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It’s been a while since Mel’s had a proper panic attack.
There’s a basement that comes to mind—the scent of mothballs, floors that creaked under each nervous step as she stared at empty coffins, all adorned with hefty price tags to identify the penultimate value of human life. The reality that her mother was gone, that this was just the first of many costs to come, that she had to make every decision from the flowers, to the resting place, to what would be engraved into her mother’s tombstone forever, not to mention the after, with school, their finances, the house, and Becca, and—it hit her. She started breathing so heavily that eventually she just couldn’t, vision spotting and then hyperfocused on the elderly funeral director's worried face, her body curled into a ball on the musty carpet for minutes or hours until eventually everything came back into startling focus almost as if it hadn’t happened at all. Embarrassed didn’t even begin to cover it.
That had been a bad day, maybe one of her worst, so at least there was rationale for her… episode, back then.
There’s no reason, absolutely no reason, for her to feel this way now.
Her skin is tingling and—ants. It feels like ants. Thousands of fire ants crawling across her, pinching and stinging her skin repeatedly as if to say notice me. Feel me. Do something about me. Rubbing her arms only makes it worse, draws more attention to the front of her mind, enough that she can feel the fabric of her clothes on her with each step she takes in the ER. Her breath doesn’t feel quite right and rationally she knows she’s getting enough air, she can feel it passing from her lips into her lungs, out again, but it’s not enough, she’s not getting enough. It’s dizzying this feeling, but she has an hour left in her shift, patients to see, charts to complete so she shoves everything as deep as it can go until she skates by on monotone prognosis’ and borderline robotic responses to the seemingly never ending barrage of questions she receives from her patients or coworkers or Big Joe, the sweet janitor that just wants to know if Mel tried that pizza place he recommended her a few weeks ago that all she can do is nod at.
Normally work is the one place she does feel steady—somewhere she’s actually competent and a place where if she doesn’t know the answer or what to do there’s a barrage of equally intelligent people there to readily assist her. For some reason though, today lingers. The grandparent she lost in the early hours still sits on her shoulders, the little girl from three days ago whose father broke her arm stings as heavily as the burn victim she swears she can still smell. A month ago. That case was a month ago, why was she thinking about peeling back charred flesh now? It’s crushing, this weight, and it’s going to kill her if she can’t just go home.
It’s a miracle she gets through the handoff and she’s grateful Shen doesn’t ask a single probing question despite her clearly skittish state. He usually doesn’t pry, more focused on landing a quippy reply, and she scurries off towards the lockers, desperate to not give him the chance. She struggles with her lock, and then again with getting her jacket on. Once she does manage to get both sleeves situated, she paws at the material over her arms repeatedly to try and soothe herself.
It doesn’t work, nothing is working, and she knows she can’t drive home like this so she waits for him, first undoing her braid in hopes of releasing the tension from her skull and then by combing through her hair with her fingers. There’s frustrated tears that bubble up at the knots she gets stuck on and she begins rotating between deep breathing and the self-affirming mantras she worked on with her therapist back in medical school.
I am safe in my own body.
I am safe in my own mind.
I am safe in—
“Mel?” she hears, breaking her cycle of thinking and forcing her eyes open. Oh, thank God. She was starting to worry he left before her. “What’re you still doing here?”
“Oh—”
“I’m glad I caught you though,” Frank continues, opening his locker. She watches as he pulls his scrub top over his head and shoves it somewhere inside, crinkling against what she assumes is a half eaten bag of chips. “I got pulled into this trauma with Mohan and the kid—” he says, and his sentence gets lost in the fabric of his hoodie, “—thirty-seven lego pieces inside his gut. The x-ray looked crazy, but I took a picture. Here.”
His phone gets shoved under her nose and she barely sees each tiny piece, humming to acknowledge he spoke.
“Garcia’s supposed to send me updates,” he tells her. He pockets his phone and opens his backpack, muttering a curse to himself when two completely destroyed granola bars and a pack of nicotine gum fall out, all to be unceremoniously shoved back in along with his scrub top. “I feel like I barely saw you today. Did Robby put you on chairs again? He can’t keep doing that just because you say yes. I can talk to him but—”
“Frank?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Um, are you busy tonight?” Mel asks. She squeezes her hands in front of her, endlessly worried about what she’s going to do if he was. Beg? God.
“Nope,” he replies easily, popping the ‘p’ in that goofy way he does, “Kids are with Abby. Why? You wanna grab dinner?”
The relief that washes over her is palpable enough that now that Frank is finally looking at her head on, he frowns at her.
“What’s wrong?” he questions. He shuts his locker, backpack slung across his shoulder, arms crossed and eyeing her. “Did something happen today?”
