky right at his heels. 

“I have a key for you in the kitchen,” Mel’s saying behind him, “But uh, you can pick whichever bedroom you want, they’re both on the left over…” she says, pointing and they both walk down the hall, “Yep, right here. Whichever one you want, doesn’t matter to me.” 

The house is older, the dark wooden floors are worn and they creek with almost each step they take. The walls are painted a faded yellow and pictures line walls, mostly photos with a few random drawings or paintings throughout. He can smell a vanilla candle burning and the window at the end of the hall is open slightly, the breeze blowing the curtains forward. 

Santos nudges her hip on one of the doors and Frank follows her inside to find a queen size bed in an old dark wood frame in the center of the room. There’s a nightstand to the left with scuff marks in it but still clean, and a dresser next to the door that matches. 

“The other room only has a twin bed but we can always add another,” Mel says from the hall, “Me and Becca cleaned it and there’s sheets in the wash in case you needed them.”

He feels a tentative hand on his elbow and he doesn’t realize he’s crying until Mel’s mouth opens a little and Santos’ eyes go wide. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, putting his box down and wiping at his eyes. “This is just, fuck, this is a lot. More than I—not bad, but—”

“It’s okay,” Mel offers. Again too good for him, too kind, and he just sniffs. Rocky nudges his palm and he scratches her head, glancing around the room again. Santos sets the box she was holding down and leaves the room without meeting Frank’s eyes. 

The walls are the same yellow as the hall and he can see the faded outlines of where picture frames used to hang in here. He wonders how difficult it was for Mel to take those down, who was in those pictures, where they ended up. 

“I’m going to go help Trinity with your things,” Mel says quietly. She squeezes his elbow once and he hears her walk away. Rocky’s nails click against the hardwood floor as she inspects the room, poking her head under the bed frame. 

He gives himself a minute to feel the weight of his emotions, that he’s going to wake up in a house without his kids, without his wife. He had gotten used to waking up to tiny bodies pressed against his own after a nightmare or during a thunderstorm. And he cries a little harder knowing that he won’t be there for them after work everyday to play pretend, or wrangle them into baths, to sneak an extra scoop of ice cream into their bowls when Abby pretended to be looking elsewhere. 

He wonders, not for the first time, if things would’ve been different if he never fucked up his back. It’s what led him to the drugs, which led to the horrible things he said to Abby, which in turn led to their separation. 

Frank knows they had problems before that, that over time the romantic love they tried to have together faded completely. They might have stayed together a few more years, but ultimately he thinks they would’ve ended up in this same spot, just maybe with less heartache at the fault of his own. 

He hears the girls enter the house again and he can tell they’re debating on entering his room or not. Frank shakes his head and presses his palms to his eyes, sighing roughly before he leaves to begin helping them. 

There’s another person standing in the living room who he can only assume is Becca with how closely she stands to Mel. She’s got brown hair instead of blonde, but has a braid to match her sister’s. It’s so similar he wonders if Mel did it too. 

“You’re Frank,” she says as a greeting and Frank smiles, hoping his eyes aren’t too red rimmed. 

“Yeah, I’m Frank,” he says, waving slightly. “You must be Becca.” 

“Yep,” she agrees, and Mel gives her a slight nudge. “Oh, right, welcome to our home! Mel tried to make cookies but she burned them. She has some from the store instead.” 

Mel’s cheeks flush and she adjusts the box she’s holding in her hands. 

“Bec you weren’t supposed to tell him that,” she admonishes. 

“Too late,” Becca states and Frank tries to hide his laugh. “Mel said you had a dog? Can I meet her?” 

“Sure, Bec, can I call you Bec?” he checks and Becca nods, smiling like he’s said something funny. He leads her into the hall and Rocky walks out of the room, tail wagging excitedly at the sight of another person. Becca looks between him and the dog and then back to Frank, waiting. 

“You can pet her, she’s very friendly.” 

He watches Becca walk slowly to his dog and stick a tentative hand out. Her giggles, similar to her sister’s, fill the house when Rocky licks at her hand. 

“She’s just like an oreo,” Becca laughs, commenting on Rocky’s black and white fur.

Mel’s grinning so wide it looks like her face might split in two and even Santos is biting back a smile. He walks back to his car so he doesn’t start crying more and grabs another one of his things, returning back into the house. 

It takes the three of them a little over an hour to clear his truck - he really didn’t have much, which should depress him slightly but before he can overthink it Mel’s ordering pizza and Santos is pressing a diet coke bottle into his hand. He guesses Mel got those so he wouldn’t feel left out and he tries, and fails, not feel anxious over her continued consideration for him. 

“If you do anything to her,” Santos warns him quietly, low enough that Mel can’t hear as she talks on the phone, “I will hurt you. Whitaker grew up on a farm, he could figure out how to hide a body.” 

Frank sits down on Mel’s couch, it’s blue and comfortable and has a rip on the arm. Santos stands over him in front of the glow of the television, taking a sip of her beer. 

“If I relapse,” he manages, “If you even suspect—I need you to tell her and stop her from trying to save me,” is what he says and Santos stares at him for a minute, an understanding passing through them. They both know Mel would do it, that she very well would destroy her own life to save someone else’s. It was hard enough knowing he made Abby go through this, the last thing he wanted was to take advantage of another person’s kindness.

Santos knows this too, he can see it written clearly on her face and is glad suddenly Mel’s made a friend in her. He still has no idea how she caught on so quickly to him in the first place, can only guess she’s seen it before, knew the signs when his coworkers either didn’t or just didn’t want to accept it. He knows if he ever does slip, she’d know, she’d hold him accountable. 

She sticks her beer bottle towards him and he knocks his soda against hers in agreement. 

Santos settles in the leather reclining chair, her feet tucked under legs, watching the tv intently as if not to meet Frank’s eyes again. He’s fine with that, there’s only so much emotion he can handle in one conversation too. 

“So it’ll be about an hour before it gets here,” Mel says as she walks into the living room. She sits on the couch with Frank, pulling a blanket from a basket next to the couch onto her lap. It’s blue and has frogs on it. Frank’s lips quirk upwards. “You guys want to watch a movie or something?”

“There’s a new episode of Drag Race,” Santos offers, then glances at Frank. “Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

She shrugs, “Whatever, he’ll figure it out.” 

Mel doesn’t seem to have the energy to argue and clicks around the tiles on her tv until the title theme is blaring into the living room. Becca comes in when she hears it and settles on the floor between Mel and himself on the couch, her own blanket in her lap. Once Rocky realizes this is where all the people in the house are, she joins as well, hopping up on the couch with her head on Mel’s thigh and her back foot jutting into Frank’s leg. 

All things considered, it’s a pretty perfect day. 

Chapter Text

If people at work know or care about Frank moving in with Mel, they don’t show it. 

Sometimes he gets the odd look here or there, mostly from nurses who can’t figure out what they are to each other. His wedding ring has been gone a while and it’s clear to anyone with eyes how much time they spend together on shift. He's sure there's a betting pool somewhere, but no one's said anything to him directly and to his knowledge, nor to Mel, so he lets whatever suspicions lie as so not to draw attention to them. And as days pass and weeks bleed into months, the speculation subsides to barely there comments, easier to tune out and let fade into the background. 

It helps that living with Mel has added an abundance of positives to his life.

The drives to and from work were sometimes more difficult than the shift itself, but having someone with him in the car, to decompress with, to laugh with, has made them almost enjoyable. Mel had originally offered to drive too, but after one white knuckled ride in the passenger seat to the hospital, Frank never lets her behind the wheel again. And maybe he has control issues and maybe part of it is that he’s just a guy and feels weird not being in the driver’s seat. She had pouted that it was unfair of him to be driving everywhere, so they compromised on her offering gas money that usually ended up right back in her wallet. 

His kids get on with Mel and Becca more than he could’ve hoped for. Abby is there that first meeting and it’s odd seeing her and Mel standing next to each other on the front lawn, chatting and laughing like they were old friends. He thinks Mel could befriend anyone and while he was initially worried about Abby’s reaction to him living with a woman so shortly after they divorced, she had just given him a little smile and an earnest “She’s lovely, I’m happy for you!” that confused him to no end. He wanted to clarify to Abby that they’re just friends but something about the label didn’t sit well in his mouth, despite it being the truth.

Abby agreed that they should definitely have a space at Mel's in case they ever spend the night. There’s still some question about when that will happen, because while his ex-wife trusts him far too much, she’s still rightfully hesitant to leave the kids overnight. He thinks the presence of another adult, one that’s clearly more competent than he is, helps ease some of Abby’s anxiety. Especially when Mel offers to swap numbers and suggests Abby send her details about their routines, any allergies, and gets their primary care physicians contact info that now lives on a neat little sticky note on the fridge. 

Eventually they decided that the kids still deserve a room regardless of whether they were sleeping in it, so he packed everyone in his truck and brought them a little ways out of the city to Ikea. Becca had held Erin’s hand the entire time, and Mel had looked so pleased he thought she was going to burst out of her skin. Together, they picked out a new bed frame and curtains and a rug he couldn’t really afford, stuffed animals that were definitely overkill, and some candles Mel had been staring at for a few minutes. It was worth it to see the kids excited over having their own space at “daddy’s house” and at Becca's smile at her new stuffed turtle. He could continue to ignore his ever-growing credit card bill a little longer if it meant seeing them all so happy. 

Tanner seems a little less mad at him these days too, a fact that makes him cry in the shower more than once and attend a fourth NA meeting during the week. 

They spend a lot of time over his house now and more than once he’s caught Mel with them building legos, or baking cookies, or trying and failing to teach Rocky to sit, all while fighting a watery smile. He still hasn’t asked about whose house this was, guesses it was her parents, has lived here long enough to become familiar with the pictures on the walls. 

Frank isn’t sure how to approach it with her, this history that he's surrounded by but not fully privy to. His therapist said he’s avoiding a potentially difficult conversation, but Santos said to give her space to work it out. It’s odd trusting Santos’ opinion more, but only one of the two has ever met Mel and she knows her probably better than Frank still does. 

It had taken them a few tries to navigate living together. Becca had fairly strict routines that he now knew better to get in the way of — the one time he had started cooking dinner during her meal time had produced some very frustrated tears he never ever wanted to be responsible for again. Mel had printed him a small schedule when he asked for one that now sits on the dresser in his room. 

Mel’s also a creature of habit but he finds he’s able to slide alongside her routines quite easily. Proper grocery store runs must occur before noon, on Friday’s the three of them watch a Christmas movie and order takeout, mid week slumps are saved by something sweet, usually a pastry from the bakery around the corner from Mel’s place. She likes to have a coffee and two eggs before they leave for work; their shifts have nearly lined up completely so they take turns on breakfast despite Frank making the eggs the wrong way the first three times he entered the rotation. 

There’s still things he’s getting used to, like the times she’s trying to desensitize herself after a shift. The noise cancelling headphones he adjusted to quickly, though he often still talks to her while she wears them, glad she’s nice enough to smile at him even though he's sure she can't hear him. 

The isolation, though, made him antsy. The first time she locked herself in her room with the music blaring he sat on the couch and stared at the wall wondering what he did wrong. He cleaned the entire house in an anxiety induced fugue state until she emerged a few hours later confused yet grateful on why he was wiping dust off the top of the fridge. 

She doesn’t flinch at a casual touch from him and he looks forward to her bursts of affection; high fives in the ER after a good save, a touch to his elbow after they lost a patient, or his personal favorite, a quick hug in the kitchen before they retire to bed. He can usually tell when she gets overstimulated and has gotten better at providing direct solutions, like switching off the overhead light, turning down the music in the car, or going for a quick and silent walk around the neighborhood with her, sometimes with his dog, sometimes without. 

A part of him feels like he’s waking back up and though he still tries to convince himself he was never high while he was working on patients, he wasn’t exactly fully present. 

He feels more now, has to step out of rooms to cry occasionally, stand outside in the ambulance bay with his head tilted towards the sky and just breathe. Sometimes he does this alone, but most of the time Mel is right there with him, just as affected, and yet still unwavering like a thousand year oak against a hurricane. 

Frank still has to do random drug tests, he still can't prescribe medication, and this morning he had to awkwardly standby as his locker was searched by two very rude security guards he'd never met before. Santos had helped him pick the things they dropped all over the floor and then nudged him towards Mel to work on a disgustingly easy case of twin newborns with nervous first-time parents. 

They were adorable and it kind of made of him miss when his own kids were that small. He holds one of them for a while, checking for problems that thankfully don't exist, before he passes the baby back to the waiting mother. Mel's still rocking the other baby, now asleep in her arms, and he gives her a parting "thank you" and leaves her to it. He could probably spend all day in there with her and she knows it, gives him the smallest smile that he holds on to as he disappears back out into the ER.

He's walking to Dana to see what she needs when he hears a voice that stops him dead in his tracks. 

Frank shakes his head and pushes into the room, grinning slightly. 

“Amber?” he asks. 

It is her, and she brushes away Whitaker’s hand from checking her eyes with his pen light so she can see him.

“Dr. Langdon!” she greets, laughing. “Oh my gosh, it’s been so long, how are ya honey?” 

The slight southern twang in her voice warms over him and he steps into the room, checking her vitals on the screen and practically shoves an intern out of the way so he can get next to her. 

“You know her?” Whitaker asks, inserting her IV.

“Yeah, yeah, course I know Amber,” he laughs. Amber leans up in the bed to pull him in a hug and Frank can’t help but return it. He releases her quickly, scanning her body for injuries. “COVID patient. You were on the vent for what? Seven days? We were about to pull you before you came back to us."

Frank remembers checking on her each shift, facetiming family members over her comatose body. She hadn't been improving at all and his attending wanted to take her vent for someone else, but he fought for two extra days. He lost so many other patients but he wanted desperately for her to pull through, and she had. She was the statistical anomaly, one of his first real saves. 

He takes Amber’s hand in his and she smiles, “Only cause this one didn’t give up.”

“Then you came back, what? Seven months later after a car accident,” he recalls. It felt like a lifetime ago and he probably wouldn't have remembered her if it weren't for all the time he had spent with her watching for any change in her vitals, all the thank you notes he received from her family. He thinks one of them is still pinned in the breakroom. 

“God,” Amber groans. “Talia drove right into a pole, the poor dove,” and Frank barely remembers Talia, her niece, he thinks, had a concussion, was cursing like a sailor when they tried to take Amber up for an x-ray. “She’s in college now. Wants to be a teacher.”

“That’s great,” Frank says and he means it, he can’t believe he’s seeing her again and then frowns suddenly, as if remembering where they are, “What happened? Are you okay?”

She waves a dismissive hand and Whitaker huffs, again trying to check her eyes again with his pen light. 

“Target was too crowded, honey, and hot, I swear the AC was down in there,” she says, “I guess I fainted which is a bit dramatic even for me, but I swear I’m fine.”

“We still need to do a full workup, ma’am,” Whitaker says and Amber just laughs. 

“Ma’am! Oh, I like you boy, work away.” 

Whitaker cracks a nervous smile and finally manages to check Amber’s pupils, nodding to himself. 

“Did you hit your head?” Frank asks, “When you fell?”

Amber shrugs, “Ain’t like there was nobody around to catch me so yeah, probably.” 

“Let's order a head CT just to be safe,” Frank says and Whitaker nods. “Full cardiac work up with her history of PH. I gotta check on some patients but I’ll swing by later, yeah? It was good to see you.”

“Good to see you too, sweetheart,” Amber laughs, “So grown up, a real doctor! I’m sure your momma’s so proud.”

Frank smiles a bit tightly, thinking about her devastated face when she found out her son was an addict.

Just like your father, huh Frankie? 

“Yeah, she is.”

Amber pats his hand and Frank excuses himself, exiting into the hallway. His eyes search the ER and he realizes he’s looking for Mel, that he wants her to meet one of his very first patients and knows somehow that a quick conversation with her would settle some of the lingering anxiety at the thought of his mother. He wonders if she's still with the twins but as he moves back in that direction, he's intercepted by Robby.

“You remember an Amber?” Frank asks as he approaches. “Pulmonary hypertension resurrection during COVID. Southern. Red hair.”

“No, I uh, can’t say I do,” Robby admits, which isn’t surprising, it wasn’t Robby’s patient and he's sure, like him, that he tries to block out the majority of that time period of their lives. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, “Can we talk for a second?”

Frank feels his blood run a little cold but he nods, following closely behind Robby. They make their way across the floor to an empty patient room and Robby ushers him behind the curtain. Frank follows, slightly confused, more so worried. They’ve had about three conversations in total since his return, all of them stilted and awkward, so he can’t even begin to imagine what this is about. There wasn't anything for security to find in his locker, his urine would've come back clean, he was clean and last time he checked, he hadn't killed anyone recently. 

He's not sure what he did, but he figures if he was getting fired it would at least be in a real room. Maybe he’d even be sitting down. 

“So listen,” Robby says, “I heard you’ve uh, well, that you’re living with Dr. King. Is there any truth to that statement?”

Frank groans. 

“Yeah, yes, I’m living with her,” he says and Robby gets that crazy look in his eyes so Frank barrels on, “It’s not like that. Robby it’s not,” and Robby doesn’t look like he believes him one bit. “I’m living in her spare room and I pay her rent. We’re roommates. That’s not a crime.” 

Roommates that work together, that share all their meals together, that walk his dog together, and go to his kids after school activities together, but still roommates. 

“And what the hell does your wife have to say about this?”

Frank’s eyes widen and he laughs a bit hysterically. 

“Robby, man, I got divorced.”

He watches the surprise dawn on his face, the glance down to where his ring once sat, and then this harsh realization set in that they really just don’t talk anymore. Something sits funny in his throat, knowing Robby could've asked anyone in this hospital about him but just didn't. Frank scratches the back of his head and frowns, teetering from foot to foot. 

“I couldn’t really afford my own place,” Frank admits. “Mel’s just… Mel. She’s a nice person.”

An understatement but all he could offer to Robby right now without digging the hole they’re in even deeper. 

“Right.”

“Listen, we’re not…” he runs his hand through his hair and tugs slightly. “She’s my friend. I still go to my NA meetings and I still meet with my therapist every week. I’m getting—” he’s stuck on the word better and bites the inside of his cheek. “This is a good thing for me. And for her.”

Robby stares at him a while and it reminds him so much of a look his father used to give him that Frank fights the urge not to cower. 

“I didn’t know you and Abby separated,” he finally says. 

Frank just shrugs, “Yeah, well you never really asked.”

There’s hurt in Robby’s eyes but Frank can’t do this right now, because in another lifetime he and Robby were more than just coworkers, but friends. Frank knows what he put him through would always sting, would always taint whatever remnants they had at a relationship outside of just attending and resident, that there might just never be a chance at salvaging what they once had. 

“So you and Mel aren’t…”

“No,” Frank affirms. “No.”

He should say something like ‘oh, Mel’s like my sister’ but that wouldn’t be true because while he’s never had a sister he’s not sure Mel fits that archetype. It feels too nice when she gives him one of those large, unfiltered smiles, when she sighs gratefully when he offers to do their laundry, when she reads the morning crossword aloud during their commute, fighting and laughing with him over who can answer the fastest. 

There’s nothing going on because there can’t be but Robby sure as hell doesn’t need to know that and Mel definitely doesn’t need to know that. 

“We’re friends,” Frank says again.

A code blue is called over the intercom and Robby groans, running a hand down his face. He draws back the curtain and darts away to help with the code, leaving Frank standing there alone. He steels himself and pushes himself back into the mess of it all, towards the board for something to occupy his racing thoughts. 

He glances at his watch, counting down the hours in his mind until he can be sitting on the couch with Mel. It was quickly becoming one of his favorite places, just being there with her, both under their own blankets, half-watching, half-discussing whatever show or movie they turned on that night. 

Sometimes Becca would join them, often playing a game on her Switch and occasionally humming to herself. Sometimes they would make popcorn and sometimes Frank would sling his arm over the back of the couch and his fingers would land just out of reach of Mel’s shoulder. 

It was one of the nicest parts of his day and after such an awkward conversation with Robby, he couldn’t wait to enjoy his time with her tonight. 

***

Mohan finds him outside in the ambulance bay smoking a cigarette a while later and he offers her a drag to which she unsurprisingly shakes her head at. 

“Have you heard anything about me today?” she asks. Her eyes have that manic look she gets when she’s performed a complicated procedure and he can see a bit of dried blood on her neck. 

“About you and Abbot?” Frank leads with, because he’s pretty sure he overheard Perlah and Princess gabbing about the two of them in a supply closet the other night and Mohan’s eyes go impossibly wider. “Relax, it’s just nurses gossip, you know how it goes.” 

She groans and leans against the wall next to him, folding her arms across her chest. 

“This is why I don’t socialize,” she grumbles. “So what if I started taking a few more night shifts? Dr. Abbot is a great teacher and I’d be stupid not to broaden my education.”

Frank takes another drag and just stares at her, amused. 

“I can’t believe people think…” she trails, then looks at him fully, borderline glaring, “Well what do you think?”

“What do I think about what?”

“About me and Abbot.”

“I don’t think about you or Abbot,” Frank tells her, “Come on, Samira, this is... we're doctors. Adults, sometimes."

She scoffs but he can see some of her residual anger fading. He finishes his cigarette and tosses it to the ground, stomping it out with his shoe. He hates that he smokes now; he had stopped right before undergrad, but picked it right back up in rehab. 

“Does Mel mind that you smoke?” Mohan questions absently. He has know idea where that came from and he looks at her in confusion. “Oh, she told me you moved in. You know she asked if I wanted to move in a month after we met but I had just renewed my lease.” 

