Chapter Text
Frank knows he got himself into this mess.
If there’s one thing rehab drilled into his bain, it’s that he’s responsible for his actions. He makes choices, and he experiences consequences, and he takes accountability for those decisions and their fallout, both good and bad.
This time, though, he doesn’t see the danger until it’s far too late. Mel often lulls him into a false sense of security like that. Well, no, that sounds premeditated or nefarious. Mel takes him by surprise. He never sees so many things about her coming.
It starts in his car, on the way home from work, after a generally unremarkable shift. They’ve been carpooling for almost six months, ever since he ran into Mel on his morning jog and they realized his new apartment is only a block away from hers. She suggested it, which made his heart jump, and then enthused about the environmental advantages and economic benefits, which made it sink back down.
“How’s the Wellbutrin going?” he asks, when they’re only a block away from the hospital. They really don’t have any interesting patients to discuss.
“It’s been great,” Mel replies, cheerful. She’s been extremely open with him about the whole journey, from realizing that she might be experiencing clinical depression, which made it difficult for her to remember anything she enjoyed outside of work, to making an appointment with a therapist, then a psychiatrist, and finally starting Wellbutrin, her first-ever daily medication.
(“I thought about going on birth control in college,” she’d told him, during that conversation, and Frank tried furiously to look normal, not like he was both imagining why she would want that and filling with jealousy over imagined college boys chasing her, “but I got too nervous about taking it at the same time every day. I have an IUD, instead.”)
“I do think it’s still affecting my appetite, but I’ve been setting reminders to snack, so that hasn’t been an issue. And sleep was already a little hard, but I don’t think it’s any different.”
“No other side effects?” Frank asks absently, flicking on his turn signal. It’s hard to turn the doctor part of his brain off. It drove Abby crazy, especially when she wanted him to “listen to her feelings” and not “try to fix everything” (the “especially since you aren’t any good at it” went unspoken).
“Oh, yes, actually.” He sees her forehead wrinkle out of the corner of his eye. He never tires of watching her face, and he’s been working on his peripheral observation skills, so he can still track her expressions while driving. “I haven’t been able to make myself orgasm since I started. It’s really annoying.”
Frank’s entire brain ceases functioning. He’s not sure how he’s even driving, still, but he feels the car decelerate at a red light. He somehow manages an, “Oh?” and that’s enough for Mel to barrel on.
“It’s not like I’m sexually active, so I didn’t think about the potential of this very much,” she continues, oblivious to how each word is driving his pulse higher. “But orgasms are nice. You know, oxytocin, dopamine, et cetera.”
“Yeah, sure,” Frank says, dumbly, hoarsely, hovering outside his body.
“And I rely on them to help with certain things.” The light turns green. “Menstrual cramps and headaches, mostly. My therapist has been very encouraging about it.”
“That’s good,” Frank says inanely.
“But I haven’t been able to achieve climax since day two of Wellbutrin.” She frowns, nose scrunching up in that adorable way that makes him think of a cartoon bunny. “So that’s been a little frustrating.”
“What, uh, what have you been trying?” he asks, like an idiot trying to drive himself to an early grave. Cause of death: hypertension or SVT or Mel King, take your pick.
“Well, my rabbit has been quite reliable for me in the past, since it’s both internally and externally stimulating.” Mel’s tone is the same as when she’s running a differential, and he isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to forget that. Just one more Mel King problem to add to his collection. “Before Wellbutrin, I could usually orgasm in under five minutes with it, but I’ve tried for almost an hour, multiple times this week, with no luck.”
Mel King masturbated for multiple hours this week. Frank can’t believe he now knows this. He’d been half hard since she first said “orgasm,” but it’s almost painful now. He appreciates that Mel always looks out the windshield while driving to minimize car sickness.
“So I got out my old bullet and ordered a dildo, but that hasn’t worked either. I was thinking of asking Trinity for suggestions. I don’t think she would be weird talking about this. I appreciate that about you two.”
That’s a bridge too far, getting compared to Santos, even thinking about Santos, in the context of this conversation. He thinks that’s probably what pushes him into what happened next.
