Work Text:
When Frank Langdon comes back to work, Mel notices three things.
One, he’s lost weight. It’s not unexpected after months of rehab, but she can’t help but see how fragile his wrists look or how sharp his jaw has become. Two, he holds himself in a way that is the antithesis of what she saw that first day last September. Perhaps this is who he truly is, but Mel looks for glimpses of the attention grabbing personality she’d grown fond of. And three, he’s no longer wearing a wedding ring.
She’d been fascinated with his hands that first day, the way they emphasized words as he spoke, the long fingers wrapping around hospital equipment, so she remembers the bright gold that gapped along his knuckle. He’s still wearing the beaded string bracelets, perhaps even more than before, but the spot where the loose gold band had been is empty.
She also notices that he turns down every offer of food and comradery after shift or decompressing in the park. It seems to Mel, from careful and covert observation, that he comes to work, does his job, and then leaves with little fanfare. He doesn’t talk about weekend plans or what he’d done the night before and is just generally disengaged.
So, two months after he’d returned to The Pitt, Mel invited him to Friday night dinner and a movie. He says no the first time, which she tries not to let bring her down, and she asks again a few weeks later. He says no again, this time with a bit of hesitation, and he looks at her like he’s trying to figure her out all over again.
Halfway through October, deep into Becca’s annual rewatch of every Disney Channel Halloween movie, Mel extends an invitation again. “We’re watching Halloweentown,” she says as she closes her locker. “It’s spaghetti night.”
She watches the side of his face as he stares into his own locker, grabbing essentials and shrugging on a jacket. She has only a moment to question the slight redness of his cheeks before he turns to look at her and say “I loved Halloweentown,” in a quiet voice, half of a grin making itself known.
Mel can’t help but stare for a moment, captivated by the bright blue of his eyes, the slight crinkling of smile lines, before she blinks and comes back to herself. “Great!” she says, her own smile wide and she thinks she does a pretty good job of holding her excitement at bay. “I’ll text you my address.”
Becca is overjoyed that someone else loves Halloweentown and is coming to watch with her, doubly so when she finds out it’s a boy. “Are you going to kiss?” her sister asks on the way home.
“No, Becca, we’re just friends,” Mel answers. At least, she thinks they’re friends. That first shift with him had been formative and she’s tried to be supportive of him since his return, but she’s not sure if Frank sees this as a friendship. She tries very, very hard not to blush when she remembers that in her quietest moments, she hopes for more.
“Shame,” Becca says and then skips forward ahead of her.
*****
After that first dinner and movie night, it becomes kind of a regular thing. He skips Halloween to take his kids trick-or-treating, but comes the next two weeks and doesn’t say a thing about watching Elf twice in a row.
Frank is different when he’s not at PTMC, smiling more openly and acting more like First Day Frank than he does when they’re on shift. He and Becca quiz each other on obscure movie facts and he sits with Mel to peer review medical journals and he starts making garlic bread from scratch. He tells her about his time in rehab, even after she insists that he doesn’t have to talk about it. He’s open with her about how hard he finds being back at work, how he feels like he’s letting his kids down, how he was somewhat relieved when it was his wife who asked for the separation.
At work, he’s still subdued, but she can see him loosening up and settling back in the longer he’s there. He and Robby aren’t as strained as he thought they’d be, something he tells her late on a Friday night, but it still feels like they’re walking on eggshells around each other. Santos and Frank will never get along personally, but professionally, they actually work extremely well together, much to Trinity’s chagrin. The rest of his relationships with the staff have pretty much fallen back into the status quo and Mel can tell with every week that passes just how much he’s grateful to be back.
Mel’s learned which weeks he has his kids and doesn’t bother asking if he’s joining them those nights. She’s happy that he still has that constant, a support network even if they don’t know how they’re helping, and she likes that it makes him happy too.
She grows used to missing his company every other week or so, and is pleasantly surprised one afternoon when he stops her before they leave and invites her to his apartment instead.