“I didn’t know that,” Frank admits, though it’s not surprising. Mel wasn’t kidding when she said she didn’t like to be alone. He had fallen asleep in a hospital on-call room once after a shift and she had a permanent frown set on her face the following day. “And no, she doesn’t mind. Or I don’t know, maybe she’s just too nice to tell me if she does.” 

Mohan hums, smiling slightly. 

“Yeah, that sounds like our girl,” she says with a light laugh. Something in his heart tugs at the use of the word ‘our’ but he ignores it. “Anyway, how are you? I keep meaning to ask but,” she waves a hand, signaling how crazy this place gets, “Well, you know.” 

He does know and he shrugs his shoulders, unsure just how honest he wants to be with her. She’s nice enough and they’ve definitely grown a little closer but he still wouldn’t consider them friends. He appreciates how patient she’s been with him, but sometimes he remembers he was supposed to be a year ahead of her and his mind gets a little sticky. 

“It’s good to be back,” he settles on, “To be working.” 

“It is a good distraction,” Mohan agrees, then tilts her head slightly. “And how are things with you and Mel? 

“Good, fine,” Frank states a bit clumsily. They’re more than fine. She loves his kids and his dog and living with her has made his life brighter. But he’s sure as hell not going to tell anyone that. 

Mohan keeps looking at him and he bounces on his heels, frowning. 

“Why?” he asks. “What have you heard?” 

“Adults, sometimes," she echoes teasingly. “Nothing, she just, well she seems happier.” 

“She does?” Frank questions. 

She nods, contemplative, “Yeah, I mean she’s always been happy, she’s like one of the most positive people here,” she laughs, then looks at him a little more seriously, “But I don’t know, I guess happy people can still be quite lonely.” 

Something in Frank’s chest tugs uncomfortably at the thought of her feeling like that before he moved in and with that comes a weight of anxiety that he could ruin it for her at any moment. He doesn't want to disappoint her, doesn’t want his own potential to fuck up to fall on her, to break up this peaceful cohabitation they’ve so carefully curated. 

"Do you think I’m a good person, Samira?” 

She shrugs. 

“I think you could be,” she says. “I think she helps.” 

"Yeah, she's good like that," he agrees roughly, "Do you think—fuck, watch out!"

They're already close to the wall but Frank puts his arm out in front of Mohan anyway, the both of them jumping as a minivan screeches into the ambulance bay and jerks to a stop. 

They both rush to the car as a woman gets out of the driver’s side, screaming at them to help her daughter, that she’s been shot. Frank yells out for a gurney and to prep a trauma room for a GSW, hoping someone is close enough to hear him. 

Mohan opens the door to find two girls, one older, a teenager sitting up, holding pressure on a girl’s lower stomach who can't be anymore than twelve. She’s still awake but barely, slurring her speech with blood on her lips. 

“Please help her, I didn’t mean to,” the older one states, petrified. 

Frank and Mohan share a look but get to work quickly, lifting the wounded girl in time for Mel and Robby to join them with the gurney. They get her on her back and Frank puts pressure on the wound bare handed and he feels the warmth of the girl’s blood seep against his palms as they rush back into the hospital. 

“Trauma one’s clear,” Mel states, guiding them that way. The mother and the other teen are on their heels and Robby slows to stop them, asking the mother what happened. 

Frank feels something go around his wrist and it’s the girl’s hand, weak and covered in her own blood. 

She’s wearing a beaded bracelet that matches his own — his green and white, hers purple and blue. 

“You’re okay,” he finds himself saying, “You’re in the hospital, you’re going to be okay.”

“Let’s prepare to lift her in three, two—,” Mel says and they get her onto the bed, a flurry of movement starting as they get her hooked up to the machines. “Dr. Langdon, you need to get gowned and gloved, Dr. Mohan, take over pressure please.”

He feels Mohan behind him but he’s stuck for a minute staring at the girl, the fear in her eyes too alert, too raw. 

“Dr. Langdon, Frank,” Mohan says, “Let’s switch, I got this.”

He lifts just in time for the girl to start spitting up blood, arching off the table with a moan before she begins to choke. Frank can feel it on his neck and puts pressure back on the wound with his own hands. Mel’s yelling to hang another unit and asking where the hell surgery is. He’s not sure he’s ever heard her swear at work and in the midst of the chaos that almost worries him more, knowing that she thinks this girl is spiraling the drain too. 

Suddenly the girl’s eyes roll back and she starts seizing violently on the table. Jesse tries to stabilize her head and turns her in hopes she won’t start choking on her own blood. 

“Push 10 of lorazepam,” Mohan orders from behind him. 

“Sats are down to 7, let’s clear that airway for an intubation,” Mel tells Jesse, then looks at Frank, “We need to flip her to see if there’s an exit wound, ready?”

Frank nods and their team moves the body, his swear confirming their worst suspicions. 

“Nothing,” he says, “Mohan, get ready to take over pressure.” 

“Got it,” she affirms and finally he’s able to get his hands off the girl, gauze and Mohan’s hands replacing where his just were. 

There’s nothing he could do with his hands like this so he’s forced to leave the room despite everything in his body wanting him to stay. He nearly walks straight into the mother and who he assumes is the sister, the fright on their faces growing at the sight of him, unsurprising when he’s pretty sure he looks like an extra from a horror movie. 

“Oh god,” the mother moans and the sister tries to catch her from slumping completely to the floor. Thankfully Mateo is nearby to hold up the woman’s otherside and he gives Frank a pointed look. 

Frank keeps his hands in the air as he walks himself to the nearest bathroom to wash the blood off. He can’t look at himself in the mirror so he doesn’t, only watches the red in the sink wash down the drain. His breathing grows heavy but the clearer the water gets, the easier each of his breaths comes. Once his hands are clean, he risks a glance in the mirror and grimaces. 

For a moment he considers it.

Asking one of the interns that don’t know him to open the med cart would be easy, getting a pill to make all of this go away would be easy. 

His hands tremble in fear and anxiety and his back aches because it always aches and he knows exactly what to prescribe himself to stop it. It would be simple in the chaos of a trauma to find a fix and his stomach rolls because that girl is dying but he's thinking about how to use this situation for his own gain. 

He grabs the edge of the sink and stares at the friendship bracelet Tanner made him. 

Frank shakes his head and tugs his scrub top off, careful not to get anymore blood on his face. He’s quick to clean his face with some wet paper towels and he stares at himself in the mirror for a minute, anxiety pooling in his chest like a lead weight. Mel had commented on his faded Flyers shirt this morning which had prompted an argument over his disloyalty to the Penguins. His Mom was from Philly originally and she had gotten him this shirt a few Christmas’ ago; he argued it made him a good son, despite not talking to her in ages. Mel had teased him, said she was going to convert him to the 'right' side of Pennsylvania hockey before Becca found out about his poor team choices and made him move out.  

It was a good morning and now all he can think about is finding a fix. 

Frank pushes himself off the sink and back out into the ER, the onslaught of noises flooding his senses. There's steps he could take towards interns or nurses with medicine access but he pushes forward towards the trauma room. It's empty by the time he gets there, the only remanence being the blood on the floor.

He turns and sees Mel sitting behind the nurses station, eyes opened but not quite fixed on anything. 

“Hey,” he says gently, placing a tentative hand on her shoulder. She flinches at the initial contact but settles when she realizes it’s him. He tries not to overthink that, doesn’t succeed. “Are you okay?”

She glances up at him finally and nods, sitting up a little straighter. 

“Yeah, yeah,” she breathes. He watches as she takes her glasses off and runs a tired hand across her face. “She was barely stable when they took her up to surgery. I don’t think she’s going to make it.” 

“Shit,” Frank swears and squeezes Mel’s shoulder almost absentmindedly, like he was reminding himself she was still here. She reaches up and squeezes his wrist in return, larger than the girl’s was, no friendship bracelet in sight. 

She lets her hand drop back down and as he spots Robby walking towards them, he releases her as well. 

“You two okay?” Robby asks with a glance around, “Where’s Mohan?”

“She’s in the breakroom with Dr. Collins,” Mel answers, sliding her glasses back onto her face. “I’m fine, I just need another minute.” 

Robby gives Frank a look and then peers down at his watch, sighing. 

“Why don’t you start preparing for turn over,” Robby says, and when Mel starts to protest he just holds up a hand. “Abbot’s already on his way in, we’ll be fine to handle the transition. You two should head home.” 

There was a time where Frank would’ve argued, would’ve stayed anyway, but now he’d gladly take the offered exit. He needed to get the fuck out of here. Mel’s more hesitant but when she meets Frank’s eyes she just nods and he wonders briefly if she can see right through him. He hopes if she can, that she's not disgusted by him, that he hasn't disappointed her.  

“Let’s try and meet by the lockers in fifteen,” Mel decides quietly. She brushes past him without another word and he watches as she situates herself at a computer to finish her charts. 

He doesn’t have much to chart himself, only having seen a few lower risk patients today that have since gone home or were waiting on a bed upstairs. He thinks of Amber briefly and returns to her bed to find it empty. He glances around the ER and frowns. 

“Hey, Whitaker!” he calls, making his way over to South 18 where he’s stitching up a head lac. “Where’d Amber go? She get her CT?” 

“Oh,” Whitaker says and the fear in his eyes makes Frank’s stomach drop. He excuses himself from the patient and shuts the curtain, sighing deeply. “She um, she didn’t make it. She had a massive aneurysm on the way up to CT. I’m uh, I’m really sorry Dr. Langdon.” 

“She—oh,” Frank manages and between that little girl and this, he’s not sure what to do with himself, what to say. “Did uh, did someone contact the family?” 

“Yeah, they’re not in town,” Whitaker says sadly. “They’re getting the next flight in,” he tells him. He's not sure he's listening, he's not sure he can hear anything. The patient Whitaker was working on starts complaining about his bleeding head and he gives him an apologetic look. “I gotta—I’m sorry again, Dr. Langdon, really.” 

Frank thinks he nods at him but he’s not quite sure of himself. His hands don’t feel attached to his body, his ears start ringing violently and he has this thought that if he takes a step he might just end up floating away. He should’ve made time to see her again, he wanted to but it just got too hectic like it always did and he forgot. He forgot and it was too late. 

Mel’s still typing and he doesn’t want to hover so he sits in the locker bay and just waits. He’s not sure how long he sits there but every single one of his thoughts are about just how many drugs are in this hospital and who he could possibly use to get away with taking some medication. He reasons with himself it wouldn’t be a lot, not enough to overdose but just enough to take the pain away. He could manage it like he was before, because he was managing it before, he knew he was. 

“Oh good you’re here,” Mel mumbles from behind him and she lays a hand on his shoulder but as quick as the touch is there it’s gone. 

He watches absently as she opens her locker and removes her scrub top. She shoves it inside without much preamble, a sweatshirt sliding over her shoulders shortly after.

There's an insane thought, for a second, of asking her. 

When she closes her locker she turns to him, sticking her hand out, unknowing of what horrible thing he was thinking. He could never do that to her, he would never do that to her, and he finally takes her hand before he can overthink it, allowing her to lift him off the small bench so he can stand. She moves to drop it but he continues holding on, swallowing roughly around the lump that's formed inside of his throat. Mel doesn't really react, but squeezes his hand and leaves it there in his, falling in step next to him out to his truck. 

They’re silent on the way to his car and she only speaks once they’re both situated inside. 

“I think we have leftover lasagna at home but I’m thinking we get something greasy and well, kind of disgusting,” Mel sighs, leaning her head back into the passenger seat. “Do you like Wendy’s? There’s one—”

“Mel, I think I need to go to a meeting.”

His hands clench around the steering wheel but he can’t seem to put the car in drive. Even with her right next to him, he’s worried suddenly that he’s going to walk right back into the hospital and figure out how he can score. He can’t get the image of that little girl spitting blood up, the fear in her eyes and this realization that something bad was happening washing over her before she started seizing. He hasn’t even told her about Amber. His mother. That just now he wanted to ask her to get him drugs. 

What kind of person was he? Disgusting. She didn't deserve this, ask for this. Maybe he should go back inside, maybe he—

“Okay, do you need me to drive?” 

“I think the goal is to get there in one piece,” Frank rasps, then he shakes his head. “No, I’m—I’m good. Let me drop you off at home and then—” He’ll what? Go to his meeting? He’s not sure he’ll make it there. 

“Am I allowed to go with you?” Mel interrupts carefully. “I’ve done some research and I know some places have closed meetings but if that’s the case I could wait for you in the car.” 

Frank stares at her, her own sadness and exhaustion fresh on her face. He wonders if she can tell just how dangerous it is for him to be alone right now and that makes him feel anxious for an entirely new reason. 

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

But she just shakes her head, offering him a tiny smile. 

“Just drive the car, Frank.”

He taps his finger repeatedly against the steering wheel and then sighs, throwing his truck into reverse. 

It was hard to say no to her, and today he was grateful for that. 

***

They sit for ten minutes in the parking lot before Mel can convince him to go inside. 

He hates himself for each agonizing second, the patience she holds for him that he doesn’t deserve. Frank can feel himself hurting this girl, hyper aware of the pain behind her eyes that her tiredness won’t let her mask. 

She offers him small bits of encouragement that make his head spin and a part of him wants to just beg her to stop, to let him relapse and crash and burn so she can get out while she can. She even suggests they could just stay here in the car in the parking lot together, for as long as it takes, she’d wait with him, all night if she had to. 

He gets out almost immediately after that. 

Mel’s quiet next to him as they walk into the church; he’s been here quite a few times and he makes his way mindlessly to the rec room, her presence warm at his side. A few people are still trickling in and he gives his head a nod to the makeshift coffee station so she’ll follow him over there. 

It’s lukewarm and stale but settles some of his nerves. Mel takes a sip and then adds three more sugar packets which almost gets him to laugh. 

They find some empty seats and sit down, rows today, not a circle for which Frank is grateful for. Things tended to get a little more emotional when they were all facing each other and he’s not sure he’d want to subject Mel to that tonight, or ever frankly. 

“You okay?” she asks softly. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he replies and pats her thigh before he can think about it, grimacing when she jerks slightly. “Fuck, sorry.”

“Just a surprise,” Mel says, her cheeks flushed. She pushes her glasses up her nose but doesn’t meet his eyes. “I’m still getting used to how… twitchy you are.” 

Twitchy, not touchy and when he looks at her again, she’s fighting a smile, still refusing to look back at him. He knocks his knee against hers, a little happier when she knocks hers right back. 

The group counselor claps his hands together to get everyone’s attention, side conversations hushing. Frank likes him. His individual therapist wasn’t an addict but Reggie, a former marine and the counselor for this group, was. He’s built like a linebacker and has burn scars on his left arm that have muddled one of his many tattoos. Frank was intimidated by him the first time they met, but hearing Reggie’s own struggle with opioids after returning home from the war made him more relatable. 

“Alright let’s get started, yeah?” Reggie greets, settling in his chair at the front of the room. “For my new faces I’m Reggie. I work construction and play dungeons and dragons on the weekends,” a few laughs, “And I’m an addict. For my old faces, I’m glad you all made it here tonight.” 

He opens it up to the floor for people to talk and Frank spends the first twenty minutes just listening. Joyce, a retired teacher, talks about her struggle with her relationship with her son. He’s just started talking to her again which makes her want to get high. Scott, a twenty-something white kid in a Steelers hoodie, has an aunt that’s been on a three week bender who refuses to get help. He’s worried she might overdose, yet finds himself wanting to use too. 

When you’re an addict, everything can be a trigger, everything can be a reason. Losses deserve a high just like wins do. 

He’s not alone in his rationale for needing to get high tonight. He’s had worse shifts, harder cases, but something about today has burrowed itself into his mind and won’t release.  

There’s a lull in the sharing and Reggie looks out into their little group. He meets Frank's eyes and gives him a look. Reggie’s been patient with him, has allowed him to shake his head a few times so he’d move onto the next one but for some reason he finds his lips moving.

“Hi, uh,” he starts, clearing his throat, “I’m Frank and I’m um, I’m an addict.”

It’s always the hardest part to say outloud and his ears sting, echoing with the returned greetings from those around him. Mel’s voice sticks out and he finds himself searching for her hand, grateful when it slides neatly into his. 

“I’m uh, I’m a doctor, and we, well we had a pretty bad case today in the ER, girl who was shot,” he begins. He’s not used to talking about his day with people who aren’t doctors, he had enough trouble filling Abby in when they were together. “She was just a kid and I don’t know if she’s gonna make it or not, which is, you know, is what I should be concerned about and everything but instead,” he laughs, shaking his head with a frown. 

“Instead I’m thinking about getting high. I don’t think I realized how much shit I was trying to forget until I stopped, you know? Not that it really helped, I mean the fucking nightmares, right?” he sighs, and Mel squeezes his hand, reminding him she’s there, “Anyway, yeah, I just, this little kid might die or be dead already and it doesn’t even really fucking matter to me because nothing is ever gonna matter more than feeling high. It makes me a shitty son and a father and I’m just scared that this is just going to be it forever, you know?” 

He rushes the last part out so quickly he’s sure it comes out a jumbled mess. The back of his neck feels hot and he wants to hop up out of his chair and right out of the room.

“Did you get high today?” Reggie asks. 

“No,” Frank swallows. 

“Do you care if that little girl dies?” 

“Yes.” 

Reggie nods, tilting his head, “And if you were high today, you think you would've done a better job at tryna save her?” 

His answer gets caught in his throat, a part of him suddenly not sure. Frank doesn’t think he was ever high at work, his doses were low for pain relief, any extra he needed was reserved for days off. But he lets himself consider what difference a pill could have made today. He might’ve been more sluggish, more out of it, less inclined to jump right in and put his bare hands on an open wound. Those seconds could have made all the difference. 

Mel squeezes his hand again. 

“No,” he replies. “I don’t think I would’ve.” 

***

It’s late when they get home. 

Frank had asked to drive around a little while longer and Mel was happy to oblige. She can tell he’s shaken and she hasn’t seen him so visibly worried about his addiction since he’s moved in. She knew there were days that were harder than others, therapy sessions that didn’t go the best, or bouts of back pain that set an uncomfortable frown on his face. Usually though all he needed from her was someone to work alongside him the remainder of their shift, or sit in the dog park with him to watch Rocky run around.

She had gotten fairly good at reading him in the few months they lived together, just like she knew he had gotten scarily good at picking up her moods. 

They part to shower and find each other again in the kitchen, damp hair and changed into more comfortable night clothes, hovering over a package of crackers on the kitchen island. They both hadn’t eaten dinner but neither seem to have a proper appetite. She nibbles on one, wanting to say something to Frank but not knowing what.

It was one thing to have this awareness that Frank was an addict but seeing him be so open tonight made her shaky, reminded her that this was real. 

“I lost another patient today.” 

Mel’s eyes snap up to Frank’s and she sets the cracker down that she’d been eating. 

“Who?” she questions gently. She hadn’t seen him with anyone else that was at risk all day. 

“She uh,” Frank sighs. “She was one of my first patients during COVID. It was back when we were all fighting over vents and I got her a few extra days. When she woke up it felt like I did that, you know?” he pushes back from the island slightly and leans down to pet Rocky. “And now she’s dead, some freak fucking aneurysm and,” he sighs. “I don’t know, this day just fucking sucks.” 

Mel swallows uncomfortably and she can feel her anxiety begin to crawl down her spine. 

“I’m worried you’re going to relapse,” she states plainly. He stares at her with wide eyes, mouth open slightly. “I’m just—I’m worried I’m going to go to bed and I’m going to wake up and you won’t be in your room. And I don’t—Frank, I don’t know what to do.” 

She knows she’s crying by the look on Frank’s face and feels Rocky nudge at her thigh; she always knows when she’s sad. She doesn’t like not being in control, not having the answers. She had gotten so good at taking care of Becca, but this part of Frank was uncharted territory. It wasn’t something she could fix with logic when addiction often didn’t need logic to operate. 

“I’m worried too,” Frank finally admits. "I wanted to ask you today. After our shift, to get me pills, anything."

"Frank."

"I know," he swallows. "I know you wouldn't, please don't ever, I'd rather you fucking stab me."

"Well, I'm not going to do that either," she manages. She wipes at her eyes with her sleeve and sighs, "Tell me what I can do right now." 

They stare at each other for a beat and he doesn’t commit to trying to stay sober, doesn’t try to offer comforting words. She thinks they both know they'd be empty promises, that the only thing that truly mattered were his actions. She reminds herself that he didn't actually ask her to illegally get him medication, that he chose to attend NA tonight, that he's standing right in front of her in her kitchen looking exhausted, but still here. 

She decides then that she’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight, that she’ll text Trinity to leave her ‘do not disturb’ off, to come over and help her if Frank leaves his room. She could do this, she would do this for him. She’s contemplating where she could hide his keys when he sighs and sticks out his hand towards her. 

“Come on,” he says. 

She doesn’t have the words so she takes his hand and follows, heart pounding in her ears with each step towards his bedroom. Rocky winds back and forth between them, herding them inside too. She’s afraid to say anything, to stop whatever’s happening. 

He shuts the door once they’re inside and sits on the edge of the bed, patting the space next to him for Rocky to jump up. She’s just lucky Rocky reacted before she could take a step forward that she wasn’t meant to. 

“We could just—” Frank finally speaks. “I want you to sleep. I need to sleep.” 

“Do you mean—”

“Just for tonight,” he explains and though it’s dark she can see the tips of his ears are red. “I just won’t be able to sleep thinking you’re worried I might do something.”

He wants her to sleep next to him. 

She wants to sleep next to him. 

“Right,” she agrees. “You’re—yes, this could work.” 