“Can we just go?” she says in lieu of an answer. They could talk about it in the car. Or not at all. “Please.”
“Fuck, yeah, of course,” he agrees easily. He moves forward to put a hand on her elbow but stops just shy of doing so. She nods her head just barely and takes a shaky breath when he makes contact. “I got you, come on.”
Mel just hums and allows herself to be pulled.
***
Once, in undergrad, a partner hit her so hard during sex that there was a large purple bruise on her jaw for over a week.
Her roommate, a sweet girl from Arizona that spent more nights at her boyfriend's apartment than their own dorm, said Mel should break up with him. Guys like that were dangerous. And your partner shouldn’t hurt you like that.
Mel slept with him for six more months.
She just got a lot better at asking where she wanted him to leave a bruise.
***
By the time they pull up to her apartment Mel’s ready to start ripping her own hair out.
Frank tried—when she’s more aware, she’ll give him credit for trying. Ambient ocean noises over his car speaker, air conditioning turned on and her window cracked, his hand available for her to take if she wanted to use it as her own personal stress ball. Which she did, up until he pulled up to her place.
He doesn’t say anything as he helps her out of the car but takes her things, going as far as to gently pull her keys from her shaking hand so he can unlock her door for her. She feels a fraction of a bit better once it closes behind them—everything still smells like linen from the candle she burned last night, her blankets are in a folded pile on the couch waiting to be placed throughout the living room after their most recent wash. The houseplant she and Becca bought when they first moved in is as dead as it’s always been on top of the fridge and their shoes are cluttered by the cheap plastic rack they bought on Amazon that they’ve yet to replace with something sturdier.
“Do you want to shower?” Frank asks her, pulling her from her thoughts. He’s standing to her right, holding onto her elbow like he was going to walk her all the way to the bathroom if she asked.
“Um. Not right now,” she decides. She’s not sure she’d be able to stand in there long enough without passing out. Actually, she’s not sure she can stand at all. “I need to sit down.”
She walks over to the couch and sits on her cushion—the right side by the end table with a coaster Becca made for her out of air dry clay. Mel places her hands on her knees and starts rubbing them back and forth over her scrub pants, rocking with the motion, hoping to counteract the sudden dizziness she’s feeling. Now that she’s home, that she’s safe with just Frank and no other prying eyes, she can sense the wave that’s finally coming. This allowance—whether she actually wants it or not—to break down.
She feels the couch dip next to her and she's just barely aware of Frank burning a hole into the side of her head that she can’t bring herself to meet. They’ve seen each other through quite a few breakdowns each by now, but Mel’s not sure she’s ever gotten… like this before with him.
“Would pressure help?” he questions quietly.
She could kiss him.
Instead she nods, blinking back tears but not hiding the choked whimper she lets out when both his arms come around her. The initial angle is a little awkward but he’s quick to adjust, moving her like she weighs nothing so that her torso is aligned with his, his right arm tucked under hers and his left around the top of her opposite shoulder. He squeezes her roughly like she taught him to and she buries her nose into his neck, her forehead against his jaw.
It feels nice. The tightness. The security. It’s nice because it smells like Frank and hospital. And it’s nice because he’s humming softly above her and the vibrations in his throat are soothing. It’s arguably the perfect hug. The perfect person and the perfect amount of pressure.
But right now she wants to pry him off of her and go bang her head repeatedly into the wall.
“Nothing is—it’s not helping,” she practically whines. She rubs her nose further into his neck and starts pulling at the front of his hoodie, bunching it over and over in her hands, trying and failing to burrow herself inside of him. “Everything is… I’m feeling everything. And it won’t stop.”
“Fuck, okay,” Frank swears. He holds her tighter, as if he could put all the broken bits of her back together with sheer force of will. “What else helps, hm? My therapist taught me this deep breathing thing the other day, we can—”
“Frank,” she interrupts through her tears. Everything is just too cluttered, it’s too much. The losses she’s had at work, the difficult cases. The fact that she has to pick up Becca tomorrow afternoon and be okay again when right now she can’t fathom ever being fine again. She just wants everything to stop. If she could quiet it all, make it all fade to nothing so she could stop feeling everything, maybe then she could be okay again.
“Baby, you need to tell me what to do here,” Frank says above her. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it. I fucking hate seeing you in pain. I’ll do anything you need, Mel, anything.”
Even through the haze of her anxiety she knows there’s something. It barrels into her stomach as this quick, surefire, thing that she hasn’t allowed herself to really think about in years. She had tucked it away, partially due to embarrassment and partially due to her unwillingness to fully examine it under the microscope it demanded. Frank could… he could help. He said anything and well… there is something.