“You aren’t thinking about, uh, finding a partner to help?” Frank asks. He can hear that his voice sounded weird, maybe deeper, and hopes it wasn’t too noticeable to her.
Mel tilts her head. “Oh! I hadn’t thought of that.” Frank curses himself. He’s going to watch her date and fall in love and get married and it’s all going to have started here, with his suggestion. Hoisted by his own petard, which is a phrase he never understood. “But no, I don’t think so. I don’t want to be intimate with somebody I don’t know, and it’s a lot of effort to get to know somebody. I hate dating.”
“Sure,” Frank agrees, as though he’s dated anyone other than his college sweetheart, who now hates his guts. Kind of. It’s complicated.
“I guess I could see if one of my friends is amenable to helping,” Mel continues, and Frank whites out. Sirens in his head, DEFCON 1 or 5 or whichever was the highest, do not pass go. “But that seems like a lot to ask.”
“I, uh, I wouldn’t mind,” Frank hears himself say. He pulls up in front of her building, double parking by the fire hydrant, and steels himself to look at her. She’s already watching him, looking more curious and confused than happy or excited, and he tries not to take it as a blow to the ego.
“I didn’t mean to pressure you,” she says, as though any part of this conversation had been her doing that, not just Frank steering into a skid. “I wasn’t mentioning it so that you would fix it or anything.”
“I know, Mel.” He can tell he’s using that tone that Cassie calls his “nauseatingly gentle Mel voice,” but he doesn’t know how to control it. “You didn’t ask or imply that or anything. I’m offering.” She continues to study him. “Just, uh, you know, to help. As your friend. But no pressure, I know it might be weird.”
“That’s so nice of you.” Mel sounds genuinely touched, her lips curving up into a soft smile, her eyes glistening up at him, and Frank has never felt like a worse person. Well, no, he thought some pretty horrible things about himself during rehab. Both times. “Would you really do that?”
“Uh, yeah,” he says, licking his lips and swallowing and hoping she wouldn’t look down. “I mean. Only if you wanted to.”
“I’ll think about it,” she tells him, which is the worst possible response, since it keeps his hope alive and also ensures it’s all he’ll think of, the rest of the night. “Thanks, Frank. I’ll see you in the morning. Have a great night!”
And then she’s gone, just the lingering notes of her vanilla lotion left behind, and Frank watches her get into her building safely before hitting his head against his steering wheel. Jesus fucking Christ.
That night, after he comes almost immediately when he got home, the phrase I’ve tried for almost an hour, multiple times this week looping in his head, he drafts some ground rules for himself, in case Mel decides to bless/curse him by agreeing to it:
- During any encounters, he won't do anything to pursue his own pleasure. (He knows it’s not realistic for him to have a rule that he won’t come, since he thinks he’ll probably come in his pants the second he touches her boob. He has absolutely no chill about Mel, and he isn’t going to pretend otherwise.)
- He’ll try not to say anything crazy, but he won’t beat himself up about what’ll inevitably slip out. HOWEVER: “I love you” is strictly off limits.
- He’ll do whatever she wants afterwards to come down, including cuddling, but he absolutely should not spend the night.
He designs the rules to help keep him in check, since the entire premise of the situation seems a little skeevy. He doesn’t want to get carried away, feeling like they have something that isn’t there, and he doesn’t want to, like, trick Mel by inserting himself into her life as a fake partner, like the frog that doesn’t realize it’s getting boiled until it’s too late.
Satisfied with his list, he sleeps decently that night, only waking up a few times with different parts of the conversation haunting him.
He’s proud of himself for acting normal on the car ride the next morning, greeting Mel and handing over the tea he made her, not immediately asking whether she’d thought about his offer and also did she try to get off last night, potentially for hours? They talk about Tanner’s soccer team, instead, and she reminisces about her brief stint in youth swimming, and then they’re working, which has always been an effective libido killer for Frank. (Except when he accidentally ends up pressed close to Mel in a trauma, his hips against her ass or her breath fanning across his neck or her breasts against his back, or when she smiles during one of their breaks in the ambulance bay, or—)
He makes it through the day, somehow, and he’s only reliving the previous day a little bit as they drive to her apartment. He contributes to the conversation, at least, a debrief on the GSW patient who had a second entry point they missed at first.
