Archive of Our Own ^beta

“We have to be careful at work.” 

It was a sentiment that Mel had expressed early on, right when their friendship had started to veer off from the touchy-but-platonic zone and into the undeniably-romantic zone. At the time, Frank had agreed to it easily. He was still a very new attending, and Mel was now technically his resident. He figured it was a good idea to give the relationship a few weeks to settle in before going through all the prerequisite HR paperwork. 

Plus, the idea of sneaking around was pretty hot. 

It was only a matter of time, anyway, before someone put two and two together that they weren’t just workplace besties. The nurse group chat was relentless when it came to sniffing out any sort of sexual tension between hospital employees. Rumor had it that they tagged Samira and Abbott halfway through their third shift together, six months before the two of them even officially began dating. And Frank and Mel were way less subtle than the two of them.

So yeah, they had a few weeks at best.

At least, that’s what Frank had assumed. At the time.

Frank’s version of “careful at work” looked, from an objective perspective, probably not that careful at all. 

Not his fault, okay? Frank was very good at taking direction, and Mel’s specific direction had been: “Just don’t treat me any differently than you have before.”

Copy that, Frank thought. 

No one had questioned the obvious, outward favoritism that he had shown towards Mel at any point in the past two years of working together, so why would they start now?

And for the first few weeks, Frank actually was more careful. He resisted certain urges that he probably would have indulged in before, not wanting to fluster her. (A tug on her braid when he passed her in the hall, a hand on her waist as he slid past her in a trauma bay.)

But then one morning, when Frank was chatting with Mel by the charge desk, he forgot where he was for a minute. He caught himself just as he was moving in to drop a kiss on the top of her head, halting in place. Dana witnessed the whole thing over the tops of her spectacles, raising an eyebrow at the strange, aborted head pat that he landed on as a cover. She watched them share a cringey, tension-filled glance as Frank tucked his hand back down into his scrub pockets, shaking his head slightly as Mel walked off.

Seeing all that, she lifted her head up fully and said to Frank: “All good over there, kid?”

“Huh?” Frank jolted out of his stupor with a deer-in-headlights kind of freeze as he turned to look at Dana.

“You two got trouble in paradise or somethin’?” She reiterated gruffly, flicking her pen between Frank and the empty space where Mel had just been.

Ah, this is it. Frank thought, feeling caught but not remorseful. Well, we had a good run.

He figured he’d throw in one final show of ignorance, just so that Mel couldn’t be too upset with him. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Dana fixed him with a look. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you and your little buddy haven’t been as close lately. You do somethin’ to piss her off?”

His little buddy? Frank opened and closed his mouth several times as he tried to come up with a response to that.

“Just apologize to her.” Dana cut in eventually, looking back down at her paper. “It’s a lot more cheerful around this place when the two of you are getting along.”

And then the phone rang, and Dana spun her chair around to answer it, so no one watched as Frank stood there for another whole minute, unmoving, his brain lagging.

His little buddy?

Mel had found the “little buddy” comment a lot less insulting than he had.

“Well, I mean that’s kind of what we want, right?” She had reasoned with him after he had ranted to her in the stairwell about it that afternoon on their break. “For people to keep thinking we’re just friends?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Frank said petulantly as he picked at a loose thread on the hem of her shirt.

“This means that we’re doing a good job. That means we can probably ease up a little. It’s a good thing, Frank.”

He brightened up a bit at the prospect of “easing up a little,” casting a quick glance up and down the stairwell to make sure no one was there before he pulled her in and gave her a quick peck on the lips.

“Okay.” He agreed. “I can ease up.”

“I said a little, Frank.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes wide and innocent. “Yes, Mel. A little.”

Frank took his foot fully off the brake and pretty much floored it after that.

“Glad to see you two worked it out.” Dana congratulated him by that afternoon after she watched him loom behind Mel for a full five minutes, rubbing the tension out of her shoulders as she finished up some charting. It took everything he had not to scoff in her face.

He started having some fun with it - no longer trying to hide it, but rather trying to see how far he could reasonably push it. The only problem was, it was getting a little frustrating trying to find that line.

Turned out, the answer to the question “how obvious could he be?” was, apparently, “quite fucking obvious.”

He thought, for sure, today’s the day, when they slept in a little too long one morning and they rolled into their shift together, five minutes late, with him wearing the same scrubs as yesterday and sporting some major bed-head. He kept a couple extra pairs folded up neatly in a drawer in her bedroom, of course, but they were both dirty from the other two nights he had already spent at her place this week, and they didn’t wake up with enough time to stop by his apartment and grab a fresh set before his shift.

“You can just grab a pair from the machines when you get in.” Mel reassured him as he pulled into the parking lot, reaching up to smooth his hair down again. “If you go quickly, maybe no one will see you?”

Frank hummed in response, and though he tried to make it sound pensive and concerned, he knew it came off a little excited. 

His mind was already racing. How could he make sure that the most possible people caught them walking in together, with him looking decidedly rumpled and wearing yesterday’s scrubs? They’d pass by the nurses station on the way to the lockers, and Frank could probably linger there for a bit before he got his change of clothes, and maybe someone would pull him away for a quick run-down of the night-shift cases? That would probably take at least fifteen minutes. Plenty of time for everyone to clock him looking so disheveled. Plenty of time to get the rumor mill churning.

He was halfway through cooking up his perfect scheme by the time they stepped out of the car, only to be greeted by the sight of McKay falling into step right behind them, announcing herself with a tired sounding “Hey, guys.”

“Doctor McKay!” Mel exclaimed, glancing over at Frank nervously. “Good morning.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, repressing a self-satisfied smirk. “Morning, Doctor McKay.”

She scoffed at the two of them as they began to cross the parking lot. “Alright, Doctors.” She said, teasing the use of their formalities. “Didn’t realize you guys were still doing the carpooling thing. How long has it been now?”

“Little over a year.” Frank answered.

Cassie gave a low whistle at that. “You saving up for a car, at any point, Mel? What do you do when this bozo isn’t working the same shift as you?”

Mel hesitated, clearly trying to think up a reasonable response, but Frank chimed in before she could answer. “I drive Mel in whenever she has to work. And pick her up. Even if I’m not on the schedule.”

That admission hung heavy in the air for a few seconds as Cassie turned to finally look at him, and Frank had that feeling in his stomach like when you’re on a rollercoaster, right before the big drop.

“That’s really sweet, Frank.” She said, sounding surprised. Another beat. “Are those your clothes from yesterday?”

Here we go. He thought gleefully.

“They are.” He drawled, smug about it. 

She stopped walking, and Frank turned back to look at her, feeling cocky as he waited for the look of recognition to dawn over her features, for her to put the puzzle pieces together and gasp scandalously. Instead, he got a scowl.

“Ugh, seriously? What is it with middle-aged men acting like they’ve suddenly invented the concept of casual sex? And with Mel in the car, really Langdon?” Her irate tone morphed into something more empathetic as she turned to address Mel. “Next time he picks you up and forces you to tag along on his walk of shame, Mel, just give me a call instead. I’m happy to swing by on my way to drop Harrison off.” With an indignant eye roll, she pushed past him, leaving them both behind in the parking lot wearing identical expressions of shock.

“What the hell was that?” Frank asked, too stunned to even feel offended.

"I know," Mel agreed, pushing her glasses higher up on the bridge of her nose. “Middle-aged? You’re only thirty three!”

“That’s the part that stood out to you?”

Frank hadn’t stopped complaining about the incident with Cassie all evening. He could tell even Mel was getting a little bit worn down talking about it.

“I really don’t think it had anything to do with you in particular.” She reassured him for the umpteenth time as they washed dishes in her kitchen, the sound of Becca’s reality tv shows echoing in from the other room. “It sounded like you hit a sore spot. She was probably projecting something, honestly.”

“Yeah, I mean, obviously. But what if she goes around telling people at work that I’m like, some whore or something?” He was whining, hamming it up a little bit. He was hoping that if he played up the reputational concern card enough, Mel would fold and agree to just go to HR with him in the morning and end the whole charade.

She wasn’t buying it. “Since when do you care about what people at work think of you?” 

He huffed down at the plate in his hands, drying it carefully with a dish towel. “I don’t. I care what you think of me, though.”

“Okay.” She said, nodding thoughtfully as she turned the tap off. “I don’t think you’re a whore, Frank.” 

It was said so seriously, like she was really trying to comfort him, that he couldn’t help the laugh that slipped out. 

“Jesus, Mel.” He grinned as he set the plate down to tug her flush against him. “I’m your whore, baby.” She giggled at the flutter of kisses he pressed into her face then, and the conversation with McKay was quickly forgotten. 

While Frank was basically at the point that he really didn’t care if anyone guessed at what he and Mel had been up to, there was one person in the Pitt that he still made sure to always keep his guard up around.

That person was, of course, Trinity Santos. 

Listen. Frank had grown a lot as a person since Santos correctly accused him of drug diversion and subsequently got him forced into rehab and almost fired from his job. He had done his whole, wide apology tour and Doctor Santos had been rightfully on that list. 

That did not mean he had to give her the satisfaction of being right about something a second fucking time.

(Not that this was even remotely similar in content or magnitude, but still. It was the principle of the thing.)

Which is why he tried his hardest not to react when Santos leaned across her computer one afternoon and practically shouted, “Hey, Mel! You like guys, right?” 

Frank ground his teeth together. He had been loitering at the patient boards, trying to decide between the forty-two year old with a fever and cough in room eight or the twenty-nine year old with an abscess in room three, but his eyes were now sort of just blurring disassociatively as he listened to Mel stammer back a response. 

“Uh, yes? In—in what context are we discussing them?”

