Work Text:
I just want someone to say to me
I'll always be there when you wake
You know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made
Mel walked into the locker room after working her first day shift back from a grueling week of working nights. To say Frank missed her would be an understatement. He never liked when she wasn’t working beside him, but this particular time in his life was one that he really could’ve used his emotional support… friend?
If that’s what you’d call whatever it is that they have going on.
Frank’s eyes lifted to where she stood at her locker, stretching her arms above her head and twisting her body side to side to stretch out the tightness of the day.
“So,” Frank smiled, “which is worse? Have you come to a conclusion yet?”
“Oh, uh,” Mel giggled, tucking the loose strands of hair behind her ear and reaching into her locker to grab her bag, “I think days and nights both have their pros and cons.”
Frank stood, lifting his scrub top over his head and stuffing it into his almost overflowing bag before turning back to Mel with a grin, “Well, I can think of one pro of day shift that automatically makes it superior.”
“Oh yeah?” Mel teased, looking at him over her glasses as she untied her sneakers, her eyes catching on where his shirt rode up, practically face to face with the toned muscles and dark hair scattered on his stomach, trailing down below his waist band.
“What’s that?” she asked, though she had a feeling she knew exactly what he was gonna say.
“Me,” he said matter-of-factly, pointing at himself and shaking his head like it was the most obvious answer.
“Oh,” Mel laughed brightly, the beautiful sound floating through the air between them, “right, of course. Yeah, you’re definitely a plus.”
Frank could tell she was just keeping up with his bit, something that seemed exclusive to him, but he still felt that familiar spread of a crimson blush across his cheeks.
“Ready?” she asked, slinging her bag over her shoulder, finally ready to ditch the ED for the familiarity of her pajamas and bed.
She had a package waiting for her at home. A lavender pillow spray that she was very excited to use, hopeful that it would perform some sort of magic on her insomnia.
“Just one second,” he breathed, his eyes fixed on where he untied his scrub pants with nimble fingers.
Mel had to keep her teeth clamped together as she watched him slide them down his legs, her eyes lifting from where the pants pooled around his ankles to his navy blue boxers, for fear that he’d look up and see her gaping at him.
He fished around in his overstuffed backpack, pulling out a pair of wrinkled grey sweatpants and slipping them on. His eyes met hers as he slipped his bag over his shoulders, nodding towards the exit, and together they made their way outside.
“I’m sorry again that I can’t give you a ride,” he apologized, looking down at his feet. “Pretty fucked up that both of our cars decided to shit the bed at the same time.”
“Yeah,” Mel agreed with a breathy laugh, “It’s okay though. I don’t mind walking.”
“Especially with me, right?” Frank teased, brushing his shoulder against hers as they reached the end of the park.
“Sure,” Mel laughed. She said it like she didn’t really mean it, but the truth is, some of her favorite moments are the ones where it’s just the two of them.
Carpooling to work, listening to her playlist while he asks her for what feels like the hundredth time, ‘Who is this again?’
Standing in the ambulance bay while they debrief about their day, when they both should have already gone home.
Sitting in the break room, just chatting, while Frank sips from the Fort Pitt mug she got him for his birthday.
She wished they could have more moments just them, but outside of the context of work. She wished she could invite him over and they could sit on her couch and watch jeopardy and argue over who answered first. She thinks they'd probably just agree on a tie.
She imagined that eventually they’d both grow tired, and she would turn to him and say, ‘Maybe you should head home?’ and his head would lull against her shoulder, and he’d whisper, ‘In a minute.’
But he wouldn’t leave ‘in a minute’.
She imagined that they’d fall asleep there, leaning up against each other, soaking in the warmth of their bodies pressed together for far longer than they reasonably should.
But last time she asked if he wanted to grab dinner after work he told her that even though he would have loved to, Abby already made plans for them to go out, and the sting was still yet to wear off, so she hadn’t asked since.
She didn’t really care for the feeling of being turned down by her best friend who she just so happened to be in love with, for his wife who only ever seemed to think about herself.
So, she’d settle for what their job would bring them. The quiet moments they could steal before the real world came calling.
“Goodnight, Frank,” Mel said, standing with him underneath the flickering lightpost outside her apartment.
For one fleeting second, she thought she caught his eyes dropping down to her lips, but she brushed it off as the light playing tricks on her.
“Goodnight, Mel.”
And with that she grabbed her package off her porch and made her way inside, toeing off her shoes by the front door and tossing her keys into the little ceramic tray Becca made her in pottery class, before clicking on the lamp by her couch.