“Do you think—” she starts. Oh, God, he’s going to hate her. No, he… he’d never hate her. He just might not understand her, even though he always has, he just might not get this piece of her. She’s not sure what would feel worse.
“Mel, honey, talk to me,” he coaxes. “It’s just me, okay?”
She nods—it’s Frank… it’s just… it’s him.
“I think… I think I need you to hurt me.”
She feels his fingers dig into her back over her jacket and then release. She’s glad to not be looking at his face and her cheeks feel sticky with warmth at her omission.
“I’m sorry… what?”
“Um, well, it’s just sometimes when I’m really overstimulated pain can recenter me, you know?” she explains. Or tries to. She sort of feels like she swallowed a spoonful of peanut butter and she’s not actually sure the words are getting out. “It shocks my system and it helps. Somehow. I know it’s a lot to ask and you can say no and I won’t be mad. But it really does help. After my mom passed my emotions were… not the best and Ethan really helped when he—”
“Who’s Ethan?”
“Ethan’s, uh…” Mel trails. She moves her knees so they’re further pressed into Frank’s legs but Frank goes and does something horrible—puts his hand on the back of her head and lightly guides it upwards. Her glasses are smudged from where she had them pressed into his skin but his gaze is intense, fingers digging into her scalp. She swallows. “He was someone I was seeing fairly casually in college.”
“Right,” Frank says. She wonders if this is all just a bad dream. She’s never told anyone about him—about the things they did. Mel didn’t see how it mattered, she didn’t think she’d ever have anyone to ask again. But Frank is… Frank is still stroking her hair. Huh. “And he… hurt you.”
“Yes. Consensually,” she assures. Then blinks. “Often during sex.”
His grip tightens and she watches his lips part.
“Right.”
Gosh, what was wrong with her.
“Not that we have to have sex!” she rushes which causes his eyebrows to disappear into his hairline. She bites at the inside of her cheek and can feel the tears of frustration starting to well behind her eyes but Frank runs his hand down from her hair and to her back, his thumb a soothing presence over each notch of her spine. It grounds her for a minute, reminding her that this is her friend. Frank is her friend. She takes a deep breath. “That’s not what I’m—I just think the pain would help right now. You asked what would help me and… pain helps. Not just you holding me tight it has to be… more. I know that might be w-weird and I know you would never… I wish we could’ve t-talked about this before. When things were clearer.”
“Mel—”
“It’s fine if you don’t want to and… and you don’t have to touch me like that if you don’t want to either. I can just… you can keep doing this. Instead. I’ll be okay.”
His hand stops moving.
“Would it help?” he asks. And at her frown he clarifies: “Sex. Would sex help. While I… hurt you.”
Oh.
She considers the weight of Frank’s hands on her now, how even though the pressure he offered her didn’t quite quiet her mind but was perfect nonetheless. Mel thinks about what it would feel like—for those same hands to hold her down, to put bruises into her skin while he was buried inside of her. He was so much bigger than her, he could smother her, he could make everything fade, he could—
“Yes.”
His eyes search hers for a moment and then his hand is on the back of her head again, guiding her forward with a warm settling weight that encompasses her completely.
“Okay,” he agrees. She feels him press a kiss to the top of her head which seems counterintuitive to what he just agreed to, but is nice all the same. “Okay.”
***
Frank has only ever slept with four people.
The first two were in high school—his junior prom date, Angela, in the back of his pick up truck down behind the old Bakersfield’s farm. It was slow and sweet and really nice even though he had bug bites on his ankles for weeks. The other was Denny, the starting right wing for their shitty soccer team who lifeguarded with Frank the summer before college and blew him in the back of the pool house after hours and taught Frank how to give a proper handjob. They never talked about it but they’re still friends on facebook. He’s a cop now.
In his last year at college, he met Abby. They fooled around, she got pregnant and followed him to med school. It produced a costly wedding, two wonderful children he’d give his own life for, and even more costly divorce. The sex was fine. He enjoyed it. He’s pretty sure she enjoyed it. But it was fine.
He knows it was fine because during his second year in college he met Dylan. She had dark dyed blue hair and eyebrow piercing and a music taste that put him to shame. She also liked to be choked, have her hair pulled, and would cry and beg for him to make it hurt more. It was the craziest three months of his life and sometimes he wonders what would have happened if Dylan didn’t graduate and move back home to Texas.
Dylan taught him a lot—how to hurt her right, how to care for her afterwards. And mostly, she taught him what kind of sex he liked and why the sex he had with Abby would always be just fine.