And then, when he double parks outside her apartment, his fate is sealed. She turns to him with a hesitant expression, bottom lip caught behind her front teeth, and he’s already half hard. Jesus.
“Were you being serious yesterday?” she asks, twining her fingers together in front of her chest. “About my, um, orgasm problem.”
“Yeah,” he breathes, the best he can do after watching her lips wrap themselves around the word ‘orgasm.’ He doesn’t remember even puberty being this bad, but maybe that’s because weekly Mass was doing some heavy lifting on squashing his hormones. Should he go to Mass or Confession or something?
“I think we should try,” she says, in her I am committing to a treatment, even though it might not work voice, which is such a specific tone that he didn’t even know it was recognizable.
“Yeah,” he repeats, then shakes himself. “I mean, sure. Happy to. Whenever you want.”
She smiles, then, one of her radiant grins that crinkles her eyes and brings out her dimples and makes his whole chest glow. She’s the best person he’s ever met.
“Would now work?” she asks, and he’s taking off his seatbelt at the word now.
“Yeah, for sure.” He starts to turn the car off before he remembers he was illegally double parked. His brain’s just static. “I just have to park.”
“Okay!” She wiggles in her seat a little, her controlled happy dance, and Frank’s caught between feeling extremely turned on and overwhelmingly guilty. “Thank you, again. You’re such a good friend.”
He finds a spot down the street, thank God, but the walk to her apartment is still tortuous. He’s been over a few times, movie night with Becca and takeout dinner, but it feels different, walking side by side, knowing he’ll soon touch her in ways he’s only imagined.
And now here he is, standing in Mel King’s bedroom, which is messier than he imagined (and of course he imagined it), listening to her “get ready” in her bathroom, and mentally reciting his list. And he knows this is his fault, that he chose to ask and then keep the conversation going and then offer, but he can’t help but feel like he’s made a terrible mistake, somewhere along the way, even though he’s probably about to have the best experience of his life.
It’s a lot to feel at 7:30 on a Thursday, standing next to a surprisingly large pile of laundry on the floor, ignoring the little tub of vanilla lotion that haunts him in the car, staring at a picture of himself on the wall. (A Polaroid of the two of them, smiling together at the Christmas party, which was really just eating some festive cookies in the break room with whatever group could get off the floor at a time, but Princess made one corner look nice and brought a Polaroid, so at least some effort was made.)
Mel comes back in comfy clothes, an oversize T-shirt and sleep shorts, and he takes a deep breath. Remember: no I love yous. You’re a friend. Helping another friend.
“I guess I don’t really know what this entails,” Mel says after a moment of silence. He’s been staring stupidly at her—she took her hair out of its braid, and he’s going to need 3-5 business days to recalibrate—but he tries to get his head in the game.
“We could start by talking about what’s worked for you in the past,” Frank suggests. He’s still standing in the middle of the room, feeling too-big and awkward. Mel brightens.
“That’s a great idea.” She sits on her bed, which has a green comforter with little plant drawings across it, and the frog stuffie on her pillow slides a little. She looks up at him, and the sight is a little too much for him, so he spins around the desk chair and plops into that, instead. Sitting on the bed feels dangerous. “I haven’t had many previous partners, and none have been very satisfying. I think I get too in my head? Like I’m thinking about too many things at once, especially since I want them to have a nice time.” Frank nods. All of that checks out. “And I never know when to move from one thing to another, like when it’s time to stop kissing or something.”
“There’s not, like, a script that everyone’s supposed to follow,” he replies, watching her closely. Her face is scrunched up, like she’s thinking really hard. He wants to make her forget about all of that, wants to help her find out what’s satisfying, unlike the other dickwards she’s been with.