She looked up through the large window behind it to catch Frank’s final wave.
He always waited until she was inside and caught her eyes one last time, shooting her a toothy grin and a gentle wave before turning and walking or driving away from her, to go be with his family.
Usually, he’d turn to the left to start his journey home.
This night though—
He turned to the right.
Mel watched him walk away until he was out of her sight.
She would spend the next fifteen minutes rationalizing why he might’ve taken a different way home.
Maybe he wanted to take the scenic route?
Maybe Abby asked him to stop and pick some things up?
Maybe he was… meeting with someone to buy—
No.
She didn’t even want to think about that, he wouldn’t do that. She knew he wouldn’t throw away everything he had worked towards. Knew how much he had suffered to get to where he was now.
Just as that thought left her mind, a realization took its place.
She has his location.
A few months prior, Mel had insisted she wanted to walk home alone when Frank asked her if she wanted a ride. It had been a rough shift and she needed the quiet and time to herself to decompress and process.
After a while, he reluctantly relented, but only after he had her give him her location.
“Just to make sure nothing happens,” he assured her. “That’s it. I won’t look at it otherwise, I promise.”
“Fine,” Mel huffed, taking her phone out of her pocket and tapping through her settings. “But you need to give me yours now. It’s only fair,” she added with that smirk that always made his heart flutter against his ribcage.
So, pacing around her living room she opened up the FindMy app and scrolled until she landed on Frank’s picture. It was a photo of him standing in the ambulance bay, decked in scrubs that were three sizes too big after he tripped on a gurney and spilled almost an entire 20oz redbull on himself.
In the photo he’s looking at her as if he was offended by her hysterical laughter at his expense, but in reality the sound of her pure amusement was the only thing that made him feel less like he was an inch away from falling off the face of the earth in a while.
And he’d never admit this, but the whole reason he’d tripped on the gurney in the first place, was because he couldn’t pull his attention away from where Mel was shaking her soft golden waves out of her braid by the nurse’s station.
Mel clicked on his photo and watched the little blue dot move steadily across the map, along the route they’d just walked to get from PTMC to her apartment.
Why would he be going back to the hospital? She thought.
Surely there had to be an explanation.
Maybe he was covering for someone and forgot to tell her?
Maybe he forgot something there and had to go back and get it?
Maybe he wasn’t going back to the hospital at all, and was just taking a longer way home to clear his mind?
Finally, laying on her couch after wracking her brain in the shower, she opened her phone back up and her eyes focused on the blue dot once more.
This time, it was completely still.
He was back at PTMC, but from what she could make out on the pixelated drone shot of the hospital, he didn’t seem to be in the ED?
Weird, she thought, before swiping out and moving over to their texts.
Make it home?
She tapped out quickly, thinking maybe she’d get an explanation for why he hadn’t done just that.
She sat there for a beat, staring at the little blue message. After a moment the small gray read popped up along with the three little dots that her eyes stayed fixed on.
Yup, just walked through the door!
At the sight of his message her head pulled back and her eyebrows scrunched in confusion and surprise. He very clearly wasn’t home.
Again, she tried to rationalize it. Tried to come up with any reason that could explain why he would lie, and the only possible answers made her skin crawl and her stomach churn.
So, she typed out a quick reply—
Goodnight, Frank.
—and turned her phone off, walked to her room and tucked herself beneath her covers. She turned on the sound machine on her bedside table and willed herself to fall asleep, despite the endless thoughts racing through her head.
At their next shift together, Mel’s eyes were practically glued on Frank the whole day. If he was in her vicinity it was as if he was an anatomy model and she was studying him.
She thought about how unkempt he looked the last few times she saw him. How his hair didn’t seem as soft and shiny as usual—and trust, she knows how soft and shiny it usually looks.
She thought about how his stubble seemed to stick around for much longer than it did before.
His scrubs always seemed very wrinkly, even more so than they did before, and she felt like a psycho when she thought about how his usual rotation of shirts seemed to dwindle down to just three.
She thought about all of those things combined with the little blue dot, steady in the same spot even when she woke up that morning, and she had a feeling she knew what was happening.
But at the same time, she didn’t want to believe that he could be going through something like that.
She thought about the conversations she overheard about Dennis, the whispers behind his back, the stories med students and interns passed around—as if they were any of their business—and her heart broke to even consider that Frank could have possibly been going through the exact same thing.
