Chapter Text
It started, like all things, because of Santos.
“Heads up, bitches!” Santos emerged from her room with an armful of cardboard boxes. “Got a gift for you.”
“What’s the occasion?” Mohan asked, side-eyeing the others in the living room because a gift from Santos could mean anything.
“No occasion.” Mel sprung up from the couch to move her can of Diet Coke so Santos could sit down on the carpet. “I’ve just been thinking a lot lately and decided that it’s high time that some of you got off.”
“Wh-what?” Javadi sputtered.
“Are you giving us condoms?” Whitaker asked through a mouthful of banana bread. He was sitting on a rocking chair in the corner, face smeared with clownish make-up that enhanced his horrified expression.
“You get nothing,” Santos countered, “except room and board. But the rest of you?” She grinned. “Head’s up.”
She distributed one box to each of the girls gathered - Javadi, Mohan, and Mel - by tossing them without warning. When they had all recovered from the sudden projectiles, she popped the top on her own. “Ordered something on a massive markdown last week,” she said. “Apparently they had lots of overflow stock and sent me some extras. I don’t need ‘em, so I figured I’d be a good friend and share the wealth.”
Javadi opened her box, stared down into it, and then closed it just as quickly. Mohan fished around inside and pulled out something no bigger than a tube of lipstick. “I don’t think we’re close enough friends for you to give me this,” she deadpanned, but there was a sparkle in her eye.
“Oh, get real, Samira. We were practically holding hands inside of that guy’s guts last week - I think that means we’re close enough for me to give you a free vibrator.”
Without speaking, Whitaker stood up and calmly walked into the kitchen.
“A vibrator?” Mel asked. She’d seen them before - her roommate had one in college that she often left lying around, and Mel was too awkward to ask her whether or not she cleaned it or ever considered putting it away - but never had one of her own. She opened the box in her lap and reached inside, wrapping her fingers around a short, somewhat soft object and pulling it out.
“It’s supposed to look like a tube of lipstick,” Santos said - proud, like she was the one that designed it. “So you can bring it around with you in your purse and no one will be any wiser.”
“For what purpose?” Javadi asked, still wide-eyed.
“To get off,” Santos replied.
“I think she’s asking why you would need to put it in your purse,” Mohan clarified, popping the lid off to reveal a golden circle at the top of it, much like where the lipstick in a tube of lipstick would be.
“I dunno.” Santos shrugged. “To get off at work, I guess. Just kidding. Don’t tell Robby I said that.”
Mel felt like standing up and joining Whitaker in the other room but instead followed Mohan’s lead and eased the lid off the small tube.
“How do you turn it on?” she asked, furrowing her eyebrows. Santos leaned over, tilted the tube in her direction, and then fumbled with the cushion on the bottom until it started to vibrate. “Oh!”
“Just click the bottom until you find the vibration you like,” Santos informed her. “It has… 5 settings? I think? I can’t remember.” She turned her own vibrator on, clicked the bottom a couple times, and pressed it to her palm, then gave the gathered doctors a pleased smile. “Ohhh yeah. This is a good one.”
“Um - thank you for the, um, gift, Trinity, but…” Javadi closed the box and held it out to Santos like it was a handful of someone’s small intestine. “I don’t… want this.”
“I don't think I do either,” Mel added. However, she had yet to put the tube back in the box.
“Well, I can’t return it,” Santos responded, “because it was free. And I don’t care if you keep it. I mean, I do care, because it’s important to express and experience your sexuality in a safe environment with someone you trust, either yourself or a partner. But if you don’t want it… I dunno. Donate it or something.”
“Who would accept a donated vibrator?” Whitaker asked from the doorway to the kitchen, still looking horrified but apparently too interested in their conversation to fully escape into another room. He was now also holding a bowl of popcorn, as if their conversation was some sort of late-night entertainment.
“I don’t know!” Santos exclaimed. “What do I look like, the fucking vibrator police?”
This started an argument that Mel quickly tuned out, instead turning the vibrator over in her hand and inspecting it closely.
She had, in fact, had sex before. She also knew the supposed benefits of self-pleasure - increased confidence, stress relief, boosted mood, better sleep. She tried to do it a couple of times - take matters into her own hands, so to speak - but watching videos felt impersonal and inappropriate, and thinking about someone she knew and had done that sort of thing with before felt like a violation of their privacy. Besides, she didn’t feel a natural desire to “get off”. She would do it if her partners wanted her to, and had a good experience if it was with someone she liked, but it wasn’t something she thought about much on her own.