“I guess.” She shrugs and rubs her fingers against the bed, a little stim that warms his heart. “I don’t really know. My rabbit is really effective, usually.”
“Do you think it’s because of external or internal stimulation?” he asks, extremely proud that he’s tapped into the inner well of calm problem solving that he uses during exams.
Mel tips her head back and forth. “Probably both. I don’t always like, um, penetration?” It’s the first time she’s seemed embarrassed, yesterday or today, and Frank can’t fathom why this is what would tip that scale.
“That’s fine,” he says, not sure how to help, but somehow that seems to do the trick. Her shoulders relax.
“Yeah, I think it’s just too much, most of the time,” she admits. She’s started tracing one of the plants on the comforter, and Frank’s gaze catches on her delicate fingers. “I think I like not having to make decisions, though. Or, like, just going along with things, and giving feedback?” She wrinkles her nose. “That makes it sound less consensual than I mean. I think I like being taken care of. And I liked that I could rely on the rabbit.”
Frank tells himself that it’s insane to feel jealous of a sex toy, particularly when sex is in his near future. It doesn’t really work.
“Are there things you haven’t liked?”
Mel bites her lip. “Yeah. But it’s kind of embarrassing to say.”
Frank raises his eyebrows, wondering what on earth could elicit this reaction after everything, but he doesn’t pry. He turns to her desk and finds a lined notepad on top, with a To Do list that’s mostly crossed out. He hands it to her with a pen, and she smiles radiantly before scribbling. He takes the opportunity to stare at her hair and its kinked waves, the imprint of her braid. He wants to run his hands through it. She hands him back the notepad, and he takes a deep breath before reading.
No:
- Butt stuff - like even looking at it
- Saying mean things
- Condoms
Frank nods slowly, like the last item on the list isn’t sending him into cardiac arrest, and looks back up. She’s biting her lip again. He sets the list aside.
“Sounds good,” he tells her. He’s not totally sure where to go from here. “I guess, do you still want to do this? ‘Cause I can leave and we can forget all about this.”
She shakes her head. “No, don’t go. I really want to. Frank,” she leans closer to whisper, even though they’re alone in the apartment, “I haven’t come in over forty days.”
Frank swallows and nods again. “Okay, let’s get on that then. Say stop anytime, though, and I’m out of here, okay?” She nods, smiling at him. “And also, I don’t want you to worry about me, like, at all.” She squints at him. “You said you get in your head about the other person, right? This is all about you. Don’t worry about me. Think you can do that?” She nods again.
“Okay.” He lets out a slow breath and stands up, wondering where to start. “I didn’t ask. Do you like kissing? Or how much, like, foreplay?”
“Kissing is fine,” she says, and the rush from her looking all the way up at him, still perched on her bed, is heady. “But I think it’s more about, uh, not being the one who’s deciding the pace.” She darts a look at his mouth and back up. “I like hickeys. But not where anyone could see.”
“Gotcha.” He distracts himself from all of that by shrugging off his sweatshirt, which he maybe should have done at the door. He steps towards her, but stops when she wrinkles her nose.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and his heart sinks. She’s already calling it. He knew it was too good to be true. “But your scrubs are outside clothes. Can you take them off before getting near the bed?”
He laughs, relieved, and nods. He unties his scrub pants, trying to keep his hands from shaking, and then tugs off his scrub top. He’s still in his boxer-briefs and shirt, so it’s hardly scandalous, but it’s still a lot, hearing her ask him to take off his clothes. He folds them on the chair to buy himself a minute to calm down.
“Do all hot guys get a lesson in that?” Mel asks, getting him out of his head, and he must look confused, because she clarifies, “The one handed shirt thing.”
“Uh,” he answers, like the brilliant doctor that he is, and scratches the back of his neck. She called me hot! the teenage part of his brain is yelling, and it’s surprisingly hard to block out. “No?”
She laughs, then, and he decides he needs to stop pussying around. He closes the distance between them, leaning over her on the bed, and he watches the laughter catch in her throat. He stops an inch from her face and sees her gaze lock on his mouth, hears her swallow.