“In a sexual context.”

Frank’s hands clutched his stethoscope around his neck tighter, like it was a strand of pearls.

“Oh! I mean, I’m not sure why that’s relevant—?”

“Just answer the question, Melatonin.”

“Y-yes. Yeah. I prefer men.”

“You prefer them? What does that mean, like you’re open to other options, or—”

“Trinity, what is this about?”

Frank had been staring at this fucking board for way too long. Dana was probably going to get back from her smoke break and snap at him to get a move on any minute now, but he was frozen in place.

“I’ve got a guy for you Mel-bel.”

“A guy.” Mel repeated back at her, deadpan.

“Yeah. He’s cute, and single. Wanna see a picture?”

“No, thank you.”

“Come on.” Santos whined. “When was the last time you went on a date?”

“I go on plenty of dates.” Frank felt something warm bloom in his chest.

Santos scoffed. “Sure, okay. Just look at him, at least. He’s hot, I swear! And he’s into all the same nerdy shit that you are. You can, I don’t know, go LARP together or something.” 

There was the brief sound of a stool rolling across tile, and then Frank heard Mel give a reluctant sigh. “Yeah, he’s handsome I guess.” 

The warm thing blooming in Frank’s chest died a violent death. 

“He’s very, um, blonde, though?” The way Mel said it made it sound like that wasn’t quite a compliment.

“So? You’re blonde.”

There was a beat of silence, and Frank tore his eyes away from the patient screen to hazard what he planned to be a quick, surreptitious glance at them, just in time to see Mel twisting her hands nervously and Santos staring at her like she was diagnosing a particularly vexing case.

“Mel.” Santos said slowly. “Are you… are you seeing someone?”

Mel shrugged, keeping her eyes glued to her computer screen. Santos gasped in delight.

“Melissa King! I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me! Is he as hot as my guy, though? Be honest with me. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“More.” Mel snapped, sounding fed up with her. Frank bit back a wide grin.

He was straight-up staring at the two of them now, like an absolute creep. He hoped that no one was watching him, but he also sort of hoped they were.

“Okay, fine, fine. Show me a picture of this stud, then. Does he like the same kind of weird stuff as you? Because I’m telling you, this guy is practically a perfect –”

“Hey!” Dana’s stern yell carried across the room as she returned back to her desk, indeed walking in from her smoke break. Frank’s eyes snapped quickly back up at the patient board.

“What the hell is this, social hour or something? Why are three of my doctors sitting around shooting the shit instead of talking to patients?”

“Sorry,” Mel mumbled at the same time Santos said, “Three?”

Then Frank felt her suspicious glare land on him and he sighed, looking back over at her. 

“What’s up, Langdon?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “You interested in hot blondes that like Lord of the Rings, too?”

I’ve got one already, thanks. Is what he wanted to say to her.

What he actually said to her was, “Yeah. Give him my number.” Then to Dana, “I’m taking the abscess in three.”

“Yeah, you do that, loverboy.” Dana told him. “Hey kids, maybe let’s keep the matchmaking to a minimum for the rest of this shift, yeah?”

“What was that thing Santos said that guy did again?” Frank asked Mel later that evening, when they were driving home in the car. “LARP?”

Mel groaned at him in embarrassment, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t actually do that.”

He waited a second, and eventually she peeked at him through a slit in her fingers. “I mean, I guess, technically.” She conceded. “But not like, in a loser way. It’s normal.”

“I don’t think you’re a loser, honey.” He was fighting to hold back a smile, not wanting her to think he was making fun of her. “What is it? I’ll do it with you if you want. Apparently there’s a lot of other handsome men there, so I’ll be in good company.”

“Oh my god.” Mel said, her face redder than he’d ever seen it. “I just said that to shut her up, he wasn’t actually that good looking.”

“Still,” He prodded relentlessly, having too much fun to stop now. “I wouldn’t want you to get whisked away by some hero who knows more Star Trek trivia than me.”

“That’s not–” Frank heard her let loose a sort of strangled gurgle. “I’ve never seen that show.”

He could tell how embarrassed she was, and it made him feel a little bit bad, but couldn’t help the sick jolt of pleasure he got from watching her squirm uncomfortably in his passenger seat. “Come on, Mel.” He whined. “I promise not to make fun of you.”

She groaned quietly again and when he flicked his eyes over she had leaned her flaming cheek against the chill glass of the window, looking away from him and trying to cool her face down. “It’s, uh. It’s…”

He waited patiently.

She took a deep breath, and when she spoke next it was so rapid that he had to furrow his brow and focus hard to catch it all.

“It stands for Live Action Role Play. I don’t do that, not that there’s anything wrong with it, I just don’t do it. I do have like, a character, I guess? For um, the Renaissance Faire? I normally go to the one in West Newton, but the one in Manheim is like, better, but far, so sometimes when I have the whole weekend off I go to that one instead. I wear, um, seventeenth-century period-appropriate attire. As–as a French maid? So like, a chemise and stays and sometimes — ugh — elf ears. But only on, like, special weekends, when it’s in theme. But not everyone there wears costumes, most people just dress in normal clothes. So if we ever go, you wouldn’t have to, um, do that. It’s normal and fun and there’s food and shows and cool art and lots of stuff to see, I swear it isn’t that weird.”

Frank’s fingers clutched the steering wheel tightly as he tried to focus on not crashing the car. “Elf ears?” He asked weakly. 

He knew there was a bunch of other shit that she had said after the elf ears comment that he probably should have paid attention to, but his brain pretty much blue-screened the second it conjured up the image of Mel King in a corset with braided hair and pointy little ears.

“Frank!”  She drew out all the syllables of his name as she whined it, burying her face back in her hands. “You promised not to make fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you!” He protested quickly. “Melissa, I’m not, I swear. It’s kind of doing something for me, actually.”

“Really?” She asked in a small, vulnerable voice.

“Yeah, really.” He cleared his throat to get some of the totally-uncalled-for raspyness out of his voice. “And I’d love to go with you, Mel. Obviously I’ll dress up too. I can be, like, your knight or something.”

She hummed at him, and the sound was so soft and fond that it made his heart clench a bit. “There weren’t really that many knights left by the seventeenth century.”

“Hm, okay.” He replied, playfully serious as he pulled into the parking lot of Becca’s facility. “I’ll hit the books and get back to you, then.”

The next few weeks at the Pitt were so consistently chaotic that Frank wasn’t really all that surprised that no one had the time to start any gossip about him and Mel. On Monday, they had a whole new crop of completely green med students and residents start, and then that same day they had not one, but two STEMIs. Tuesday morning started with a gunshot wound, which was normally more of the night-shift fare, and then someone coded in the waiting room and Frank had to rip off his bloody paper scrubs and literally run out to resuscitate them while a whole audience of sick and injured people watched on in horror.

That pace sort of generally continued on in a steady, unrelenting sort of way for several excruciating shifts until finally he was sitting in the break room one afternoon, staring blankly at the salad he had packed for lunch, realizing: “Holy shit.”

Samira and one of the new med students were the only other ones also on their lunch breaks, and both of them turned their heads to look at him in concern.

“I’m just realizing that it’s one p.m. and no one has actually died yet today. I think we might actually have a chance at a normal fucking shift, for once.”

Samira gave him a sympathetic, tired look and the med student (Mera? Mila? He probably needed to figure that out.) giggled at him, probably a little uncomfortable hearing one of her attendings letting f-bombs fly at lunch.

“Come on.” He said to the girl as he packed up his half-eaten food. “You want to actually learn something today? We’ve got time to do some cool shit, now that it’s quieter around here.”

The girl’s eyes widened almost comically as she nodded, furiously shoving things back into her lunchbox to follow him. “Yeah, definitely. I’ll do whatever.”

“Great.” He grinned at her as he led her back out to the floor. “Get ready to have some fun.”

She trailed after him the whole rest of the shift, and he let her assist him with procedures that were normally more R1 or R2 territory. Mia (her name, which he very tactfully checked on her badge before he accidentally called her the wrong one) was borderline reverent towards him the rest of the day, practically gushing in excitement every time he told her to glove up and come join him in the trauma bay. He had forgotten how much he missed this part of his job — the training, the confidence-building, the mentoring.

“Nice job today.” He told her as they parted by the lockers at the end of the day. “You killed it. We’ll make an ER doc out of you yet.”

The girl blushed at the praise, ducking her head and giggling out a breathy, “Thanks, Doctor Langdon,” before scurrying off towards the parking lot.

Frank hung back, waiting on Mel to finish up her charting. He had just pulled out his phone, about to shoot her another text telling her to hustle up, when he heard a huff and the slam of a locker door closing.

When he looked up, Samira was standing in front of him, her arms crossed.

“Hey.” She greeted, voice stern.

“Um, hey.” He answered, tentatively, the lingering smile slipping off his face.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was accusatory, but for once Frank had no idea what he was being accused of.

“I’m… waiting for Mel?”

“I mean what are you doing with her, Langdon?”

Oh, wow. Frank thought. It’s actually finally happening.

It made sense that out of everyone, Mohan would be the one to finally figure them out. She was closest with Mel – they went to the farmer’s market on the weekend together sometimes, Samira had met Becca before. Mel had probably let something obvious slip the last time they grabbed coffee together.

“Mohan, you don’t have anything to worry about –” He began to give her a small reassuring smile, but her brows furrowed in tighter at him.

“I saw all those looks she was giving you today. You were feeding into it too.” 

Damn. Mel had been giving him looks? He must have missed those. Bummer.

Frank shrugged sort of sheepishly at her. “I mean, sorry? What do you want me to do, ask her to stop?”

“You could stop encouraging it at the very least!” Samira was adamant, and Frank found himself getting annoyed.