He finally cracks a smile, “I’m glad you agree with my assessment, Dr. King.” 

Frank tilts his head towards the bed and this time she does move, shuffling quickly to the other side of his bed, her glasses placed gently on the nightstand. His sheets are cool but soft and it takes her a second to get comfortable in an unfamiliar space. She stares at the lines of his back, the rise and fall between his shoulder blades. 

“Goodnight, Mel.” 

The weight of the day bears down on her and she shuts her eyes, focused on Frank’s even breathing next to her, of Rocky’s small huffs as she settles at the foot of the bed. She reaches forward and wraps her hand around the back of his shirt, balling it slightly in her fist. 

"I'm not going anywhere," he promises quietly. 

“Mm,” she mumbles, tightening her grip. "This was my parent’s room."

She’s asleep before she can hear a response. 

Chapter Text

The first time he wakes up, Mel’s face is inches from his own.

Her eyes are closed, her breathing deep, and he smiles slightly, pleased to know that she snores. She’s curled in on herself completely, knees almost tucked into her chest. The blanket has fallen down to her waist so he pulls it up to cover her, rolls over, and closes his eyes again. 

When he wakes again the bed is empty.

No Mel, no dog, just him. 

He stares at the ceiling for a few minutes and just breathes, trying to reduce the anxiety pooling in his stomach. He’s not sure what he’s going to do if he’s ruined his friendship with her and can only hope that she accepts his apology for acting like such a fucking addict last night. 

He’s embarrassed and ashamed but his head feels clearer this morning, safe, despite the lingering worry of what Mel’s reaction to him will be today. 

The clock on the nightstand reads half past seven and he’s beyond grateful they’re both off. He had planned to see if she wanted to go to Tanner’s soccer game with him later, but now he’s not so sure she’d want to. 

As he finds the courage to get up he’s reminded of what she said last night and touches the headboard briefly. She trusted him enough to let him move not just into her home but into her parents' old room. He remembers the feel of her small fist curled into his shirt, the relief on her face when he suggested she lay next to him at all. 

Mel was a good person.

She cares about you. 

He can hear someone moving in the kitchen so he pulls a sweatshirt over his head and pads quietly towards the sound. 

Mel’s there, still in her pajamas with her hair loose, big headphones on, dancing slightly as she cooks. 

For a minute he just stares, soaks in the carefree girl so at odds with the raw pain and fear he saw last night from her. He never wants to be on the other end of that look again, wants desperately, to see her like this always. 

She finally sees him out of the corner of her eye and startles slightly but before he can apologize she’s grinning, tugging her headphones down to her neck. 

“You’re up!” she laughs. “I’m making pancakes, would you like some?” 

Her enthusiasm is contagious and he finds himself smiling, his anxiety immediately disappearing. She was always surprising him, this girl. 

“Pancakes sound great.” 

He settles on one of the kitchen stools and grabs a medical journal from the pile that’s littered there, flipping it open. As she cooks he reads, sometimes aloud when he comes across something he thinks she’ll enjoy too. There’s new research being done on parasitic diseases he finds interesting that Mel ooohs at, another study on ALS she’s already read up on, but lets him drown on about anyway. 

When she’s nearly done cooking he makes himself useful and puts on a fresh pot of coffee. They haven’t shared a day off together in ages and the domesticality of it moves down his spine like molasses. When he was married, days off were spent busying himself with unfinished projects around the house and helping Abby with all the things she did during the week to maintain things. Towards the end of his marriage, they were reserved for getting high. He can’t remember the last time he just sat down in the morning with someone else completely sober with nothing to rush off to. 

It’s nice to exist next to her in a kitchen that’s filled with so much love, a fridge covered in magnets and polaroids, a viney plant in the windowsill above the sink, a stack of folded tea towels that have yet to be put away. He and Abby didn’t grow up in houses like these and he knows they both struggled to make their own home warm and welcoming after never having anything to mirror it off of. 

They eat in relative silence, though he knows he wants to say something about last night. To thank her for one, to ask her if she was okay, if she wanted to yell at him and if this was some send off breakfast before she asked him to leave. He keeps overthinking his words though so instead focuses on shoveling pancakes into his mouth until Mel laughs at him and tells him to slow down so she doesn’t have to perform the heimlich. 

Becca emerges from her room a little while later and starts making ramen noodles. He glances at the clock on the stove, 8:06AM, and then at Mel, who just waves a hand telling him to keep his mouth shut. 

“Can we take Rocky to the park?” Becca asks and at that word Rocky walks into the kitchen, wagging her tail excitedly. 

“Sure, Becs,” Frank replies. “I gotta finish my coffee and then shower, let’s say 30 minutes?” 

“45,” Becca decides and she just smiles and disappears into her room with her noodles, Rocky hot on her heels. 

Mel shakes her head and Frank returns her grin. 

“I think that dog likes her more than me,” Frank comments, sipping his coffee. 

“I think so too,” Mel agrees and she drums her fingers against her mug, “If you um, well if you have anything today I can take Becca and Rocky to the park. I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“I don’t feel obligated,” Frank says earnestly. “I like your sister, she’s just about as cool as you are,” he continues which earns him rosy cheeks, “Besides all I have today is Tanner’s soccer game, so.”

Mel hums and takes a sip of her coffee. 

“We’re okay, right?” he asks suddenly. Because he feels like things are better than normal but for the first time in a long time he’s afraid he’s messed something up beyond repair. “Like, that was… it was okay with you?”

“Last night?” Mel clarifies and at his nod she gives him a tiny smile. “Yes, Frank everything was okay with me. I mean, I didn’t enjoy the part where you were really stressed out and worried about relapsing but—”

“—After that?”

“After that, I… enjoyed it,” she finally says. And she’s still a little flushed and looks cozy in her pajamas and he really wants to convince her to crawl back into his bed with him when— “I never slept in a bed with someone else, but it wasn’t that bad. I missed my own pillow though.”

“You can bring it next time,” he says, which definitely makes him sound too eager, but then his brain catches up with the first half of her statement and he raises an eyebrow at her, “Wait, like never shared a bed with someone? What about Becca? Or friends? Boyfriends?” 

Mel squirms slightly in her seat and shrugs. 

“Becca has a lot of particulars surrounding sleep,” she explains, then frowns, “And I was never invited to any sleepovers growing up.”

“Okay, but didn’t you date in college?” he asks. “You’ve definitely told me about a boyfriend before.” 

“Oh, I’ve had boyfriends,” Mel states. It’s in that matter-of-fact way she does when she’s giving a diagnosis at work. His lips quirk. “I just never let them stay over in my bed or stayed in theirs, it’s—it’s hard for me to feel comfortable around people.”

But you feel comfortable around me? 

It hangs in the air unsaid and Mel stands a little abruptly, knocking her knee into her chair. 

“Um, I should shower and start the laundry,” she says, depositing her mug in the sink, then goes and disappears towards her room, “If you have anything, leave it in the hall!”

The door to her bedroom shuts and Frank just sits there in a daze. Rocky wanders into the kitchen and whines a little, and he shakes his head. 

“Yeah, yeah, Fido, I hear you.”

He needed a long shower anyway. 

***

Mel stands under the spray until her fingers start to prune, letting the pressure bounce off her head, failing miserably to quiet the thoughts she’s having. 

She remembers waking up only once in the middle of the night; Frank was on his stomach like a starfish, face mashed into his pillow and drooling slightly, but his arm had been around her waist, hand splayed on the bare skin between her shorts and her shirt. 

It was warm and it was heavy and she liked it. 

After panicking for a few minutes she managed to settle and fall back asleep, waking up again in the morning to Frank on his back, the arm that had been around her now over his eyes, and his blankets messily tangled around his legs. His shirt had ridden up and she had stared at the sliver of skin for quite some time before she forced herself to look away. With how much he clearly moved in his sleep she was shocked she didn’t wake more, especially with how light of a sleeper she normally was. 

She hadn’t lied when she told him she enjoyed it, the fact is she probably enjoyed it a little too much. 

Going back to her own bed tonight will be difficult and she has the bizarre thought of him sleeping in there with her. He’s only ever been in her room a handful of times, once to help her catch a spider, another when Erin got stuck under her bed during a game of hide seek, and a few times to lay on her floor after a long shift while she played either Fleetwood Mac or Oasis from her parents record player, all depending on how many patients they lost that day. 

Mel tries not to imagine him tucked under her dark green comforter or what it would be like to wake up in her own bed with him pressed against her back. 

The warmth of him, his even breath, how it would feel to be held. 

She fails miserably and turns the heat of her shower as high as it will go. 

***

Frank ends up going to Tanner’s game alone; Mel wanted to go grocery shopping and Becca had a puzzle to finish after their walk around the park. 

He doesn’t mind sitting on the sidelines by himself but he knows it would’ve been greatly improved by Mel’s enthusiastic cheers and overall commentary about the game. She had a thing about sports facts, it was kind of endearing. 

He’s just glad things weren’t weird between them and even though he doesn’t think the sleep he’ll get tonight will be better than last night, he knows it’s what’s needed. His therapist and everyone at NA was pretty clear that new romantic relationships at the beginning of recovery were a major no go. 

Not that he was thinking about entering a romantic relationship with her.

At all. 

His pocket vibrates and he checks his phone to see a text from Santos. They had only swapped numbers in case of a “Mel-mergency” (Santos’ words), so he’s slightly concerned to be receiving something from her at all. 

can me and huckleberry come over later we are in the shift from HELL  

Worse than PittFest? 

Her next texts come in rapid succession and he’s gotten so used to the paragraphs of information he receives from Mel that he squints at these ones to try and decipher them. 

ya a truck carrying fucking FISH flipped over and caused a pile up so everyone in here smells fucking vile!!!!! im contemplating suctioning out my nostrils or jumping off the roof

but can we come over 

i need to pet a dog 

plz plz plz plz plz plz 

He snorts and glances up to see Tanner picking up a literal dandelion.

“Tanner! Back in the game, bub!” 

His son groans dramatically and runs off to where his team is and Frank tries not to laugh; he and Abby might have to discuss something else for next year, maybe baseball or hockey. Or theater, dance, who knows. He returns back to his phone to see three more texts. 

HELLLLLLLLO

im almost done with my red bull and then i have to put my seventeen face masks back on so i dont throw up on my patient while i stitch him up 

plz dog now yes 

He shakes his head in confusion. 

Why didn’t you ask Mel?

i did idiot and she said to ask u too but she said yes ofc 

but i am NOT making a groupchat 

He wouldn’t have minded if they had just come over, but he’s grateful for the slight ways Mel always thinks of him. He's sure she was giving him the space to determine if he was up to socialization after how rough yesterday was and while usually he would prefer to isolate himself, something about them being around seems... nice.  

Sure, but only if you both shower. Twice. 

She sends him back the middle finger emoji and Frank just rolls his eyes. He looks up from his phone just in time to see his son score and he’s about to fight the parents around him for groaning when he realizes why.  

“Awe, Tanner, buddy! That’s your goal!”

***

After soccer and after milkshakes to celebrate scoring a goal regardless of whose net it was, he brings Tanner back to his old house with a promise that they’ll see each other this weekend. 

“Do you think we can play lego with Mel?” Tanner asks as he helps him out of the truck. 

“Sure, Tan, I think that can be arranged.”

His mom opens the front door and Tanner grins, hugging Frank’s leg quickly. 

“Bye, dad! Love you!”

He hasn’t said it in a while and Frank can feel his throat go a little thick. 

“Love you too, kiddo!” he manages to call. His son waves over his shoulder and barrels past Abby into the house. 

“Oh, Tanner,” Abby groans, her hair whipping behind her. “Your cleats—wait, Frank! Hang—ugh.”

She waves a hand and closes the door, meeting him halfway on the front lawn. 

“Your mom called me,” she starts with and Frank’s pretty sure he feels his stomach sink into the ground. “Did you forget to tell her something, I don’t know, super fucking important?”

She looks both amused and annoyed and then outright laughs when Frank’s eyes go wide because certainly, certainly, he told her they got divorced. He knows it’s been a while since he answered her calls, but a decent son would’ve informed his mother of his marital separation before it happened. In between getting clean and getting reoriented at work, and his overall shame he felt anytime he spoke to her, he just hadn’t said anything.  

“I completely fucking forgot.”

“Frank!” Abby huffs, shoving his shoulder, “She literally asked about our Thanksgiving plans this year.”

“And what did you tell her?”

Abby throws her hands up but has the decency to look slightly embarrassed, “I told her we’d get back to her.” 

“Oh my god,” he groans, running a hand down his face. “What the fuck is wrong with us?”

“Us?” she questions, “No, you do not get to put not telling your mother about our divorce on me. I had to call my parents, just be grateful it’s just your mom. She’s at least kind of nice,” and Frank gives her a look that makes her roll her eyes, “Well okay, I mean she’s nice enough to be around our children.” 

"I can't believe I didn't tell her," he mutters.

"Well, better late than never, yeah?"

Frank sighs, “I just don’t want to disappoint her more. You and the kids are like, the thing she likes most about me.” 

“You know that’s not true,” she says gently. “Listen, I gotta get Tanner in a bath before your son makes the entire house smell. Can you call her? Please?”

“Yeah, yes, I’ll—” he tries, he has no idea when he’ll pick up the phone. “I just gotta… work myself up to it.” 

“Fine, just preferably before Thanksgiving?” Abby teases as she backs away towards the house. “And you’re taking Erin to her dance class on Tuesday?”

“Yeah," he says, and he was probably going to cry the entire time because of how cute it was. He thinks he'll bring Mel. "And do us both a favor and ask Tan if he even likes soccer.”

“Oh, thank god,” Abby mutters, waving at him as she returns back into the house. 

He stands on the lawn for a minute, annoyed with himself for being so careless. He loved his mother, for the most part. She might have stayed with his dad for far too long and tried to bridge the peace between him and his brother too much, but he still loved her. And regardless of things she did or didn’t do, she deserved better than a forgetful update on one of the biggest changes in his life. 

The worst part, he knows, is that there’s a house no more than fifteen minutes away that he could drive to at any time to speak with her, but he can’t because he’s afraid of seeing that disappointed look on her face again. 

Frank shakes his head finally and makes his way back to the truck, pulling up one of Mel’s frat music playlists on his phone. 

He spends the rest of the afternoon running errands; Mel forgot to pick up dishwasher tabs at the store this morning, he gets his truck washed for the first time in months, and swings by Sheetz for a pack of cigarettes and blue slurpee for Mel. 

It’s a little melted by the time he gets back but her eyes go wide when he gives it to her, grinning at him. 

He helps her fold laundry and puts away the towels in the linens closet. Somewhere in between doing the dishes and cleaning the counters he finds himself telling her about his mom.  

“She’s a retired nurse, I can’t remember if I ever mentioned that,” he comments, using the corner of the sponge to get out a particularly gross grease stain on the stove, “I used to use her sutor set to stitch up my stuffed animals.” 

And one time his own knee when his father threw a plate at him, but he keeps that to himself.

“That’s kind of adorable,” Mel comments from the living room where she’s losing a battle against getting the dog hair off the couch. “That sounds like something Erin would do.” 

“Oh, totally,” he agrees. “But yeah, she’s uh, she’s a cool lady, I mean, she’s kind of a lot, but the whole ‘your son’s an addict’ thing really got to her,” he continues. He gets more soap, goes back to his stain, “I mean like, obviously, she’s my mother. But yeah, so I haven’t really talked to her since right after I got out of rehab.”

“Hm, I mean what’s the worst thing that could happen?” Mel says. “I mean, literally, what is your biggest concern with speaking to her?”

Frank stops scrubbing to look at her across the house. 

“Sorry, is that—”

“No,” he sighs. “Fuck, I don’t know, Mel. Disappointing her more. Reminding her of my father, I guess.”

She frowns and it would be harder to look at if she didn’t have a wad of dog fur in her hands. 

“Is he an addict?”

“Alcoholic.” 

The only other person who knows that is his ex-wife and his therapist. He supposes it’s only fitting that she knows too. 

“And is he—”

“Dead,” Frank clarifies. “Thank god.”

“Oh,” Mel hums a little sadly, then surprisingly, “I’m glad he’s not around anymore.” 

“Fuck, me too,” he agrees readily. “My mom’s way better off, we all are. Anyway, Ab’s said I need to call her because well… I kind of forgot to tell her we got divorced?”

Mel blinks at him. 

“Frank.”

“I know,” he resigns, throwing the sponge back into the sink, surrendering to the grease stain, “I know, okay? It’s been a weird few months.”

He watches her nibble her bottom lip and he waits. 

“But good though, right?”

He smiles slightly, “Yeah, Mel, this,” he says, pointing between the two of them, “Has been good.” 

She smiles, clearly pleased and gets back to work on de-hairfying the couch. 

He always has to shower after he cleans so he does just that, then smokes a cigarette outside which makes him smell again. When he gets back inside he hears Mel’s shower running too with her music blaring so he situates himself on the couch and finds himself falling asleep to a rerun of Chopped. 

When he wakes it’s because Rocky is barking and Santos is dropping all her shit in the entryway so she can lean down to pet her. 

“And to think I was going to kill myself earlier,” she coos. 

“Hey,” both Mel and Whitaker reply. They share a look and Whitaker just sighs in defeat, asking if there’s room in the fridge for the six pack he brought. 

“Oh, Dr. Langdon,” he says half inside the fridge, “I brought you some diet coke, Mel said those were your favorite.”

Frank slings an arm over the back of the couch and looks back at him, smiling slightly. 

“Thanks, Whitaker, but you don’t have to call me doctor outside of work.”

Whitaker emerges from the fridge with flushed cheeks, “Oh, right, sorry, doctor, I mean, yeah, sure.” 

“Smooth, Huckleberry,” Santos snorts. She’s sitting fully on the ground with her legs splayed wide with Rocky laying in between them. “He only got them for you cause he felt bad that old lady you knew died.” 

“Trinity,” Mel scoffs. “Dog privileges can be revoked at any time.” 

Santos actually pouts, wrapping her arms around Rocky to hug her. 

“She’s just cranky because she lost a patient today,” Whitaker states, leaning on the counter. He’s downed half his beer already and Frank’s worried they understated just how bad their shift was. 

“It wasn’t even my fault,” she grumbles into Rocky’s fur. “Arm amputation in the accident but the stupid EMT didn’t do the tourniquet tight enough. She bled out before I could even do anything.”

Mel passes Santos a beer sympathetically. 

“Do you know if our gunshot victim from yesterday made it?” she asks tentatively. 

Santos shakes her head, “Not sure, I meant to check for you but it got too crazy and then well, I forgot.”

“It’s fine, thank you for almost remembering.” 

Santos glances up with a tampered down smile and finally stands up, asking if there’s any food in this house. 

Whitaker offers to make pizza, which prompts Becca to come out of her room, Mel joining in the kitchen to start working. Santos joins him on the couch with an exhausted sigh. She’s got that faraway look in her eyes when she looks at the television and Frank pats the middle space of the couch so Rocky will join them. She lays down immediately and shoves her hind legs into Santos’ thigh, making her smile slightly. 

“Thanks,” she mumbles. 

“What was that?” he teases. “I didn’t quite catch it.” 

She rolls her eyes so harshly he’s surprised he didn’t hear it and just takes a long swig of her beer. He wishes briefly that he could join them; the tea Mel made him earlier has grown cold on the coffee table. 

“Are you allowed to drink anymore?” Santos questions, surprisingly not judgemental, just curious. 

“Probably not,” Frank says, “I don’t have problems with alcohol but lower inhibitions don't really breed the best decisions.” 

He thinks of his father too and wonders if an addict is just an addict and all that. He doubts he would ever have another drink again. 

“Makes sense,” Santos hums, taking a sip of her beer. “I can’t believe you have to like…” she gesticulates in front of her with her hands and shakes her head, “raw dog life, that’s fucking crazy.” 

Frank snorts, surprised and Santos just grins at him. Mel’s occupied with Whitaker and her sister in the kitchen and he finds himself staring at Santos in contemplation. She stares right back at him, waiting. 

“You should hate me,” he finally settles on. 

“Maybe,” Santos replies. “I could start if you want me to.”

“Trinity…” Frank huffs. 

“Francis,” Santos replies mockingly, and he wonders if she’s joking or if she actually found out his birth name somehow. He refuses to confirm anything to her and just waits for her to roll her eyes again, leaning back into the couch with a sobering sigh. “My best friend was an addict.” 

That pulls him up short and that’s—oh. 

“Harder stuff than you,” she continues softly, “We uh, she couldn’t deal with some shit and found drugs. And I don’t know one day it got too much and she just—” Santos swallows, biting at her bottom lip and releasing it, “Anyway, I get it. And I’m not sorry I told Dr. Robby and I’m not sorry you got fucking divorced or whatever, I’m just glad you’re like, still alive, okay?” 

“But why did you act so fucking normal when I got back?”

Because while all of that makes perfect sense as to why she would speak up that day, her behavior towards him still didn’t add up. If their places had been swapped, he’s not sure he would’ve approached her at all her first day, probably would’ve steered clear altogether. 

“Had a lot of time to think, I guess,” she says. “And you did the rehab thing and came back to work at the same fucking hospital you got kicked out of. That’s like, insane.” 

“You wouldn’t have come back?”

“Fuck, no,” she laughs. “I would’ve moved my ass to Philly. Maybe back to Jersey.” 

He scoffs then shakes his head, “But I stole drugs from patients.”

“Yeah,” she states plainly. “Because you’re a fucking addict.” 