“Last time I’ll ask,” he breathes, and he likes how she shivers a little when his breath ghosts across her lips. He reaches out, slides her glasses off her nose, and leans over to set them on the desk. When he returns, she looks a little desperate. “You sure?”
“Frank,” she whispers, “kiss me.” He’s powerless, then, to do anything other than give her what she asked for.
He tries to start slow, not rush into it, but he loses that resolve pretty quickly, when her mouth opens with a little sigh. Her lips are as soft as he thought they’d be, vaguely strawberry-flavored, and he wants to trace every inch of her mouth, wants to burn the way she tastes into his memory.
He eases her back slowly, until she’s lying on the bed and he’s over her, braced on his elbows. She’s so warm, a delicious whisper of heat against his front, and he could stay here for hours, slowly mapping out what it’s like to kiss Mel King.
But he knows he has a mission, so he gently manhandles her, nudging her up the bed, until her head is on the pillow. He reaches over and tucks the frog stuffie under the other pillow. He kisses his way down the side of her throat. He’s rewarded by a breathy moan that intensifies when he adds a little teeth. She’s just as responsive as he’d hoped, little sighs and shudders and twitches, and he’s losing his mind, a little. He tries to catalogue as he goes, but it’s a lot of input, very quickly. It’s hard to forget how her hips jump when he nibbles her earlobe, though, which she apologizes for, a mumbled sorry.
“Nothing to say sorry about, baby,” he tells her, sitting up so he can pull her shirt off. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised she doesn’t have a bra on underneath, not when she just changed and they both knew they were doing this, but the sight of her tits short-circuits his brain. “I like hearing you and knowing what you like. Grind away.”
He sinks down to her tit, then, with an open-mouthed kiss that elicits a surprised whimper, and he feels invincible. He has seen the face of God, and it’s Mel King’s nipple. He spends another minute there, kissing and sucking and biting, and he feels her hips twitching against him, searching for friction. He switches to the other tit and reaches his hand down, firmly cupping the outside of her shorts, and she whimpers again. He rubs gently, experimentally, as he laves the other nipple, and her hips settle into a needy rhythm, chasing his hand.
He drops a trail of kisses along her abdomen, smiling when she giggles, batting his head away from her belly button, and pauses when he reaches her shorts. He can see a little dark spot where he had been rubbing, and his dick, which has been painfully hard since he read her list, jumps. She arches her hips up, a little impatient, and he tugs her shorts off. He takes a deep breath when they fall to the ground, and he glances up to find her watching him, a little crease between her eyebrows.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, painfully honest. He clears his throat. “How’re you doing?”
“Great.” Her eyes dart to his hands, which are gripping her upper thighs, his thumbs resting on her mons pubis. “But, um. I’m a little nervous, I think?”
He nods and considers his next move. She said she has trouble getting out of her head, right?
“Okay, let me know if you don’t like this, but can you flip over for me?” She shoots him a look, and he remembers the first item on the list and laughs. “I’m not trying to go against the list. But I have an idea of how to help you stop worrying, maybe.” Her expression clears and she rolls onto her front, back and ass in the air, and Frank closes his eyes for a moment, undone by her implicit trust.
He crawls back up the bed, allowing some of his weight to rest on her, hopefully more like a weighted blanket than crushing, and kisses along her spine until he gets midway down, somewhere around the T8 or T9 vertebra, and then he locks in, nibbling and licking, intent on leaving a hickey not where anyone else can see. She shudders beneath him, and he wishes her noises weren’t muffled by the pillow.
He continues his trail of hickeys down her back and he uses his right hand to test out some different things. He reaches around to play with her tit, but she doesn’t react much to it, so he moves to scratching her scapula, just a gentle scrape of his nails, and she whimpers, hips stuttering again.
He hoped that laying down like this would help her feel less embarrassed, especially since rocking against the bed is probably more familiar to her than pressing against him, from her hours of recent solo experimentation, and it seems to be working. She grows louder as he continues his descent, keening when he runs his nails over her ass, and then he accidentally strikes gold when he brushes against the back of her knee and she screams. And yes, on an academic level he knows that’s an erogenous zone, especially for women, but he’s still surprised.