Once their shift was over Mel met Frank in the locker room. He was standing against his, overstuffed bag slung over his shoulder, eyes glued on his phone. He looked up with a smile when he realized she was there.
“My car is still out of commission, but I brought my walking shoes,” He said, a playful smirk on his face.
Mel looked down at his feet, giggling when she saw his camo crocs, flipped into sport mode.
“Just because it’s called ‘sport mode’ doesn’t mean you should actually use them for any sort of physical activity,” she laughed, throwing up airquotes as he looked at her with a matching smile.
“Well,” he sighed, looking down at his shoes, “I’m prepared either way.”
Mel closed her locker and slung her bag over her shoulder, dangling her keys between them and smiling.
“I got my car back yesterday!” she mused, her heart picking up its pace slightly knowing however he answered might reveal exactly what she was worried about. “So I won’t be walking, and neither will you.”
Her heart dropped with his smile.
“Oh, uh–” he swallowed around the dryness in his throat. “That’s okay, I’m out of your way. Besides, I like to walk.”
“Frank, I’m not gonna let you—”
“Really, Mel,” he said, just stern enough to be clear that he wouldn’t be changing his mind. His voice was confident, but his unwillingness to meet her eyes said otherwise. “I appreciate it but I’ll just walk.”
“Okay…” Mel replied with a big sigh, nodding a few times before putting her keys back in her pocket.
They just stood there for a while, Frank awkwardly rocking back and forth on his heels before Mel finally cut through the silence.
“Well… let’s go. Might as well start your journey.”
He looked up finally to meet her eyes and Mel could see the gears turning in his head. She felt hurt that he was using so much effort to keep something from her.
Why was he keeping it from her? If he was going through something he could just tell her. She thought he knew that by now.
“I, uh–” he coughed. “I forgot, I have to talk to Robby about something. You go ahead.”
He turned to walk away, but turned back around just as fast to say, “Goodnight, Mel. Thank you… for caring.”
“Yeah,” Mel replied, her eyebrows scrunching in that way that Frank found unbearably cute. “Of course. Goodnight, Frank. I’ll see you soon.”
With that, he left the locker area.
Mel should have walked out the door, to her car, and driven off to go home and soak in the lavender pillow spray she still hadn’t gotten a chance to use.
But obviously, that’s not what happened.
She stayed, crept up to the entrance of the locker area and watched as Frank continued towards the staircase, before scanning the ED and pushing his way through the doors. She turned away, her back against the wall and her head hanging low as her worst suspicions seemed to be confirmed.
If he really was staying on the abandoned floor of PTMC, she couldn’t possibly bear knowing and not do anything about it.
She had to do something about it.
She just needed to think about the best way to approach him without making him feel less than.
So, she waited a few minutes before making her way up in an attempt to find him.
The farther she ventured up the stairs, the harder her heart pounded against her ribs. The closer she got to where her worst suspicions placed him, the more her tears stung her eyes.
When she pushed the heavy door open with a loud creak, the smell of the abandoned floor hit her like a blast wave. Musty, damp, and stale.
It was dark, all but a few flickering bulbs in the ceiling, the green exit signs, and warm light seeping out of one single open door at the end of the hall. She could hear music too. From where she was standing, it sounded exactly like the song he had sent her a link to that morning.
She really didn’t want to be right.
Her heart shattered when she made it to the room, taking in the sight of it.
His bag was sitting on the unmade hospital bed, now opened and practically overflowing with what she assumed was all he had.
The small waste basket in the corner was almost completely filled with protein bar wrappers and cans of redbull.
She could feel the tears threatening to spill.
It looked clearly lived in, yet desolate at the same time.
Just… sad.
Reluctantly, she knocked on the door.
“Frank?” she said, and as soon his name left her lips she could hear him on the other side of the bathroom door, scrambling and cursing under his breath.
She hoped this was the right thing to do. Hoped he wouldn’t be embarrassed or ashamed. Hoped he’d let her help him.
God knows she wanted nothing more than to help him.
She walked further into the room, up to the small bedside table where her eyes landed on a framed photo of Frank, with Penny seated atop his right shoulder, and Tanner on his left. Her hand came up to press against her lips as her fingers traced the frame, the dust wiping off onto them.
Her eyes fell to the gold ring sitting beside it, and her sadness turned to anger.
How could she let this happen?
If she ever actually loved him, how the fuck could she let this happen?
After a few minutes of just standing there, her attention was pulled away from his life–which seemed to have been ripped out from beneath him–to the sound of the bathroom door opening and closing behind her.
