Work Text:
୨ৎ
The windows of the subway train are wet. It’s the remaining lick of yesterday. Heavy downpour.
Mel has begun to translate all these mundane, quiet things into small catastrophes. Continuous rain means unhoused patients suffering from hypothermia. Broken ankles that slipped on mud. Jaws hitting the damp concrete. Common colds turned into autoimmune infections.
They tell you to leave it in the ED, go home. Find the balance. And Mel knows that. Practiced it for months and basically perfected it. But it’s easier to focus on small catastrophes in other people than her own little disaster. And by all means, she’s not going home to some kind of misery. She isn’t sad, she isn’t frustrated, she isn’t even alone.
And that makes her breath catch — that is the catch. The invasive, inundating presence of another body. Around her, beside her, inside her. It all melts into one. It is overwhelming. Airbag to chest. The sharp glow of the sun after a sleepless night. She can’t properly describe the feeling.
But it eats her, how much she wants it.
The climb up the stairs vibrates through her tired thighs. She smells of clean sweat and endless layers of disinfectant. She probably adopted the slightly cynical and dense scent of the ED too. It hit her like a truck when she first started there. Now she forgets it exists. It has burned into her senses, as have the bright overhead lights, the cool feel of metal against her palm, the thick color of blood. Cries and pleas and gratitude and grief and joy and anger and fear. It’s one mass. It’s her job, and it is something of her life too. Every possible human emotion pushing against her.
(This has always been a constant. Feeling out of it, a side effect of becoming a ghost girl in the wake of her parents’ death. Sidelining life. Making sure Becca lives enough for two people. So that she doesn’t have to learn it for herself. Too much. Too heavy this body. Too—)
She’s at the door. Blue in the evening light, the hallway dim and cold. They haven’t fixed the lights yet, which seems incredibly taunting now, because there’s soft light spilling out of the crack of her door. An invitation. Mel feels her heartbeat in her throat now. This is normal. It took her a while to learn that it doesn’t come from pain. It’s just her heart being annoyingly insistent to remind her that it exists.
She almost speaks it into the vacant, dust-riddled air of the staircase: I know. I feel it too.
And despite being a doctor, apparently it rarely occurs to her that her heart is connected to her. It is her. She can’t fight it. She doesn’t want to.
She opens the door.
The light is surprisingly low and exuding from the living room. A lamp, orange and calm. She undoes her laces, feels a globe of pain in her lower back, which pushes a soundless sigh out of her. She stuffs the laces into her shoes and puts them to their assigned corner where she can find them again in two days. The relief of having a day off floods through her. She wants her bed. She wants lukewarm food from the microwave and lukewarm weather. She wants to push her bare feet into the blanket on the sofa. She wants—
When she props herself up again, Frank’s already standing in the hallway.
Wispy strands falling into his face, slight eyebags, open-mouthed and with an expression she recognizes immediately but never knows how to understand. White shirt, sweats. The colorful bracelet on his wrist. His standard. She can hear him breathe. It doesn’t bother her.
“You’re home.”
She smiles. It’s something small. “Hi.”
He moves forward, careful over the wooden floorboards. She taught him the rhythm of her home. He learned it. Now it’s like a second language. He ends up behind her, and she wants to turn around and greet him properly, but then her scarf is slowly being unbound from her neck and she stays put. Understands.
“Did anyone give you hell today?" He asks under his breath. The linen fabric gives way to skin. Mel catches his hand on her shoulder as it slithers down and out of view again.
“Not necessarily. We didn’t have that many traumas today.”
He hums in acknowledgment, hanging her scarf up on the wall behind them before he returns. Then he gently brushes her braid to the side and his lips come down on the back of her neck, meeting vertebrae. She moves with the push, bends her head down and lets her eyes flutter shut. Frank’s hands settle on her hips and he pulls her a little closer.
“Missed you a lot.” He mutters onto her skin, and her body reacts to it.
“I missed you too.” She says it slowly. Mel doesn’t know how to make it sound like he does. Like there’s always more, more, more. Something instinctive and natural.
She feels it too. She hopes he knows it.