“Look, Javadi, all I’m saying is that you might feel a little less stressed all the time if you jerked off every once in a while. And Mel.” Mel startled at the sound of her own name. “You of all people deserve a break.”
“A break from what?”
“From the stressors of life.”
“I take breaks!”
“By doing what, sitting on the couch in silence?”
“Sometimes,” Mel answered. “And - sometimes, I sit on the front step.”
“I’m not trying to pressure you,” Santos said, suddenly and uncharacteristically serious. “Or anything like that. Please don’t think this is me saying, like, ‘Oh, you better get off or…’ Or… or something.” She frowned. “It’s, like, nothing like that.”
“Oh, I didn’t think it was like that,” Mel said reassuringly, reaching out to pat Santos's hand because despite the fact she didn’t know if the vibrator would do anything for her, she also didn’t think that Santos was trying to be anything but helpful.
“Okay. Good. I’m just saying that I think it can be a good way to relieve tension. And we’re fucking doctors - we need to relieve tension somewhere or it’ll like… build up and explode. Mass casualties and everything.” She held up the vibrator and smiled like she was in a television ad. “And better to have one of these guys than make a mistake with one of those douchebags you can pick up at Enclave.”
Mel turned the vibrator over in her hands. It was light and smooth. Inoffensive. Not like the other ones she saw for sale at the mall when she wandered into the wrong store with Becca, bright pink or purple with sharp-looking barbs or tentacles. (The tentacles had been intriguing, intellectually, but one Google search had her swearing them off forever.)
“I think I’ll keep it,” Mel replied, awkwardly. “Thank you, Trinity.”
“You’re welcome, Mel,” Santos said, smiling. “Glad I could help.”
When Mel got home, she stashed the vibrator in the bottom drawer of her bedside table and didn’t think about it for two weeks. She worked twelve hour days, wore the soles of her feet to what felt like the bone (but it wasn’t, she checked), was late to pick Becca on almost every night, and even snapped at Frank once when he touched her elbow in an effort to slip past without having her accidentally back into him.
She didn’t even remember what she said to him. In retrospect, she probably didn’t say any real words, just made a series of unhappy noises accompanied by a few displeased hand gestures. But it was enough that he’d avoided her the rest of the day, leaving her to follow him out at the end of the shift and catch his arm before he could cross the parking lot.
“I’m sorry,” she said, before he turned around but after she released his arm because she knew her hands were freezing cold and didn't want to touch him longer than she had to. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I was… frustrated and upset and overstimulated, but it - it wasn’t fair to -”
Frank shook his head. “It’s fine, Mel.”
“No, no, it wasn’t. It wasn’t.”
“Mel,” he repeated again, a hand on either of her shoulders like he was about to tell her to take a deep breath. And she did take a deep breath, just in case. “You’re fine. It was a hard shift. And like I haven’t said way fucking worse.”
“But I don’t even remember what I said,” Mel confessed.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you said anything at all.” He pursed his lips and squinted like he was thinking, then tapped his chin for comedic effect. “Something about me being a ‘fricking... jerk off', maybe? I can't remember.”
“A what?” Mel stammered.
“It doesn’t matter.” Frank hitched his backpack higher up on his shoulder, and despite his probationary period and his divorce and Mel calling him something indecipherable but mean-spirited in a moment of weakness, he seemed like he was in a good mood. “We’re good. I promise.”
“Okay. Good.” She pretended to wipe her forehead and breathe a sigh of relief, feeling pleased when it made him laugh.
“You need a ride home?” he asked.
“Ah - no, no, I’m fine,” she answered, waving him off. “I’m fine. But thank you, though.”
“Alright. Well, before I head out, I should probably remind you that I won’t be around for the next couple days.”
“Oh?” Mel recalled a conversation a few days ago but forgot his explanation. “What are you, um, doing?”
“Just spending a few days with the kids while Abby’s at a conference,” he told her. “I’m… really fuckin’ looking forward to it.”
“Oh, that’s nice!” A car honked behind them and Mel stepped closer to Frank so the person could drive around her. “What are you going to do?”
“The zoo, I think. A museum or two. But mostly catching up on all the little kid gossip. Their new favourite dinosaurs and whatever.”
“Ohhh, that’ll be nice.”
“Yeah.” He had a distant look in his eyes, but the slight smile on his face told her that it wasn't the bad kind. “It’ll be great.”
Mel, too, smiled. At him. He didn’t notice, but she didn’t care. Because while she was smiling at him, she wasn't smiling to get his attention. She was smiling because she was happy for him, and happy that he wasn’t mad at her for snapping at him during their shift.