“It’s not like I’ve committed a crime here, Doctor Mohan.” He challenged. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone here has been a touch unprofessional at work, would it?”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously at the implication. “She’s a little young for you, isn’t she Frank?”

Did Frank need to switch up his fucking skin care routine or something? When did everyone at this hospital decide he was suddenly the crypt keeper?

“She’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions.” He defended. “And you’re really one to talk, Samira.” He loaded his voice with all the same tone that she had, enjoying the way it made her cheeks heat up in indignation.

“It’s not even remotely the same and you know it.” She hissed, poking him in the chest. “That girl is so wide-eyed and innocent she’s practically a baby.” 

Frank opened his mouth to correct her, to inform her that actually, while the innocent thing was a pretty convincing facade, the real Mel was into some truly mind-blowing shit, but Mohan cut him off before he could interject.

“She’s probably not even twenty-two!” She whisper-yelled, high-pitched and lecture-like.

“Sorry, what?” Frank said at a normal volume. “She just turned twenty-nine.”

“No she –” Then Mohan stopped, leaned back, and looked at him more assessingly. “Who are you talking about?”

“Uh, Mel?” He answered. “Who are you talking about?”

“Mia.” She said, as if it were obvious.

“The med student? Why the hell would you be talking to me about the med student?” He asked, appalled.

“Why would I be talking to you about Mel?” Samira countered.

“You guys were talking about me?” Mel asked, choosing that exact moment to appear behind Mohan’s shoulder, blinking and confused.

Samira and Frank both just gaped blankly for a few seconds, looking between her and each other, both of them trying to figure out how they were going to explain themselves.

“Apparently, we were not.” Frank said eventually, reaching down to pick Mel’s backpack up off the floor and pass it to her, having grabbed it out of her locker for her earlier. 

“Okay?” Mel said, still sounding confused. “Is, um. Is everything okay?” She directed this question at Samira, who was still looking at Frank, her eyes slightly narrowed.

“Yeah, Mel. It’s –” Mohan shook her head, sighing. “This isn’t about you, don’t worry.”

It's exclusively about her! Frank wanted to scream.

Samira shot him one last glare as she backed away, making a small hmph sound as she did. “I’m still watching you, Langdon.” She said in parting, headed towards the exit.

“Fucking hell.” Frank muttered under his breath, shaking his head incredulously at her retreating form.

“What was that about?” Mel asked as she hiked her backpack up over her shoulders.

“Come on,” He said, guiding her past the lockers. “I’ll explain it at the restaurant.”

Mel’s reaction to Frank’s retelling of the misunderstanding with Samira and the new med student left a little to be desired. He had waited until they were seated across a booth from one another at their usual diner so he could catalogue her expression as he told it, could bask in the joy of watching her laugh at the sheer absurdity of it.

But when he finished the story, her only response was to look down with a small frown and say, “Oh.”

Frank felt the wind rapidly leave his sails. “Oh?” He repeated, unable to mask his disappointment. “I mean it’s crazy, right?”

Mel shrugged at him, and he could tell by the movement of her arms that she was twisting her fingers together under the table. “I guess.”

Her tone was… strange. Borderline curt. Frank tilted his head to the side, trying to puzzle her out. “Are you… upset with me?”

Mel wouldn’t look at him. “I mean. What were you doing? To, um, make her think that?”

“Nothing!” He insisted. “Literally just doing my job. Training a new hire.”

Mel nodded right away, accepting it immediately. “Okay.” She finally looked at him then, eyes big and full of unwavering trust. It struck him, not for the first time, that he did not deserve this girl. “Was, um. Was she doing anything?”

Frank thought about it for a minute. “I mean, I don’t think so? She was a little giggly, maybe, but I think that was mostly nerves.”

The noise Mel made back at him sounded suspiciously grumpy, and Frank finally caved, raising a brow at her. “Alright, Melissa. What’s the problem?”

Her frown deepened as she pressed her lips together into a firm line. Frank could make out the beginnings of a small flush rising up her neck. A thought occurred to him.

“Mel,” He said slowly, watching as her gaze lowered down, embarrassed. “Are you – are you jealous, honey?”

She chewed on her lip, and the under-the-table hand-twisting intensified. Frank barked out a laugh that he regretted as soon as he saw her shrink further down into her seat.

“Sorry,” He apologized, trying to put a lid on his amusement. “Sorry, baby. It’s just – I’m like, pathetically obsessed with you, you know that right? That you have truly nothing to worry about?”

“I know that.” She sighed, sounding a bit frustrated as she looked back up at him. “I do know that. It’s just that you’re you, and I’m…” She trailed off as she gestured generally down at herself.

Frank raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, what? Didn’t catch that last part. You’re what?”

She huffed at him. “You know what I mean, Frank.”

He hummed at her in an unimpressed way. “I really don’t, Mel. But if you want to have a lengthy discussion about it, I’d be happy to get into it later this evening when I have my head between your thighs.”

The creeping flush exploded over her face at that comment. “Okay, fair. Point taken.”

The waiter came to set their food down and their conversation paused for a moment. By the time he walked away it seemed like Mel had composed herself a bit more – she smiled at Frank apologetically.

“I’m sorry. I think maybe I’m just feeling a little insecure because people at work still don’t know about us.” She explained as she picked up her fork.

“You know, there’s an easy solution to that.” Frank said, leaning in conspiratorially. “We could file our paperwork.” 

Mel sighed. “After my fellowship application goes through, okay?”

Frank groaned. “Mel, I told you, no one is going to care about that. I’m not on the hiring board and you wouldn’t even let me write you a letter of recommendation! No one is going to accuse us of favoritism.”

“I know, it’s just –” She fussed, spiking a piece of pasta with her fork. “I want to play things safe. It’s only a few more weeks, right?”

“Fine.” Frank conceded, not feeling pleased about it. “A few more weeks. But if someone figures it out before then, we have to file it anyway. Agreed?”

Mel nods. “Of course! Yeah, Frank, of course.”

The next week, Frank decides fuck it and just gives her a hickey.

A big one. Right on her neck, where everyone would see it.

He knew, the night before, as he was sucking on the skin right above her pulse, that he was doing something that would get him in trouble later. But last week one of their patients had remarked, in an otherwise glowing patient satisfaction report, what a fun “sibling dynamic” her two doctors had. Then Gloria had given them a shout-out and linked the full review in the hospital-wide weekly bulletin email. And something in Frank had snapped.

All week, he'd endured a relentless barrage of uninspired "big bro" quips from Santos and Garcia, and it was starting to make him lose it. He figured the fastest way to kill the pithy "baby sister" commentary was to just let Mel wear the indent of his teeth on her neck.

“Babe, we really have to get going.” Frank implored, leaning against the door to his apartment, watching Mel fuss with the bruise on her neck in the mirror for the fifth time that morning. She kept just pressing at the skin with her fingertips, as if light pressure was all it needed to rub away completely. He felt a little bit bad about it.

“Frank, this looks awful.” She whined. “How am I supposed to go in like this?” 

They had spent over half an hour already that morning trying different old-wives-tale style tricks that promised to fade the mark. The cold spoon had brought some of the redness down, but it did nothing about the more obvious dark purple areas. The brush hack was one that Frank fought against rather adamantly, arguing that there was clearly no science behind it and that she was more likely to just irritate the skin on her neck than anything else. Mel had gotten only about two good scrubs in before she dropped the brush on the carpeted floor with a blegh noise, immediately overstimulated by the sensation. Makeup would have been the most effective, but they stayed at Frank’s apartment that night, and Mel so rarely wore the stuff that she didn’t have any at his place.

“Why don’t you just wear your hair down today?” He suggested, coming up behind her to tug lightly on the end of her braid.

Mel’s eyes connected with his through the mirror. “All day?” She pouted.

“It’s probably your best bet.” He said as he pulled the hair tie out, slipping it on his wrist as he gently undid her braid, fanning her wavy hair out over her shoulders until it mostly covered her neck. 

“There.” He said, resting his chin on top of her head and wrapping his arms around her waist as he looked at her in the mirror. “Good as new, right?”

“You think so?” She asked, biting her lip.

“Yeah, for sure.” He lied. 

He gave it probably twenty minutes before she twisted her head the wrong way and someone caught a glimpse of it. Maybe forty before Robby snapped at her to pull her hair back so it wasn’t dangling into someone’s open chest cavity in the trauma bay. 

Yeah, Frank was definitely an asshole for this one, but yesterday morning Santos had greeted him with a “hey Luke, where’s Leia?” and he just knows he didn’t play it off casually enough for her not to notice how much it pissed him off.

With that memory fresh on his mind, Frank stamped the guilt down deep as he reassured her the whole drive in, reminding her, “Hey, worst-case-scenario is just that today’s the day we have to file the paperwork.”

Mel situated her hair around her neck as carefully as possible as they stepped out of the car, keeping her sweatshirt zipped up high on her throat as she darted to the lockers, successfully covering the obscene-looking thing mostly from sight. 

It wasn’t until about fifteen minutes into their shift, when Frank had just cracked into his first Red Bull of the day and Mel was settling down at her computer, that he heard Javadi release a high-pitched, crazed sounding laugh, and say, “Oh my god. Mel?”

Frank congratulated himself for guessing the timing correctly.

“Hm?” Mel hummed at her, turning her head very slowly and deliberately to look at the girl. 

“I, uh.” Another weird, breathy giggle from Javadi. “I think you need to come to the bathroom with me.”

“Oh. Um…”

“Now, actually!” Javadi chirped, fishing around in the backpack at her feet and pulling out a small, zippered bag.