So when Mel, his Mel, this girl he’s been trying and failing not to fall in love with probably since the very first day he met her, says she finds it pleasurable to be hurt during sex, he’s pretty sure he fucking blacks out.
***
He gets her to agree to move into her bedroom.
If it works in the way she says it does, ideally she’ll finally be regulated enough to pass out and he’d rather she be here in the comfort of her own bed rather than her small couch. He wanted to stay with her afterwards anyway, and the couch always proved too small a fit for them when they inevitably dozed off during one of their many movie nights.
It’s easier too, to fit himself over her on her mattress and squeeze her shoulders hard enough to bruise so he can watch her face for any signs of discomfort. Unfortunately, or fortunately, for him, he’s not quite sure yet, Mel doesn’t look to be in pain at all. Instead she fucking moans, this deep, hearty sound that makes the back of his neck prickle. Her back arches seemingly unconsciously and her mouth parts to utter a string of sentences together that almost makes him come in his pants.
“Thank you,” she sighs out. “You can go harder, Frank. I can take it.”
He obliges her request, tightening his grip on her shoulders to the point where he worries if he goes any further he might actually break something. Frank knows Mel is strong—he’s seen her lift patients off the ground and let Tanner swing from her arms. But she’s also… small. And it’s abundantly clear just how small she is with how much of her he seems to be able to hold. Stripping her from her jacket may have been a mistake, forced now to see how much of her arms can fit in his palms, what the skin poking out from under her shirt sleeve looks like with his thumb digging into her flesh.
“How’s that?” he checks. He feels like there’s sandpaper in his throat. “Better?”
“Uh-huh,” she agrees. Jesus, she was practically slurring. She starts squirming under him, nearly brushing his crotch with her knee. “Can you, um, my hips?”
“Yeah, baby.”
He releases his hold on her shoulders and sits back on her bed, his knees on either side of her hips, pinning the tops of her thighs underneath him. He makes the objective decision to push her shirt up, revealing the soft skin of her stomach and a smattering of freckles and moles he’s never had the privilege of seeing before. They glow under the amber light Frank had turned on when they entered her room and he traces his thumbs over them for a second before he digs them into her skin.
“Oh, God.”
Her nose is screwed up and she’s started to cry—properly, not the angry tears she was releasing on the couch but the ones he knows were trapped behind whatever mental block had steeled itself shut inside her mind. He’d be worried if in between her choked sobs she wasn’t muttering ‘please, please, please’ under breath and crying harder, this time with a little smile, when he deepens the pressure of his hold.
Frank wonders if this will be enough.
He’s seen Mel through a lot in the past few months—a quick fire friendship bordering on codependency that he hoped would eventually lead to something more but never in his wildest delusions did he ever quite picture this. Parted lips and flushed tear-stained cheeks, writhing underneath him fully clothed with her hands curling into her comforter. She’s had her episodes just like he’s had his, but she scared him today. Something more that required more. That required… this.
“Still with me?” he gauges. He watches as Mel looks off to the side of his head, unable to meet his eyes. “Talk to me, honey. Harder? Softer? Do we need to stop?”
“No,” she breathes. He keeps his hands on her skin, tries his best to maintain the pressure as her tongue darts out to wet her lips. “It’s just… is this okay. For you.”
It takes everything in him not to fucking laugh, not to shove his hard-on into her belly to show her just how okay this was for him. He works his jaw, trying to make sure the words come out right—she’s always understood him, always seen through his bullshit, but he doesn’t want to risk any confusion when she’s so fragile. If he made her cry right now, he’s pretty sure it would kill him.
“This is… it’s more than okay for me,” he assures slowly. He moves his head to try and catch her eyes but she doesn’t take the bait. Frank squeezes her again, hard enough that he feels her hip bones on his thumbs and she gasps, snapping her eyes to his. “There we go,” he murmurs, loosening slightly now that he has her. “I like taking care of you, Mel. That’s all this is. If you wanted a hug and a bath, I would’ve given you that but you want this. And I like this. Knowing I can do this for you.”
That you need me.
It goes unsaid but she can see it, of course she can see it, never in his fucking life has anyone ever looked at him the way Mel does—seeing everything at once, the good, the bad, the things Frank doesn’t even see himself. This isn’t that though, it’s easy, this piece of him. This innate desire to be useful, to prove he’s capable and that he could provide for her; whatever that entailed. It’s not about the fact that he’s leaving bruises on her, it’s that she asked him to leave them and he can.
“You like this too,” she says quietly. “It’s not just me.”
“No, baby, it’s not just you.”