His grip loosens and she takes the opportunity to turn and look at him. He smiles lazily and presses a small kiss to her lips. Mel brushes the hair out of his face, and it falls right back.
“Fuck, no. Really.” He respires. “I missed you like crazy.”
His head drops into her shoulder and she laughs quietly. His hands feel up her body and then to her chest, holding onto the zipper, pulling it down until her jacket opens at her lower waist.
Then they just embrace. Body to body. Mel wraps her arms around his neck and he lets out a small groan, relieved to see her. Frank smells like himself. It's something real. And close.
“Your heart is beating really fast.”
She tenses and looks up at the ceiling. “Yup— Yeah. I'm sorry.”
“It's okay.” He chuckles as he leans out. Taller again. “Look.”
He unbinds one of her arms from his neck and grabs her hand. He leads it to his sternum, and she feels his heartbeat surface on her skin. “Me too.”
A little quick. If she had to guess, 77. But she can’t really think about it right now. It pulsates between the space of her fingers where she keeps them splayed out on his chest. He looks down to where her hand pushes against the fabric of his shirt. He brushes his own over her knuckles.
“Are you hungry? I made bolognese.”
She smiles, keeps her hand with him. So alive. Steady. “That’s why it smells of tomatoes.”
“Yeah!” He starts moving backwards through the hallway to keep his eyes on her. “It’s my mom’s recipe. I think I did it justice.”
“Oh, nice.” She follows, peeling off her jacket and putting it down on the dresser. “Good job.”
“Yeah, I took some creative liberty though.” He grins, obviously proud. “I blended the sauce down enough so there aren’t any bits.”
He learns. She learned and is still learning a lot about Frank too. He only likes a specific brand of chewing gum and there’s a horizontal scar on the inside of his bicep that he got when he went hiking with his father as a kid. His favorite band is Led Zeppelin. He doesn’t like anything strawberry-flavored.
Then there’s the harsher things, but they get easier the more they tackle them. The withdrawals, the urges. Sometimes he doesn’t want to talk. Sometimes he doesn’t stop. The world tips and shifts, but mostly it’s this: small mornings and small evenings. The small mornings are getting more frequent.
(Robby got the hint eventually and their work schedules have been lining up more often. He says it’s for efficiency reasons, since they tend to perform better when working together. Mel knows it’s supposed to be a peace offering.)
But Frank really does take the time to know her. That’s how it’s supposed to be and she’s had enough mildly uncomfortable conversations with Dana that he better treat her right, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be jubilant about it. This is love done right.
“You can tell me if it sucks.” He says as he pulls a chair back for her in the small kitchen and lets her sit down. “Maybe I’m too blinded by nostalgia and I actually cooked up something borderline poisonous.”
She looks up at him, slightly alarmed. He raises his hands with a nervous expression.
“I’m joking. I know the risks of eating raw food.” Frank fishes out a bowl from the cabinet and moves to the stove. “Plus I’ve cooked for you plenty of times by this point.”
“Hey, I didn’t say anything.” She taunts, looking down at the table with crescent lips.
“Didn’t have to.” He fills the small bowl with plenty of pasta and then adds the sauce on top. He moves to the window at the end of the room. “Basil?”
She looks at the plant. “When did you get that?”
“Today.” He plucks one leaf from the stem and puts it to his mouth. “I hope that’s fine.”
“Yes and yes.” She says. It’s a bit ridiculous and they’ll probably forget to water it, but for the moment, it’s quite charming. He pours a few leaves on top and reaches into a drawer for a fork and spoon.
He puts the bowl down in front of her and hands her the cutlery. “Buon appetito.”
“Wow, I didn’t know you were bilingual.”
“I have my talents.” He takes the other chair, and the way he sits down is always calculated. A little slumped, to accommodate his back. “Now let’s see if cooking is one of them.”
She looks down. Her bowl is neatly arranged and it smells amazing. He does this from time to time. It’s a blessing when she’s coming home from a shift like today.
She spins her fork in the pasta and gathers a gracious amount before she brings it to her mouth. She could honestly eat anything right about now (well, not really), but she’s glad it’s this.