“Becca has an overnight, right?” he asks, because he’s picked up her sister’s schedule also. “The kids and I are making homemade pizzas and watching The Grinch.”
“Which one? Karloff, Carrey, or Cumberbatch?”
The grin that grows across his face when she doesn’t immediately turn him down is devastating. “As many as we can get through,” he says and Mel finds herself grinning right back.
*****
Mel’s always been good with kids, she genuinely likes working with them, so she knows the only reason she’s nervous is because Tanner and Riley are Frank’s kids and she wants them to like her. As she approaches Frank’s apartment door, she twists her hands together in front of her, but when she hears high pitched giggling through the door, she relaxes and knocks on the door.
The kids are still giggling when the door swings open and Frank leans against it. He looks loose and at ease, something she doesn’t even get to see when he comes to her place. “Hey,” he says, “come on in.”
Stepping inside, she sees two children who have Frank’s bright blue eyes and chin dimple, but paired with black hair instead of his brown. Mel can’t help but smile at their slightly too big aprons absolutely covered in flour. “Tanner, Riley, this is daddy’s friend from work. Say hi to Miss Mel.”
“Hi Miss Mel!” they chorus back, looking up only briefly from the dough they’re pressing out. “We’re making pizza!” Riley yells, using the back of her hand to push hair out of her face.
“I can see that,” Mel says with a laugh, glancing at Frank as he stares happily at his children. “What kind of pizza are we making?” she asks, slipping off her jacket and scarf to drape over a chair. She has a feeling she may go home with little white handprints on it, but that’s fine with her.
Frank’s the one that answers, moving around the table towards the kitchen. “We have cheese, pepperoni, olives because Riley likes them, mushrooms because Tanner wants to try them-”
“Oh I love mushrooms!” Mel exclaims, turning to the boy. “Great choice!” She instinctively raises her hand for a high five which he meets with a slap and puff of white powder. “Oh!” she mutters and then glances at Tanner. They’re silent for only a moment before they both dissolve into giggles.
When she looks up again, she catches Frank’s eyes and some deep, primal part of her knows he’s been staring. She tries very hard to ignore the flutter in her stomach and busies herself wiping the flour off her hands.
Mel hears Frank move in the kitchen and doesn’t jump when she feels his presence behind her, turning to find him close and holding the neck of an apron up to her. She hopes the light in his apartment is dark enough to hide the blush that blooms across her cheeks as she dips her head and lets him put the loop over it. When she goes to tie it behind her back, he gently presses against her elbow, encouraging her to turn around where his fingers skim across her waist as he loops the strings around each other.
She forces herself to remember why she’s here, despite the flutter and the blush and the goosebumps that have popped up across her flesh at his touch.
They spend the next several minutes dressing their pizzas, Frank piling on a frankly ridiculous amount of cheese on his, before sending the kids to wash their hands while the adults put the pizzas in the oven.
When the kids come back out, they each grab Mel by a hand and pull her into the living room, urging her to sit in the middle of the couch before they each clamber up on either side of her.
“Well, now, wait,” Frank says with a laugh. “What if I wanted to sit next to Miss Mel?”
Tanner and Riley lean forward to look at each other over Mel’s lap before Riley hops back off the couch, using Mel’s leg for leverage. She grabs Frank’s hand and pulls him to sit on the couch, plopping him next to Mel and then climbing into his lap. “There!” she says triumphantly. “Win-win!”
Mel giggles and then outright laughs when Frank pulls back to look at his kid. “Who taught you win-win?” he asks, but Riley has already turned her attention to where Tanner is expertly pressing buttons on the remote to pull up Disney+.
Soon, the four of them are tucked in to the couch with their pizzas and the glow of the TV and it’s right around the time Cindy Lou Who invites The Grinch to the Whoville celebration that Mel realizes this is the most content she’s been in awhile.