He gives her a moment to breathe, carefully watching her face for any real discomfort but only finds her eyes staring back at his. He tilts his head and squeezes her flesh again just to watch her lashes flutter and for her to release a shuddery exhale.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Where else, hm?” he asks. He expects her to say her legs, her arms, maybe her shoulders again, but her head lolls backwards so she’s looking at her headboard until she manages to rock back to look at him. Her bottom lip is trembling and she looks so fucking nervous all of a sudden it makes him want to cry. He loosens his hold on her hips so he can crawl back over her, fingers pushing under the fabric of her t-shirt and along her ribs, faces inches apart, meeting her watery eyes. “Hey. It’s okay, we’re okay. Whatever you need from me, Mel, you’ll have it. We’re okay.”
He knows it's the right thing to say when she starts crying again—such an odd thing. To be able to decipher what tears mean. He can read her just as well as she can read him and it does something funny inside his skull, in the pits of his stomach, knowing just how intune they are.
Still, it surprises him when she takes his hand and guides it to the front of her scrub parts.
Her hand squeezes around his wrist and he cups her over her pants, not nearly enough for what he wants to do but apparently it’s what Mel needs to understand that he’s in this.
“Only… only if you want to.”
Does he want…. Jesus, this girl.
Frank kisses her cheek, then her nose, eyeing her lips before he decides against it. There would be time for that later—when she was more in her own skin. When she could tell just how much he meant it.
“I told you I’d do anything you needed, right?” he asks and she nods, his own head nodding along with her. His hand presses harder over her clothed cunt and she arches into his hand with a gasp. “I’ll take care of you. You tell me more, I’ll do more. You say stop, I stop. Are we clear?”
He hopes he doesn’t sound too fucking rude but he thinks Mel needs direct right now. She nods her head again and starts grinding against his hand properly, nothing more than these desperate little swirls that have his mind spinning, before she simply just says: “please.”
Frank presses his fingers down over her harder in response, shifting his knee to pin her thigh down to the bed so she can’t really move anymore. She tries though—clearly pent up to the point where it’s hard for him to discern how much of this is because of him or her own distress. There’ll be time to dwell on that later. For now, he bends his head down to mouth over her shirt and above her left breast and bites down over the fabric, hoping he’s reading her right.
“Oh, my—Frank.”
He continues his ministrations, aware that he’s grinding his own pelvis into her mattress between her spread legs, lost in the sensation that is Mel. He thought she would be responsive… if they ever… but this is…
“Easy, baby,” he tries. She’s tugging at the bottom of her own shirt, trying to rip it over her head but she can’t manage it with how tightly he’s pressed up against her. “Let me—Mel, slow down.”
“It’s itchy,” she whines. “Frank, I need it off.”
“Okay, okay.”
He moves off her enough to tug her shirt up and over her head, helping her with the clasp on the back of her bra when she contorts her own body to try and reach for it in her laid down position. The moment it’s gone she lies back against her pillows—hair fanned out behind her, chest rising and falling rapidly, and yes, his eyes fall to her breasts, to her perfect dusky pink nipples that he wants to bite and pull and spend his time worshipping but his attention is immediately pulled back to her arms, to these telltale signs of the start of new bruises from where he squeezed her earlier. The groan that he releases is a punch from the gut. Gorgeous, she was so fucking gorgeous.
“Fuck,” he swears. He drags his hand along her cunt and in one harsh movement his hand is underneath her pants, her panties, that are fucking soaked, stretched against the backs of his knuckles. “You’re so fucking—”
His words get muffled when he bites down on her arm, right near her shoulder, right over the indent his own thumb left behind. Her skin is salty with her sweat—unwashed and all Mel and he licks at the skin he’s bitten, two of his fingers pressing firmly into her clit. He feels her moaning more than anything, the deep vibration shaking his own chest. It all feels a little crazy and he can’t help but bite her again, zeroed on how fucking it easy it is to circle her clit with how wet she is. He hadn’t even really done anything, barely touched her properly, and already she’s a slippery mess for him. Jesus.
“No, no,” she whines suddenly, which makes him draw back, worried until she pushes his wrist further down. Right, so not trying to rip him away. Fuck. Right. He gets the hint and shoves two of his fingers inside of her, rewarded immediately by her lips rubbing against his jaw and her hand tugging at the back of his head. “More,” she pants. “Frank, more.”
His third finger fits snugly against the others and he watches the contours of her face as he begins to thrust them harshly inside the wet heat of her.
“Yeah. Yeah?” he manages. Frank has no fucking idea how he’s supposed to last to fuck her properly. If she even wants that. The noises she makes—from her mouth, her body. It’s insane. This is all… “Come on, baby. You’re doing so well for me. That’s it, right? This is what you needed?”