After she finishes chewing — “This is great.”
“Seriously?” He asks, elbows on the table and hands folded in front of his face expectantly.
“Yeah, it’s really good. Definitely edible.”
“Fuck,” He breathes in relief. “Thank God. I was going to make it for Penny and Tanner when they come over.”
Mel looks up at him again, mouth half-full. “Are they coming over?”
“I wanted to talk to you about that. You should eat first, though. Must be hungry.”
And she is. She makes her way through the bolognese in some kind of trance, and then she’s staring at a swirl of left-over sauce at the bottom of the bowl. The idea of meeting Frank’s kids does not leave her once. She has seen them before at the ED. Sometimes Abby comes and leaves them with him for half an hour or so, but Mel has never really outright spoken to them.
They know she exists. He’s not making a secret of her. She knows them from Frank’s wallpaper, the video calls, the stories. The guilt and the hope and the very human urge to rebuild. She thinks he’s doing a great job.
“Do you want some more?” He asks when he notices that she’s done. He has started his own bowl too.
She nods “A little, yeah.”
He smiles. “Awesome. One sec.”
Frank gets up with her bowl and fills it up halfway.
“Thank you.” She takes the bowl from him. It’s lukewarm in her hands. “So…”
She’s stirring her fork around in her food. It’s a habit she can’t shake. One of her legs is pulled up on the chair now and she rests her arm on it.
“Yes.” He says as he swallows. Their ankles brush under the table. She keeps her leg against his. He doesn’t budge. “I mean, it was just an idea. I really want you to meet them.”
“Yeah, of course. I get that.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t feel ready. They’re smart kids, they’ll understand.”
“Really?” Mel laughs lazily.
“Yeah.” Frank says and he’s comically confident. “Promise.”
“I’ll—” She takes her bottom lip under her teeth. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“Of course!” He feeds himself his last bite. “Sleep on it. No pressure.”
His leg pushes a little more into hers.
She knows she’s somewhat decent with kids. She took care of her twin sister for a long time. Part of her always will. She hasn’t really considered having any of her own until recently. It hits her: heavy and pointed. She’ll crumble up in bed and wonder what it would be like — to make that space within herself for someone to call her own.
She hardly has the time for a kid. She doesn’t know anything. But it still lives inside her, the possibility.
She finishes her second serving and he eats in tandem. Her body is coming down and her clothes feel too clingy now that she’s been wearing them for over ten hours. Under the frame of her glasses is a thin layer of sweat.
Once they’re done, with Frank putting everything into the dishwasher and handing her a napkin to clean herself up with, he asks — “You wanna watch a movie?”
And she isn’t usually someone to pass up on a good movie (though Frank has a slight knack for anything camp and the occasional thriller that she isn’t always on board with), but tonight she’s tired in a way that rings deeper. Like she doesn’t want to move from here to there, to focus on anything. Her mind, being the ever-anxious thing that it is, is still circling the proposition her boyfriend made on her meeting his kids, and suddenly she just wants to go to bed.
“I feel a bit…” Words deceive her. She can’t muster up anything. “I don’t know. Sorry.”
“Worn?” He offers.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Don’t apologize. It comes with the job.”
“Yeah, but today was fine.”
“You don’t need a reason. There’s bad days and there’s good days. You caught a bad one.” He rises and pulls his chair over so he can sit closer to her. His hand comes down on her shoulder and he fingers the sleeve of her shirt. The air is a bit chilly, due to the open window.
“This is not bad.” She mumbles as she watches his bracelet slide with his movement.
“I’m not upset with you, baby.” He gives her a gentle smile. “Just tell me what you need.”
“I don’t think I need anything.”
Her heart beats to a rhythm. Strong and slow: you, you, you.
“Hey,” He scoots even closer. His hand travels down to the knee she has brought up. “How about I run you a bath?”
She considers it, and then she nods. She needs to wash off this day. “Yeah, sure.”
“Yeah?”
She nods even more vehemently and he breaks into a smile. “Alright. Coming right up.”