“Uh, I should get going,” she said, suddenly. “And you should get going, too.”
“You’re sure you don’t want a ride?”
“Yeah. Yep. For sure.” Each of her affirmations were a slightly different pitch. Mel started to back away and then jumped when someone else honked behind her.
“Watch out,” Frank warned, chuckling but keeping an eye on the car, presumably to make sure it didn’t run her over.
“Yeah, you too,” she replied as she continued to walk backwards. “I mean, uh - drive safe. And I’ll see you in a couple days.”
She didn’t pose it as a question, but he nodded anyway before she turned around. “Yeah, you will.”
She missed him at work the next day. She knew she would. She liked seeing him across the floor, checking in with him at lunch, watching those satisfying Instagram videos with him in the break room, their lighthearted conversation underscored by the sound of someone popping bubble wrap or mixing paints or sticking their fingers deep into a pile of slime. (This slime phase had lasted the longest out of all of them, and he threatened to get her some for Christmas before she insisted that, while it was nice to look at and listen to, she wouldn’t want any of her own.) Frank’s absence meant she had more time to talk to Santos and Mohan and Javadi, though, and she even chatted with Whitaker about some singer named Orville Peck and promised to check him out before she left work. So it was a good day in the end. But she still missed him, and the missing him weighed on her heart, just a little.
Becca went to bed as soon as they got home from pizza, so Mel tidied the kitchen and the living room and then, after she showered and brushed her teeth, found herself sitting on her bed at 9:30 pm with nothing left to do. Just as she was debating whether or not to go to sleep, her phone buzzed.
It was a picture of Frank with the kids.
Had a blast at the zoo today, he said.
He did, in fact, look like he was having a blast - he was smiling wider than Mel had ever seen him, and she could tell even through the screen that he was holding tight onto the kids’ shoulders. She could see so much of him in their faces, it made her heart swell.
It looks like it! she replied.
Tanner said that I look like a macaroni penguin. He sent a photo of said macaroni penguin, and the first thing she noticed when she looked at it was that the penguin’s blond bangs did resemble Frank’s hair when he forgot to put product in before work. Should I be offended?
When we went, Becca said I looked like one of the kangaroos.
You know, I was thinking the same thing. She smiled, then, a second later: Joke.
I know.
He was obsessed with taking pictures on my phone. Kept trying to take a bunch of me for some reason.
Really?
Yeah. I was getting the total model treatment.
Maybe you missed your true calling.
Don’t I know it.
That was a joke!
I know.
You’re a good doctor!!!
I know!
Can I see them? The photos?
She expected him to respond right away, but he didn’t. The three dots appeared, disappeared, and then appeared again. I’m looking for a good one, he said finally, after what felt like an hour but was really a few minutes had passed. Think I hate all of them.
Why?
The three dots appeared, disappeared, and then appeared again, but he never responded to her question. She had a feeling he did know, though, and made a mental note to ask him about it when he was back.
Here’s the best one, he texted. Mel clicked on the attached image and tilted her head.
It was Frank in front of the lion exhibit. He was wearing a bright teal t-shirt she didn't recognize and a pair of black jeans; he seemed to be having a conversation with someone because he was smiling, but his hands were clasped behind his head and his attention was directed off to the side. The position he was holding meant that his shirt was riding up. It exposed a strip of his pale stomach and the slightest hint of what she thought was the waistband of his underwear.
She closed her phone and placed it face down on her bed, taking one deep breath in and one deep breath out.
She knew for a fact that she was attracted to Frank. So attracted that sometimes she felt like attracted wasn’t the right word - it didn’t feel strong enough, didn’t hold enough weight. She admired him. She adored him. His brain, his process; how he persevered, how he pushed himself. But there were physical things about him that she liked, too. His arms. His hands. His face. And when she answered a question right or said something that made Dana laugh and he winked at her - oh, she liked when he winked at her.
She wondered if he ever had sex.
No, that wasn’t right. She knew he had sex, that he had had sex at least twice in his life but most definitely a lot more. Instead she wondered what his… perspective on sex was. If it meant something more to him than just sex. How often he needed it. What he considered an acceptable amount for the average person to need it before it became a red flag. She thought about what the look on his face would be if she told him that Santos gave them all vibrators, and it made her snort. And then she sighed and thumped the heel of her hand against her head a few times, hoping it could stop the words “Frank” and “sex” from ever being in the same sentence again, because they were friends, good friends. She might go as far as saying that they were best friends, and she shouldn't be thinking about him like that.
Her phone buzzed beside her. She picked it up so quickly that it fell out of her hands onto the floor, and when she picked it up the second time, she scanned the screen like her life depended on it.