“Right.” Mel nodded, shooting Frank a look as she trailed behind the girl on the way to the bathroom. Frank just gave her a helpless shrug in response.

He loitered for as long as possible around the charge desk, trying his hardest not to catch Dana’s attention so he could watch as Javadi scurried in and out of the restroom, grabbing more things from drawers as she returned, doing god knows what to his poor girlfriend behind the door.

Eventually he was spotted, and sent off with his tail between his legs to an acute abdominal pain case that ended up being appendicitis. They dosed the patient up with some pain meds and got him on the OR schedule for an appendectomy in a few hours, but the whole thing ended up taking far more time out of Frank’s morning than he had hoped, so he didn’t see Mel again for the first two hours of the day.

When he finally caught a glimpse of her again, she was standing at the patient board, gripping her stethoscope around her neck as she decided on a case to take. Frank slid up next to her in a way that he hoped looked cool, casual.

“Hey,” He greeted, keeping his eyes on the board and not her. “You good? Javadi had you in her operating room for like, a minute.”

Mel glanced to the side at him, shooting him a small smile as she brushed her hair back. Frank looked down to catch a glimpse of his handiwork and —

There was nothing there. A slightly off-color brown spot, maybe. But Mel’s hickey (his hickey) was gone.

“Javadi is amazing at makeup.” Mel gushed at him under her breath. “You should have seen all the stuff she had, Frank. At first I thought, no way, we’re not the same shade at all, but then she started explaining color theory to me, which is so interesting by the way, and she mixed a bunch of different colors together and then put powder on it and sprayed it with this stuff and it’s practically perfect.” 

“Huh.” Frank said blankly, tearing his eyes away from it to look back up at her face, finding her beaming at him.

“She even gave me a little jar of it to keep in my desk drawer for touch-ups throughout the day. I’ll show you later.”

“That’s so awesome.” Frank grumbled, feeling utterly despondent about it.

“Mel,” A voice said, and Frank turned his head to see the artist herself, approaching the two of them with a slight frown on her face. 

“I’m sorry, I asked around but somehow no one has an extra hair tie today. I don’t even know how that happens, honestly.” Javadi apologized.

Mel smiled at her. “Thank you for trying. You didn’t have to do that. I can just—”

“Here.” Frank slid Mel’s hair tie off his wrist and handed it to her, still there from when he had taken her braid out this morning. Mel accepted it from him, casting a wary sideways glance at Javadi as she did.

Javadi looked at him with a slight divot between her brows, and Frank thought for a second maybe he had salvaged the situation. The hickey was a bust, but maybe he’d get a rumor started today yet.

“Oh. I didn’t even think to — why do you keep hair ties on you?” There was a beat of awkward, obvious silence that Frank really basked in for a moment, waiting to see if Mel would say something, or if it’d be him.

Before either of them could fess up, the small wrinkle in Javadi’s forehead smoothed in a series of rapid blinks, and she released a small laugh that sounded like realization. “I keep forgetting about your daughter, duh. That’s very girl-dad behavior of you.”

Um, what?

A spot behind Frank’s temple began to thud quite suddenly. “It’s not –” He started to argue. “That’s not–”

“Is Doctor Daddy Langdon taking good care of his adopted daughters over here?” Santos chimed in, rolling into the conversation on her stool as soon as she heard him floundering. Frank could do nothing to stop his groan of abject horror.  

“I have to go check on a patient.” He muttered, immediately giving up and walking off. 

Fuck his life.

“So you’re telling me she didn’t ask you a single question about where it came from? Or who gave it to you?” 

“No!” Mel whispered her excitement to him in a low voice as they huddled together outside the ambulance bay on their break. “I was literally about to just tell her, you know, because she was being so helpful? But she stopped me before I could.”

“Why?” Frank couldn’t hide the disbelief creeping into his voice. Javadi was second only to Princess in her propensity for collecting hospital gossip.

“She said she was trying to turn over a new leaf. After the whole… TikTok incident.”

One of the nurses in the ICU had found Javadi’s TikTok a few months back and she had been asked (told) by hospital administration to delete it. Frank was perhaps more upset about it than she was. He had been watching her content on a burner account for a while.

“Huh.” He replied, rolling his mint around in his mouth to try to hide his scowl.

“Crazy lucky, right? She was really nice about it too. Told me she was happy for me, that she was glad I had someone. She said she’s trying to focus more on making friends this year, before she gets too bogged down in a residency and doesn’t have time. We’re probably going to go get boba on Thursday.”

“Wow, yeah.” Frank gave her a tight smile, trying to suppress his disappointment and be supportive. “Crazy lucky.”

Whenever Frank had to work a double, he typically prepared like this:

The day before, hit the gym and tire his body out. Nothing too strenuous, he didn’t want to be sore, but just enough to get the blood flowing. 

Eat three healthy, balanced meals. 

Limit his caffeine intake. 

Try to get to bed at a reasonable time so he could get as close to nine full hours as possible. 

Lay in bed stressed about getting his full nine hours, watching the glowing alarm clock on his bedside table tick up minute by minute like a time bomb about to go off. 

Get about five hours. 

Wake up with his heart racing and begin pounding Red Bulls until it was over.

Mel, on the other hand, prepared for her twenty-four hour shifts like this: 

Hang out with Becca. 

Hang out with Frank. 

Skip dinner and treat herself to a cupcake from the new store that opened up down the street instead. 

Stay up way too late watching brain-rotting reality television. Somehow wake up fifteen minutes before her alarm anyway, as bright-eyed and beaming as always. 

Have a banana for breakfast as her “energizing snack” while she watched Frank rush around the apartment like a crazed person, trying to get his shit together.

It was maybe the only thing he didn’t like about her, and that was mostly because he seethed with jealousy at how easy she made it all look.

This morning, though, something was different. He didn’t know what had changed, but when he picked Mel up at her apartment that morning on the way into their double, he watched her yawn not once, not twice, but three times.

“All good over there?” He asked, trying not to sound delighted, because why would he be delighted that his lovely, kind, beautiful girlfriend felt tired before her twenty-four hour shift at the ER? That would be sick. That would be twisted. That would be not at all in-character behavior for him, Frank Langdon, a man whom everyone knew to be moral, ethical, and compassionate.

“Yeah.” Mel said, rubbing her eyes. “Yeah, I’m not sure what’s going on. I think I might have gotten too much sleep last night.”

He laughed at that, shaking his head at what could only be described as a stereotypically-Mel answer. “I’m sure you’ll get going once we get in there, sweetheart. Nothing like a few eight a.m. crises to wake you right up.”

But the bounce-back he had predicted never quite seemed to happen. She muddled through alright for the first twelve or thirteen hours. She was maybe a bit slower on the uptake than usual, but she was still churning through multiple patients per hour and flipping over cases on the board quickly enough that no one commented. It was around ten p.m., when they had already been at it for almost fourteen hours and were still staring down the barrel of ten more, that he started to really notice her slipping — a dead-eyed gaze at her computer screen; a shaky hand with the scalpel; heavy, slow blinks at him when he asked for her differential.

When the call came in that they had a three person MVA on the way, he yelled over at Mel to glove up and join him, certain that a high-energy trauma case was adrenaline-pumping enough to snap her out of it.

But then they wheeled the patient in and Frank was halfway through an intubation calling for suction and he looked up to see Mel half zoned out, looking at him like she was an R1 again, and Frank thought shit.

“Mel, take five. Swap with Whittaker.” He snapped, more stern than he intended to be but they had about a minute, maybe, to get this guy’s airway open and he needed suction now.

Thankfully, Whittaker muscled in right away, grabbing the suction from her and immediately leaning in, giving Frank the sightline he needed to continue the procedure. He could hear Mel stumbling over her words apologetically in the background, and he hazarded a quick glance up at her as passed through the cords and began feeding the tube down the patient’s throat.

“Doctor King. Take five. Get some air. I’ll come find you when the patient is stable.”

The room was eerily quiet for a moment as he felt Perlah’s eyes on them, Whittaker’s eyes on them, Walsh’s eyes on them, all watching them warily. Frank didn’t look up from the patient, too worried that he might find Mel looking back at him, misty-eyed and hurt.

She said nothing in response, but he inferred from the sound of gloves snapping off and the crumple of paper scrubs being tossed in the trash that she had heeded his recommendation. 

“Alright, guys.” He said to the still-staring audience. “Let’s finish this, okay?”

It took another ten minutes or so before they got the patient stabilized enough for Frank to step back and let Whittaker take the wheel. He popped his head into the other two trauma bays briefly to check and make sure no one needed him before finally stepping back out into the ER to look for Mel.

“She’s in south sixteen.” Lena said to him from behind the charge desk as soon as he approached, not even looking up from her desktop.

“Great.” He said, rapping his knuckles on the desk. “Thanks.”

He felt strangely nervous as he walked up to the patient room, shut with the curtains drawn, and wondered idly if he should knock first. He decided against it, eventually, slipping into the room and ducking behind the curtain without announcing himself.

“Mel?” He asked quietly as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over with her head in her hands, shaking a little. Frank hated himself.

“Mel… sweetheart. I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t.” She choked out, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hands roughly as she looked up at him. “You were completely right to send me out. I don’t know what happened in there. I could have killed him.”

Frank leaned back against the door as he watched her, sucking on his teeth as he tried to decide whether or not she wanted him to touch her, whether it would be at all welcome right now. “He’s fine. He’s stable. I never would have let that happen in there.” 

She gave a shaky humming noise of acknowledgement, and then Frank noticed her hands. Her nails were digging into her knees through her scrub pants so hard that the tops of her fingers were white, and he could see bits of red around the nailbeds, like she had been picking at the thin skin there enough to make them bleed. Distraught by this, Frank closed the distance between them.