When she turned, he was just standing there, his hands in the pockets of his wrinkled grey sweatpants, and his eyes glued on Mel’s, which were intertwined in front of her stomach, her grip tight on herself.
He looked completely dejected. The shame on his face made Mel sick to her stomach.
They just stood there for a moment, neither of them wanting to start this conversation, though they both knew it was inevitable now, like the aftershock of an earthquake, collapsing everything he thought was left standing.
“Why did you lie?” was all she could think to ask.
“Mel, I–” he started, finally looking up to meet her eyes as he took a step closer to her, but she cut him off before he could dig a deeper hole.
“I asked you Monday night if you made it home, and you said yes. Said you ‘just walked through the door’. Did you forget that I have your location?”
He didn’t say anything. Just dropped his eyes from hers once again and walked closer, plopped down on the edge of the shitty excuse for a mattress and rested his head in his hands, his elbows digging into his thighs as he ran his fingers through his hair, something he always did when he was stressed.
“What happened, Frank?” Mel asked, her voice as gentle and kind as she could possibly make it as she sat down next to him.
God this mattress sucks, she thought. No wonder his back has been bothering him.
He told her everything. He can’t help but tell her everything. Something about her always makes him break open, like a poorly thrown waterballoon, bursting against the grass.
“Abby–” he started, but his voice broke the second he tried to speak.
“Take your time,” Mel assured him, placing her hand against his bicep, her touch soft and gentle against his tense muscles.
He cleared his throat before starting again.
“Abby found me in the bathroom holding her bottle of xanax that she keeps around just in case she has to fly anywhere,” he blurted, his eyes still glued on his feet.
“Oh,” Mel breathed.
They sat in silence once again. It seemed like that’s just how this conversation would go.
It was a lot to process, not just for Mel, but for Frank as well. He hadn’t yet fully confronted this situation. He was just going through the motions.
Dealing with it.
Surviving.
He had learned pretty early on in life that he would just have to figure it out, even if that meant he was completely on his own, and this was no different.
“Did you–”
“God, no—absolutely not.”
“Okay,” she said, letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“I’ve been struggling, and it was there. I knew it was there and it was like–” he pulled in a shaky breath. “Like it was calling out to me, and I just wanted to hold it in my hand. I don’t know, it doesn’t make any sense, but I had no plans of taking any.”
“I won’t try to act like I truly understand, because I don’t,” she started, her thumb brushing against his skin. “But I can imagine how hard that must be, and I’m sorry you got to that point.”
“Thank you, Mel,” he choked, tears in his eyes when he finally looked up for the first time since they sat down.
He just looked at her for a while, his red rimmed, bright blue eyes scanning her face before dropping once more to his feet, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her any longer.
“So, she lost it. Screamed at me to get the fuck out. I tried to explain, but she had no interest in hearing anything I had to say. She let me grab a couple things, then locked the door behind me,” his voice wavered more and more the longer he recounted the events of that night.
“I’m so sorry, Frank.”
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my kids,” he whispered, and Mel caught sight of a tear falling from his eye and landing on the floor. “I haven’t seen them since. I haven’t been back home since. She won’t answer my texts or calls.”
He was crying now. The tears falling from his eyes were like an april downpour, steady and heavy.
Mel just sat there, a steady presence when he finally had to face just how unstable his life had become. She listened, like he had done for her so many times before.
“She has the house, the car,” he choked through sobs. “But I don’t even care about that shit, I just wanna see my fucking kids.”
He looked up finally, and Mel’s heart shattered at the sight of his face as his eyes landed on the photo of them. She lifted her hand quickly to wipe the warm tear that slipped past her reservations. It wasn’t about her right now.
His hand came up to where hers rested against his bicep, and she let him intertwine his fingers with hers. He held on tightly, and she let him. She always would. As long as he needed it.
“Surely you don’t have to stay here?” Mel said as gently as possible, being careful to make sure he knew she wasn’t judging his situation at all, just trying to understand him and meet him exactly where he was at.
“Where else would I go, Mel? I can’t stay with Robby again, I’ve done that once before and–” he shook his head. “Never again. Besides, what would I even say to him? My wife caught me holding benzos in our bathroom?”
“Okay,” Mel nodded, squeezing his hand slightly. “What about Garcia? You guys are close, right?”
Frank just shook his head, letting go of Mel’s hand and flopping backwards against the bed.
“I can’t do the jokes anymore,” he whispered, barely audible through his hands which were covering his face now. “They were slightly funny for a little bit, but now it just hurts. I can’t live with a constant reminder of everything I’ve ever fucked up, and she loves to remind me.”