“Yes, yes.”
He curls his fingers which makes her yelp, makes Mel’s hand grip his biceps—as much as she can anyway with how much she’s trembling. Frank uses the hand not currently trapped between her thighs to grip the side of her face, up into her hair so he can pull it enough to have her eyes snap to his.
“Frank.”
“Almost there, honey,” he coaxes. Because he can tell. He can see it in her fucking face, in her teary eyes, the way she fucking breathes. “Give me one, right now, and then I’ll fuck you. I’ll make it all better. Is that what you want? Tell me, baby. I gotta hear you say it. You can do it.”
“I can’t,” she whines. He pushes his thumb into her clit and she tries to shake her head back and forth in his grasp. “Frank, I’m gonna—keep—keep—”
“Yeah? Right there, huh?”
Mel nods frantically, watching him intently, her mouth falling further open and he can’t fucking help it—he shoves his thumb right into her mouth, watching in awe as she closes her lips around it.
He feels her suck his finger—God—and he curls the ones inside her body, up and up and up, feeling her bite down, watching her eyes screw shut until her thighs clench together and her head rolls back, everything wound unbelievably tight and then—SNAP.
“Oh, God,” she sighs out. “Thank you. Thank you. You’re so good to me. Thank you.”
Jesus.
***
Everything is…
Quiet.
For the first time since she left this ER, maybe this morning, maybe in months, it’s like the noise that was buzzing in her skull has subsided to no more than a gentle hum. The panic that was threatening to suffocate her up and around her rib cage has finally deflated, replaced now with nothing but the feeling of Frank’s hands on her.
She’s lost her pants and her underwear, can feel him peeling off each of her socks, feel his lips dip into the curve of her ankle, her calf. Her body feels tingly—good tingly now, not the type of tingly that made her want to scratch at her arms until she bled. Mel leans up on her elbows, hissing through teeth when Frank nips at the skin behind her knee.
He sets her leg back down on the mattress, eyes roving over her with a pleased smirk on his lips. She flushes head to toe, aware suddenly of her nakedness, that he’s still fully clothed, that his fingers were inside her, that he held her down, kissed her skin, that he was going to—
“Baby,” Frank says. He’s called her that before plenty but it’s different now, it’s all different now. He tugs his shirt over his head and she can’t help it—her tongue darts out to wet her lips. “I can hear you thinking. Do you want to stop?”
Mel shakes her head, pleased when his smirk turns into more of a grin.
“Good,” he says. His hands hover at his waistband but then he flicks his chin at her. “Turn over.”
“Turn—What?”
“On your stomach,” he clarifies, “I can get a better hold on you that way.”
Mel swallows, giving herself a second to take Frank in—the hair on his chest that she only knew was there from the rare days he forgot an undershirt at work and it would poke through the V of his scrub top. It was distracting then, but it’s more so now when it’s accompanied by the knowledge that he was going to… fuck her.
She finally manages to tear her eyes away and flips onto her belly, her hands coming up and underneath her pillow. She touches the silky fabric of her pillowcase repeatedly as she listens to the sounds of fabric rustling behind her. Maybe it’s better this way, to not see him fully. It was hard enough—to watch him watching her as he touched her. Despite how good it all felt, it was difficult.
To know he was just doing this to help her.
The bed dips and goosebumps skirt along the path Frank draws with his hand on the back of her thigh. It’s too light and she’s about to verbalize it when he grabs a fistful of her ass and squeezes.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“You’re so responsive,” he says. She’s not sure she’s ever heard his voice so deep. “Where do you keep the condoms, honey?”
“Um, I have them, but… I don’t really like how they feel,” she admits into her pillow. Which is a half-truth because they are a sensory nightmare for her but mostly she just wants to feel him. Fully. “I was tested last year and I haven’t had… I’m on birth control too. I promise. I wouldn’t—”
“Mel,” he says, squeezing her flesh again. It’s quiet for a breath too long and she starts to worry she’s finally overstepped. Pushed this all too far. “... If you’re sure. If that’s—we can, Mel.”
Her back arches unconsciously back against his palm and she hears Frank mutter a low curse.
“I’m sure, Frank,” she promises. “Can you just… I’m ready.”
“Oh, you are, huh?” he teases. He taps her on the hip gently and Mel inhales when he makes contact with one of the bruises he left. “Lift for me.”
She obliges his request and settles down again once he slides one of her pillows underneath her pelvis. The bed shifts again and Frank’s thighs press against the insides of hers, spreading them to make room for himself and suddenly, without warning, he has two fingers back inside of her. She chokes at the intrusion but Frank’s other hand holds her down in between her shoulder blades. Warm and firm and absolutely intoxicating.