“Mel, enough.” He grabbed her wrists, prying her hands up and pinning them down to the bed next to her. “What are you doing? You’re tired. You just need a break. Stop beating yourself up in here for the crime of being a human being.”

“That’s never happened to you.” Mel said, voice almost accusatory, like she was seeking proof of her own shortcomings. 

Frank almost laughed at her. “It most definitely has happened to me. It happens to everyone that works here at some point. It doesn’t make you a bad doctor.”

He could see some of the iciness of her self-loathing begin to thaw, her eyes softening and focusing on him like they did when he was teaching her a new technique. He raised his hands off her wrists to guide her lightly by the shoulders until she was laying back against the bed. “Sleep, Mel. Twenty minutes. Take a nap. You’ll feel better.”

She gripped at his forearms with something almost like panic. “That’s not—Robby said—”

“I don’t care what Robby said.” He interjected. “I’m your attending tonight, okay? And I’m telling you to take a nap.” He probably could have been gentler about the way he said that to her, but Robby’s insistence that needing a break was tantamount to personal failure was a particular point of contention for him. 

She pouted at him as she allowed herself to be laid down against the pillows. “It’s just – I don’t think that’ll help.” 

“What’ll help then, baby?” Frank asked, on the cusp of begging, feeling powerless. “I can go get you a coffee, or—”

“Kiss me?” 

It was asked so earnestly, so innocently, that Frank just blinked at her for a second. “Sorry, what?”

She was starting to blush a bit. “Please? I—I think it’ll wake me up some.”

Frank exhaled, feeling a dangerous stirring sensation begin to build in his lower stomach as he took in her big eyes and pouty lips, begging him for a kiss. 

“Okay.” He glanced back at the door to the room — still shut. It didn’t lock, but he hoped that people were giving them some privacy under the assumption that she was upset over the incident in the trauma room. “If—if you think that’ll work.”

She nodded ardently, folding her hands over her chest and tilting her head just-so, waiting for him patiently. Frank leaned down, hovering his mouth over hers as he watched her eyes flutter shut.

A quick one. He thought. No harm in that.

But as soon as he pressed his lips to hers, he knew there was no world in which it would be over quickly. She released the most pleased little sigh he ever heard in his life the second their mouths met, and her arms came up to wind around his neck as she melted down into the bed. He tried to keep the kiss closed-lip, but she was warm and insistent, tracing the outline of his mouth with the very tip of her tongue until he gasped, opening up for her.

She groaned when he did, and while it was only a small sound, half-muffled in his mouth, it practically echoed in the empty room.

“Mel,” he whispered, tearing himself away, but not going far. “Mel, we’ve got to be so quiet, honey. This is —” He gulped down at the sight of her – panting a little, her fingers having reached up to twist in the collar of his scrub top. God help him. “This is really crazy.”

“I’ll be good.” She promised, tugging at him again. “I’ll be really quiet, Frank, I promise. It’s helping.” 

“Fuck,” he whispered as he dropped back down to her mouth, completely unable to resist her. 

Weirdly, he could tell she was telling him the truth. There was a growing liveliness to her movements, a sureness to her hands as they scraped through his hair that he hadn’t seen since the first hour or two of their shift. Something in her brain had switched back on, and it made Frank a little lightheaded to consider the implication of this being the thing that managed to snap Mel out of her funk.

He was very careful to keep his hands only on her shoulders, pressing her down into the bed, but Mel had no such reservations. Her fingers traveled from his scalp down the back of his neck, over his chest, his stomach, headed lower. 

He released an almost humiliating noise as she reached for the waistband of his scrub pants, a sort of cut-off whimper as she found a sliver of bare skin to run the tips of her fingers across. 

“Mel, Mel, Mel,” he repeated against her lips, not sure exactly what he was trying to communicate.

The logical parts of Frank’s brain that had been yelling about how careless they were being were starting to quiet, getting drowned out by the ravenous parts of his brain that begged and pleaded for her hands on him.

He leaned back, about to throw caution to the wind and ask her just how quiet she really thought she could be, when the sound of footsteps registered in his ears. 

Close footsteps. Followed by the sound of the door pulling open.

Frank rocketed back from her, taking two large steps and turning away just in time to hear the curtain pull open. His back was to Mel and he was now facing a rolling cart of bandages and other medical supplies, staring stupidly at the wall as he tried not to freak out. 

“Oh.” Whittaker’s voice. Frank swallowed hard at the wall. His face was burning. He should turn around and address him, but he didn’t think he could yet.

“Sorry. That’s my — I should have — sorry. I’ll just —” Curtain open again. Door shut. 

Frank exhaled, trying to regain some composure before he turned back to Mel. Once he looked at her, he knew that they were both fucked. She looked tousled, her eyes wide with glasses askew, her face flushed, the pillows by her head crushed down by his palm, the blankets by her side wrinkled by her fist. 

“Frank?” She asked, sounding worried.

“I’ll fix it.” He promised in a rush, running his hand through his hair to settle it. “Stay here — just — wait. I’ll find him; I’ll fix it sweetheart.”

He rushed out the door after Whittaker, leaving Mel behind on the bed. As he left the patient room, Frank turned his head just in time to see the boy duck down the hall by the lockers.

As much as he wanted this sneaking around phase with Mel to be over, Frank knew this was not how they needed to be discovered — making out in one of the patient rooms like two horny teenagers. That was the kind of workplace incident that might keep Mel from a fellowship appointment. That was the kind of thing that would get them in trouble with HR. That was the kind of thing Frank needed to solve, expeditiously.

“Whittaker!” Frank barked out down the hall, watching Dennis stop in his tracks and turn around to stare up at him with his usual brand of kicked-puppy eyes.

“Look, man,” Whittaker began before Frank could even launch into his “it’s not what it looks like” defense. “I’m not gonna say anything, if it makes you feel better.”

It did make Frank feel better, marginally. He crossed his arms over his chest protectively. “Thanks, I — I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have — she just needed —” He had no idea how to explain himself, what sort of excuse he could possibly muddle out.

“It’s fine, really. We’ve all done it.” 

Frank’s brain stuttered. “Um. Really?”

Whittaker shrugged at him, like it was common knowledge. “I mean. Probably not Robby, but the rest of us? Yeah.”

Frank must have been wrapped up in Mel-land for longer than he thought. Since when were all his colleagues hooking up in empty patient rooms? How had he missed that?

“You?” Frank couldn’t help the stunned disbelief that crept into his tone as he gave Whittaker an assessing once-over.

He shifted under Frank’s gaze, clearly uncomfortable. “Yeah, man. Me. I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this, now that you’re also an attending. I know everything thinks that I’m some, like, goody-two-shoes. But I do also break the rules sometimes.”

Frank felt almost scared to ask his next question. “With–with who?”

Whittaker gave him a weird look. “Not with anyone. Just, by myself, you know. On the longer shifts; when it’s quiet.” 

Oh, Jesus. That was what Frank got for asking, he supposed. He really didn’t need to be privy to the knowledge that Dennis Whittaker was using the empty patient rooms to… clear his mind during longer shifts, but Frank really had no room to lecture him on it, now.

“Alright, then.” Frank’s voice sounded strangled, and he so badly wanted to be out of this conversation now. “Thanks for, um. Your discretion.”

Dennis seemed entirely nonplussed by Frank’s strangeness, watching him back away with a weak, tired smile that Frank thought was tinged with a bit of sympathy. “It’s good you watch out for her, you know. Mel. She’s stubborn sometimes, but she listens to you more than other people. If anyone was going to talk her into a mid-shift nap, it would probably be you.”

Frank halted mid-step. “Nap?” He echoed.

Dennis held his hands up, palms out in surrender. “Did I say that? No nap. I didn’t see anyone napping. Scout’s honor.”

Frank took a deep breath and very carefully kept any emotion off his face. “Right. Good work today, Whittaker.”

He couldn’t even be fucking mad about this one.

“Oh, gosh. I can’t believe Dennis thinks I nap at work.” Mel bemoaned the next afternoon after they had both slept for ten straight hours and Frank had explained to her how he fixed their incident.

“I nap all the time.” Becca interjected from her seat at the kitchen table, looking up from her Switch. “So do Tanner and Penny. Napping is good for you.”

“Very good point, Becs.” Frank agreed, pointing at her with the spatula he was using to fry off breakfast sausage. (Mel had a rule that the first meal after waking up was always breakfast, even when their night shifts meant they woke up at three p.m.) “All the best people I know nap.”

Mel shot him her most withering look. It wasn’t very withering.

“There’s nothing wrong with napping, Becca, but you shouldn’t do it at work. It isn’t fair to everyone else.” Mel explained to her sister, who responded with an unconvinced sounding noise and directed her attention back down at her video game.

“I mean, it’s much better than him figuring out what we were actually doing in there.” Frank turned to Mel and shielded his mouth with his palm, angling in such a way that he hoped Becca couldn’t see him dramatically mouthing the word kissing. Mel bit her lip, looking away from him guiltily.

“I saw that.” Becca said factually. “I can read lips.”

Frank paused, feeling caught. “Well,” he said evenly, turning back to the frying pan. “Who taught you to do that?”

Becca ignored him. “Why would you get in trouble for kissing? You’re boyfriend and girlfriend. You kiss all the time.” 

Frank was not really sure how he was supposed to explain to Becca the murky ethics of on-the-clock makeouts with your subordinate in the ER without dying of embarrassment in the process. Thankfully, Mel jumped in to offer a much more succinct answer.

“The people at work don’t know that Frank’s my boyfriend.”

The clicking on Becca’s Switch halted. “Oh. Well then can’t you just tell them? Why would you keep it a secret?”

