Work Text:
She never liked the park as a kid.
Always found herself on edge, waiting for someone to look at Becca the wrong way or say something mean.
Those afternoons had trained her instincts young, a readiness to step in and shield her sister from the cruelness the world often offered her.
Now, years later, she sits on a park bench with that same protective hum quietly thrumming under her skin, though, it's more old habits than anything. She's having a nice time. A really nice time. The afternoon has been perfect in its ordinariness; golden light slanting through the maples, distant laughter from the swings, the faint jingle of the ice-cream truck Frank and Tanner went to seek out a few minutes ago.
She watches Penny play in the sandbox a dozen feet away, the two-year-old very focused on her sand castle, her neat pigtails bouncing with every pat of her shovel. On instinct Mel sits up a little straighter when a boy, older and bigger, runs in full speed, jumps and kicks up some sand.
He points to Penny's pink shovel and bucket set they picked up at CVS on the way here. "Can I use that?"
Penny looks up, her nose scrunching a little at the boy. "But my daddy buyed this for me," she tells him matter of factly.
"But my daddy buyed this for me." The boy repeats back to her in a mocking tone Mel knows all too well, then he reaches out and yanks hard on one of Penny’s pigtails.
"Ouch!" Penny yelps, dropping her shovel, her small hands flying up to her head.
Something fierce surges through Mel's chest, her legs move before her mind fully agrees. She’s crossing the grass in quick, timid steps, heart hammering, heat creeping up her neck quickly.
“Hey… um, please don’t do that,” she says to the boy as she kneels beside Penny, gently smoothing the tugged pigtail and pulling the girl close. “That hurts her. You shouldn’t pull hair.”
"That hurts her, you shouldn't pull hair." The boy mocks again.
Mel’s puts herself between them as she looks around, spotting the woman on the nearby bench who the boy arrived with, phone in hand, earbuds in, completely unaware. “Uh- hi, excuse me,” Mel calls, hating how her voice wavers.
The woman pulls one earbud out, blinking with mild annoyance. "Yes?"
“Uh, hi, sorry, your son just pulled my- uh... just pulled her hair.”
The woman sighs, rolling her eyes a little. “They’re just playing. Boys will be boys.”
Mel swallows, a knot of anxiety tightening in her stomach. But then Penny lets out another small, hurt whimper against her side clutching at Mel's jacket, and something sharper cuts through her disdain for confrontation like it always did with Becca.
“No,” Mel says, surprising even herself at how it comes out. She meets the woman’s eyes directly. “It’s not ‘just playing’ when he’s mocking her and yanking her hair hard enough to make her cry. She’s two. So get off your phone for two seconds and be a parent and tell your kid to play nicely."
The woman stares for a second, caught off guard by the sudden steel in Mel’s soft voice. She mutters something under her breath but finally calls out, “Tyler, say sorry and go play somewhere else.” The boy grumbles a half-hearted “sorry” and scampers off.
Mel exhales shakily, hugging Penny close again and pressing a kiss to her hair.
Footsteps crunch on the grass behind her. She turns just as Frank and Tanner reach them, two slightly-melting ice-cream cones in each of their hands. He catches the tail end of the woman still frowning on her bench and Mel crouched protectively with Penny.
“Did you just tell off that mom?” Frank asks, eyebrows raised.
Mel stands slowly, still holding Penny’s hand, her face flushed with leftover adrenaline and embarrassment. “Yeah… yeah sorry, her son, he pulled her hair and I just- it wasn't nice, so I said something.”
Frank grins, his eyes lighting up in that way that always makes her stomach flip.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing,” he says, stepping close to hand her the strawberry cone, his voice dropping quiet, just for her. “That’s kinda hot, babe.”