“Thank you.” She breathes as they both rise.
“No need. You go get the pajamas you need. I’ll be in the bathroom.”
Her face is a little hotter. “Okay.”
They separate in the hallway, though it’s not a great distance. Her apartment is at best cozy and at worst claustrophobic. It is enough, however. The bathtub was Becca’s idea, or really a necessity of hers. She doesn’t like showers. Baths are easier. So Mel found a cheap enough apartment with a bathtub. Sometimes when Becca stays over she’ll still use it. Then it’s Mel, her sister and the wall between them.
(They’re okay. They just don’t see each other every single day anymore. Mel likes to pretend it doesn’t hurt her somewhere. There is a knife in her side and it has Becca’s name engraved in it. Maybe they were severed at birth. Maybe it’ll always feel like this.)
The water comes flooding in when she opens the drawer at the bottom of her closet. All her shorts and awkwardly cut shirts have gradually been replaced with longer pajama pants and the occasional pullover. Fall doesn’t just oxidize the leaves, it does something with the air, it calcifies everything. The pavement is both wet and bone-dry. There is a disorderly rhythm to the season.
Mel is glad she doesn’t have to spend it alone this time.
She grabs her stack of clothes and walks to the bathroom. Once she opens the door, the misty, warm air greets her and slowly but surely physicalizes on her glasses. The water is filled up to a quarter and already bubbling up.
Frank is observing its rise, hands on hips. When he sees her, he gives her another one of those endless smiles. Thin and neat. Sweat gathers at his temples.
“Here, I’ll help you.” He says and he suddenly walks over. Mel looks around, perplexed, and puts her pajamas down.
“With what?”
He does a circular motion with his finger. “Turn around for me.”
She follows and stands to him with her back again. She’s looking at the door. One of his shirts hangs there. To think that she was living here by herself a few months ago, and then he’d come around seldom eventually, and now this is always going to be their destination after work.
(Unless they make bigger plans.)
His fingers wrap around the tip of her braid and he pulls the hair tie off. She knows that she could do it herself, she could cook her own meals, she could put herself to bed. But that’s not the point.
A shiver runs through her body. She doesn’t question it.
Meticulously, he unfurls the three bundles of hair she bound together. His fingers comb through her hair.
“I like when it’s wavy like this.” He speaks into her scalp.
“Yeah?” She asks, not daring to look behind herself.
She gets a kiss to the crown of her head as an answer. Then his arms lock around her lower stomach and he kisses a trail from her neck to her jaw. She folds together with laughter.
Once he lets go again, Mel grieves the touching immediately — “Alright, let’s get these clothes off of you.”
She undresses herself. And he sits down at the lip of the tub, stirring fingers in the water to make sure the temperature is alright. Socks, shirt and pants. Until she’s standing in her underwear and bra. It’s by no means unfamiliar, this constellation, but it’s never been like this before.
He looks at her, then at the little black bow stitched into the front of her underwear. He breaks into a smile. It feels like they’re always smiling. Smiling and staring.
“What?” She asks, just to fertilize some conversation.
“Nothing. Come here.”
She walks towards him, and without him having to say it, turns the practiced 180. His hands glide over her spine and then to the clasp of her bra. Mel hears him breathe, in a small shudder.
“That’s a lot of bubbles.” She says when the silence is too thick, syrupy. And it is true, the rim of the bathtub is kissed all over by foam.
“Is that a good or a bad thing?” He asks as the bra opens with a dull pop sound. She looks at her bare feet and grins. The halters slide down her arms.
“Good. I like ‘em.”
His thumbs hook into the waistline of her underwear. They don’t move anywhere. “You want me to take these off for you too?”
Her ears are scorching hot. The air in the room is barely settling in her lungs and it’s already too heavy like cream to breathe it properly. He only pulls one hand out for a moment to turn the water off. Then he places the tips of his fingers against her thighs and waits for her to answer.
“Yeah.” Is her answer. It comes as no surprise.