*****
Frank texts Mel early on a Sunday morning telling her he’s taking the kids ice skating and wants to know if she and Becca want to come. It’s not entirely unsurprising, they’ve been spending more and more time together. In addition to the weekly movie nights, they’ve also started meeting for breakfast once a week and Frank’s given her a ride home on more than one occasion when the weather is bad.
Mel’s favorite person in the world is her sister, but she finds that Frank is coming in at a very close second. He’s easy to talk to and is actually a great listener when he’s not running around an entire emergency department. He’s funny and patient and doesn’t explain jokes until she gets them like some people have in the past. And when he laughs at her jokes, it sends a rush of warmth through her bloodstream and she can’t help but want to hear his laughter again and again.
She even enjoys spending time with him while his kids are there. They think she’s even funnier than their dad and are ecstatic when they find out she’s an expert at making slime, even adding in some inclusions.
Mel talks to Becca about altering their Sunday routine to meet up with Frank, something that Becca agrees to almost immediately. This will be the first time she’s met Tanner and Riley, but any excuse to spend time with Frank is enough for her.
When they arrive at the park where a temporary skating rink has been set up, there’s only a few other families there and it’s easy to spot Frank kneeling in front of a bench and tying the laces of Riley’s rented skates.
“Hey,” Mel says as they approach, high fiving Tanner before ruffling Riley’s hair.
“Morning,” Frank replies and she’s struck momentarily silent by the early morning gruffness of his voice. He introduces his kids to Becca, who immediately drops down and unties the skate Frank had been working on.
“Here,” she says, smiling up at the kids. “I’ll show you a cooler way to tie this.” She does something fancy with the strings, looping them around each other in a complicated knot. In the end, Tanner looks from his skates to Riley’s before exclaiming loudly that he wants his skates tied the same way.
Frank moves to stand next to Mel, eyebrows up and hands held up in mock surrender. “Where’d she learn that?” he asks, bumping her shoulder.
“Oh, our mom was a skater,” Mel replies, smiling fondly as Tanner plays with the end of Becca’s braid. “Not, like, a professional or anything. But she was pretty good. Becca was always the better skater between the two of us.”
Tanner and Riley immediately take to Becca who meets their enthusiasm with her own. She compliments Riley’s Barbie themed scarf and shows Tanner their almost matching Spiderman socks. Soon, the three of them are heading out onto the ice, Frank and Mel practically forgotten.
“She’s good with them,” Frank says, settling on the bench to put his own skates on. Mel follows suit, pulling out an old, worn looking pair of skates with faded purple stripes on them.
“Becca loves kids,” she replies, tying her laces. She waits for him to finish before smoothly standing and walking to the edge of the rink. When she looks back, she can’t help but smile at him wobbling on his blades, hands out at his sides to keep his balance.
Across the rink, Tanner, Riley, and Becca all cheer Frank on as he steps out on the ice, knees locked and back hunched forward.
“Loosen up,” Mel says with a laugh and then skates backwards alongside him. “You’re going to fall.” He clings to the wall with one hand and shuffles forward, eyes to the ground for the first few glides, but when he finally looks up, his eyes are bright and his grin is wide.
Frank doesn’t go far from the edge of the rink, so Mel goes back and forth between him and the middle of the ice where she and Becca show the kids some beginner moves. Eventually, Riley is skating in wide circles around Becca begging her to jump and spin, while Tanner and Mel work on stopping on a dime right in front of Frank.
During a hot chocolate break, where Frank has fully given up and returned his skates, Mel stays out on the ice a few moments longer. She hasn’t skated like this in years, but muscle memory takes over and she finds herself speeding up into an elegant salchow, her stomach flipping as her feet leave the ground. When she lands, there’s a round of applause from the benches coming from her four favorite people.