Frank glanced back in time to see Mel shooting him a look that clearly said help me. He raised an eyebrow at her. 

“That’s smart.” He told Becca, scooping up some sausages onto a plate and handing it to her. “Hey, why don’t we try that, Mel?”

Mel glared at him. “We’re going to tell them.” She informed her sister. “In two weeks when I hear back about the fellowship.”

“Two weeks is a long time to keep a secret. You should just tell them now.” Becca said sagely.

“I wholeheartedly agree.” Frank replied.

Frank thought he was maybe being punished for something.

His evidence to support this theory was as follows:

First, he had not had a shift with Mel in six days. This was, statistically, unlikely. He and Mel both primarily worked day shift, so they worked together more often than not. Six straight days without sharing a shift had quite literally never happened. Cynically, the whole thing smelled of shift-bribing to him.

Second, he had been kicked off of escorting duties. Since their shifts differed all week, Mel had arranged for separate transport to and from the hospital, electing to carpool in with Samira or McKay. She told him it was because she was worried about his sleep schedule, but by cutting out their drive time she chopped his already-paltry Mel-time basically in half. He saw her in nothing but short spurts for almost a week – a few minutes by the lockers as their shifts overlapped, a single evening at his apartment where they both were too exhausted to do anything other than sleep.

Finally, he thought he was maybe being punished because as he walked into work for the sixth consecutive day of Mel-less purgatory, he texted her, somewhat jokingly: Am I in trouble?

And she replied, harrowingly: No, Frank. Let’s talk tonight.

Frank stood at his locker staring at the message, trying and failing to not have an utter breakdown about it. 

What? He texted back. Her bubble popped up, then disappeared. Frank bit on his thumb nail, watching her virtually ponder what to say as the ellipses indicating her typing reappeared a few times indecisively. 

Mel, I was joking. He sent eventually, growing impatient.

No bubble. He started to freak out.

Am I actually in trouble?

Did I do something?

I’m sorry for whatever it is.

Can you tell me what I did so I can apologize? 

Is it because of that joke I made to Santos yesterday? Because that was not about you, I swear.

Also, she’s not actually mad about that, she knows I was kidding.

Mel???

Frank leaned on his locker, staring at his phone screen unblinkingly. The bubble reappeared.

Sorry, Becca’s crochet yarn got tangled and I had to help her.

He dropped the back of his head against the metal locker door with a brain-rattling thunk.

Mel, please, you’re killing me here.

Bubble again.

It’s nothing bad, Frank, I swear. Just have a good shift, okay? We can talk after you get off.

He knew this was intended to be reassuring. He knew this should provide him comfort. He knew that Mel wasn’t one to beat around the bush, or play with his emotions. If she said it wasn’t anything bad, then it wasn’t anything bad.

But still. Frank was a catastrophizer.

He shut his locker door, stopping just short of slamming it closed. Normally, he left his phone in his locker during his shift, only stopping to grab it when he was on a break to check and make sure Mel or Becca or his kids didn’t need him. Today, though, he slipped it into his scrub pocket instead. Just in case Mel felt inclined to elaborate, to perhaps put him out of his misery a bit.

Or maybe she wouldn’t, and maybe Frank would finally see what that roof that Robby and Abbott loved so much was all about.

And then Frank really did try to focus on work. Really.

So what if he lingered in triage for a while longer than he normally would, picking patients off the board that were probably better suited for an R2 than an attending? It was good for the patient satisfaction scores for the attending to show face in chairs every now and again.

His plan was to breeze through the morning until his head felt like it was on a little more straight. Or until Mel decided to text him. Whichever came first.

It was all going swimmingly until he sat down with a teenage boy who had fallen off his bike and was sporting a decent road rash across his bare forearms. 

“Dang, dude.” Frank said, shining a pen light on the injury. He could see some flecks of gravel that he’d have to pick out – just a few. “How far did you slide?”

“You think this is gonna take long?” The surly teen asked him, ignoring his attempt at small talk.

“Nah,” Frank said, turning the light off and standing up from his chair. “I’ll put in an order for some eight-hundred milligram ibuprofen for you, and then we’re just going to clean it out and bandage it up. Should only be a few more minutes.”

Frank’s phone buzzed in his back pocket. He pulled off his gloves and reached for it, releasing a disappointed sigh when it was nothing but a spam text – the cable company reminding him that his monthly payment had gone through. He set his phone down on the cart and quickly typed in the script for the pain meds.

“I’ll be right back.” He told the teen. “Just going to grab a few supplies.”

He was gone for three minutes. At most. 

Just long enough to grab some tweezers and bandages and a better pen light from the supply closet, because the one in the patient room was dim and he could tell the battery was dying. But when he pulled the curtain back, the boy was gone.

“Hey,” he called over to Donnie, who was passing by in the hall, also working triage that morning. “Where’d the kid go?”

“What kid?” Donnie asked, looking up from the charts on the tablet he was scrolling through.

“Road rash kid. He was just in here.”

“No idea man, sorry.”

Frank frowned, wondering if the boy had slipped off to the bathroom somewhere, when his eyes landed on the cart. He felt his heart drop as he grabbed for his pockets, already knowing he’d find them empty.

“Fuck!” 

Donnie’s head whipped around, paying him his full attention this time.

“That little fucker stole my phone.” Frank said, stunned at his own idiocy.

Donnie laughed at him. “You left your phone alone in a patient room with a teenage boy from triage? That’s a rookie mistake.”

“Goddamn it.” Frank hissed under his breath, slamming the tweezers down onto the cart with his open palm.

“Langdon!” Robby’s voice carried across the ER, a stern shout. “Need you over here!”

Frank glanced back at Donnie, who tilted his head towards the call. “Go. I’ll pull the kid’s name from his charts and talk to Ahmad. He’ll keep an eye out for you.”

“Fuck me.” He breathed again, rushing towards the chaos that he could see beginning in Trauma One.

As luck would have it, the rest of the shift was completely brutal. Considering how slow it had started off, Frank probably should have seen that coming. Calm before the storm type of thing and all that.

He spent the rest of the day running between one of the two trauma rooms with Robby – no time to stop, eat, piss, or even worry about his stupid fucking phone. Just barely enough time to mitigate one potential tragedy before moving on to another. Of course, when Frank was feeling like the walking dead and had been going for more than eight straight hours without so much as sitting down, the EMTs brought in a fucking toddler. 

Dog attack. Kid was playing; tried to grab for the bone. Dog only snapped twice, but it was enough. 

There was blood everywhere and the parents were screaming inconsolably; Dana and security had to drag them both out so Robby and him could work. Even Garcia was solemn and focused as they stabilized the boy and evaluated the extent of the neurovascular damage, prepping him for a vein graft up in the OR.

The boy would survive. But his life wouldn’t be the one his parents had imagined for him. It was hard to measure that kind of devastation on a scale. It was hard to think “well at least he’s still alive” when you were looking at a six year old with torn off chunks of skin, with complex, traumatic wounds that would require surgical intervention and probably leave him with lifelong chronic pain.

Robby found Frank red-eyed and chain smoking cigarettes outside the ambulance bay shortly after the boy was wheeled upstairs for surgery.

“Hey,” Robby said, leaning up against the wall next to him. 

Fuck off. Frank wanted to say back. 

Old Frank would have just said it. Old Frank would have bit any hand that reached out to comfort him, especially when that hand was attached to Robby, a former mentor who Frank knew looked at him and saw nothing but his own personal failures reflected back.

But that was old Frank. Benzos Frank. Pre-rehab and therapy Frank. Still-trying-to-make-his-marriage-work Frank. 

Mel-less Frank.

New Frank sighed, dropped the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with his foot. 

“Hey.”

They were silent for a bit, watching the sun creep lower over the tall buildings in the foreground, watching the sky slowly start to turn orange. They didn’t talk about it. They never talked about it. Frank talked about it with other people; he knew Robby talked about it with other people; but they never talked about it together. Frank thinks he probably lost the right to do that after the horrible shit he said to him at Pittfest.

“Heard you lost your phone.” Robby said eventually, looking straight ahead. 

“Yeah,” Frank replied. “Yeah, Christ, I forgot about that. Guess that’s where my next paycheck is going.”

Robby fished into the pocket of his scrubs and pulled out an iPhone, swiping it open and unlocking it. “Here,” he said, holding it out to him. “Call someone. Your kids, your sponsor, Abby. Someone.”

Frank stared down at the phone in Robby’s hand, hesitating, unsure of exactly why he was being offered this sort of kindness. It wasn’t an apology, really, but it felt significant nonetheless. 

“Just take it, Langdon.” Robby said gruffly, as if he too was aware of the gravity of the moment, and therefore anxious to get it over with. “We’ve probably only got about five minutes until Dana needs us again.”

“Alright.” Frank said hoarsely, taking the phone from him. “Thanks.”

Frank walked away a few feet as he opened up the phone app, fully planning to to type in Abby’s number and ask her to put one of the kids on the line. But the app opened to the recent calls, and his eyes immediately zeroed in on a name halfway down the list. 

King.

He clicked on it without a second thought, raising the phone to his ear as it rang.

“Doctor Robby?” Mel’s deep voice registered through the phone, breathless. “Is everything okay?”

It probably should have been humiliating how immediately he felt himself choke up at the sound of her. 

“It’s me.” He managed to get out, his throat rough and gritty.

“Frank?” She recognized him immediately. “What’s wrong, why are you calling me from Robby’s phone?”

“A kid in triage stole mine this morning.”

“Oh, goodness, I’m sorry. It’s only six, there’s probably still some stores open. Do you want me to run out and see if I can get you a new one?”