His stomach twists uncomfortably, aware of how much he owes her. He had been angry at her initially for telling Robby. It had felt like his world was ending, that he would get fired and lose his medical license, his wife, his kids, everything. Realistically he knew what he was doing couldn’t have lasted much longer, his luck was stretching thinner and thinner every shift. He thinks now she may have entered his life at just the right time, before he had the chance to accidentally kill someone at work. Or himself. 

“Thanks, you know,” he tries, “For um—saying something.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” she dismisses, “Thanks for not like, plotting my murder or trying to like, sabotage my career.”

“I still could,” he jokes, “There’s still time.” 

Santos snorts and Mel giggles at something in the kitchen. He glances up towards the noise, smiling to himself.

“So have you two…” she trails, smirking slightly. She sets down her beer on the side table and makes a crude gesture with her fingers to articulate her point, laughing at whatever horrified face he makes. “Alright, alright, not yet I guess.” 

And she shouldn’t be saying yet, there can’t be a yet with how new he is to recovery. Or with the fact that he just got divorced. Or since they were roommates now. 

He wasn’t even fully sure what was happening between him and Mel. She was probably the closest thing he’s ever had to a best friend, even more so than Robby or his ex-wife. Robby reminded him too much of his father sometimes, and while he and Abby often walked the same line, they weren’t always in sync. Something about Mel just clicked with him, there was a comfort there he never had before. They had known each other for such a short time but it very well could’ve been years. Plus, now he knew what it was like to share a bed with her. 

Frank just couldn’t afford to linger on that right now. 

“Dude, it’s like yearn central over there,” Santos laughs at him. “Control your fucking face.” 

“Says the girl that trails after Garcia and Walsh like a lovesick puppy.”

“Rude, homophobic even,” she scoffs, “And just not accurate. I got drinks with Ellis the other night.” 

He raises an eyebrow and grins at her, “Yeah? What’d you guys do? Hold hands?”

“Asshole,” she laughs, “Listen I know you’re out u-hauling me right now, but normal people go on dates before they move in with the girl they so very clearly have a thing for.” 

He scratches Rocky’s head and gives her a look that just makes her laugh harder. 

“What is so funny over here?” Mel questions with a smile, she’s got her hands on her hips and her cheeks are flushed in the way when she’s nervous to say something. Frank just raises a knowing eyebrow at her and she gives him a pleading look. “So Dennis may have, well, accidentally sneezed all over the pizza the moment he pulled it out of the oven.” 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Santos groans. 

Frank’s already standing and grabbing his keys from the catch-all dish on the kitchen counter, asking Mel to call ahead to the place around the corner. 

“Oh, thank you,” Mel sighs happily. She squeezes both of his wrists in appreciation and returns back to Whitaker and her sister to clean up their contaminated former dinner. 

He catches Santos’ knowing look and he just glares at her, praying she doesn’t try to stir the pot and say something to Mel the moment he steps outside. 

Santos mimes locking her lips, smirking. 

He hates her.

No he doesn’t.

***

When they part to sleep that night and every other night the next few weeks, Mel hovers awkwardly for a moment wondering how to bring up that she wants to share a bed with him again. 

Frank doesn’t say anything but he’s also got this look on his face that Mel can’t quite wrap her head around. Both like he’s wanting and waiting for her to ask to join him (exciting) but anxious and worried if she does (scary). So she settles on just giving him a hug before she retreats to her room, always too fast but just enough to get her heart beating wildly in her chest. 

It takes her a few extra minutes to settle under her sheets but it’s worth it. 

She just wishes she had the courage to ask for more. 

***

His therapist says he shouldn’t be sleeping with Mel, or anyone for that matter, in any capacity. 

Frank didn’t mean for it to come up but Mel’s life has become so intertwined with his own that his therapist had bluntly asked if they were romantically involved. It had tripped him up because while no, they weren’t, everything they were doing together aligned with what he normally did when he was in a relationship with someone. 

Frank had tested the waters to see if it was within the realm of possibility, not that he was thinking about it but just to know. His therapist had closed his notepad and given him a long hard look that made Frank sit up straight on the overtly expensive couch in his therapist’s office. 

Apparently even entertaining the idea had the potential to blow up his recovery. 

Who knew. 

So he ignores the looks she gives him every night that would very clearly lead to them sharing a bed again, he dials down the casual touches as much as can (but always returns the ones she initiates, always), and tries (and mostly fails) to not spend the majority of each shift with her. 

If she’s noticed she hasn’t said anything for which he’s grateful for because he’s not sure how exactly he’d explain his sudden change in behavior to her. 

Sorry I’m acting like such a fucking middle schooler around you but the other night when you grabbed my hand during a scary scene in the movie we were watching, my heart jumped. Which would be fine in any normal circumstance but things aren’t normal because I’m barely sober and hanging on by a fucking thread as it is and I don’t want to drag you any deeper into this mess I’ve created. But yes, I want you to touch me again. I want you to touch me whenever you want. 

He’s sure that would go over well. 

In trying not to occupy every second of Mel’s free time, Frank finds himself going on runs, which turns into running with Samira. She had found out he was jogging down by a park which was situated close to both Mel’s house and her apartment and had just fallen in step next to him one day. 

He has a suspicion Mel was the person that told Samira this, but neither of the girls have indicated any truth to that one way or the other. It feels good to clear his head, and Samira’s just as competitive outside the hospital as she is in it, so their light jog usually ends in full on sprints until they’re panting in the grass. They talk about how hard med school was, the difficulties of interning during COVID, and how they both feel like they’re constantly trying to please Robby all time. It’s how he finds out she’s a part of the dead dad club too, and even though she liked her father, he’s glad he has someone to relate to in his pursuit of a stable male role model. 

At work things are at least a little easier. The ER is still a hectic place but with time and practice, his confidence grows. He starts to feel like the R4 he was before rehab, only clearer, more level headed, better. He returns to bouncing between as many cases as possible and ordering interns around in a way that has one of them muttering he’s the new Santos. She gets a kick out of that one, and laughs in his face at the nurses station when she finds out. He eats the tupperware lunch Whitaker packed her in retaliation. 

His coworkers push him back into more complicated procedures the more he starts to earn their trust back. Garcia drags him up with her to help in an emergency surgery, he does burr holes supervised by Abbot, and even delivers a baby when a woman quite literally waddled into the ER and was crowning no less than a minute later. 

Frank feels like himself and despite having to piss in a cup every other shift and being still banned from prescribing medication, things start to feel normal.  

Which is of course the moment when everything goes to shit. 

He’s returning from a smoke break when Santos knocks into him coming out of a patient’s room. She doesn’t apologize and is frantically looking around the ER, the anger radiating off her palpable. He doesn’t have time to ask her what it is she’s looking for because she finds it, or him rather, and starts stalking in the direction towards a man. 

“Hey!” she barks. 

Frank follows after her immediately, glancing around to see where the hell security is. He doesn’t know what’s going on but it can’t be good. 

“Where the fuck do you think you’re—” she grabs the guy by his arm harshly, forcing him to face her. He’s about a foot taller than her and twice her body size but she doesn’t back down. “Rohypnol? You fucking roofied her?” 

Now they really need security and he puts a hand on Santos’ arm trying to pull her back so she doesn’t end up with an assault charge. He manages to meet Dana’s eyes and finds her already on the walkie. 

“Dr. Santos, let’s—” he tries. 

“You drug tested her?” the guy starts to yell, stepping closer to Santos. Red, blustering, angry, and Santos is not choosing flight. “You didn’t have my consent for a drug test and she’s my wife. I’m—”

“The only thing you’re gonna be doing is rotting in jail, you disgusting sick fucking—”

Frank can see the moment the guy decides he’s going to hit her and either Santos is too angry to notice or just doesn’t give a shit anymore and Frank’s moving before he really knows what’s happening. 

Unfortunately rather than shoving her out of the way, Frank does the stupid thing and steps in front of her, just in time to get nailed in the face by the guy's fist. 

“Oh, what the fuck,” he groans, though he’s doubled over and his vision is spotty so he’s pretty sure it comes out a garbled mess. He can’t remember the last time he got hit in the face, maybe in high school by his brother, but he is definitely getting too old for this. 

He can feel hands behind him trying to hold him up and Santos is in his ear complaining how heavy he is and how he should’ve just let her take the hit. While he certainly wasn’t going to let that happen, there were alternatives to what he stupidly decided to do. He’s sure Santos is never going to let him live this down and if he wasn’t worried about getting blood everywhere, he’d try and make a joke about how they should be even now for the drug addled rage tantrum he gave her on her first day. 

Security finally arrives and drags the asshole away, screaming and cursing about how he’s going to sue this place. At that, Frank finally laughs, which does get blood everywhere, and he rushes to cover it with his hand, wincing at the sudden pain. 

“Fuck me, what the fuck,” he swears again. Santos leads him into the nearest empty bay and practically shoves him into a bed, muttering complaints under her breath. 

The room becomes crowded quick; first with Whitaker who looks like he’s going to throw up, then with Cassie who’s laughing and taking a picture with her phone, only to be shoved out of the way by Samira, trying and failing to be doctorly over Santos’ extremely loud voice. 

“Get the fuck out,” Santos barks, shoving gauze under his nose. He makes a noise and Santos just rolls her eyes. “Stupid, stupid, it’s what you deserve. I would’ve ducked.”

Thankfully the room clears and the noise lessens but with it the lights get brighter and he has to squint so he doesn’t go blind. This isn’t the first time he’s been assaulted in the ER but it’s the first time it’s hurt so fucking badly. 

She presses a bit roughly on his face and he flinches, trying and failing to bat her hands away. 

“Just let me—ugh,” she bites. “It’s not broken, at least I don’t think it is.” 

“Some doctor you are,” he manages in his congested tone. 

“God, you—”

“Frank!” Mel’s voice interrupts. He opens his eyes to see her frantic ones. “What the—are you okay? Is he okay?” she asks Santos, “Why isn’t he hooked up to the monitor? Is Garcia on her way?” 

“M’fine.”

“He’s fine,” Santos affirms at the same time. “The big idiot just doesn’t know how to take a punch.” 

“Somebody punched you?” Mel breaks and she looks a little bit like she’s going to cry so Frank grabs her wrist to squeeze it. 

Frank removes the gauze from his face but thankfully doesn't feel anymore blood pour down.  

“See?” he tries, grinning and hopes briefly that his teeth aren’t blood soaked but Mel’s disgusted expression suggests otherwise, “M’totally fine.” 

It’s then that she does burst into tears, a hand on her mouth to muffle her sobs. Frank squeezes her wrist harder and shares a horrified look with Santos, trying to communicate with his eyes something, anything but she seems just as stunned as he is. 

“Mel, I’m okay,” he tries gently. “Look at me, honey, I’m fine.” 

Santos thankfully doesn’t comment on what he’s said, focuses instead on drawing the curtain around them to give them some privacy. She stands half in and half out like a guard dog, arms crossed against her chest, trading worried glances between Mel and the ER. 

“Mel, sweetheart,” he finds himself saying. He pulls her closer by the wrist until her hips are between his knees. She barely reacts, only continues crying so he runs his other hand along her side, shushing her softly. “It’s okay, I’m okay. We’re okay, take a deep breath.” 

She’s nodding so he at least knows she hears him and he continues the movements with his hand. 

“You’re kinda ruining my street cred, hon,” he jokes. “I can take a hit.” 

“No you can’t,” Santos chimes in, not even looking their way. 

Mel lets out a little groan and suddenly her forehead is pressed against the top of his head. The last time she got this close to him they were in his bed together and despite the consistent throbbing in his face and the tears she’s letting out, he finds it kind of… nice. 

Her glasses are in his hair and he wraps his arm around her waist fully, allowing himself to rub her back. He’s cognizant that Santos is still standing there, that anyone could walk in and not understand what was happening right now (did he?) but he can’t bring himself to care. 

Frank can feel her body start to relax, the tears slow down and her breathing even. He feels his own tension in his shoulders subside and lets himself enjoy how close she is to him. 

“You’re okay, honey,” he says below her, practically into her stomach, and that earns him a wet, slightly hysterical, chuckle. 

“I should be asking you if you’re okay,” she mumbles against the top of his head. She sighs, the breath tickling his hair, and she lifts her head off him. He doesn’t let her go far, keeps his hand on her hip but does let go of her wrist so she can wipe away the remaining tears in her eyes under her glasses. 

“Sorry,” Mel mumbles, her cheeks heating. “Sometimes I cry when I’m scared.”

She pulls away and he lets her go to his dismay, but she only sanitizes and puts some gloves on, returning to her previous position between his legs once she’s done. 

Mel starts touching his face, far gentler than Santos had, humming to herself every so often. 

“Definitely not broken,” she says quietly and he barely hears Santos mumble a “told you” under her breath, too focused on Mel. 

“You should still get a head CT,” she tells him. “And you might have a concussion. Maybe I could—”

He knows she wants to suggest staying in his bed again and while Santos hasn’t made a comment towards him for comforting her while she cried, he’s not sure he wants her to know about their latest development. 

“Yeah,” he says softly. And he knows she gets it with the way her eyes light up briefly, her mouth quirking in that way when she’s trying not to smile. He pokes at her side teasingly, trying to draw it out of her.

“Dr. Santos?” Mel asks, still looking at him, “Can you go order that head CT?” 

Santos glances between the two of them, longer at Frank but then just nods, excusing herself wordlessly. 

“I still feel like my heart is racing,” Mel admits and Frank squeezes her hip again, smiling. 

“For the record,” he starts. “I would be just as bad if I found out you were hurt. Maybe worse.” 

He probably would’ve ended up in jail but he doesn’t say that, doesn’t want to worry her more. 

“I’m sorry for crying,” Mel sighs. 

“Don’t apologize,” he says immediately. “It’s nice to know you care so much.” 

“Of course, I care about you.” 

She looks exhausted, exasperated with him, and he can feel the waters getting muddy, knows they’re toeing something he shouldn’t be entertaining. He was walking a thin line of recovery, there were too many opportunities for him to hurt himself and her. Frank can’t really think straight though because she’s still so close to him and giving him a look he wants to memorize for the rest of his life. 

“Well, that’s a relief,” he finds himself saying, “because I care about you too.”

“Yeah,” Mel replies, and then she brushes some of his hair out of his eyes with her fingers, light and barely there but just enough, “I know you do.”

***

There’s no preamble and she doesn’t have it in her to pretend tonight, not when she was so frightened. 

She tucks her head against his chest in his bed, her arm around his stomach, his hand rubbing absent circles on her back. 

It was natural, this progression, and she doesn’t let herself overthink it, just lets herself breathe with him. 

Rocky’s curled at their feet, snoring already, as steady as the beat of Frank’s heart under her ear. Alive, alive, alive, it tells her. 

“How’s your head feeling?” she asks quietly. 

“Mm, a little sore,” he admits. “Probably would be better if I took more than a baby aspirin but…”

He doesn’t have to say anymore, she was standing next to him during the slight argument at the ER over what to give him. Robby had been on a call with the hospital's HR department trying to see what the parameters were but Frank had just dismissed the idea entirely. 

“Save everyone the mountain of paperwork,” he had said, but Mel saw how tense his jaw was, that under the light hearted joking tone he used there was a real fear there of what could happen if a prescription painkiller were to enter his bloodstream again. 

Mel had given him the baby aspirin herself and watched him swallow the pill in the kitchen. She could tell it was a big deal for him and held his hand the entire time. 

“I wish I could do more to help,” she sighs, running her thumb along the edge of his soft shirt. 

His arm tightens slightly around her waist, “This is helping. My own personal weighted blanket.” 

She huffs, smiling slightly into his chest. 

“I’m sorry I scared you,” he continues quietly. “I want to say I’ll never do it again but unfortunately for the both of us I have a tendency to do a lot of stupid shit.” 

“You kind of do,” she agrees and his chest rumbles with his surprised laughter. It shakes her slightly but she settles back against him, taking a deep breath. “The last time I was in the hospital for someone I—” she swallows. “My mom was sick. She wasn’t and then she was again and it was all very sudden.”

Frank’s hand on her back stills but then it resumes, urging her to continue. 

“She had a fairly aggressive metastatic stomach cancer,” Mel tells him. It hurts because she hasn't talked about her mother in ages, but she wants him to know her, as much as she’s able to give. “My dad had already passed — heart attack — and she was so busy taking care of us that she was neglectful of her own checkups.” 

“Sweetheart, that’s not your fault.” 

She nods into his chest and Frank’s hand comes up to settle on her shoulder, squeezing her into a half hug. 

“I know,” she states, and she does, logically but it would never fully erase the guilt she felt. “But she, well, she did get better. Her radiation treatments and surgeries worked and she was supposed to be in remission.” 

“But she didn’t make it?” 

“No, her heart failed,” she sniffs. “It was a month before my high school graduation and by the time I got to the hospital she was already dead.” 

Frank squeezes her a little tighter and she wipes at her eyes, trying not to get the droplets all over his shirt. It’s a useless feat and she curls into him even more, her knee resting over his thigh. 

She’s not sure if this is okay, what the rules are, if there are rules here. But Frank isn’t pulling away from her, only closer, like he wants to mold himself into her just as badly as she wants to with him. 

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye,” he says above her. 

“Yeah, me too,” she agrees. “I really wish you could’ve met her. She would’ve liked you. And the kids.” 

“Fuck, Mel,” he rasps. His voice sounds like he’s been crying too but she doesn’t dare look up, only burrows deeper. “If she was anything like you I’m sure I would’ve—” he stops, sighs. “Yeah, I—will you tell me about her?” 

Her words are a little lost but she nods against his chest, sighing out when his hand finds a home against the back of her head. 

It stays there as she settles, the even beat of his heart under her ear and the consistent pressure of his hand on her skull loosening any remaining tension in her shoulders, left only with this feeling of safety and warmth in its wake. 

She allows her eyes to close and breathes in the scent of him, the familiar ambiance of her parent’s bedroom curling deep inside of her bones. 

It’s the best sleep she’s had in months. 

***

It’s the best sleep he’s had in years. 

Chapter Text

They don’t talk about it but it doesn’t stop. 

Pandora’s box has fully been opened, and neither of them have addressed the fact that every night without fail, they fall into bed together. It doesn’t matter which of their rooms; Frank prefers Mel’s, it’s cozier, more lived in, she has more pillows. Sometimes Mel redirects them, nearly drags them into Frank’s room and he wonders if it has anything to do with missing her parents. 

He doesn’t say anything about that, or fucking anything really, because while he does have a history of being kind of a coward, he’s really is just scared out of his fucking mind. 

She had opened up to him more about her mom, mostly in passing comments that left him floored each time she revealed them. She took her tea with three sugars just like Frank did, the sewing machine Mel patched Erin’s jeans with belonged to her mother, the big scratch in the door frame of Mel’s room is from a game of indoor hockey her parent’s played with them when they were children. 

He’s afraid to ask more, to push her in anyway, so he tucks away each fact neatly, despite his every growing list of questions. The dichotomy of her sharing her history with him while the both of them ignore the shift in their friendship, relationship, whatever, has left him on uneven ground. 

Still, though, he accepts each piece she offers with careful consideration, cherishing the trust she’s shown him. It helps, immensely, that he knows after each shift, each NA meeting, or shitty therapy session that he was going to be able to come home to her, to fall asleep next to her, to hold her or be held by her. 

Frank is increasingly aware of how risky this is, that there’s a million and one reasons that could drive him and Mel apart, that this thing could implode within itself at any second, of any day, and just be over. He worries greatly that if things did end, like they most often do for him, how he would handle it. He’s not sure he likes his own predicted answer. 

His therapist says he should take a step back. Or at least talk to her. 

But he can’t, because he’s gotten used to falling asleep to the sound of Mel’s even breathing and waking up to the faint scent of her strawberry shampoo in his nose. He’s an addict, he knows this. He can’t stop. 

He doesn’t want to.

***

She doesn’t know when things became so different and yet startlingly the same. 

There’s a culmination of small moments and big moments all tangled together that have led to this she’s sure. Comforting, friendly touches that suddenly held meaning and an intertwining of their families that became impossible to ignore. He holds her hand when they take Rocky out for walks now; she attended Erin’s school play and sat right between Frank and Abby because Abby claimed she liked her better anyway. He washes the dishes each night after she’s cooked them dinner, and there’s pictures of him and his family intermingled with her own along the walls of her childhood home. She tries to sort through these things the best she can, she’s always been intelligent and logically she should be able to assign a definition to what it is they’re doing. 

Mel no longer sleeps alone; fact. Frank’s got a spare charger on her nightstand along with a stress toy that looks like a dumpling; also fact. Two of her pillows have a permanent residence on his bed and on more than one occasion he’s jokingly complained about how she sheds like a dog all over his shirt in the middle of the night; glaringly accurate with evidence to prove it. She normally wakes up first and no matter who’s bed it is, he’s usually touching her in some way, an arm around the waist, a fist curled in her shirt, or her personal favorite, his head fully laying on her chest; each of them equally devastating. Once she thinks she feels his lips press into the back of her neck before retiring after a particularly difficult shift; inconclusive, could’ve been a dream. 

She’s been able to open up to him more about her parents and in turn he’s begun sharing things about his own family with her. 

Mel knew his father was dead, an alcoholic, but she didn’t know just how bad things were for him growing up. That he used to hit Frank and his brother, would disappear for weeks on end, and drive them around despite his intoxication. 

“He wrapped his car around a tree when I was seven,” he told her one night in bed. She had her head on his shoulder and her hand on his clothed stomach. “It was—yeah it was bad.”

“Jesus, Frank,” she had muttered. 

“I was lucky I was sitting behind my dad or else I would’ve been dead,” he said. “The passenger side was just gone. It was—you know he never apologized to me for that?” 