Mel just nodded again, processing everything he told her, careful to say the right thing.
After a while, she finally spoke, an almost imperceptible whisper.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The sound that escaped Frank’s chest at Mel’s question felt like an arrow going straight through her own. A broken, pathetic sound. A body wracking sob.
She scooched back until his head was in line with her knees, leaning against the wall so she could sit comfortably and be there for him as best as she could, because she knew that’s what he needed right now.
“You know you can tell me anything, Frank.”
“I know,” he choked, wiping his hands down his face in an attempt to dry his tears, but they just kept coming.
“So,” Mel whispered, reaching out reluctantly to run her fingers through his hair.
It hadn’t looked very soft, probably due to his lack of feeling any need to take care of himself, but it somehow felt softer than she’d even imagined.
The second her fingers pressed against his scalp, his eyes fluttered shut, and he took the first deep breath he had in what felt like weeks—maybe even months.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked finally, when it seemed he had collected himself at least a little more.
But her words made his walls come crumbling down completely, and with them came everything he had been holding back.
She kept her fingers running through his hair as the sobs wracked his body and his cries filled the small, dimly lit room. The sound of his pain flowed through her ears and stabbed her heart. She couldn’t stop her own tears from running down her cheeks.
She just waited patiently until he felt ready to answer her.
She’d happily sit here with him until sunrise if that’s how long he needed.
“Everyone I thought cared about me already thinks im some loser addict who fucked his life up,” he choked through his sobs. “I didn’t want to give the only person who’s ever given me a chance any reason to agree with them.”
“Frank,” Mel soothed after a moment, moving her hand down from his hair to stroke gently against the space between his eyebrows, something her mom always did for her and Becca when they were having a hard time regulating themselves.
“Nothing could ever make me think less of you.”
Her words settled against his mind and his heart, warm and caring and so full of kindness, that he couldn’t help but break all over again.
“Come here,” Mel whispered, unable to just sit there and watch as he cried, legs hanging off the edge of the bed. There was no way he was comfortable.
He didn’t hesitate.
He sat up and scooched back slightly to lay on his side and pull his legs onto the mattress. Mel lifted her arms, inviting him to rest against her, and he did just that.
She held him there for what felt like hours, one hand rubbing lazy shapes against his back as the tears flowed freely from his eyes, soaking through her scrub pants where his head rested on her lap, and the other still running through his hair.
Every second he sat there with her, it was as if a weight lifted off of him. As if he finally felt—for the first time in what seemed like forever—like he could relax and just sit with it and feel it and actually process just how shitty his situation had become.
Eventually, Mel actually thought he had fallen asleep.
“Frank?”
He startled slightly, and she quickly pulled her hands away from him.
“No, keep going,” he whimpered.
“Oh,” Mel giggled. “I’m sorry, I thought you were asleep.” She placed her hand gently on his back again and continued to trace up and down along his spine while the other pressed in small steady circles against his scalp.
“Almost,” he whispered, but it seemed that he quickly realized that he couldn’t. Mel couldn’t stay there. Stay awake while he slept against her. He sat up quickly at the thought of just how long they had been there
“You can’t stay here,” he said, his voice full of disappointment.
Mel smiled fondly at him, reaching out to wipe a stray tear off his cheek. But her hand stayed, warm and soft against his face.
“You can’t either,” she whispered as she gazed into his eyes. “Pack your stuff, you’re gonna stay with me.”
She said it as if it was the easiest solution in the world. Like it was the most obvious answer to the problem she’d just spent what felt like hours comforting him through.
“Mel, I can’t ask you—”
“You aren’t,” she interrupted plainly, standing up off the bed and grabbing his bag.
“And neither am I. Pack your stuff,” she tossed his bag on the bed next to him. “Doctors orders.”
He packed what little remaining things he had with tears in his eyes and warmth in his heart.
The entire ride to Mel’s house, she didn’t once let go of his hand, and he didn’t even consider trying.
By the time they got there, it was almost eleven o’clock. They were both very tired, but Mel insisted that Frank take a genuine shower.
While he did she ran his small collection of clothes through a quick wash and dry cycle, and heated up the leftover spaghetti and pizza from the last time Becca stayed the night.
Frank stood in Mel’s bathroom, wrapped in her ridiculously soft towel as well as the smell of her lavender shampoo. He looked at himself in the mirror, and for the first time in a long time, didn’t completely despise the man looking back at him.