Frank smiled despite himself, raising his eyes to the sky and blinking away tears. “No, hon. That’s not why I called.”

She must have been able to read something in his voice, because there was a beat of silence on the other line, and Mel was softer when she spoke again. “Was it… was it a pediatric case?”

Frank shut his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Did they survive?”

“Yes.” Barely.  

“Then you saved a child’s life today, Frank. You’re a good doctor. That family was lucky to have you there. Focus on that.”

For someone who frequently complained about missing subtext and failing to recognize social cues, Frank was constantly surprised at how quickly Mel King had learned to read him like a fucking book. A single rogue tear made its way out of the corner of his eye and he wiped it away roughly, hyper-aware of Robby’s looming presence still behind him, only a few yards away.

“Did you text me today?” He asked pathetically, desperate to talk about anything else.

“I did, hold on.” He heard tapping, and her voice sounded further away when she spoke next, like she had put him on speakerphone. He realized she was scrolling through their texts. 

“I sent you an article I read about laryngeal trauma. I sent you a picture of Becca’s capybara Wooble that she finished working on and I asked if you thought Penny might want it. And then I sent you a text an hour ago just saying that I hoped you were having a good day and I missed you.”

It was almost devastating, how much he adored her. Almost too much to handle. He felt like such an idiot for how anxious he had been all morning, wondering if they were okay. Making himself sick with worry over something that was so obviously perfect, so obviously exactly what they both wanted and needed.

“Penny’s gonna love that.” He told her, his voice thick and raw with emotion. “She’s going to have to start that frog one next, though. Or Tanner will get jealous.”

“Okay, I’ll let her know. She’s getting fast with them now.”

A throat cleared behind him, and he glanced back to see Robby nod in the direction of the ambulance bay doors, a clear signal for him to wrap it up.

“I’ve got to go.” Frank said reluctantly, not quite ready to get off the phone yet but knowing he had to. 

“Okay. I’ll come by tonight. I love you.”

And Frank knew that Robby was still hovering just behind him. Up until this point, he felt like he had still been in the plausible deniability zone. That this conversation that was no doubt being overheard just about walked the line. That when Robby inevitably checked his call history and saw that Frank had called Doctor Mel King, and not his ex-wife, or kids, he’d be confused, certainly, but he’d hopefully write it off as Frank not having any numbers memorized, or something.

But there was also simply no way he was going to allow Mel to tell him she loved him for the first time and not say it back. 

“I love you too.” He replied, nearly choking, like the words had been punched out of him. Then he said it again, just to feel it twice: “I love you too.” 

(Frank had been telling Mel he loved her for the past four weeks, which had already been an enormous show of restraint on his part. It was only the “too” part that was new. And it felt glorious.)

He could hear the smile in her voice when she spoke again. “Go back to work. I’ll see you soon. Bye, Frank.”

The call disconnected, and Frank lowered it from his ear. This was it. She was right there on the screen, damningly, in the recent call history. 

King.

It would be so easy for him to leave the call record there, let Robby connect the dots, and end the torture of hiding this.

But Mel didn’t want that. And Mel loved Frank.

Conscious of Robby’s eyes on him, he swiped his thumb quickly across the screen and deleted the three minute forty-two second call record. Clicking the phone closed, he walked back and passed Robby his cell. 

“Thanks.” Frank said.

“No problem.” Robby replied gently as they crossed back through the automatic doors. 

“I didn’t know you and Abby had gotten back together.” The comment lingered in the air for a moment as Frank grabbed some hand sanitizer, trying to decide how he wanted to respond.

“We haven’t.” He said simply.

Robby’s brows pulled in, his face morphing into a look of confusion. He opened his mouth to say something, to no doubt press for details, but Frank clapped him on the shoulder – a tactile, friendly move that he hadn’t attempted since before his suspension. Robby’s attention quickly shifted to the hand.

“Two more hours, man.” Frank said encouragingly. “We got this.”

“Yeah.” Robby said, sounding stunned but not unhappy. “Yeah, Frank. We do.”

“I’m sorry for making you upset today.” Mel murmured to him that night as they laid on his couch, her thumbs digging into the muscles of his back as she rubbed the soreness and aches out of them. 

“S’okay.” Frank slurred into the couch cushions, feeling languid and pliable under her hands. “I was just worried you were avoiding me or something.”

Her hands paused, stuttering in their movement. Frank lifted his head up gently, trying to turn his neck to look at her. 

“Were you?” He asked, more alert.

She pushed on the back of his head so he was face-first in the throw pillow again, tutting at him. “Don’t turn your neck like that, it’s not good for it.” 

She dug ruthlessly into the muscles of his shoulder and he groaned down into the fabric. “Mel.” He whined, sliding a forearm under his forehead so his voice was less muffled. “What the hell is going on, babe? I’m getting some crazy mixed signals here.”

“I know.” She said, sounding remorseful as she reached up to pet the back of his head, her fingers scratching at the short hair at the nape of his neck. “I’m really sorry. I have been avoiding you a little bit. It’s just…”

He could hear her hesitating, and he wanted so badly to flip over so he could look at her, but he knew sometimes that what she needed was his patience. She had admitted to him before that she found the intensity of his eye contact to be incredibly distracting. While it had been a great ego-boost to hear that, he tried not to abuse it.

“Last week,” She continued after taking a moment to collect her thoughts. “After I realized I loved you–”

“When was that?” Her hand froze in his hair.

Frank was already interrupting. Very poor manners on his part, but the question simply couldn’t wait.

“Um. It was when you took Becca and Tanner and Penny to the Botanical gardens on your day off? And I was at work and you sent me that picture of the three of them with those orange flowers in their hair? And you said everyone missed me?”

“Yeah,” Frank grinned down into the pillow like an idiot. “Okay. Continue, please.”

“Right,” She said, resuming her nervous petting of his scalp. “Well, after that, I was just having a really hard time acting, well, normal. At work, I mean. I couldn’t stop staring at you. I kept getting distracted by your voice, or your hands, or your arms. And it was taking me a long time to finish my charts because I kept, um, thinking about you. And I think Santos was noticing. So I was just worried that I was being really obvious about it, you know? The being in love with you thing.”

It’s been obvious for months, Mel. Frank felt like interjecting, but she was still going, on a roll now.

“I knew that you would have just said that we should tell them already, and you would have probably been right. But I had thought that with the fellowship decision coming in a week, I could just ask to have our shifts moved around a bit, and keep my distance for a few days. And it was sort of working, but…” She trailed off, her hand grazing down his spine and giving him goosebumps.

“But?” Frank urged.

She sighed, and then he felt her whole weight collapse on him, (carefully, she was always careful with his back) draping over him like a weighted blanket. “But I missed you.” She muttered into his neck, slipping her arms under his stomach and squeezing him.

“Mel,” he hummed affectionately, feeling her rub her cheek into the space between his scapulae. 

“We should just file the paperwork tomorrow.” She mumbled into his back. “Sorry for making you wait so long.”

He wriggled a bit, trying to flip over, giving Mel a gentle tap on her hip to ask her to shift her weight. She sat back up on her knees, allowing him to turn over onto his back so that he was laying back against the couch with her straddling his thighs. 

Focus, Langdon. He had to remind himself as he slid his hands up her thighs possessively.

“Mel King.” He started, reaching up to brush a loose strand of hair off her face. “I love you so much, honey.”

She smiled down at him, big and wide.

“But,” he continued, and the smile dropped. 

“If you are seriously telling me that I snuck around with you for almost three months because you were worried about this fellowship decision, only for you to decide two days beforehand that you’re ready to throw in the towel… I’m gonna actually lose it.”

She blinked at him, a small frown on her face. “Joke?” She asked hopefully.

“No, Melissa.” He told her, tugging her down to him. “Not a joke, unfortunately.”

“But—” she gasped into his mouth as he mashed their lips together, cutting off her argument with his tongue.

“No but.” He declared with a playful bite to her neck that had her gripping his hair tightly. “It’s two more days, sweetheart. You’ll survive.”

The evening before the fellowship nominations were released, Mel and Frank worked together on the night shift. It was Frank’s idea: tire her out on the nightshift beforehand so that he didn’t have to worry about her sporadic, nervous energy on the day shift as she waited for the impending email notification. So far, things were going exactly to plan. It wasn’t a particularly difficult shift; they weren’t working a double; there was nothing terribly tragic or out of the ordinary; and they both managed to keep their hands to themselves. 

Frank had been on his A-game now that he was determined to keep the relationship under wraps for the last two days. There were no more lingering looks across the halls, no whispered conversations by the lockers, no deliberate brushes of their hands as they passed each other a pair of fresh gloves. Maintaining this level of precision was proving to be exhausting, but he was committed to seeing it through, now.

He figured that he had spent over two months on nothing but his worst behavior, so with two days of actual effort on his part, they were sure to coast through entirely unnoticed.

He did not account for Abbott.

The evening of their shift, Frank was feeling exceedingly confident. It was one shift. They’d made it a full three months, almost. They could do twelve more hours.

For the first eleven hours, Abbott (who watched over the ER like a damn Predator drone) had no commentary to offer them. Frank was aware that they still had a few small but enduring tells: the midnight lunch that they shared together in the break room that consisted of the same leftovers, packed in matching tupperware; the fact that they both smelled exactly like her Olay coconut oil body wash. 

But it was just tiny things. Barely noticeable. Easily written off. 

It wasn't until the final hour of the shift, as Frank, Mel and Abbott lingered in one of the trauma rooms, having just wheeled a patient up to the OR, that Frank really slipped up.

It was nothing, really. A hand on Mel’s hip as he slid past her around the gurney. He didn’t even think twice about it — while it wasn’t a touch that he would normally give to, say, McKay or Javadi, it wasn’t exactly a damning one either.