Way to kick a guy while he’s down.
Sorry! It's a good photo! And after deciding not to point out the specific parts of the photo she liked, she added, I am just a little out of it.
Because she was. She was tired. She was bored, and she had been bored all night. And now, she was horny. Three things that seemed entirely contradictory in retrospect, but were somehow true all at once.
Me too. I’m exhausted.
You should go to bed.
I’m going. But you go too, Mel.
I’m going! Goodnight.
Gnight.
She placed her phone on her bedside table - face down, so she wasn’t tempted to look at the picture again - and couldn't help when her gaze drifted to the bottom drawer. Cautiously, and with an eye on the door, she leaned down to pull it open and felt around inside for the vibrator.
It was a bit bigger than she remembered. The matte coating was soft and satisfying against the pads of her fingers. She pulled the lid off and inspected the small circular knob at the top, noticing for the first time that there was an indent in the middle of it to make it look like a misshapen cartoon heart. She pressed the cushion on the bottom and jumped when the vibrator whirred to life.
She was reminded of what Santos had told them, what those articles said. Stress relief. Eases tension. Better to have one of these guys than make a mistake. She laid back against her pillows and closed her eyes.
And then she thought better of it, shooting up from bed and reaching for the fan on her dresser, turning it on to the highest setting and facing it in the direction of the door. It was a cheap fan, so it was loud, which would hopefully drown out the sound of the vibrator when or if Becca got up to use the bathroom. She then turned off the lamp on her bedside table, but decided to keep the one across the room on, just in case. After all of those tasks were done, she crawled under her blankets, pulled them up to her chin, kept one hand on top to hold them in place against her chest and let the other one snake between her legs and inside of her sleep shorts. She had never turned the vibrator off, so the sudden buzzing against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs made her jump.
She laid there for a few minutes without moving - besides her hand, which she moved to various strategic positions until she settled on one that felt right. Even when she found it, though, she didn’t feel… anything. At least not anything pleasurable. The vibrator wasn’t doing much besides over-stimulating her, and she was so nervous about someone seeing her despite the fact that the only other person in the house was asleep that she kept one eye open and trained on the door while the vibrator buzzed away between her legs. After a while she clicked it off and laid there, frustrated because she felt even more stressed and tense then she did before, and wasn't it supposed to do the opposite?
And then she thought about Frank. The way his eyes crinkled at the edges, the warmth of his hands no matter how cold it was outside. She thought about Frank, sending a picture of himself at the zoo, waiting for a text back as if whether or not she thought it was a good picture of him was something that mattered. But to him, it mattered.
She turned the vibrator on again. Held her breath and clenched the hand on her chest like she was clutching a cross. She waited for a sign she shouldn’t do what she was about to do because really, if there was a sign, she would’ve listened to it with enthusiasm. But nothing came, no one called. She pressed the vibrator between her legs. This time, she arched a little off the bed. And when she went searching in her mind for inspiration, all she found were the words "Frank" and "sex". Together, in the same sentence, despite how hard she had tried to separate them.
There was this one day, in the break room, where she found Frank shovelling spoonfuls of cereal into his mouth. He was breathing hard and heavy between bites, the sheen of milk and sweat shining on his chin. Mel was sure she had stared at him for twenty or thirty seconds before he jerked his chin towards her hands and asked her why her phone was playing Baby Shark at max volume. (She still couldn't remember why.)
There was another day where Frank was talking to Dana, bracing himself against the desk with both hands, leaning forward to see something on the floor at her feet. The back of his scrub top was riding up - he really wasn’t that tall, why did all of his shirts seem too short for him? - and his sleeves were bunched up underneath his armpits, which meant the entire ER could see the contours of his biceps as clearly as they could see the smile on his face. He had nice arms. He had really nice arms. On the occasions that Mel touched them, she was pleasantly surprised by how soft and strong they could be at the same time.
There was another day where they went to the dog park. It was sweltering out, and within minutes he had sweat through the back of his white t-shirt, but instead of finding it gross, she couldn’t stop staring at where it clung to his shoulders. There were all the times he threw his arm over the back of his passenger seat while she was sitting in it so he could reverse out of the hospital parking lot, and then that other time he poked her shoulder so she would turn in the direction of the window to see who it was - which she did, but only because she knew it'd make him laugh. Then there was that moment a month or so ago where he had chocolate smeared beside his mouth after wolfing down a donut and spent a good fiften seconds trying to lick off all traces of it when she pointed it out.