This isn’t new. It’s practiced. She knows this. And yet it thrums through her body, every small and unsteady drag of fabric down her skin. She hates that she isn’t looking at him, but she also doesn’t know what would happen to her if she did. So she just stands there and waits until the fabric reaches her ankles and she steps over it. He tosses it into the laundry basket beside them. Mel releases the breath she’d been holding.
She’s standing completely naked in her bathroom, and Frank’s right behind her. He’s not saying anything. Mel feels him on every patch of her skin, like small sparks of electricity. Her hand curls and uncurls.
He gives her hand a squeeze. “You’re good to go.”
She doesn’t really hesitate to take him up on that and makes her way into the very warm bathwater. She cringes a bit at the heat but settles in, at her own pace, until she’s finally sitting inside, knees drawn up. The bubbles have settled down a bit with the stir. They hug her shoulders.
(Her own nakedness used to irk her. In a quiet, inexperienced way. It is her body, but she never knew how distant she was to it until she undressed before him for the first time and wondered where all of this came from. Small scars and tired patches of skin, curve and edge and freckles and birth marks. The space between her breasts. The curve of her back. The pearls of her ankles. An ordinary puzzle of body parts but it all accumulated to her body.
She remembers the awkward climb into bed. She remembers Frank and the way he’d looked at her like all of it made sense. Every piece.
Now it doesn’t matter. Now it’s just her body and she doesn’t expect anything from it.)
He drags himself over the lip of the tub and then he’s seated closer to her.
“Here—” He reaches for her face with two hands and pulls her glasses off. They stick to her skin and she sniffs in amusement. Frank folds them up and takes the small walk over to the sink to put them somewhere safe.
Her hair, like a shield, falls around her shoulders and kisses her collarbones. He runs a hand through it, all the way through. His fingers come back slightly wet.
“Feel good?” He asks.
“Mhm.” She hums, leaning into his touch when it returns. He puts his hand into the water and brings it back cupped. He spills it over her back. “I don’t remember the last time I had a proper bath.”
“We should’ve thought of that sooner, huh?” He asks as he rinses her off a little more. The bubbles grow smaller. In a few minutes, he’ll be able to see all of her. “Not everyone has a bathtub in their apartment.”
“It does take a lot of water, though.” She points out. That never really seemed to stop her with Becca.
“I think a bath from time to time won’t hurt.” He says this and leans forward a bit with raised brows. Mel gives him a smile, all teeth. Then it melts.
She can’t shake the odd feeling from before. It settled on her soul the moment she clocked out. It's been following her for weeks, honestly. Just this nagging, grueling ache at the center of her belly.
Frank moves to get new angles. Eventually, all her hair is wet and he’s rubbing shampoo into it. More bubbles leave. She can see her own knuckles. Her hands are interlocked and her forearms rested on her knees. She feels like a dog.
The more this goes on, the washing supported by the water-interrupted silence and the foggy window of the cabinet and her body pruning up, wet and naked, the more it grows in her. She’s staring at her own short fingernails. They’re tidy. It took her years to overcome her chewing problem.
“Mel?” His voice surfaces, like the sound of water being squished out of a sponge. She doesn’t look at his face and instead at his jeans. She doesn’t feel small in his presence. Maybe that’s the problem.
It razes through her body before it reaches her mind. It is hot-red and violent. Her eyes are blurry.
She’s crying.
There is barely a sound to it. She refuses to look at him. Turns her head to the water, sees more of her body unraveled before her. A hand settles cautiously and fully on her shoulder. Always soft, always patient. The bullet pierces her and she understands. She understood it the moment he committed to her.
“Mel, baby.” His tone is new, mellow. Not like he’s talking to a child, not even a patient, just her. Somehow that’s worse.
She doesn’t reply. She wouldn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make him try even harder.
Then — “Do you want me to get in there with you?”
Mel breaks. It’s a spit-full, sharp noise and it blows through her mouth in the shape of a globe. She puts her shaky hands to her face and tries to rub the evidence of her very obvious sadness off. Then she nods, harder than she has at anything else all night.
He rises and Mel watches him undress. Shamelessly, through her red eyes and a sniffling nose. His hair falls and bounces. He’s a bit awkward. Her heart is throbbing in her chest.