“He didn’t?” 

“No, I don’t think he actually remembered what happened. I was in the hospital for a week,” he sighed against her hair. “He died during my last year of med school but I didn’t even go to the funeral. Abby doesn’t even know that. I told her I went but I—I just drove around for a while and came back to the shitty apartment we were living in.” 

He said that a lot too. 

That she was now privy to information that even his ex-wife didn’t have. It was confusing yet exhilarating to know that he trusted her so much. Mel’s best friend had always been her sister, but she was starting to wonder if there was room for Frank to claim that label too. 

And while she tells Becca nearly everything, there were things, fears, regrets, hopes, desires, that she felt more comfortable sharing with him. 

She never told anyone about the suffocation she felt in this very house after her mom had died, how she had to drag Becca with her to DC so she could start her undergraduate degree. 

“I was so scared,” she had told him. They weren’t touching but they were curled in on each other, two halves of a hole. “Becca didn’t want to leave but I had to. This house was too—it was so empty without her. It was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done in my life.” 

Other than this, she had wanted to say, but she didn’t, had only cried a little when Frank told her what she did was brave. 

“You did what you had to do, sweetheart,” he told her. That was new too, casual and easy yet each time her heart clenched in her chest. “You took care of yourself and your sister. You just needed time to process, that doesn’t make you a bad person.”

“Therapy’s made you quite introspective.” 

A laugh, one of those small smiles that made her own lips tug. Those smiles made her want to kiss him, a lot of the things he did made her want to kiss him, but each time she refrained, trying to tread the careful balance of platonic intimacy they’ve formed. 

The liminal space within their bedrooms becomes a refuge for them to open up. Outside of this, their routines remain the same. Frank still drives them to and from work, she packs them lunches most days, and they linger on too many cases together as an R3 and R4 should. They watch low-stakes television on her couch and work their way through trying the local coffee shops around them. There's a calendar of his children's events posted on the fridge and they find the time to get together with Trinity, Dennis, and/or Samira outside of work. 

So what if she’s more rested?

So what if she’s the happiest she’s ever been? 

Despite the confusion, despite this deep, undeniable ache for more, she’s content with whatever it is they have right now. 

He doesn’t bring it up so neither will she. 

It’s fine. 

***

It’s very much not fine. 

The only unexpected effect their new dynamic brings is that Frank hasn’t thought about using in ages. 

There's no one for him to turn to with his dilemma; he can't tell Mel, for starters. And he can't tell Santos, who would just tell him very unhelpfully to go for it. Samira definitely suspects something is going on, but he's seen her chasing after Abbot too many times to know she's probably just as emotionally stunted as he is. Whitaker, well he might just melt into ground. And who does that leave? Robby? He'd rather die. 

He doesn’t feel comfortable disclosing this to his therapist, because he really doesn’t want to have to sit through another lecture on how he should probably move out and set some clearer boundaries, so instead he brings it up during NA. 

It turns out they’re not much help either and after careful deliberation and data collection from his fellow addict peers, he comes to the consensus that he has no fucking idea what to do. 

Half of them tell him to go for it, the other half tell him to steer clear. They all, however, seem to be in agreement that no matter what he decides to do, he’s still at risk for relapse anyway. Losing her friendship could be just as detrimental as losing her in a relationship, if she even wanted to be in a relationship with him. It’s not like he’s ever asked. 

His brain is scrambled after his meeting and instead of driving back to Mel’s, he pulls onto the highway, blaring the radio as loud as it will go. 

He doesn’t call his mother to warn him of his arrival, instead he shows up, grateful his brother’s car isn’t in the drive as he makes his way up to her front porch. There’s a scratch in the banister from where he used to lean his bicycle and he thumbs over it with a sigh. 

The lights are still on inside and he rings the bell twice, feeling like an idiot with his hands shoved into his pockets as he waits for her to open the door. He should’ve called her first, he should’ve just—

“Oh, sweetheart,” his mother says the moment the door swings open, “What happened?” 

“I got divorced,” he blurts out, “And I think I met somebody.” 

His mother, dark hair like him, but a bit messier, glasses on her nose in a crew neck from his alma mater and sweats with a hole in the knee, folds her arms across her chest and sighs. 

“Oh for the love of god, Frankie,” she says. “Come in.” 

He shuffles in awkwardly behind her, toeing his shoes off at the front door and follows her into the living room. The tv is on but paused on some baking show, the lamp in the corner turned to the lowest setting. 

It’s a wreck just like the last time he stepped foot in here several years ago — newspapers on the coffee table and the couch, books neither of his parents ever read stacked in piles high off the floor, shopping bags and old clothes crammed into every spot imaginable. 

There are no family pictures on the walls here, not like Mel’s house, only an emptiness that threatens to swallow him whole. 

Frank sits on the arm of the couch. 

“I’m gonna make tea, you want some?” his mother asks, walking into the kitchen. 

“No, I’m good, Ma.” 

He runs a hand down his face and pulls his phone out of his pocket, swearing quietly when he realizes he hadn’t told Mel where he was going. 

Just got home and I’m making that taco casserole you like, will you be home soon? 

Frank? 

Where did you go? Do I need to be worried? 

She attached a screenshot of his location that they’ve long since shared with each other and he shakes his head, responding quickly. 

I’m at my mom’s house. 

I kind of blacked out after my NA meeting and just drove here, I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t text you. Completely safe and sober, promise. 

He watches the three little dots appear almost immediately and her message follows shortly after. 

That’s good! I’m glad you went to talk to her, I’m so proud of you! There will be a dinner plate in the fridge for you when you get back. 

He smiles, heart a little sore. 

Thanks, Mel. I’ll text you when I’m on my way home. 

She hearts the message and his brain rattles a little at his use of the word home. He’s not sure he’s ever called it that before and as he sits in the house he grew up in, he’s increasingly aware of how much more of a home her place feels than this one ever did. 

“So divorce, huh?” his mother asks, entering back into the room. She sits on her old reclining chair, the one his father used to sit in, and takes a sip of her tea. 

“Yeah,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, it just uh, well you know, it just didn’t work, okay? But we’re good, the kids are good, everyone’s good.” 

She hums, “Well that’s a damn shame, Abby is a good woman.” 

“She is,” Frank agrees readily. “But we fell out of love.” 

“You cheat on her?” 

“What? No,” he scoffs. She just sips her tea giving him the same look she used to give him when she caught him smoking up in his room. “I didn’t cheat on her, Ma. It’s not like that.” 

“But you met someone else?” 

He runs his hands down his thighs over his jeans and nods. 

“Yeah, we work together,” he tells her but gets stuck on the fact that they’re already living together so he keeps that to himself, “She’s—she’s fucking incredible. Like I don’t deserve her levels of incredible, okay?” 

“You said that about Abby too before you told me you were gonna marry her.” 

He groans and his neck heats, this uncomfortable swirl settling into the pit of his stomach. He should've just called her, he shouldn’t have stepped foot in this house. There was a reason they always did the holiday’s at his and Abby’s place, there was a reason he hasn’t been inside of here in years. 

“Listen, Ma, I’m not going to sit here and defend my life to you okay?” he sighs. “I fucked up, I know I fucked up. But I’m clean, I’m back at work, I love my kids. I’m a good father, better than he ever—" he swallows because he’s not sure he could take her defending him right now and just sighs. “There’s not much else.” 

“You came here just to tell me that?”

“Yeah, fuck, I don’t know, I guess I did.” 

His mother just makes a noise and he stands suddenly, restless. 

“You know—” he starts. 

“We’ll get dinner next week,” she interrupts. “With this new woman, what’s her name?” 

He deflates. 

“Mel.”

“Alright,” she dismisses, “I need to get back to my program. I’ll see you in a week, sweetheart.” 

She waves him over and he obliges, leaning down to give her a half hug and a kiss on the cheek. They don’t part with ‘I love you’s’—they never were that kind of family and he leaves the house without so much as a goodbye. 

He gets into his truck and dials Mel before he’s even pulled out of the driveway. 

“Hey, that was quick,” she answers after the second ring, “How’d everything go with your mom? 

“About as awkward as I could’ve imagined,” he says. He can hear the faint sound of the tv in the background. “I don’t even know why I showed up here, I just—anyway, she uh, she wants to get dinner with us next week.” 

“Us?” she questions. 

He drums on the steering wheel, nibbling his bottom lip. 

“Yeah, like me and you,” he says, “And her, obviously. If like, well if that’s okay with you.”

“You want me to meet your mother.” 

Frank wishes he was with her so he could read her face, so he could get a proper gauge on her reaction. 

“Yeah, Mel, I want you to meet her,” he finally replies. “Is that okay?” 

He can barely hear her inhale over the shitty speaker in his phone but he counts to three in his head so he doesn’t panic, worried maybe he’s finally overstepped. 

“I would—I would love to meet your mom, Frank.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah,” she sighs, and he thinks it’s a happy one, can picture her smiling, “Of course. Are you, um, are you almost home?” 

“Yeah, like fifteen, twenty minutes tops. I know it’s late, you can go to bed without me.” 

She hums, “I can wait up.” 

“You’ll fall asleep,” he chuckles, he can already imagine her on the couch, eyes half closed, wrapped in a blanket looking as cozy and inviting as she always does. 

“Not if you keep talking to me.” 

“You want to stay on the phone with me? You’re gonna see me tonight.” 

“Mhm.” 

This girl. 

“Fine, Mel,” he laughs again, finally pulling onto the highway and away from the house he grew up in, the tension in his chest finally loosening, “Tell me about your day.” 

“Well, would you like to hear about the emergency appendectomy Garcia let me perform with her in surgery? Or about the very much alive goldfish I pulled out of a patient’s body?”

“The goldfish, obviously, come on, do you even have to ask?” 

She laughs and it sounds like magic. 

***

It’s nearly six months to the day that he’s returned to work when Robby corners him.

Well, sort of. 

Frank had a kid that was declared brain dead. Hit by a car on his bike. No helmet. He was Tanner’s age. 

He had sat with Collins when they broke the news to the family, her hand resting uncomfortably on her own stomach, to explain to them that their little boy was never going to wake up again. He should’ve offered to take the case from her, but he’s not even sure he would’ve been able to do it on his own. Maybe she knew that too and they sat together with the parents, answering each of their questions as calmly as they could. 

They had taken it about as well to be expected, those earth shattering sobs that he knew he was going to hear again tonight, begging and pleading for them to do something, try anything. 

Collins had let him leave after that so she could sit with the parents a little while longer and he had gone straight to Mel across the ER, telling her to meet him on the roof when she was done with her patient. He could tell she was conflicted but before he could force her to choose between her career or him in that moment, he disappeared from her side with a parting squeeze to her wrist. 

He’s halfway through his second cigarette when the door of the roof opens but to his surprise it’s not her, but Robby. 

“Oh,” Frank says lamely. “Uh, everything okay down there?” 

“Yeah, Frank, Mel she, uh—”

“Is she okay?” 

He hates that his spine goes a little rigid and Robby, the bastard, laughs. 

“She’s fine, relax,” he says in amusement. He puts his hands into his sweatshirt pockets and tilts his head. “She’s tied up with a patient but she wanted me to check on you, so here I am. Checking.”

Frank blows a breath and tries not to roll his eyes. 

“Right, well, consider me checked,” he huffs, turning back to lean on the railing. He expected Robby to leave but instead he leans on the railing next to him. 

“I’m sorry about the kid,” Robby sighs. “You uh, you call Tanner?”

“He’s at school, so.”

“Right.”

It’s stilted and awkward and maybe Frank will jump just to get out of this conversation. 

“So what’s the deal between you and Dr. King?”

“Really?”

Frank lets out an incredulous laugh and looks at Robby to find him smiling. 

“Don’t feed me some bullshit that you two are still just roommates,” he continues and before Frank can try and articulate a work appropriate response Robby says: “You know me and Heather were roommates for a while.” 

“You and Dr. Collins were a thing?” Frank asks. Where the hell was he? “Where the hell was I?” 

“Busy being the hot shot intern with your head up your own ass,” Robby jokes. “I don’t think you noticed anything that wasn’t a high-risk procedure or an impossible case.” 

Frank hums because he’s not wrong; he had felt like he had something to prove back then. He went to state school, was afraid he peaked in med school, he never felt like he fit into medicine until he had stepped foot into the ER. It was part of the reason he chewed out Santos on her first day. He was such an asshole. Maybe some pavlovian part of him was trying to stop it in her.

His brain catches up and Frank stares at him, mouth agape. 

“Wait a goddamn minute, are you and her still—”

“We are not talking about that,” Robby interrupts immediately. Which is the most non-answer on the fucking planet. And a telling one. He wonders if it would be appropriate to get him a ‘#1 Dad’ mug. Probably not. “We’re talking about you right now.” 

Frank smirks, “Will I at least get a wedding invite? I promise not to drink.”

Robby groans. 

“Just as unbearable as back then, huh?” Frank says. He finishes his cigarette and tosses it onto the pile of other buds, from other doctors who found reprieve up here. 

“No, you were our most promising resident,” Robby states. “You still are.” 

Frank meets his gaze but doesn’t know what to say, stuck for a minute in suspended time. There are apologises drafted in the corners of his mind for stealing, for worrying him, but mostly for letting him down. He doesn’t say anything though because they both know words would never be enough to fix things, that coming to work everyday clean was the best apology he could ever offer. 

“She makes you a better doctor,” Robby offers at last. He squeezes his shoulder in that overly paternal way he does and Frank’s eyes burn. “And listen I know I haven’t been—I’m just glad you’re here, okay?” 

“Yeah, man, uh, me too.” 

He releases his hold on him and starts walking away, but stops, sighing. 

“I’m glad you’re back.”

He’s been back for months, but maybe Robby realizes too that he’s only just re-found his footing. 

Frank watches Robby leave, the door of the roof closing firmly behind him. He debates on whether or not he should smoke another cigarette but ultimately decides against it. 

He was okay, he was still here, he was needed. 

Frank pushes off the railing and heads back downstairs. 

***

She’s just finished inhaling a granola bar when Frank appears at her side. 

“You’re supposed to chew and then swallow,” he says. His eyes look a little lighter, not that hollow daze he had when he approached her about an hour ago. He leans against the nursing station and she looks up from the computer she had been charting at. 

“How are you?” she tries to ask, but it comes out more like “Ow’er ya?” 

Frank gives her one of those small private smiles he usually reserves for when they’re lying next to each other in bed. Her stomach warms. 

“Better, thanks, you know,” he says. “For sending Robby up. Even if it was kind of parent trappy.” 

Mel finally swallows and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Frank’s already handing her his red bull and she takes a swing, returning it back to his waiting grip. 

“Parent trappy?” Mel questions, then, “Oh, joke?” 

“You haven’t seen The Parent Trap?” 

She shakes her head. 

“It’s a movie, Tanner loves it, I’ll explain it later,” Frank says and she wonders if it’ll be in the car, on the couch, or in bed. He drums his fingers against his desk and glances around the ER. “Collins still in there with the family?” 

“Mm,” she replies, biting her cheek a little. “Yeah, they’re um, talking about keeping him on the vent.” 

“Shit,” he huffs. “I mean fuck, I don’t even know—” he shakes his head and she watches him fiddle with his friendship bracelet. Her throat feels a little thick and she realizes she’s thinking about Frank’s children as well. 

For so long it was just her and Becca, but in the past few months she’s grown to love his kids deeply. She cared for them so much and she’s not sure what she would do if anything happened to them. Or Frank. She wonders briefly what he would do if something happened to her. 

“I don’t want to be put on a vent,” she finds herself saying. His fingers stop drumming and she feels him staring at her despite her looking straight ahead at the computer. “Well, use your judgement I guess, but no longer than a week if no significant improvement.” 

“You’d want me to decide?” 

“Of course,” she continues. “You’re a good doctor and I don’t think Becca would fully grasp what was happening.” 

Frank releases a breath and she risks a glance at him. He looks slightly devastated at the prospect of her hypothetical death and she wishes she hadn’t brought it up at all. 

“Sure, Mel, no vent,” Frank finally says. “But I will be using extraordinary measures before that.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” 

She smiles at him and Santos saunters up to them, biting into a sandwich. 

“What’re we talking about?” she asks, mouth full. 

“Mel’s end of life care,” Frank replies with a grimace. “No vents, what about you?” 

“Like if I’ve gone full veg?” Santos questions. At Frank’s nod she shrugs. “Smother me with a pillow I think,” she points her sandwich at Mel. “You can do it, you’d be nice about it.” 

Mel’s nose wrinkles. 

“I don’t think I’d want to do that.” 

“Oh, but I can pull you off the vent?” Frank questions. “Unfair.” 

“Wouldn’t you want me to pull you off the vent?” she asks. 

Frank opens his mouth and closes it a few times and Santos snorts, taking another bite of her sandwich. 

“I’ll do it,” Santos declares. “For both of you. But one of you would have to do Whitaker.” 

“Awe,” Frank coos mockingly at her, “You do have a heart.” 

Santos sticks her tongue out at him much like a child would and disappears as quickly as she’s come. 

“Kids,” Dana calls from the nurses station and they both look towards her, “Motorcycle versus box truck, five minutes out.” 

Mel finishes her typing knowing full well she’s going to have to finish this thought later. Frank takes a final drink of his red bull and tosses it in the garbage, already handing her a pair of gloves. 

“You think all his limbs will still be attached?” Frank asks as they make their way to the ambulance bay. 

“Well, for his sake I certainly hope so.” 

Frank smiles and nudges his shoulder against hers just as the ambulance is rolling up. They make their way to the back doors and the EMT opens it, their voices overlapping as they both ask:

“What do we got?” 

***

They make quick work of a leftover casserole Mel had made the night before and watch half an episode of House Hunters before Becca is requesting a game of Uno.

None of them are ever satisfied after just one game so it quickly turns into several, at one point he has nearly half the deck in his hand after Becca and Mel decided to team up against him and he starts dropping cards on the floor. Becca determines each floor card is worth a whopping one hundred points against him, and by the end of it he’s racked up enough to be declared the biggest loser in the history of Uno. 

Despite the roughness of the start of his day he feels lighter and can tell Mel feels the same. It’s barely nine when Becca yawns so loud her jaw cracks and she drags Rocky into her room without so much as a goodnight. 

They don’t need to talk about it but they retire to Mel’s room as well. They’re stuck on the afternoon shift tomorrow but the thought of being able to sleep in a little while extra makes them both sigh out the moment they lay down in her bed. 

“I think we need to get Becca into poker,” he says tiredly. 

Mel snorts, “That’s a horrible idea, she’ll steal all your money.” 

“Ah, yes, my thirteen dollars in my checking account will be sorely missed.”

She lets out a little laugh and he reaches out to find one of her hands, settling slightly now that they’re touching.  

“Are you okay?” she asks softly. “I know today was difficult and we didn’t really get to talk about it.” 

Her eyelids look as heavy as his feel and he runs his thumb along the top of her cheek before he can think better of it. He watches her eyelashes flutter but he doesn’t remove his hand. 

“Yeah, sweetheart, I’m alright.” 

She hums and shifts closer to him in the bed, eyes closed and smiling slightly. 

“I like when you call me that.” 

Heat pools in his stomach and here in her bedroom, in the solace and safety it offers, with her so close to him, he chooses not to shy away. 

Instead he allows himself to move closer and drops a kiss to the top of her head, leaving his lips pressed against her hair. 

“Yeah?” he manages. “What about ‘honey’?” 

She’s quiet and for a second he’s worried he’s overstepped but she squeezes his hand.

“That’s good too.”

He hums, swallowing.

“Baby?” 

Frank can hear her breath catch slightly but she covers it up with a feigned sound of annoyance. 

“Maybe it’ll grow on me.” 

She must be half asleep, her filter, like his, gone. He doesn’t know what they’re doing anymore, but with the weight of the day behind him, he allows himself to just be. 

He maneuvers her body closer to his so her head is fully tucked under his chin. She’s quick to settle, sighing out pleasantly against his chest, her hand curling into the material of his shirt where he hopes it would stay the remainder of the night. 

“G’night, Frank.” 

I love you. 

“Goodnight, sweetheart.” 

 ***

It’s still dark when his eyes crack open and he smacks his lips a few times, trying to get Mel’s hair out of his mouth.

At some point in the night they’ve completely tangled into each other, Mel’s body pressed fully against his own with Frank’s leg slotted in between both of her thighs. It wouldn’t be a problem if she wasn’t squirming so much and it takes his tired brain a moment to realize what she was doing. 

“Mel, fuck, wake up.” 

She lets out a little sigh but she continues her movements, grinding, he thinks blearily, she’s grinding against his bare thigh.

“Mel,” he tries again, a little firmer. She’s in the smallest pair of sleep shorts and the brush of her thighs against his own as she moves makes his head fill with static. He manages to place his hand on her hip and he holds, hoping to stop her movements. As much as he wants—he doesn’t want her to be embarrassed, he doesn’t want her doing something she’d regret. He doesn’t think he could live with himself if she ever felt regret towards him. 

Frank can feel her stir and her hand pushes slightly against his chest creating the smallest bit of space between them. Their legs are still tangled together and he realizes she’s woken up when she goes rigid against him. 

“It’s okay,” he says above her quietly. “You were just dreaming, it’s okay.” 

“Oh, god,” she mumbles and her head thumps against the center of his chest, “I am so sorry.”

“It’s fine, Mel,” he says again and then like an idiot, “It feels better when you’re awake anyway.”

She makes a small noise and he sucks a breath, his apology hot on his tongue. 