That time he’d stood up to a patient who was saying inappropriate things about her, a hand on her thigh as he protectively held her in place behind him; that time he surprised her with a homemade sandwich mid-shift and watched her eat the entire thing without looking away - and maybe, if she was remembering right (and she was remembering right), without blinking; that time they were sitting next to each other in the break room - why does so much happen in the break room? - and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder without a word, but when she tucked herself against his side, it felt like he jumped out of his skin.
She never told him how much she liked it when he touched her (even if he didn’t ask first, though it was nice when he did). Still, she had a feeling he knew, because he did it so often, even when he didn't have to.
How would he touch her if they had sex? Would he still be careful, cautious, reaching out only when she could see it and had time to decline his advances? Or would he be fast and loose, moving the way he does when the ED is crowded, slanting his hips every which way to slip through the throngs of people without brushing up against anyone doing something important? She knew that he would be looking at her the entire time no matter what, staring at her, his bright blue eyes shadowed by more than his dark brown eyelashes. That sort of attention from anyone else made her feel awkward in her skin, but with Frank it always seemed, always felt so nice.
And he had nice lips. Soft and pink. He had really nice teeth, too. Suddenly she remembered a conversation the two of them once had where he grinned at her and she was filled with the sudden urge to run her tongue across his incisors. She thought it would taste like a vanilla icing for some reason, and his breath would probably taste like coffee or mint gum, and he’d smell like sweat and cologne and plastic, and she knows that if the two of them had sex he would be grabbing her, holding her, as tight as he could, until his knuckles turned white and his skin started to burn.
Where would he grab her, though? Her leg, her arm, her shoulder, her waist, her ass, her -? She arched off the bed again, grit her teeth, threw her head to the side from where it had been previously resting flat on the pillow, and tucked her blankets higher under her chin as if it made any difference. Her skin was starting to feel tighter and tighter, and there was a part of her that really needed to move, to stretch, to chase something down, but there was nothing there besides her body and the vibrator, and trying to chase down the latter only made that tight feeling get more and more intense.
What would he call her? If they had sex? Her ex-boyfriend called her baby, which she didn’t like in general but especially in bed. Frank was old Hollywood handsome, though, and all those old Hollywood stars always said honey or darling or sweetheart. Sweetheart. She imagined him saying it softly, watching her, staring at her, his eyes trying to convince her to do something that words couldn’t. Sweetheart. Mel. Are you okay? Are you okay? You’re safe with me. Me. You and me. Us. Sweetheart. His thumb on her chin. Her thumb on his chin, in the crook of his dimple. His hair falling in his face. His arms.
She arched off the bed just a little when she came and bit down hard on her fist. She didn't make a sound like she was worried she would but was glad she took a precaution anyway, even if it did leave tender indents on her skin for ten minutes afterwards. When she stopped shaking and the hot flush of shame and embarrassment started to creep up her shoulders at the realization of what she had done, she turned off the vibrator and shoved it deep under the covers, not wanting to touch it again. Then she got up, went to the bathroom to pee and look at herself in the mirror, returned to her bedroom and turned off the lamp in the corner. The process felt procedural and impersonal, but that was what she needed while she decided how she felt. When she crawled into bed into bed again, her skin still felt like it was vibrating, and she double-checked to make sure she didn’t leave the vibrator on even though she remembered turning it off.
After a few minutes of thinking, she decided that she did in fact feel a little strange about what happened, but not as shameful as she did right when it was over. And considering that most of the thoughts she had were about how much she liked Frank as a person instead of anything explicitly sexual, she didn't really have much to feel shameful about at all. In fact, if she knew all it took to pleasure herself was thinking about Frank being a good doctor and a good friend, it would probably be a lot easier going forward.
Not that she had plans to do it going forward, either a lot or at all. Of course she didn't. But that was besides the point.
She felt even better about it the next morning. She felt better in general, actually. She hadn't slept that well in years, and not even forgetting her tea on the counter in the kitchen or having to stop at Rite Aid for extra hair-ties on the way to PTMC soured her good mood. When she arrived at work, she gave Santos, who was the first person she saw, as big of a smile as she could manage. She was thankful for her. She had a lot to be thankful about, actually. She worked at a place she loved with people she loved, with people who loved her and valued her and wanted the best for her in return, platonic or romantic or otherwise. She was meant to be there. She always knew that, but this had been a good reminder. And there was nothing that relieved stress more than a reminder like that.
Santos stared at her for a second, narrowed her eyes, and then said, “Someone’s in a good mood this morning.”
Mel made a beeline for her locker without giving her a response, but even when she heard Santos laughing behind her, she couldn't find it in herself to be mad.