When he stepped out into the kitchen he was instantly hit with the smell of italian food, and suddenly it dawned on him just how hungry he had been, and for how long.
“It’s just left overs. Sorry, I’m not a very good cook,” Mel smiled meekly, gesturing for Frank to take the chair across from her.
He was surviving off of protein bars and stolen turkey sandwiches for god's sake. The table was set with what might as well have been a four course Michelin meal.
“This is more than enough, thank you,” he sighed. “Truly, Mel. You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“You deserve to feel comfortable and happy, Frank,” she said, reaching across the table and grabbing onto his hand. “No matter what mistakes you’ve made. We’ll figure this out together. I can talk to Morgan at some point and we can get everything figured out.”
He didn’t say anything. Just aimlessly twirled his fork in his spaghetti.
“You aren’t alone, Frank. And you do have options.”
Mel watched a single tear fall from Frank’s cheek.
They ate in silence, all but the sounds of him thoroughly enjoying what Mel assumed was his first “real” meal in days.
She didn’t want to think about that too much though.
By the time Frank cleared his plate—truly cleared his plate, even using his pizza crust to wipe up the leftover spaghetti sauce—they were both absolutely exhausted, barely able to hold their eyes open, yawning every few minutes.
“Okay,” Mel interrupted the silence finally. “We should get some sleep.”
Frank nodded his head, standing up from his seat and walking over to the sink with his plate.
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“Stop.”
Her jaw fell open at his abruptness, but she didn’t have the energy to argue, so she slipped past him and slid her plate into the sink.
She retreated to her bedroom and quickly replaced her sheets with a fresh set, smoothing her comforter and pillows, and flicking on the lava lamp beside her bed.
She looked over at her bedside table, and without a second thought grabbed the lavender pillow spray that she still didn’t have a chance to use. She sprayed it several times over her bed, inhaling the comforting scent.
She was happy knowing Frank would be the first one to enjoy it.
When she emerged a few minutes later, he was stacking throw pillows and layering pitiful throw blankets on the couch.
“What are you doing?” Mel asked, walking up beside him.
“Uh…” Frank hesitated, confusion written on his face. “Getting ready to sleep?”
Mel just laughed, pointing down the hall, “You’re taking my bed silly.”
“W-what? No, I can’t—”
“Relax, I’m just gonna take Becca’s,” she assured him, her hand gentle against his shoulder. “It’s okay, Frank. I promise.”
Reluctantly, he sighed and followed Mel to her room.
As he stood at the doorway, looking in on Mel’s space, his body felt like all the tension dissipated for the first time in forever. His shoulders dropped, his jaw unclenched, his eyebrows unfurrowed.
He couldn’t stop the tears from falling for what felt like the hundredth time that day.
Mel didn’t say anything. Just stepped towards him and wrapped her arms tightly around his shoulders. She held him there for a moment, until he reciprocated the hug and held her just as tight, his tears soaking the crook of her neck as she rubbed his back.
“We’ll talk more in the morning,” Mel said when they finally pulled back after a while, her eyes gentle and kind, glued on his. “Just sleep. You need it.”
“Yeah,” Frank whispered with a wet laugh, his eyes shimmering in the orange glow of her lava lamp and crinkling at the corners.
“Goodnight, Frank,” she whispered, reaching up and placing her hand against his cheek, the pad of her thumb soft against his stubble as she wiped away yet another stray tear.
His eyes fluttered shut as he leaned into her touch, inhaling deeply before looking back at her once more.
“Goodnight, Mel,” he whispered back, lifting his hand to rest over hers. “Thank you.”
Mel took her hand off his face and dismissed his gratitude with a quick wave, before stepping away from him and retreating to Becca’s room.
Frank’s eyes stayed glued on her as she walked away, releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when she finally disappeared, shutting the door behind her.
He walked up to Mel’s bed then, pulling back the covers, fighting the voice in his head telling him that he didn’t deserve this. That he had no right to enter her space. No right to accept her help.
Mel’s voice echoed back, and eventually completely overcame the devil on his shoulder that had seemed to fill his thoughts for so long.
As he laid in her bed, atop her soft cotton sheets, beneath her pale yellow quilt, his head amongst her ridiculously fluffy pillows, he felt so at peace he could’ve sworn he was floating.
And shutting his eyes, breathing in the smell of what he assumed was her lavender shampoo on her pillows, he quickly drifted off into the best sleep he’d had in years.
He woke the next morning with a smile knowing—
She’d be there.