“Relax, baby. I just wanted to—Jesus, you’re still so fucking wet.”
His fingers pump inside of her once, twice, until they’re withdrawn and she’s left so empty it takes what small bit of her sanity she still has to not kick out into some version of a temper tantrum. He’s quick though—it’s like he knows she can’t take any longer, so in tune with her needs it makes her head spin. Like he was with his fingers, there’s no preparation, no kind words, just the head of his cock teasing her entrance until he pushes into her.
“Fuck, fuck,” he swears. Usually it takes her a second—to adjust, for her body to accommodate, and it has been a while, but he’s seated inside her to the hilt already and she can’t help but grind back against him, whining into her pillow. “Mel, fuck—Mel,” he chokes. His hands squeeze over her hips, the same place he gripped earlier, and his chest presses against her back, his lips skirting on her shoulder. “You gotta give me a second here, baby. You feel—”
He doesn’t finish the thought, instead bites down on her shoulder as he withdraws and fucks back into her, muffling his groan and nearly drowning out whatever embarrassing noise passes through her lips. The rhythm he starts is slow, like he’s still testing the waters, but the pressure he provides her with his hands and his body is… it’s exactly what she needs.
She can’t help but compare—Ethan was… it was good but it wasn’t this. Frank knows her too well. A different sort of intimacy that’s only amplified now that he’s buried inside of her. She thought… she’s not even sure this constitutes as fucking. He’s squeezing her roughly, practically smothering her with his weight, not leaving a single inch of her uncovered. His movement is somewhat restricted to small, slower, thrusts since he can’t really move without pulling away from her. She doesn’t want him to go anywhere though, and blindly she reaches her left hand up to paw at the side of his head, gripping his hair.
“That’s it, honey, let it out,” he says and oh—when did she start crying again? He kisses her cheek where her tears are flowing freely, his gradual pace growing into something… more. Her sob mixes with a moan but Frank just kisses the side of her face again, leaving his lips there. “You’re doing so well, baby. You’re so good, Mel. Good at your job, good at taking care of everyone—fuck—good for letting me take care of you.”
It was good.
She was—he was—it all felt so good.
He’s thicker than she allowed herself to fantasize about, stretching her just enough to hurt, the perfect amount of pressure along with the perfect grip on her hips. She’s going to be bruised all over and she moans at the thought, spurring his hips forward and his nails to scratch into her skin. She could come like this, she’s sure, but a part of her still feels empty. She wonders… maybe he would…
“Frank,” she slurs into her pillow. He slows down the pace he’s set, leaning down to nose at her cheek. “Can you—I need more.”
“What do you need? What can I—”
She reaches towards her nightstand as much as she can but only gets as far as feeling the wood against her fingers before Frank is literally swatting her hand away. He shifts his hips so he’s buried as deep as humanly possible, causing her to gasp. Her eyes screw closed but she hears the drawer open, then hears him hum to himself. What if this was too much? They weren’t even—what if she was asking too much?
“I’m gonna start with my fingers, okay?” he says. She sniffs. God, of course he would—the lube uncaps but Mel keeps her eyes closed, missing the weight of him on her back as he lifts off her, trying not to shudder in anticipation. “Jesus, you’re so pretty, baby.”
She’s not sure how that could possibly be true with how purple her skin must look, the redness she knows is present in her face and how puffy her eyes are. Mel doesn’t have another moment to dwell on that, her whole body tensing at the sudden feel of Frank’s finger rubbing against her other hole.
“You’re okay,” he coos at her like she was some scared animal. And maybe that’s all she is—an anxious, nervous, mess—but she doesn’t feel that way. Not anymore, really. Instead she allows her shoulders to drop again, hyperfocused on the weight of Frank’s cock inside her and the slow press of his finger working her open. “So good for me,” he says again. It’s nice, she thinks. For him to keep saying that. “You’re fucking unreal, Mel.”
He doesn’t tease her, doesn’t waste any time slipping a second finger along the first despite how much it burns. Even with the lube, it’s tighter than when his fingers were in her cunt, and tighter still, considering his cock was still stretching her thin. It feels like he’s everywhere again and Mel melts, lost in the feeling of how full she feels. There’s nothing to worry about like this—right now she just has to be.
“—so fucking tight, baby,” she hears. Gosh, how long has he been talking? He curls his fingers and manages to resume fucking her, his other hand rubbing up and down her back far too tenderly for what they’re doing. “Has anyone ever fucked you here, Mel?”
He poses his question with a pointed hook of his fingers and she whines, shaking her head into her pillow.