“I’m—that’s not how I wanted to—” he tries. Fuck, he’s not awake enough for this and she’s too close to him to think straight. “I mean, shit, can we just pretend I didn’t say anything?” 

“Oh.”

“Fuck, that’s not what I meant, okay?” he rushes. “We can talk about this when we’re both more awake. I want to talk about this with you.” 

“What if—” she says quietly against his chest and then shifts against him slightly. “We could—if you want, um, you could well…”

His heart is thumping loudly in his chest and his lips brush against the crown of her head. He wants and wants and wants, and for a second he entertains what it could be like to have. 

“I could what, Melissa?” 

“Show me how it feels?”

He barely hears it over the low whirring of her white noise machine and for a moment he wonders if he’s the one dreaming, but she’s breathing quietly, still in his arms, tangible, there. 

“Yeah?” he confirms lowly and she nods just enough for her nose to brush against his jaw. 

Because she’s pretty and warm and he’s wanted her for months, he flexes his hand on her hip, not stopping but guiding, a perfunctory ‘oh’ leaving her half parted lips before she sighs into his neck. 

“There you go, sweetheart,” he rasps. A voice he doesn’t recognize but still his, wrecked. She’s ruined him, he knows this by the direct swivels of her hips into his thigh and a small fist gripping the front of his shirt. 

He bargains with himself that what they’re doing is okay because he’s not touching himself, despite his ever growing hard-on pressing into her hip, despite everything in his body telling him to bury himself in the wet heat of her. 

“Frank,” she whines, and nothing has ever been sweeter. “It’s not—enough.” 

“Jesus, baby, okay, yeah.” And her hair is loose so he tangles his hand in it, soft, smooth, just like everything else about her. He pulls enough to force her neck to crane upwards so he can finally look at her, the air knocked out of his stomach, carefully laid endless layers of bricks immediately crumbling down. 

He presses his forehead against hers and leaves it there, breathing her in, the hand still on her hip guiding her movements against his thigh. 

“O-oh, that’s—” she breaks off when her lips brush against his, her next breath entangling with his own. 

“Yeah? Tell me, honey, I want to hear it.”

“It’s good,” she whispers against his mouth, “You make me feel so good.” 

He knows there’s a wet spot on his thigh and at her next breathy moan he breaks, closing the gap between their mouths. 

He swallows the noise she makes and is surprised to be met with such desperation from her. He wonders if she aches for this just as much as he does, finds her tongue seeking his own before it reaches out to her. She’s shivery with a need he wants to bottle up, desperate to memorize each detail of the way she feels like this. 

She’s perfect, heartbreakingly so. 

“Perfect, sweetheart,” he says against her lips, cognizant of his hand still helping her roll her hips against his thigh, “There you go, just like that, baby. Sweet girl, you can do it.”

She moans again, just as sweet and so close to his mouth that he can feel the vibrations on his lips. He’s suddenly overtly glad to be sober, that he’s going to remember each drag of her hips against him, the taste of her, each breath she takes. 

“Such a quick learner,” he rambles. “You’re doing so well. God, you’re always so fucking good at everything.”

“Frank, you can’t—” she whines. And he could die he thinks, he could die right here, “I’m gonna—”

“I know, perfect girl, show me.”

Her hips falter and he feels her thighs clench harshly against his own, the moan she lets out loud enough that he kisses her again to muffle the sound. He can feel the tension in her literally melt away and he rubs her hip bone with his thumb soothingly, savoring the tiny pleased noises she makes as she comes down from her high. She draws away to inhale deeply and he watches her, fascinated. 

“Oh, that was—wow,” Mel swallows, blinking at him rapidly. “Are we okay?” 

“Yeah, yes, fuck, Mel,” Frank sighs, kissing her again. “Of course we’re okay. That was—you’re incredible.” 

Her nose crinkles slightly and in the darkness he can just make out her cheeks heating. 

“But you didn’t…” she trails. 

“That’s okay,” he says immediately, because it was. It would take him a while to calm down, sure, but he’d be just fine. “It was good for you though, right? You feel okay?” 

“Yeah, I feel… floaty. It’s nice though.” 

“Yeah?” 

She hums a little and leans up to kiss him again on the mouth. It’s slow and exploratory, yet still direct and controlled. Much like their other nights in bed together it feels like having a conversation, answering to each response. He holds her face in one of his hands and she slides one of hers aimlessly around his shirt, pulling and gripping in between kisses. She’s pliant and moldable and yet not, kissing him much like the way she talks, gentle but to the point. He can’t get enough of her and a part of him is worried he’s not awake at all. 

She tastes like mint toothpaste and something that’s all Mel, a warmth to her he wants to drown in until their lips go numb.

Floaty, she had said, yeah he feels pretty floaty too. 

He hasn’t properly made out with someone since he was in college and he finds himself grinning against her mouth.

“I’m so glad this isn’t your parent's room.”

“Frank —oh my—oh my god.”

He smiles and presses a kiss against her chin. He feels so happy his heart could burst. It wasn’t just him that wanted this, she wanted it too. 

“I really don’t think I could have sex in there,” he says, feeling slightly insane, happy, “so this might have to be the sex room.”

Mel lets out one of those surprised giggles and then puts her hand over her mouth, flushing. 

“God, I’m sorry, that wasn’t very… attractive was it?” she removes her hand and swallows roughly, “Frank, what are the rules here?”

He frowns.

“Rules?”

"I don't—I've never had sex with my best friend before."

She nibbles on her bottom lip nervously and then releases it. He runs his thumb over it and she shudders slightly. He likes to think he and Abby were friends throughout their relationship and while Mel's told him about some of her previous partners, he aches a little knowing that may not have been the case for her. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” he sighs, pressing a light kiss to her nose, the corner of her mouth, “There aren't rules to this as long as we're both enjoying ourselves. And for the record I am very attracted to you.”

“Oh… really?”

It’s so small and timid and so at odds with the confidence she normally holds. He suddenly wants to find every single man she’s ever let get close to her like this and throttle them. 

“Mel,” he swears, kissing her again because he can, “You’re beautiful and I want you, clearly,” he laughs, shifting his hips slightly so she can feel how hard he still is for her. It was going to take him a while to cool down but it was all worth it to see her eyes go wide with surprise. 

“Oh, wow, you really—sometimes I think I’m just making it all up in my head,” she rushes. “Or maybe I was just imagining things I wanted to be true. I have a very active imagination.” 

He shakes his head and his eyes flutter a little when her fingers trace the line of his jaw. 

“You weren’t imagining anything,” he promises. “I was just scared I was going to fuck this all up. I still am.” 

“Frank,” she sighs. She draws his face towards hers and he follows easily, kissing her soundly. They linger for a while, just breathing each other in for a minute until she draws away again. “I’m scared too, but I think we’re allowed to at least try, don’t you?” 

“You’ve always been the smarter of the two of us,” he jokes, and she kisses his cheek, trying to hide her pleased grin. 

His palm comes to rest against her stomach and the edge of his fingers dip underneath the band of her shorts. His thumb strokes the skin there and he’s about to suggest they try and get some sleep when Mel shifts her hips a little, giving him a slightly pointed look. 

“You want—yeah?” 

“Please?” 

“You’re sure—yeah, fuck, Mel, okay.” 

Slowly as if to give her time to change her mind, he edges his hand down, but the first brush of his fingers against her produces a sound from her that’s so devastating he wants to weep. 

He’s cried around her plenty, he doesn’t think she’d mind, but wants this to be good for her, wants to show her just how deeply he feels for her because he doesn’t quite have the words yet. 

She’s wet against his fingers and this awareness that he’s responsible for this, for the red-bitten lips, and the flush of her cheeks, the doe-eyed desperation as she grinds against his fingers, hits him like a freight train. 

“That’s it, sweetheart, just like that, there you go. Fuck,  you’re—can I—”

And she’s already sliding her shorts down her legs, kicking them somewhere off the bed. He devours the sight of her and wishes suddenly that it wasn’t so dark in here so he could see her properly, her thighs, the rise and fall of her stomach. He loses himself a little at the sight of his hand down her baby blue cotton underwear and he knows he’s fumbling his touch, licks his lips and thinks about what it would be like to taste her. 

“Mel.” 

“Later,” she replies, because she always knows what he’s thinking sometimes even before he himself realizes, is stuck on her solidification that this wasn’t just some one off thing. 

She helps him out of his shirt and says something about a condom, but he gets distracted by the feeling of her hand running through the slight hair he has on his chest. She kisses the corner of his mouth in between the rest of the discarded clothing and makes a desperate little noise that has him muttering an apology into her lips. 

“Sorry, fuck, you’re sure? Like actually sure?”

“Yes, can you—” she kisses him again, tugging him impossibly closer, “I want you. So much, it’s not even—can you please, hurry up?” 

Frank laughs a little deliriously and finds the condom in her nightstand. She’s saying something about them getting tested and an implant in her arm that he has to ignore so this doesn’t end before it’s truly begun. 

He kisses her so she’ll stop filling his head with their future escapades, a hand on one of her thighs, a tiny choked off moan from her lips when he finally finds a home inside of her. 

“Fuck, Mel, you feel—” he groans. “This is going to be over very quickly.”

She lets out a breathless laugh and traces the planes of his cheek with her fingers, feather light. 

“That’s okay, it's okay, just—just move,” she says. “It feels good, it’s a lot for me too but move, please, I can—I can take it.” 

“Jesus, baby.” 

He didn’t think sex with anyone could ever feel this way and he wants to carve out the space inside of her so that he never has to leave, this perfect girl that he’s not quite sure what he did to deserve right now, or ever. His rhythm is choppy and his heart is racing, but she takes everything in stride, seemingly just as nervous as he is, like they were both worried they could slip through each other's fingers at any time. 

Frank touches her hair, her face, kisses her lips, her cheeks, trying to memorize each breath, every little pant. He hits a particular spot inside of her and tastes the surprised moan she lets out. 

“Oh, that’s it huh?” he manages and she nods a little, teary eyed. “God, you feel—I’ve thought about this so much. Too much.”

“You h-have?” 

“Mel,” he laughs, groans, swears. He kisses her deeply, only drawing away when they both need to come up for air. “Of course I have, baby, how could I not?” 

She tucks her hips impossibly closer to his and runs her fingers down his cheek lightly. Her pinkie finger catches his lip and he kisses it gently, returning her awed gaze with his own. 

“I have too,” she admits quietly. “I just didn’t want to get my hopes up. I would’ve been okay just being your friend forever.”

He knows then, with a startling clarity, that there’s never going to be anyone else. That the love he had spent the better part of his life chasing was right here, that this, her, was all he needed to fill the empty spot inside his chest. 

His eyes feel hot and his throat is thick, stuck on the words he so desperately wants to say to her. He kisses her again, his hips stuttering slightly, trying and failing to sort through just how many emotions he was having about her. 

“I know,” she says against his lips and of course she does, she knows him better than he knows himself, “I do too.”

He thinks then he does start to cry but it’s okay because Mel’s eyes are just as wet as his. Frank kisses the apple of her cheek and leaves his forehead pressed against hers, focused on the feel of her underneath him. He can feel himself growing close and manages to conjure up enough brain power to put his hand between them, touching her in sure, tight circles that bring out those little moans he’s already begun to categorize. 

“Mel, Mel.” 

“Yeah, I—”

He can feel her clenching around him and he’s a shotgun behind her, holding onto her hips so he doesn’t stitch himself inside of her so completely. 

They’re quiet for a minute as they both come down, twin breaths and comforting hands free roaming. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to pull away from her but is comforted by the feeling of Mel’s legs still wrapped around him, keeping him there all the same. 

She nuzzles her nose against his neck, sighing happily. 

“I think it’s okay if you call me baby.”

He laughs into her hair, wondering how on earth he got so lucky to have this, her. He draws away only so he can kiss her, smiling slightly when he feels her smile too. She reaches up to push her hair back from her face and grimaces slightly. 

“It’s going to be so matted,” she complains lightly. 

Frank pushes it back himself, “I’ll brush it, I’ll take care of you.”

“You don’t have to.” 

“I know,” and he does. “But I want to. I’ll always want to.” 

He knows he usually wants too much too fast but he and Mel have been taking care of each other for a while now, she’s taught him how to be a better man, to be a version of himself that he thinks might just be more than decent. 

Mel’s grin is wide and contagious and he presses it against her cheek, kissing the corner of her mouth. 

“I’m never going to get tired of kissing you,” he admits. 

“It is pretty nice.” 

He snorts against her skin and kisses her lips, more teeth than anything, messy, not very good at all but still perfect. 

“I should get up,” he says into her mouth and she wraps her arms around him, tightening her thighs against his waist. 

She kisses him again, a sweet little thing that has his heart throbbing painfully in his chest and then tucks her nose into his neck. 

“Just a little while longer,” she whispers into his skin. 

Still tangled together, he settles, and breathes.

Chapter Text

She changes three times before they leave to join Frank’s mother for dinner. 

When Frank had mentioned it over the phone, she was nervous but they were friends, roommates, and at that point, she hadn’t seen him naked. While she knows objectively there hasn’t been much of a change in their relationship outside of the physical, it still feels more monumental. 

She had never met a significant other’s parents before. 

If that’s what they were, she still hadn’t asked, she should probably ask. Though, he’s told her he loves her more times than she can count, has become overly familiar with the shape of his lips against her own, but still, they haven’t really defined this shift between them, and had continued to speak in their actions rather than their words. 

Her former relationships were brief, had far faster trajectories — a few dates or drinks, sex, a new label to call each other. It was nothing like what she had with Frank, this friendship, this trust, everything. Despite it being a few months since he left rehab, it feels like Mel’s known him longer, as if she lived with him for years, has loved him for half her life. It’s an intensity she didn’t expect yet she holds a deep understanding and appreciation for it. It’s special. And she wants it to stay that way for as long as it could, forever, if at all possible. 

The restaurant is a small Italian place that they’ve ordered take out from but never sat inside. She’s glad she’s familiar with their menu and has one less thing to worry about, instead can focus on smoothing her hands down the dark jeans Frank had convinced her to put on after he walked in on her wearing a dress. 

It’s just my mother for chrissakes, not the pope. 

Though she flushes slightly at the memory of the look he gave her when he first saw her in the dress. It wasn’t anything particularly revealing, it was practical, she had worn it before to a job interview. 

He had helped peel her out of it in a slow and controlled way that made her shove him out of her room and lock the door to get changed again so they wouldn’t be very late. 

She glances at him when he parks the truck and it’s like he’s thinking the same thing, a knowing smirk on his lips at the sight of her red cheeks. Mel hates him a little for it, because this past week with him has been well, a lot. 

It felt like they were making up for lost time and despite their bone-deep tiredness after work, this need and desire to touch each other won out in the end. She’s had sex before but never like this, intense, almost primal, yet filled with adoration and care that often led to her shedding a few tears. Mel couldn’t get enough of it, him, and found herself waking in the middle of the night with a need for more that she couldn’t quite believe he matched every single time. 

Samira had commented about the bags under their eyes the other day and Mel was so flustered she almost knocked over a suture tray. Frank had just laughed, said they were up late watching a movie and sauntered away like he hadn’t spent the better part of their evening licking between her thighs. 

So yes, she hates him for making him think about his hands on her as they walk into the restaurant but then she sees it, the nervousness under the bravado, just like she had seen it in the hospital after their interaction with Samira. The same look he had given her when they were working on a patient to ask if that was okay, a fear she held as well, worried that all of this was simply too good to be true and would end before it really began. 

Mel takes his hand and squeezes and he tightens his hold just shy of it hurting. 

They’re the first to arrive, and the waitress leads them to a small table with a slightly dusty LED candle on it. Frank pulls her chair out for her before she can get to it herself and she huffs, trying not to laugh. 

“Leave me alone,” he mutters. He leans down to give her a brief kiss on the cheek and then settles in the chair next to her. 

“Your mom’s not even here yet,” she teases. “You don’t have to show off.” 

“God forbid I want to do something nice for you,” he fires back, then his eyes go a little soft. “I still need to take you out on a date.”

“We go out all the time,” she replies, slightly confused. Or, as much as they could with their busy schedules, but she really wasn’t sure where else he could want to take her. She liked going on walks in the park with him and Rocky, they sometimes went out to brunch with her sister but they preferred to eat their meals at home, he even took her to an art exhibit last month, what more could they possibly do? 

Frank just smiles, “It’s supposed to be nice this weekend, I was thinking a picnic.” 

“Oh,” Mel grins, perking up, “That sounds great. I'm sure the kids would love that. I think I have some old outdoor games in the shed and I bet Becca—”

“Mel,” he interrupts, chuckling, “I meant just me and you.” 

“That would be nice,” she agrees, but then shrugs, “But wouldn’t it be nicer with everyone?” 

Frank stares at her and she blushes slightly under the intensity of his gaze.

“What?” she questions.

“Nothing,” he replies, shaking his head. He smiles at her gently and she returns it. “You’re just—you really are my favorite person.”

“Oh,” she blinks, “ Really?” 

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he confirms, his hand finds a home on her thigh and he squeezes it, leaving it there, rubbing absent circles. “It’s why I wish there was a way to spare you from this entire evening. We could still make our escape, I’ll blame it on me. Say I got sick.”

She frowns at him, “Why would we do that?” 

“My mother can be a lot,” he warns. “She’s probably going to bring up my divorce and my brother and make passive aggressive comments about me being an addict and then passive aggressive comments at you for choosing to be with me.” 

Mel places her hand over his on her thigh and shrugs. 

“It’s fine, I’ve had awkward dinners before.” 

Frank laughs, surprised and real, and she smiles back at him. 

His mother arrives after they’ve ordered drinks, two diet sodas and a pitcher of water for the table. Frank stands to greet her, knocking his knee into the corner and almost splashes the drinks everywhere. His mother huffs and kisses him on the cheek then sits across from Mel before she can decide whether or not she should’ve stood up too. She’s a small woman, lean and swamped in an oversized sweater. Even across the table, Mel can smell the cigarette smoke lingering on her clothes. 

When she meets her eyes, they're the same blue as Frank’s staring right back at her. 

“You must be Mel,” she says in greeting. “Is that short for anything?” 

“Melissa,” she states, fiddling with her straw. Frank’s hand returns to her thigh the moment he sits back down and the tension reduces from her spine. “It’s very nice to meet you.” 

“Hm,” his mother replies, then at Frank, “Why didn’t you bring the kids? Has she not met them?” 

“Really? She’s sitting right here,” he sighs. “Of course she’s met the kids. They love her.” 

“That’ll be hard when you break up, won’t it?” 

Mel sucks a breath, trying to formulate the proper reply but Frank’s already responding before she can think of one. 

“It would, and we’ll worry about that if it ever happens,” he tells her. If. Her neck heats. Then he groans, sipping noisily at his soda. “Can we just not for once? And eat like normal fucking people?” 

“Always with the cuss words, Frankie.”

“Yeah, I wonder where the hell I learned that from, huh?” 

His mother’s lips twitch but she doesn’t say anything, just flips open the menu. 

Frank releases a small breath and opens his own menu, though Mel knows he’s going to order the stuffed shells because it comes with too many and it’s Becca’s favorite from here. Just like she was ordering penne vodka so they could share it tomorrow during whatever lunch break they could snag. 

“It’s so dark in here,” his mother huffs. “How am I supposed to read this?”

“Oh!” Mel says, fishing through her tote bag hanging from her chair. She produces a small pen light she “borrowed” from work and hands it to Frank’s mother across the table. “I usually need a light as well, Frank makes fun of me for it.” 

“Hey,” he laughs, a startled noise like he didn’t expect to find anything about this meal funny.  

“That sounds like my son,” his mother says, smiling slightly. “Thank you, Melissa.” 

She returns the smile and tries to tamper it down by biting the inside of her cheek. It diminishes fairly quickly though as his mother, now that she can see, complains about the prices on the menu, that the menu itself is sticky, and then tells Frank this is why they should’ve went to Giovanni's instead, not whatever this place was. 

Thankfully the waitress doesn’t overhear that bit and takes their orders, leaving them back to their own devices. 

“So my son tells me you two work together?” his mother questions, “You’re a nurse, then? Good profession, I was a nurse for almost thirty years, I’m sure he didn’t tell you.” 

“Oh, he did,” Mel defends lightly, “But no, I’m a doctor too.” 

“You won’t have much time to raise a family,” she states plainly. “Though I guess you don’t really need to worry yourself with that since he already has two and it’s probably not the wisest to be thinking about more when he’s so fresh from rehab.” 

“Jesus,” Frank groans, squeezing Mel’s thigh in apology. “Would it kill you to dial it down a notch?” 

His mother rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her iced tea, “I’m sure Melissa’s mother had some choice words to offer her when she found out her daughter was dating a recovering drug addict.”

“My mother’s passed,” Mel tells her gently. 

Frank’s mom’s eyes soften, “I’m sorry, hon. What about your father then?”

“Him as well.”

His mother reaches across the table and pats Mel’s hand. She’s proud of herself for not flinching at the sudden contact, though she thinks it was because she was so shocked it happened at all. 

“This is definitely making the top five worst dinners of all time,” Frank sighs. 

“What were the other four?” Mel asks him and he and his mother laugh, that same huff of surprise that makes her warm all over. She was kind of serious though and Frank shakes his head at her knowingly. 

“Those are going with me to my deathbed.” 

“At least tell her about great aunt Linda,” his mother coaxes but then glances around the restaurant with a groan, “Does anyone work in this place? Where is our food?” 

Frank pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Ma, it’s been like five minutes and no, I’m trying to impress Mel, not traumatize her.” 

“Oh, I’d really like to know please,” Mel says, twirling the straw in her soda. “I can tell you about the restaurant Becca got us kicked out of.” 