Distracted now from his hickey adventures, he latches onto her left knee, a kiss that turns into a bite, and she writhes above him.
“Fingers, can I have your fingers,” she groans, head turned away from the pillow, and he doesn’t need to be asked twice.
He reaches up and slides his finger through her folds, lightheaded at how wet she is, and she pushes against him, desperate. He abandons his exploration to delve in, and her whole body clenches for a second as his finger acclimates to his new favorite place in the world, Mel King’s cunt. She relaxes, then her hips start jerking, and he commits to a rhythm, a push-pull against the swivel of her hips. When he thinks she’s ready, he adds a second finger, and she moans, a noise that will probably haunt him the rest of his life.
He knows he’s talking, that he’s been talking, a stream of nonsense, yes, you’re perfect, you’re beautiful, it’s ok to let go, you’re doing so good, but he’s not exactly sure what he’s said or if she’s even listening.
He thinks she’s close, her breathing ragged and movements a little less coordinated, and he regrets their position now, that he can’t reach her clit without significant reshuffling, but he settles for leaning back down and biting the back of her knee, and holy shit.
Part of him had wondered how obvious it would be if she came, if she’d be the type to bury her face and go silent, but he’s now cursed with the knowledge that Mel King is a screamer.
The second his teeth touch her skin, her cunt clenches around him, an all-enveloping spasm that burns his fingers, and she shrieks, a long, drawn-out wail that all her neighbors can surely hear. He thinks the only reason he doesn’t come on the spot is his surprise. She trails off into a hoarse whine, then reaches blindly for his hand, so he withdraws, sitting back on his knees.
She’s starfished on the bed, face buried in a pillow. Her hair is a tangled mess across her upper back, ending just where the hickies begin, a scatter of dark circles from the small of her back to her ass. There’s a darkening spot on the back of her knee, too, which he hopes still counts as a place people won’t see. He’s still in his shirt and boxer-briefs, and he didn’t even get a chance to get messy. It’s a disorienting contrast.
He eases up to lie beside her, head turned towards her, and he can’t believe how peaceful she looks. She smooshes her head over, face tilted towards him but still mostly in the pillow. He watches her blink her eyes slowly open. She looks relaxed in a way he’s never seen, like all of her muscles are letting themselves rest, like her brain is actually quiet for once. It’s a heady rush, knowing that he helped her feel like this.
“You good?” he whispers, finally, when he starts feeling a little creepy just watching her drift off.
“Never better,” she mumbles, and he smiles. She’s so cute. He wants to stare at her, to sleep beside her, to wake up and do everything in his power to make her life better, every day, for the rest of his life.
But that’s not what this is. He reminds himself of that, firmly, and tries to remember his list. He needs to get out of here.
“I’d better head out.” Her eyes fly open, then, and her brows furrow. He hates that he’s interrupting her blissed out vibe, but there is some urgency, because: “And you’d better go pee. I’d never sleep again if I were partially responsible for Mel King getting a UTI.”
She huffs out a bleary laugh and pushes herself up. He sighs and he sits up.
“Thanks,” she says, once he’s pulled his clothes back on. She’s still naked, and his eyes dart down for one last guilty glimpse of her perfect tits. “I really needed that.”
“Anytime,” he replies automatically. (Not that he wouldn’t drop everything to do that again, or quit his job to get his mouth on her. It was probably a little obvious, though, how quickly he said that.)
She smiles, a little goofily, and she’s still so obviously calmer, looser, that it’s driving him a little crazy. The back of her left fucking knee, Jesus Christ.
He leaves, before he can say or do anything else incriminating, and barely makes it home before shoving his hand down his pants. He barely lasts 30 seconds, just thinking about her fucking noises, and when he heads to the bathroom to change and wash his hands, he notices Gwen the dog watching him, in that faintly judgmental way smart dogs can pull off.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, drying his hands. “I don’t need you to say anything. I know I’m a mess.”