*****
The liminal space between Thanksgiving and Christmas brings with it an influx of emergency patients, a nasty snow storm, and both Mel and Becca getting the flu. They hole up in their apartment and DoorDash meds and soup and drinks full of electrolytes and Mel doesn’t even mind watching Elf twice a day because she keeps falling asleep halfway through.
By day four, she can tell they’re on the other side of the illness, her fever breaking in the morning and Becca’s by the afternoon. Still, she has to talk Frank out of coming over, convincing him that she would be returning to work shortly and that they were truly both fine.
Hours later, there’s a knock on their door, startling Mel from a light doze. There’s no one there when she checks the peephole, but when she swings open the door, there’s a cardboard box at the base of her feet. When she looks closer, she sees a couple of containers of what looks like homemade soup, a handful of drinks in flavors she knows she can’t find in the stores near her, and four handmade cards, one each from Tanner and Riley to both Becca and Mel.
She can’t help but smile as she brings the package in, handing her sister the cards with her name on them before turning to her own. Tanner’s card is on bright green construction paper with ‘feel better’ scrawled across the front in a dark marker. Inside is a drawing of the two of them as stick figures, skating across the page judging by the apparent movement lines behind each figure.
The other card from Riley is a pale purple with a bright pink heart drawn with crayon, the words ‘Get Well Soon’ written in a clearly adult’s handwriting. The inside however is all Riley, a mismatch of various animals all with speech bubbles saying variations of the same sentiment, that they hope Miss Mel feels better soon.
The kids' cards to Becca are much the same, but Riley’s includes an elaborate scene of an ice skater mid-jump and Tanner’s is every Marvel character he could fit on the 8.5 by 11 paper. Becca smiles as she carries the cards and a bowl of soup into her room and closes the door behind her and something in Mel unclenches as she sees her sister feeling better both physically and mentally.
Mel grabs her own bowl of soup, stopping for a moment when she notices one last paper in the box. Unfolding it, her smile widens as she takes in the hastily written words. “Hope you and Becca feel better soon. Let me know if you need anything. Miss you. See you soon. Love, Frank.” She runs her fingertips over the familiar scrawl and feels her heart flutter as she rereads those last two words.
*****
The New Year’s Eve day shift is not as chaotic as they know the night shift will be, but neither Mel nor Frank has plans for the evening. The kids will be asleep long before the ball drops and Becca has elected to spend New Year’s at her facility’s party where she can dress up and drink sparkling wine with her friends. So they stay after their shift and help until there’s a lull in the activity.
With a few minutes left until midnight, Frank sneaks Mel away from The Pitt, leading her up to the roof with a grin she hasn’t seen since that first day over a year ago. The air is cold when they step out into the night and the city is loud even this high up.
Frank had Facetimed the kids earlier in the evening, Mel waving at them over his shoulder, so they take a few minutes now to call Becca. Frank compliments her on her dress and they laugh over an inside joke that Mel will never understand and then Becca’s scrambling to get off the phone because it’s one minute to midnight and she wants to get a seat next to her friend Sam to watch the ball drop.
Mel laughs as she hangs up and then leans against the edge of the roof, elbows against the brick. Next to her, Frank leans backward against the same brick and leans back against his hands. They stand there quietly for a long moment and even the sounds of the city seem to mute in anticipation of midnight before the countdown starts.
ten, nine, eight
“Mel,” Frank says quietly and she’s so content that it takes her a moment to turn towards him. When she does, she finds him staring down at her with a look in his eyes she’s only ever wished for late at night, in her quietest moments.
seven, six, five
She watches with wide eyes as he leans forward before pausing a hair’s breadth away from her lips, giving her a chance to move away if she wanted.
four, three, two
As fireworks explode across the city, Mel surges forward and presses her lips to Frank’s, reaching up with cold hands to hold his face against hers. Her heart races in her chest, goosebumps popping up on her flesh when his own hands encircle her waist, and her blood warms when he deepens the kiss and pulls her even closer. When she closes her eyes, she can still see the flashes of fireworks on her eyelids.
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