“Becca?” his mother asks. 

“My sister,” Mel replies with a smile. “She has some sensory issues with noise specifically and the diner by my college had a jukebox and I guess someone found it funny to play My Sharona on repeat."

"Oh, no," she offers sympathetically, and Frank snorts next to her. 

"The owner didn't appreciate it when she unplugged the thing, but some of the other patrons were actually appreciative." 

"I would've been right there with her, she sounds like my kind of gal."

Mel smiles, "She's my best friend. She actually lives with—”

“Mel,” Frank interrupts. “She lives with Mel full time. She’s awesome, she got Tanner off his training wheels last week.”

She barely glances at Frank but the apologetic squeeze to her thigh lets her know they’ll talk about this later. That was fine with her, she’s sure whatever reason he had for keeping their living situation from his mother was a good one. Even after spending such a short time with her, she can tell things between them were… unusual in a way Mel hasn’t seen before between a parent and a child. 

“That boy better be wearing a helmet.” 

“Of course he is,” Frank sighs. “If it wouldn’t make them social outcasts I’d have them in helmets everywhere." 

“Good,” she says, then looks at Mel, “You know, when he was twelve he got hit by a car while he was on his bicycle and he wasn’t wearing a helmet. 

“Yeah, because you backed into me in the driveaway,” he scoffs. Frank pulls the sleeve of his sweater up to show Mel the faint scar above his elbow. She had become well-acquainted with that one and every other scar on his body this past week. “Landed right here, I didn’t even hit my head.”

His mother waves a dismissive hand and delves into a very detailed story of how she remembers that day, Frank interjecting at every opportunity to correct her, a volley of two competing halves across the small table. 

As hard-shelled as the woman is, outspoken and quite brash, she can clearly see how much she loves her son and in turn how much Frank loves her just as badly. She wonders how different things could’ve been for them if Frank’s father wasn’t around, if it would’ve allowed them to be more open in the care they had for one another, rather than concealing it behind such a thick, concrete wall. 

She aches for that little boy, for the woman in front of her, but reorients herself to the here-and-now, nodding along to their story, watching as Frank’s shoulders loosen completely and the softness that edges around his mother’s eyes that Mel’s not sure either of them really notice. 

Mel, who would give anything to be sitting with her own mom right now, just smiles. 

***

Frank puts his head back against the headrest in his truck and shuts his eyes, taking a deep breath. 

He listens to the sound of Mel buckling herself in and of her phone connecting to his radio. An old Paramore song plays and Frank opens his eyes, turning his head to see her already staring back at him, illuminated only by the faint lights in his car and the lingering glow of the restaurant.

“I’m sorry about her,” he starts with. “It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but still, sorry.” 

“I think it went pretty well,” Mel states, which is nice considering his mother broached the topic of them having children two more times over the course of their meal, “Do you think if I ask politely she’ll call me ‘Mel’ though?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s okay,” she replies easily, “Maybe I can convince her at Thanksgiving.” 

“God, you can still get out of that,” he groans, running a hand down his face. His mother had told Mel to join them during the holidays as they were leaving. He and Abby already decided on being together for the kids, but he didn’t really want to subject her to the chaos that occurred without fail during their allocated once-a-year meal with both their families. “My mother’s one thing, but Abby’s parents? Her fucking aunt? They’re a bunch of right-wing conspiracy theorists that will probably say something offensive towards Becca that’ll make me hit one of them.”

“Becca hates Thanksgiving,” Mel chuckles, “It’s too off-routine. We usually just order take out and put up the Christmas tree.” 

“That sounds really nice, can we do that instead?”

Mel smiles, but shakes her head, “You should spend the day with the kids. If you want me to come, I can come. I can handle myself around… those with lower intelligence.” 

“That’s good that one of us can.” 

Her smile softens slightly and he watches her tilt her head, nibbling her bottom lip questioningly. 

“She doesn’t know we live together?” 

“No,” Frank sighs. “And I should’ve told you that but I kind of forgot and like I’ll tell her soon,” he promises, “But she had a fucking fit when she found out me and Abby were shacking up before we got married, so.” 

“Oh, so we’ll just have to wait until we get married then.” 

He thinks his brain short circuits a little bit as it tries to process what she just said but Mel’s doing that thing with her lips like she’s fighting a laugh and he groans. 

“I hate you,” he manages. 

“No, you don’t,” she snickers and she’s right, he doesn’t, and he leans over the console to draw her cheek into his palm and kiss her firmly, smothering the sound of her laughter. She hums happily against his mouth and she tastes like vodka sauce and diet soda but it’s nice, he wonders if it’ll ever not be nice with her. 

He draws away and thumbs at her jaw absently, smiling at her. 

“Thank you for meeting her today,” he tells her seriously. “It meant a lot to me that you were there.”

Her fingers squeeze around his hand on her face and she turns slightly to kiss his palm. He’s still getting used to the casual intimacy she shows him and he tries not to get overly emotional, though he’s not sure he succeeds with how much the back of his eyes burn. 

He releases his hold on her and settles back into his seat watching as she fiddles with the takeout bag in her lap, clearly wanting to say something that she’s worried he’ll have some kind of reaction over. 

Frank puts an arm on the back of her seat and pulls the truck into reverse, allowing her the space to sort it out in her mind. When they pull onto the road she figures it out, a quiet admission he just barely catches over the low sound of the music. 

“If we do get married,” she starts with and he’s lucky he’s driving so slow otherwise he thinks he would’ve crashed the car, “I don’t want a wedding and I don’t want to wear a big white dress. None of that sounds appealing to me.” 

Frank’s lips twitch. 

“I mean you’d look great, but yeah me either,” he tells her. “Me and Ab’s got married in city hall. Her parents didn’t talk to us for six months, it was awesome.” 

“Well, neither will mine,” Mel jokes lightly. He reaches across the console and takes her hand in his. “But city hall does sound… nice.”  

“Really nice.” 

“Hm.” 

Frank drums his fingers on the steering wheel and waits patiently, his other hand tracing absent patterns against the back of her hand. He wonders absently if she’d want a ring; he’s never seen her wear one in the time he’s known her, so he doubts she’d feel comfortable wearing one daily. Maybe they could just do necklaces or friendship bracelets, he’s flexible. Christ, he’d even consider tattoos if that’s what she wanted. It might be a little insane but she was the one talking about marriage after all. He should blame his mother and all that talk of kids. He’s not sure he was going to survive this conversation with her, how was he supposed to survive that one? 

A song changes, and then another, and then finally: 

“And don’t propose,” she continues, he risks a glance at her and even in the darkness he can see her cheeks are bright red as she stares straight ahead. “We can just discuss it. When we—If we get there. I would rather we just talk about it, I hate surprises.” 

“Talking is good,” he agrees, which arguably they weren’t that good at but they were getting better. He’s fairly certain he’d agree to anything she wanted. Hell, if she suggested getting married right now, he thinks he might be just stupidly in love with her enough to say yes. “And for the record I hate surprises too. No birthday parties, nothing, well maybe sex surprises, those are okay.” 

“Frank.” 

He snorts and leans slightly towards the middle of the car so he can bring her knuckles to his lips, kissing them. He settles them back down on the center console, squeezing slightly. 

“No surprises,” he reiterates. “And city hall. Just us, Becca, and the kids, yeah?” 

“Yes,” she agrees far too quickly. God, what were they doing? “And I won’t be taking your last name.” 

“That’s fine but we might actually give my mother an aneurysm.” 

“Well—”

“Joking,” Frank laughs. “Kind of. But all of this sounds really, really great. Very adult.” 

Mel huffs, “I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me right now.”

“I’m not, baby,” he promises, “I promise I’m not. You’re kind of giving me a major ego boost talking about marriage after only a week of officially dating.” 

“I hate you,” she parrots. 

“No you don’t,” he sing-songs. “You want to marry me in a very contractual way that would benefit us both in our taxes.” 

“Oh,” she hums, contemplative, “I hadn’t considered that, that would actually make a lot of sense financially.” 

“See?” he teases, pulling up into the driveway, “Occasionally I do have the brains in this relationship.” 

“You’re a doctor, Frank, of course you—” Mel stops and then sighs. “Oh, that was—anyway, I did mean to ask you for clarification on something.” 

He turns the car off and finally looks at her. 

“We didn’t really discuss labels, and well, girlfriend seems a bit juvenile when we already live together,” Mel says. “How do you feel about partners?”

“I can get behind partners,” Frank tells her. And he feels like they’ve been partners for a while, knows how much he can rely on her and hopes in turn she feels like she can rely on him. “What do you say, King, you want to be my partner?” 

“I asked you first,” she replies flatly but he can see her trying not to laugh and he snorts. 

“I would love to be your partner, Mel.” 

It’s a little more serious than he intended, his throat suddenly thick and he watches Mel’s eyes soften. He reaches over to tuck a loose strand of her hair behind her ear and brushes the tips of his fingers over her cheek. 

Her eyelashes flutter slightly and he leans towards her to kiss her again. He thinks it was unfair that there was a time when he wasn’t kissing her all the time, but he’s grateful that he gets to have her now, that she even wants to be kissed by him. She deepens it with a pleased hum but pulls away, nudging her nose against his. 

“We should go inside,” she says, her eyes a little hazy. He gives her another kiss because he wants to and he’s gotten better at that, allowing himself to be rather than overthinking every action with her. 

“We haven’t had sex in my truck yet,” Frank replies, half-joking. “It’s dark out, it could be fun.” 

“For who?” Mel asks incredulously. She looks so offended at the idea he does laugh outright, his forehead knocking gently into hers with how close they are. She huffs her own laugh, kissing him once on the cheek before she finally extracts herself from him and gets out of the car. 

He watches as she comes to stand in front of his truck, glowing faintly in the headlights. 

She’s so beautiful it hurts and for a minute he just stares at her, struck not only by the sight of her but by the smile she’s giving him, soft and teasing, and for him. That the hand on her hip and the words she’s saying but he can’t hear are because she wants him to get out of the car and join her. 

So he does, and follows her right inside. 

***

Work remains mostly the same. 

The majority of their coworkers already had their assumptions that neither he or Mel bothered to correct. They had discussed it, whether or not to keep their relationship private, but Mel hadn’t really cared. She knew some of their coworkers were more open about their relationship status (re: Mateo and Javadi) and that some were together without saying anything at all (re: Robby and Collins who Frank couldn’t believe Mel caught onto before he did). 

It was him that was more worried about telling people, not for himself but how they would look at her for shacking up with the recently divorced drug addict. 

“Everyone already knows we live together,” she had said, “It’s not that much different.”

“But it is,” he had argued. Because it was to him, more serious and more precarious, and more likely for someone to try to get her to finally wake up and leave him. “Everyone in this hospital knows everything there is to know about me,” the drugs, the rehab, the divorce, “I want to keep this for us for a little while, it’s too special.”

So they did, because before everything Mel was his best friend and understood his fears and needs better than he understood them himself. Their romantic relationship existed in the walls outside of the hospital, but within them they kept things professional, or at least Frank tried to. 

He knew he was... touchy with her before, but now that he has an awareness of it, he tries to dial it back when they’re on shift. Mel doesn’t mind, is mostly just amused and kindly holds back her laughter when his hands jerk lamely at his sides when he goes to squeeze her shoulder or her wrist or pull lightly on her braid. 

It was common for the nurses to joke about how attached at the hip they were, always working cases together that probably didn’t need two senior residents. Frank didn’t want anyone to assume he was giving her special treatment on anything; not that he really had any reason to, Mel was leagues ahead of where he was as an R3, a better teacher, a better student, a better doctor. She was going to make a hell of an attending.  

To remedy this, he stops joining a lot of her cases and instead goes off on his own, falling in with a few of the new medical students that are eager to learn. He can tell Robby is pleased, and though he misses working with her, he finds he likes hearing her talk about her cases later that day almost as much as he enjoys being right by her side every step of the way. 

Oddly, it’s the professional distance they’ve created that causes Santos to find out. She corners him in the break room and says she’s worried about him in a way that makes his eyes sting a little before he realizes why she’s concerned at all. 

“Did something happen?” she asks, standing in front of the door both so he couldn’t leave and someone couldn’t enter. “Like, are you okay? ” 

She’s eyeing him like she’s trying to figure out if he’s using again, but he can tell she knows he’s not, is just so confused by the entire shift in his behavior at work that he outright laughs. 

Apparently not spending every minute of every day with Mel was abnormal enough to warrant an impromptu intervention. She was gonna get a kick out of this. 

“Oh, you are not fucking laughing at me right now,” Santos scoffs. She crosses her arms over her chest angrily and glares at him. “I’m being a good friend! Yeah, my concern for your wellbeing is hilarious, huh? Real mature asshole.” 

“Sorry,” he snorts, wiping at his eyes. “I’m good. I’m really good.” 

Her glare turns suspicious. 

“But you and Mel are like barely fucking speaking,” she continues slowly and he waits, seeing her work the puzzle out in her mind, “But neither of you seem upset about it.” 

“We talk plenty," he replies, smiling slightly. “Here and at home.” 

Santos tilts her head and she blinks once, twice, and then her eyes widen. 

“You had sex,” she states. 

“We did,” he replies a little proudly, “And still are.” 

At that, she crosses the threshold of the room and punches him rudely in the shoulder. It’s harder than he was expecting and he makes a noise, shoving her half-heartedly away from him with a grin. 

“Hey."

“Ow,” he interrupts, “What the fuck?” 

“You’re lucky I didn’t hit you harder,” she returns, throwing her hands up in frustration. “Why didn’t you tell me you got together? When did you get together?” 

Frank rubs at his shoulder and shrugs, “A few weeks ago.”

“Weeks?” she repeats, bordering on a yell. She looks like she wants to hit him again but thankfully she refrains. “That still doesn’t answer my original question.” 

“We haven’t told anyone,” he replies. “I mean, Becca knows. And so does my mother, but that was kind of—that’s not important,” he sighs. “We weren’t trying to keep it from anyone, I just wanted to keep things professional at work, okay? And okay, maybe selfishly I wanted one thing in my life to actually belong to me and not be headline news to the entire fucking hospital.” 

Santos nibbles at her bottom lip and he can see the anger in her fading. 

“Listen—”

“You didn’t tell me,” she interrupts lowly. “I thought we were friends.”

His shoulders fully slump and he feels like an idiot all of a sudden. He wasn’t used to people caring so much, he was still trying to wrap his head around why Mel loved him at all, but this? Platonic and careful and built on the biggest crux of his life, he was completely unprepared for.

“We are,” he affirms, his throat suddenly thick. He clears it and with Mel he’d touch her in some way to offer her comfort but he has a feeling Santos wouldn’t like that. “We weren’t trying to keep anything from you, I promise. I think we’re both just a little scared still. I don’t want to screw this up with her, you know?” 

Santos softens a little and nods. 

“Yeah, well good luck with that.”

“Asshole,” he retorts, letting out a surprised laugh. 

She returns his smile with her own and this time when she knocks his shoulder with her fist, it’s playful. 

“If you ever keep anything like that from me again, I’ll stab you.”

“Yeah, whatever, killer, no more secrets.” 

She rolls her eyes, then turns to leave, opening the break room door. 

“Come on, lives to save and all that,” she says. She stops before she exits, looking back at him, “Go back to working with Mel, I think it’s giving Whitaker PTSD from his parent’s divorce.” 

His laughter follows her back out into the ER and he settles at the nursing station, glancing up at the board. There’s a few low risk patients in waiting he could pull but he sees Mel walking next to a gurney being brought in from the ambulance bay and decides to take Santos’ advice head on. 

“What’s the story, morning glory?” he asks, assessing the teenage boy on the gurney. He’s gotten open wounds covering most of his face and upper body and Frank’s staring at his ulna through his arm. 

Mel glances up at him and grins, but then returns her attention to the patient. 

“This is Trevor,” she says, guiding them into Trauma Two, “He was skateboarding down a set of stairs and fell into an open dumpster.”

“Well, that certainly explains the smell,” he comments absently. The teen groans in annoyance and they lift him onto the bed. Frank presses into his side and the kid gasps at the pressure. “Ribs are definitely broken.”

“So is his collarbone,” Mel says, “Let’s page ortho and let’s up his morphine.”

His sats start dropping rapidly and he’s handing Mel a scalpel across the patient to start the chest tube insertion before she can ask for it. She’s nearly as quick as Abbot is with her procedure and the moment she’s done, he’s right behind her with his intubation, two halves coming together just in time for Garcia to come collect her latest victim. 

“Oh, good, he’s still alive,” she says in greeting. “Glad the ER staff still knows how to do their jobs.”

“You’re welcome,” Frank replies, and he’s sure if there weren’t other doctors around Garcia would’ve flipped him off. They wheel their patient out and leave her and Mel standing there, both in blood splattered gowns, a tiny grin on her face that’s caused her nose to crinkle. 

She looks so beautiful it makes his chest ache. 

“Nice work,” he finally says.

“Thank you, Dr. Langdon,” she replies primly, but she’s biting back her full smile. “I have to check on some patients but we should do this again sometime.”

She disposes of her gown and gloves and tosses her braid over her shoulder, disappearing back out into the ER.

Jesse coughs behind him and Frank realizes he’s just standing there smiling like an idiot at the space she vacated. Right. He shakes his head and ignores the knowing look from him, walking back out into the ER, not for a patient but in search of Robby.

He thinks it was about time they discussed that HR paperwork. 

***

Mel never thought she could have this.

There was a part of her that had settled in her early twenties, after she had lost her parents, after she had spent incumbent nights studying in medical school, after she realized the few boyfriends she had would never quite get her. She had accepted that maybe romance just wasn’t outlined in her future, that her fulfillment would come from other avenues in her life, her work, her sister, the few close friendships she formulated. 

The past trauma that clouded her life was too much for most people to handle, nor could they truly understand her need to be her sister’s primary caretaker. Brave, someone had called her. Brave in the way that they thought what she was doing was some great task that they themselves would never want to be a part of. 

Mel was used to classmates tolerating her quirks, to friends that knew her on a surface level because she was too afraid to open up fully to any of them. 

She knows that’s not the case now, that in the chaos of the emergency department she found people she cared for and knew, for once, that they in turn cared for her. 

But she just didn’t really expect… him. 

Not just a friend but more, a partner, someone she could count on, a security she isn’t sure she’s ever experienced in her life. He understands her in ways she didn’t think were possible, the big, scary, important things that wake her up in the middle of the night down to the tiniest details that she still can’t believe he’s paid attention to, that he’s remembered. 

Mel isn’t sure if she’s ever been in love, mostly because she didn’t think she’d ever get to be in love. 

She just knows for certain she is now. 

***

He wakes up to her arm pressing into his cheek as she reaches over him to turn her alarm off, he wants to sit in the moment for a bit, even though he knows they have to get up soon. 

Mel finally stops the ringing on her phone and settles back down against his chest, pressing a small kiss into his jaw. 

“Morning,” she murmurs, her voice is always deeper after she's slept and it makes his stomach warm. 

“Morning, baby,” he replies, kissing the top of her head. “Sleep okay?” 

“Mm,” she hums. Her hand moves dangerously close to the waistband of his boxers and when she feels him tense she chuckles slightly, “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he says, then shifts them slightly so she’s underneath him. Her legs open automatically so he can settle between them, and he smiles down at her, a hand on the mattress by her head to hold him up, the other on her cheek, “Just don’t start something you don’t intend to finish.” 

“You’re the one that wanted to go to brunch,” she reminds him, “You made the reservation.” 

“I’ll cancel it.”

Mel pursues her lips fondly and he leans down to kiss her, groaning when she stops him with a hand over his mouth. 

“Morning breath,” she states plainly. 

His eyes narrow and then he smirks, licking her palm rudely. 

“Oh, Frank,” she sputters. “Gross, what the-”

He laughs when she almost knees him in the stomach trying to get away from him and he holds her hips down, ducking to kiss her neck and making his own startled noise when she bites him on the shoulder. 

“Ow,” he chokes through his laughter. She’s squirming and giggly underneath him but he manages her to pin her back down again, her pupils dilating once he’s done so. “Yeah, that’s better, huh?” 

Mel’s eyes narrow but she’s flushing, doesn’t fight him when he kisses her on the cheek. 

“We need to go,” she murmurs weakly. 

“I think I’m hungry right now,” he replies teasingly, nipping at her collarbone over her shirt. He’s pretty sure it’s his and now he feels a little dizzy. “What do you say, sweetheart? Breakfast in bed?” 

He lifts the bottom of her, his, shirt up to kiss her stomach and even though she groans in feigned annoyance she doesn’t stop him from pulling her shorts and her underwear down her legs. 

She shifts up the bed to give him the space to nestle between her legs, sighing out at the first brush of his lips to her inner thigh. He feels the last bit of teasing fight in her melt away when he kisses the lips of her cunt, savoring the small, content, noise she makes the moment he begins to lick her. 

He could die, he thinks. It's the same thought he’s had every time he’s tasted her, here or elsewhere on her body. She’s better than any drug, her small fist tugging at his hair incomparable to any high. 

The noises she makes are never quite the same and he tongues at her repeatedly, hoping to learn each new one she offers him until he’s built a lexicon of that of Melissa King. 

He tugs her thighs further over his shoulders and gets lost in the musky taste of her, groaning when she pulls his hair a little harder. 

“Oh, wow—” she gasps, “We’re gonna be—mhm—so late.” 

He risks a glance up at her and has to start repeating medical jargon in his mind so he doesn’t come right there at the sight of her, the flush of her cheeks, the way she’s biting her lip, her stomach flexing and squirming, barely covered by his shirt, for the love God. 