Mel clearly dismissed it as well, as evidenced by the fact that she didn’t even look up from the tablet as he did it, simply shifted forward to allow him to pass by her. 

“I’ll go put these charts in.” She said offhandedly as she shut the tablet screen, shooting both him and Abbott a tired smile as she walked out the doors. Frank watched her as she walked out, certain that he could read the stress written in the lines of her shoulders, already tensed up from the email that would come at some point tomorrow. He was already devising ways to try to take her mind off of it when they got off work — what sort of white noise she might like on the ride home, which of her shows would capture her attention enough while he cooked them some food.

“Hey,” Abbott’s voice interrupted his musing, low and stern as the doors shut behind Mel. Frank glanced over briefly to find the older man fixing him with an almost paternal glare. “I’ve been looking the other way all shift, but now I feel like I gotta say something. I don’t know how Robby runs his ER, but I don’t do any of that couple shit in here.”

Distracted, still tracing Mel’s path with his eyes, Frank just waved him off, the words not really registering in his mind. “Yeah, man. Whatever.”

Abbott snapped his gloves off with a disgruntled-sounding pop. “Langdon. I mean it. I don’t know why you two haven’t filed your HR paperwork yet, but you’ve gotta get on it. Hell, Samira and I filed ours a week in. Just go and get it out of the way, already.”

Frank blinked, fully looking over at him now. 

“Wait.” He paused, his head spinning as he realized what they were being accused of. “You think–you actually think Mel and I are dating?”

Abbott rolled his eyes at him. “Oh, cut the shit, Frank. You two have been making doe-eyes at each other all shift. Her phone background is a picture of you and your kids, for Christ’s sake.”

The surge of victory Frank felt was probably inappropriate, given that he had actually been trying to hide it all night. Still, he couldn’t stop the crazed-looking smile that was creeping up across his face. “Yes.” He agreed, nearly hissing the word as he nodded vigorously. “Exactly! You’re right. We have! It is!”

“…Yeah.” Abbott echoed slowly, watching him strangely. “Just – try to keep it professional, while you’re in here. We’re a hospital, not a fuckin’ wedding venue.”

“Yeah, dude. Of course.” Frank agreed, still grinning madly. Abbott shot him one final, suspicious look before backing through the trauma bay doors, headed back out to the patient board, shaking his head as he left.

Alone in the room, Frank had a quiet celebration with himself.

Fucking finally.

Frank waited until the next time Abbott was distracted to creep up behind Mel at her desk, deep in focus as she finished up some charting. 

“Guess what?” Frank whispered behind her head, trying his best to contain the delight that threatened to spill into his voice. 

She hummed questioningly at him, eyes still locked on her screen.

“We have to work on our paperwork tonight. Abbott knows we’re dating.”

She gasped, turning back to look at him. “What? How did he figure it out?” 

“Apparently you were being too obvious about it. The being in love with me thing.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, like she was investigating something. “You’re teasing me?”

“I am.”

She humphed, turning back to her computer screen. 

“Cheer up, honey.” Frank told her, hooking a stool with the toe of his shoe and dragging it over to him so he could sit. “You have no idea how embarrassing I plan to be once I don’t have to pretend anymore. It’s gonna gross people out, how in love I am with you.”

She shook her head, but he could see a small smile fighting to crack through her facade. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

He winked at her, giving her braid a tug as he stood up. “You’ll see soon.”

The fellowship acceptance email came at precisely four-thirty-three p.m., when Frank and Mel were both fast asleep, taking their post night-shift nap. Frank awoke to an incessant buzzing, and he blearily began to grope around for Mel’s phone on the nightstand table next to him.

Half-asleep and mildly disoriented, he blinked down at the screen, seeing dozens of text messages from their coworkers coming through, expressing their congratulations.

“Mel,” he shook her shoulder gently as he sat up straight, immediately alert. “Baby, wake up.”

“Hm?” She cracked her eyes open, reaching up to rub at her face. 

“You got it.” Frank breathed, shoving her phone at her. “Mel, you got it.”

“Oh.” Mel said, her eyes widening as she straightened up next to him, reading through the pages of group chat messages celebrating her success. “Samira put together a happy hour tonight to celebrate.”

“What time is it?” Frank asked, looking over her shoulder to check the clock in the top left corner of the screen, seeing that it was already almost five. “Damn. We better start getting ready.”

“Do you think people will mind if we’re a little late?” Mel asked, crawling out of the covers and straddling his lap suggestively.

“Definitely not,” Frank conceded immediately as she hovered over him, brushing her mouth against his jaw.

“Let’s just skip it, actually.” He suggested, tugging her t-shirt off over her head. “Who cares about them?”

By the time they walked into the bar that Mohan had selected for celebration drinks, they were thirty minutes late and both looking pretty freshly-sexed. Not that Frank had to pretend to give a shit about that, anymore.

“I’m going to kiss you at the bar tonight.” Frank had warned Mel in the car on the way there. “Let me know if you’d like to give our colleagues advanced notice of our relationship status before that happens, or if you’re okay with shocking them.”

“Hm,” Mel pondered, genuinely thinking on it. “I guess we’ll see who all is there? I wouldn’t mind surprising Santos, but I don’t know how I’d feel about Robby.”

Frank cursed quietly to himself in mild disappointment when he immediately caught Robby’s eye at the bar as they walked in. He was sort of looking forward to doing it the fun way.

It was hard to stay glum for that long, though, when he saw the way Mel beamed at their friends and accepted hugs like they were nothing, so drunk off her own achievement that she had an apparent temporary stay on touch-aversion. It took him only twenty minutes or so, settled against the bar and drinking his Coke, before he decided that tonight was not the night. 

There would be plenty more moments for Frank to get to have his “fuck you all, I bagged Mel King” moment. But tonight, he decided, would just be for Mel.

At least, it was. Until Abbott slid up next to him at the bar, interrupting his conversation with Dana and Robby to ask pointedly, “You kids file that paperwork yet?”

“Paperwork?” Dana said. “You get yourself in trouble again?”

Frank ignored her, addressing Abbott through gritted teeth. “It’s been like twelve hours, dude. Give us a break.”

“Somethin’ happen?” Robby pressed.

“Christ.” Frank heaved a sigh. “No, just—”

“Him and Mel.” Abbott added, tilting his beer towards Mel, who was chatting with Samira.

“What about him and Mel?” Robby asked, crossing his arms.

“Nothing!” Frank tried to interject, unsuccessfully.

“How often do you work with the two of them, Robinavitch? You’re really telling me you haven’t noticed it?” 

“Between him and Mel? They get along fine!” Dana argued. 

Frank was fucking sweating, now. “That’s not —”

“Langdon’s fighting with Mel?” Santos peeked her head in, hungry for gossip.

“Didn’t seem like it to me last night.” Abbott grunted, sipping at his beer.

“Why would they need paperwork, then?” Robby again.

“Paperwork?” Santos practically drooled at the word.

“Is Langdon in trouble?” Javadi tried to whisper her question as she creeped up to Santos’ side, but her volume control had apparently evaporated after the third beer. He watched Samira’s eyes slide to them from around the bar at the sound of Langdon and trouble.

“Apparently he did something to Mel.”

“Mel?” 

“Is it about the fellowship?”

“Is this why you haven’t been talking to her all night, Langdon?”

“Well, he drove her here still, so I mean they couldn’t have–”

“Abbott said there was paperwork, so–”

Frank’s head whipped back and forth between all of them, trying to keep up. “Just, hold the fu—” 

“Doctor Langdon and I are in a romantic relationship.”

Everyone’s mouths snapped shut simultaneously at the sound of Mel’s simple, even explanation. Frank turned his head slowly to find that she had materialized next to him, and was looking shockingly calm despite the situation. There was a long stretch of dead silence in the bar.

It was Robby who was the first to break. “That was you he was on the phone with?”

Mel just nodded, and a low murmur of gossip-tinged conversation began to rise out among the audience as they recovered from the initial shock.

“Huh.” Robby said, sounding stumped as he picked his beer back up off the bar. “Huh.” With a bit more humor to it this time as he raised the drink to his mouth.

“No fucking way.” Santos mumbled distastefully. “He’s your guy, Mel-bel? Has this loser even seen a Star Wars movie?”

“I’ve seen Star Wars.” Frank snapped at her petulantly.

Mel huffed. “I don’t even like–” 

“Wait,” Javadi’s eyes widened. “If you guys are dating, then that means—” She cut off with a gasp.

“Victoria, no—” Mel tried, but Javadi was three drinks deep and had zero filter left.

“Oh my god.” She said loudly. “Doctor Langdon gave you that hickey?”

At that, the polite murmur of quiet gossip raised to a roar. Frank groaned, hiding his face in his hands as mouths dropped, a chorus of “what?” and “hickey?” and “ew!” rolling through the audience of their colleagues.

Frank wondered if anyone would notice if he left to go chain-smoke a pack of cigarettes. As the tenor of the impending and inevitable inquisition coalesced around him, Frank opened his eyes to find that Mel had crept closer and was partially shielding him from the crowd with her body.

Her hand was tucked behind her back, fingers open and spread, waiting for him. 

“You okay?” She asked him quietly, ignoring everyone else.

Frank looked down at her hand again, an open invitation to join her. The noise of the bar seemed to fade into the background as he intertwined their fingers together. 

“Yeah.” He breathed. “I’m good.”

And then, because Frank was not someone who broke promises when it came to Mel King, he ducked his head down, tilted her chin towards him with his finger, and said, “Let’s give them something to talk about.”

Mel smiled into the kiss.