Frank climbs in at the opposite end of the bathtub and settles into the warmth. It’s a short endeavor, because he pushes himself towards her and one half of her wants to deny him, but the other is working for the blood and it knows it wants this.
That’s it, the root of her problem: this dichotomy she has made of herself.
He pulls her over and puts his forehead to hers. They look at her hands, and he slides a hand into them, and she holds him.
“You wanna tell me what’s wrong?”
“I just—” Her breath hitches. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” His thumb runs over the space between her index and middle finger.
“I don’t know what to do.” She pushes one finger into the space between his bracelet and wrist. “For you.”
“For me?”
“You care for me. You do all these things. I don’t know if I can do that too.”
“Mel.” His tone is firmer, but with no malice. “You don’t have to do anything.”
“You can be honest with me.” She echoes back. When he looks up, he’s already looking back.
“I am. And I’m telling you this is enough.”
She slowly pulls back, still holding his hand. He fixes his posture too and waits for her reaction.
“You don’t…”
“No.” She’s not sure if he knows what she was about to say. She doesn’t even really know what she wanted to say either. “I like doing this for you. You don’t owe me anything.”
It’s how it’s supposed to be. She knows that. But that’s still not the point.
“And I know you’re with me—” He brushes her wet strands behind one of her ears and her lips press together. “If I told you all the things you do for me we’d be here until the morning.”
Her expression molds into a sad smile. She feels a bit ridiculous now, but mostly she’s relieved.
“The water would be cold.”
He laughs, softly. “There’s my girl.”
They play with the water, silently, until he takes her shoulders and she’s facing away from him again.
(At the bottom of everything, she knows this is about trust.)
Two kisses land on her shoulder and then he’s pouring shower gel into his palm. He brushes her hair away from her spine and then his hands splay out on her skin, rubbing effortless circles over her shoulder blades. They move forward, over her collarbones, down her chest. He pulls her arms up and covers them too. She smells like coconut. It beats the mild cynicism of the hospital.
They do not speak, just breathe, just touch. She feels triumphant when she gets to wash a bit of him too, concentrated as she drags her hands over his skin. He gazes at her, tilts his head.
They’re both dogs. Mel is not too big, he isn’t either. They are equal. It’s an overwhelming revelation.
The water drains away and she sits on the toilet lid, wrapped in a towel. His is bound around his waist as he brushes his teeth after her. Mel’s hair has dried down enough in the heat of the small room. She combed it flat around her face, and it drapes over her body.
She says it, breaks the silence: “I do want to meet your kids.”
He turns around to her, a bit of toothpaste still stuck on the corner of his mouth. He rubs at it.
“I’m glad.” He says. It’s kind and easy. Then it grows heavier. “Honestly, it would mean the world to me.”
Another quick smile. Her feet touch. “I’m a little nervous.”
“Yeah, yeah!” He says understandingly as he frantically cleans off his toothbrush. “That’s normal.”
He spins towards her and walks over the puddles of their clothes before he finds her. He squats down.
“We’ll figure it out, okay?” He leans down and presses a kiss to her hand. His hands wrap around her calves. “Nice and slow.”
“Nice and slow.” Mel repeats. She finds it internalizes better that way.
Frank looks up at her. She’s taller for once. She runs her hand through his hair and he takes it like breathing. It all feels natural. The nakedness, the crying, the odd hope they have for each other.
If she hadn’t hoped, she wouldn’t even be here. Wanting is inherently humiliating. They’re like two animals to bone, sea to shore, all the hungry things. It’ll always feel like a hand around her heart. It’s knowing it persists despite that keeps her wanting things.
And have them too.
“You know I love you.” Frank says. It takes a bit of breath out of his lungs, Mel has seen enough people grasp for it to know.
It sits like a pearl in her mouth. A perfect weight, slowly sizzling and forming into words. He’s looking up at her like he believes something. And Mel believes it too, that’s why she says it back.
“I love you too.”
At some point, the air in the room grows lukewarm.
art by @trudelino on tumblr + tiktok (@trudeskunstmuseum on instagram)