“Please, please.”

Frank groans into her pussy and licks a wet, crude line along her that has her swearing. He can’t help but grin and he knows she feels it when she swears this time at him, her heel digging into the top of his spine in pent up frustration. 

“M’sorry, baby,” he smirks, kissing the top of her pelvis, “I’ll get you there, let me get you there.” 

He returns his attention to her clitoris and can feel her start to shake slightly underneath him. Frank never really believed in God despite all those Sunday’s he spent crammed inside of a church, but this? Her taste, the noises, this entire woman, was nothing short of a divine revelation. He thinks if he could pray to anything, it would be to her, and he moans into her cunt to do just that.  

“Frank.” 

He knows she’s close when her voice goes high and reedy, sounds he has become very familiar with, that are burned into the corners of his mind and will certainly haunt him for the rest of his life. He also knows her body now, the exact pressure she needs from him, direct and to the point, and he repeats it over and over again until he feels her back begin to arch off the bed. 

Her thighs tighten around his head and she tries to pull away like she always does, like the pleasure is too much and she has to run away from it, but he keeps her there, their moans tangling together in the early morning sunlight filtering into her room. 

He continues to leave wet kisses against her, listening absently to the sounds of her breathing as she tries to regulate herself back to normal. When she does, she hums pleasantly, tugging slightly on his hair so he’ll lift off her. 

She brushes through his hair and he smiles, resting his cheek against her thigh. 

“That was nice,” she sighs happily. 

He snorts and kisses her knee. 

“Yeah? Make sure to leave me a good rating on Yelp.” 

“Oh, God, the reservation,” Mel says, sitting up so quickly she almost knees him right in the jaw. He manages to get out of the way, kneeling slightly on the bed, and she grabs his phone from the nightstand, typing in his code to unlock it, “Somebody else might need our table, I’ll just—” Of course, she’d be thinking about someone else, this girl. She taps on his phone a few times and then smiles, “There. Cancelled.” 

“I love you,” he tells her. 

She gives him a surprised smile and puts his phone back down, glancing down at where his boxers are clearly still tented. Mel opens her mouth but then her stomach grumbles, her blush returning in full. 

He chuckles and gets up from the bed, tugging at her ankle. 

“I’ll make pancakes,” he says, “You want coffee or tea?” 

“Tea, please,” she replies, grinning at him. 

He squeezes at her ankle again and then disappears across the hall and into his bathroom to brush his teeth. When he finishes he walks into his room to get changed, glancing around at the near emptiness of it. 

It’s not like he had a lot to begin with but slowly the few things he had have migrated into Mel’s bedroom. Hers really was more comfortable and he wasn’t kidding when he said he was never having sex in here with her. 

He still uses the closet, mostly, and the en-suite bathroom, though he’s sure he’ll eventually move his things to her bathroom as well. She’s already started to complain that he’s using her shampoo when he was too lazy to walk across the hallway to get ready in the morning. It was a little cramped in there with her, but they made do. Part of him liked the forced closeness, especially when they tried to maintain a mostly-respectable distance from each other at work. 

Frank slides a sweatshirt over his head and walks into the kitchen to get started on breakfast. 

Mel joins him after she takes the dog out and they watch a video of a spleen removal that Santos had texted Mel in the middle of the night. When they finish, Frank glances at the clock and realizes it’s probably a good thing they didn’t go out this morning otherwise they probably would’ve been late to Tanner’s last game. 

“Is Becca coming?” Frank asks as he puts the dishes in the sink. 

“I asked if she wanted to last night but she said she wanted to play the Sims,” Mel says from behind him and he can hear the smile in her voice, “She’s building the Cullen house from Twilight she wants to show you once it’s done.”

“Right on,” Frank chuckles, turning back to her. Her hair is a little tied up in the collar of her shirt and he pulls it out gently, situating it for her. 

“Thanks,” she grins, then stands on the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek. His hands fall to her waist automatically to hold her there a while longer and he leans down to catch her lips against his own. 

She sighs into the kiss, syrupy sweet to the point that he feels lightheaded. He feels her hands wrap around the front of his sweatshirt, tugging him closer to her and he squeezes her hips, grinning when she lets out a tiny noise into his mouth when he accidentally pins her against the kitchen island. 

“We have—” she tries, shuddering when his tongue brushes hers, “—to go.” 

“Mm, a few more minutes,” he tries. He wonders if it’ll always be like this with her, hopes it will be. “I can be quick.”

She laughs into the next kiss, pulling away slightly to grin. 

“No you can’t,” she teases. She runs her hands along the front of his chest and kisses the corner of his mouth, “It’s his last game, we can’t be late.” 

“Yeah, probably ever with how bad he is,” he replies and Mel gives him a look, “We’re getting him into a theater program at the Y, don’t worry.” 

“Oh, that’ll be great,” she says earnestly. He gives her another kiss before he finally releases her so she can finish getting ready. 

He follows after her but parts back into his own room to find a pair of jeans to throw on and meets her back out in the hallway, trying to tamper down his disappointment when she’s no longer in her little sleep shorts that drive him crazy. 

Frank tilts his head and smirks. 

“Is that my hoodie?” 

“What?” Mel questions, glancing down. Her nose reddens when she looks back up. “Oh, yeah, I guess it is. Your clothes are everywhere.” 

“Sorry,” he chuckles, though he’s not at all, because he likes that she goes to sleep in his shirts and wears his clothes out when they’re together. 

He watches her flit back to Becca’s room to say goodbye and coax Rocky out with the promise of a car ride. She giggles and rough houses with her slightly, smiling when Rocky starts barking excitedly. 

God, he loves her, is in love with this girl that came into his life at just the right time. A large part of him wonders if he’s just dreaming, if he never actually woke up from that night in her bed, hell, if he was still stuck standing in the ambulance bay after his argument with Robby. He’s not sure he even deserves her still, that maybe if this is real, one day soon she’ll realize she’s better off without him. 

“Frank?” Mel calls, drawing him from his thoughts. “Do you know where my—oh, nevermind.”

She’s sliding her tote bag over her shoulder and latches Rocky’s leash onto her neck. The front door is halfway open and Mel turns, grinning at him. 

“You coming?”

Frank shakes his head to clear it and falls in step next to her. 

***

“Come on, Tanner, you got this!”

His son gives him a big smile, one front tooth missing from where he ripped it out the other day and runs back out on the field with his team. 

“He’s not that bad,” Abby says from her cross legged position on the ground. She’s got a blanket underneath her and Erin’s discarded leapfrog tablet by her leg, Rocky’s head in her lap. “Maybe we give it another year.”

They watch as Tanner attempts to do a cartwheel on the field and Frank just hums. 

“Maybe gymnastics,” he offers. 

“Too dangerous,” Abby replies, shuddering. “A girl I knew in high school broke her neck. What about bowling? Or ping pong?”

“He could get his hand crushed in the machine,” Frank states, “Or choke on one of the ping pong balls.”

“Better keep him inside forever then.”

“Agreed.”

He glances over to his right where Mel’s kicking a soccer ball back and forth with Erin. They’re standing fairly close together since her toddler legs can’t get the ball very far and he smiles when he hears both the girls giggle. 

“She’s good with them,” Abby says and then, “I have a date this weekend so you’ll need to take the kids.” 

“No shit,” Frank laughs. He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks back down at his ex. She leans back on her hands and squints up at him over her sunglasses. 

“Yeah, he’s got a kid in Tanner’s class we—”

“Wait, ew, do I know him?” 

Abby rolls her eyes, “You moved in with Mel seven seconds after we signed the divorce papers.” 

“Yeah, but we weren’t—”

She raises a knowing eyebrow at him and he rolls his eyes, smiling slightly. 

“We weren’t, but we are now, okay?” he tells her and she just looks at him incredulously, the spitting image of their daughter’s face when he told her chocolate milk didn’t come from brown cows. “Fine, don’t believe me, but I swear I’m being honest for once,” he continues and she snorts, scratching Rocky’s head. “So who is he, huh? It’s not Petey’s dad is it?” 

“Petey’s—” Abby’s mouth falls open in open disgust. “He’s like fifty.” 

“And? You literally had a poster of Daniel Craig up in your dorm room.” 

“Skyfall was a great movie,” she huffs, the tips of her ears reddening, “I didn’t want to fuck him, I just—”

The whistle blows on the field and they both look up to see that the other team has scored. Tanner is busy sitting on the ground ripping up the grass and Frank sighs. 

“Baby, stand up!” Abby yells. “We’ll get ice cream after.” 

His son perks up at that and gets back to his feet, swarming the ball with the rest of his teammates. 

“Wanna come get ice cream?” Abby asks him.

It should be odd, this concept of taking his new significant other out with his ex-wife and his children, but they’ve always been a little unconventional. He’s glad they never hated each other, that after everything, he didn’t lose this friendship with her and his kids wouldn’t grow up in a loveless home. 

“Yeah, I think we can swing that.” 

“Yeah?” she laughs. “Hot date tonight?” 

“Whitaker’s birthday,” he explains. She looks a little lost and he clarifies. “The kid that fixed the dishwasher.” 

Abby had been texting him all shift saying there was water everywhere and she couldn’t get someone out to the house until the end of the week. He had been complaining about it to Mel when Whitaker had interjected with a “oh I can fix that!” and ended up in his former kitchen several hours later and got paid in half a tray of lasagna that Abby had made for dinner the night before. 

“Oh, that’s nice, what’s he turning, fourteen?” She jokes and he snorts. “You guys going out?” 

“They’re coming over.” 

“Wow, people in your house.” 

“Right?” 

The only time people ever came over his and Abby’s place was for the holidays, which they hated, but both refused to go to either of their parents’ places. It was one of the perks of having kids to be able to deny travel, regardless of how short it was, so they used it as often as they could. 

He feels something knock into his leg and looks down to see his daughter, pressing her forehead into the side of his knee and making animal noises. 

“What are you doing, you gremlin,” Frank pretends to growl. He lifts Erin up by the waist and she giggles loudly. Her tiny hands nearly catch him in the chin as she swings wildly, and he sets her back down before she can do any proper damage. 

She waddles over to Abby and practically throws herself into her mother’s lap, forcing Rocky’s head out of its restful position. 

“I think maybe she should play soccer,” Mel says in greeting as she returns to Frank’s side. Her cheeks are a little red from the wind and her hair is mostly falling out of her braid. “I didn’t think a child could run that much.”

“Maybe she’s a future track star,” he muses. “Or you’re just out of shape.”

“She’s in better shape than you are,” Abby scoffs. She starts combing through Erin’s tangled hair with her fingers while Erin pokes at Rocky’s nose. “What do you say, kid, you want to play soccer?” 

“Wanna go to the moon.” 

Mel hums like it’s a reasonable answer and Frank knocks his hip playfully against hers. 

“I don’t know about the moon, but we can do ice cream,” Frank tells her. Erin sits up in Abby’s lap and grins so widely it splits her face in two. “Yeah? Ice cream work for you?”

“Yes, puh-lease.” 

Mel giggles at his side but then points to the field, her eyes widening. 

Frank follows her gaze and they watch as Tanner does somersault after somersault down the field. 

“I don’t know,” Frank says, “Maybe we should revisit the gymnast conversation.” 

“Absolutely not,” Mel states, “He could break his neck.” 

Abby puts a hand up as if to say ‘see, I told you’ and Frank realizes his future was about to be filled with countless two-to-one parenting decisions he would most likely always be out voted on. 

Frank smiles softly. 

That sounded kind of perfect to him. 

***

After ice cream and a barely reigned in meltdown when they didn’t have mint chocolate chip, they finalize the weekend pickup times for the kids for Abby’s date with whichever age appropriate father she’s going out with, and then finally, he and Mel go home. 

There’s not much time before their friends start to arrive, but he helps Mel set up the few decorations they have to make things a little more festive. It’s mostly streamers he hangs from the ceiling by standing on one of the kitchen chairs, Mel’s hand on his leg in some attempt to steady him. Becca and Mel vetoed balloons immediately, so instead there’s a very crinkly banner that says “It’s a boy!” that hangs above the television in the living room. 

“I have no idea,” Mel had sighed at Frank’s confused look, “Trinity got it.” 

“Enough said.”

They don’t have much else to do — Samira was bringing pizza and Santos was bringing the cake. He thinks he remembers something about a karaoke machine but Frank had just sort of nodded along when everyone had been discussing it at work this week. All he knew was Santos’ apartment was too small and they were providing the venue which Frank was fine with; he didn’t want to sit on Santos’ living room folding chairs for hours anyway because she still hadn’t bought a couch. 

“Okay, I need to shower,” Mel announces, setting a bag of pretzels on the counter with a shrug. They had forgotten to go shopping and he should probably text Samira to grab some appetizers with the pizza but Mel’s still in his sweatshirt and her hairs a little messy and—

“Great, I’ll join you,” he smirks. 

“They’re going to be here in thirty minutes.” 

“I can be quick,” he parrots from earlier. She still doesn’t look like she believes him but she’s not saying no, only fighting a smile. 

He knows he’s won when her eyes fall to his lips and her cheeks flush. She sticks her hand out in feigned exasperation and he takes it, allowing himself to be led towards her bedroom and into her en-suite bathroom. 

It’s cramped inside the shower for two people, he’s too tall and the tub is too small but they make due for him to bring her to two shuddery orgasms on his fingers and still have enough time for him to wash her hair. 

Or at least for him to put the shampoo in her hair and for her to swat his hands away so she could do it herself. He uses her shampoo as well, much to her annoyance but makes up for it with soapy kisses in between rinses. 

Frank knows they’re in the honeymoon phase, that now they both know they can touch each other like this they don’t want to stop. But he hopes he doesn’t go away, that this love he feels for her only continues to grow. 

There’s knocking at their door when Frank’s only just tugged his pants on and Mel looks a little panicked in her room, still just in her bra and underwear, a sight he really doesn’t want to let go of. 

“Maybe they’ll go away,” Frank suggests to which Mel huffs at and pushes him out of her room, his socks sliding on the hardwood into the hallway. She shuts the door behind her and he walks down the hallway towards the front door, only to see Becca sitting on the couch watching House Hunters.

“Did you not hear the door?” he questions, smiling.

“Oh, no I heard it,” she replies, turning slightly to grin at him over her shoulder, “I thought it would be funny to make them wait.” 

Frank snorts and rips the front door open to see Santos and Whitaker standing there. 

“God, about time,” Santos complains, pushing her way inside, cake box carefully balanced in her hand, “Huckleberry, put that in the living room.” 

He’s got a stack of board games in his hands and he moves to set them on the coffee table that Becca investigates with interest immediately.  

“It’s a boy?” he reads in confusion, looking back at Frank. 

“Blame your roommate,” he deadpans. 

Whitaker sighs but he’s smiling fondly at Santos across the room. She was an odd one for sure, but he was glad he could call her a friend. After she had confronted him about his and Mel’s relationship, he had received some vaguely concealed threats about what would happen if he ever hurt Mel. It had been expected, but what he hadn’t expected was for Mel to tell him she received roughly the same speech about her intentions with Frank. 

His eyes had stung and if it weren’t for an incoming patient he probably would’ve cried right there in the ER. For a long time he felt like he never had friends that truly cared about him, but he thinks these people that have folded themselves into the seam of his life might be just that—friends, people he can rely on, who actually give a shit. 

There’s another knock at the door and Frank goes to answer it again, this time revealing Samira with several stacks of pizza blocking the majority of her body.

“Give me that,” Frank says, taking the boxes from Samira. 

He sets them on kitchen island and Mel comes out of her room, pulling Whitaker into a hug to wish him a happy birthday. Samira shrugs her jacket off and places it on the back of a kitchen chair, moving around the kitchen to the fridge to grab a drink. 

“Trinity, this cake is ginormous,” Samira says as she closes the door. Frank hands her a bottle opener and cracks the top off, “And why did you tell me to order so much food, is anyone else coming?” 

“No,” she replies, shrugging, “I get hungry when I’m drunk.”

“You get hungry when you’re sober,” Whitaker deadpans. 

Mel slides behind Frank to grab some plates from the cabinet, shaking her head with silent laughter as the two continue to banter as she passes them out to their friends. 

“The veggie is on the bottom,” Samira supplies. Frank picks up the boxes and moves them to the side, getting the last one open for Mel. “And meat lover’s is the second one, I think.” 

“This is why you’re my favorite,” Santos sighs happily, pulling the box and nearly knocking them all over in the process. 

He gets Mel a slice and then finds the box with the plain pizza for Becca. He leads her out of the kitchen with a hand on her back and towards the couch, giving Becca her plate. 

“Thanks,” she replies, “Can I have a drink?”

“Yeah, water, soda?” he asks, walking back towards the kitchen. 

“What are you having?” 

“Diet coke.”

“I’ll have that too please.” 

Frank catches Mel smiling softly at her sister and is glad to be distracted by the volleying argument between his coworkers taking place in the kitchen so he doesn’t get overly emotional this early in the evening. 

“I think you and Ellis would make a lovely couple,” Samira is saying, half leaning on the counter and sipping at her beer. “She’s very funny, that could be good for you.” 

“All those night shifts, huh?” Santos teases. She laughs when Samira glares at her. “She’s nice, hot, but Garcia keeps asking me out and—”

“Wait, what about that nurse from Radiology?” Whitaker interrupts, “Andy?”

“Anna,” Santos replies, “No, she’s straight, apparently.” 

Frank pushes his way past her to get to the fridge and fishes out the two sodas. He grabs another beer before Santos can ask, and hands it to her, closing the fridge with his hip. 

“I still think Ellis is a great fit for you,” Samira replies. “But do whatever makes you happy. We could make a pros and cons list if you think that would help.” 

“Jesus, no,” Santos grumbles. 

The rest of their lighthearted argument is lost on him as he returns to the living room to hand Becca her drink. She thanks him and he smiles when she moves over to give him space to settle in between her and Mel on the couch. 

“You didn’t get anything to eat,” Mel notes, frowning. 

“I totally forgot,” he sighs and he really doesn’t want to get right back up again but doesn’t have to when Mel slides her half eaten slice to him. “You’re the best, you know that?” 

“You should tell her more,” Becca comments. 

“You’re completely right,” he agrees, taking a bite of her pizza. “How many times a day do you think is appropriate? Twenty? Thirty?” 

“Twenty-five is in the middle.”

“Oh, jeez,” Mel complains lightly. 

He knocks his knee against hers and she grins.

“We can start a tally on the fridge,” Frank continues, laughing outright when Mel buries her face in her hands. “Or not. At least let me do it once a day.” 

Mel peers back up at him through her fingers and he mimes blowing a kiss at her, taking another bite of his pizza. She removes her hands fully and leans over quickly, kissing him on the cheek before she gets off the couch to head back into the kitchen. 

“You make her happy,” Becca says when she leaves. “I’m really glad you’re here, Frank.” 

“Yeah, Becs,” he replies, his throat a little thick at how earnest she was. “Me too. And she makes me really happy too.” 

“That’s good,” she says, she looks back at the tv and sighs. “Why would they pick that house? It’s so ugly.” 

“Right?” Frank agrees. “No amount of paint is going to save that one.” 

“Exactly.” 

Frank settles back onto the couch with her and while he usually feels the need to put himself on in some sense when people are over, he relaxes knowing he doesn’t have to. They don’t expect him to act a certain way, so he doesn’t, can just exist in this space, listening to the faint sounds of laughter coming from the kitchen, Mel’s ever-present, making his lips quirk. 

It’s nice, he thinks, to just be. 

After pizza and drinks, and after Santos nearly sets the house on fire with the sparkler candles she bought for Whitaker’s birthday cake, they all migrate back to the living room to play some of the many games that were brought over. They gather around Mel’s water-stained coffee table in varying positions on the floor, his own back pressed against the couch, legs outstretched under the table so his ankle could press against Mel’s hip across from him. 

Whitaker decides on Uno first but they only last three rounds since Santos unsurprisingly cheats worse than Frank does. When Monopoly is brought out next, Becca takes over as banker before Santos can even try and suggest it. 

He doesn’t remember the last time he’s played Monopoly — he didn’t grow up in a boardgame household and Becca and Mel preferred card games. He’s given the dog as his token and Samira has to explain the rules about buying properties to him several times but it’s fun, juvenile, so at odds with what they spent the better part of their lives doing, but fun. 

There’s constant laughter around the table, cards that are thrown, and a near spilled drink into his lap at the fault of flailing arms during a bad roll. At some point Mel’s hand settles around his ankle and stays there, a smile on her lips that’s just as permanent. 

He can’t help but think about just how different things were for him this time last year. 

An addiction he couldn’t even admit he had, in a marriage with someone he was no longer in love with, raising kids he was certain would one day hate him just like he hated his own father. He shouldered his shifts at work alone, desperate to prove himself to everyone around him that he was worth something, worth anything. 

Frank still isn’t sure he is somedays, but he’s getting better, doesn’t think the people sitting with him now would be here if he wasn’t. They were good people, so what did that make him? Someone that was worth it? That had the potential to be? He hopes that he is, he hopes more that if he isn’t, he can be soon.

Mel squeezes his ankle. 

“Dude, it’s your turn,” Santos says, “You like totally zoned out.” 

His friends are looking at him with varying levels of concern, but it’s Mel’s eyes, soft and knowing, eyes that could see him in the truest sense of the world, that he stares back at. 

“You okay?” Mel checks. 

Frank picks up the dice and rolls them, smiling when Mel picks up his piece for him and moves it several spaces up the board. 

“Yeah,” he swallows, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

He thinks for the first time in a long time, he actually means it. 

fin.