“No?”
“N-no,” she mutters. “I’ve only ever… um… done it by myself.”
“Fuck,” he groans. He adds a third finger and Mel’s pretty sure she’s drooling on her pillow and if she wasn’t so lost in the pleasure she’d have half a mind to worry about the state of her sheets. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help, baby, but I’m here now, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” he huffs and she can picture his smile. Pretty. Gosh. He was the pretty one. “I’ll help you whenever you need, okay? I’m—you have me, honey. For whatever. For this.”
That sounds nice.
Frank slows down the movement of his fingers and adjusts himself over the back of her body, kissing her once on the shoulder.
“Hm? You still with me, Mel?”
“Yeah. It’s…” she starts. Her eyelashes flutter and she feels her blush travel from her cheeks to her neck. “This is really good. You’re making me feel so good.”
He shifts his hips forward and then back, rocking her in a way that makes her clit catch against her pillow. The noise she makes, this choked up little squeaky thing, would embarrass her if he didn’t groan so loudly in her ear.
“You still need more though,” he says. Oh. Oh, he can’t mean— “Don’t you?”
“Frank,” she whimpers. It’s too much, she’s already asked for too much. “I can come like this, just—”
“Mel,” he interrupts, effectively forcing her mouth closed. “You need to let me help you and you need to tell me if you need more. This is for you, baby. It’s all for you.”
Her body shudders underneath him and she feels the way he stills—his fingers, his cock, even his hand on her skin. It would worry her if she didn’t hear him swear again, as if she were doing something that physically pained him.
“Come on, Mel, do you want more?”
“I do,” she whispers. She knows he’d make it good. She knows. “I do want more but—but—”
“But what, baby?”
He kisses her shoulder again and then her cheek, nudging the soft skin lightly with his nose, coaxing her.
“We’ll still be friends, right?” she finally breathes. She cranes her neck back over her shoulder just enough to look at him, her bottom lip wobbling. It’s the first time she’s properly gotten her eyes on him since he got her on her stomach and he looks as wrecked as she feels—blown pupils, spit-slick lips, flushed red cheeks—but behind the dishevelment is… confusion. “Frank, you have to—you have to promise me we’ll still be friends.”
His eyes widen and his mouth curves upwards, shaking his head slightly like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. She wants her mattress to swallow her whole when a small laugh escapes his lips, but he leans forward again, pressing his smile into her shoulder.
“Mel,” he says into her skin. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“But—”
He bites down on her shoulder, no doubt over the teeth marks that are already there, harder this time. She yelps, producing another smile.
“Of course we’ll still be friends,” he assures, licking over the mark he left. He starts fucking her again, his hand effectively trapped by his own pelvis, thrusting his fingers deeper into her ass. “Best friends. Come on, Mel, let me hear you say it.”
“We’ll still be—oh, Frank—best friends.”
“That’s it, baby,” he praises. He gives her a parting kiss on her bite mark and lifts again. “Best friends, just me and you.”
Best friends, she thinks as her nightstand opens again. Best friends, when the lube opens, when his fingers retract from her body. Best friends, when he presses the dildo, only slightly smaller than Frank’s cock, right into her ass.
***
Maybe there is a God.
He must’ve done something. Something right to end up here—with Mel, to have lasted long enough to not spill inside her the very moment he felt the wet heat of her around his cock. She holds him like a vice, responds to fucking everything with these tiny noises that he’s not even sure she’s aware she’s making. It takes everything in him and whatever divine power seems to be looking out for him right now to hold on, to make sure that he could touch her the way she so desperately needed.
The dildo in her ass is… it’s a fucking sight.
He didn’t really know what he expected when he opened her nightstand drawer—he had thought maybe something for her clit or maybe something to tie her down with, to help her feel more restrained, secure. He supposes this all makes sense though, for her. Mel needed things tight. She needed… this. To be filled so completely and held down and reminded how good she was.
“Frank,” she sighs out. She’s never going to be allowed to call him by his first name at work again. “Can you…”
She grabs at his wrist that’s resting on the mattress near her head and pulls it towards her face, lips parted and waiting.
Frank counts to ten in his head and then shifts his hips forward, the dildo rocking into her ass a little more thanks to the pressure of his pelvis. He adjusts so he’s practically smothering her, curving his right arm around her head along her pillow, fingers in her hair, his other hand moving to where she wants it—right against her mouth.
Mel wastes no time guiding two of his fingers to her lips and he watches, the inside of his cheek snug against his own teeth, as her eyes close and she begins to suck on them.
“You are so fucking…” he tries. He kisses the side of her head and grips her hair a little tighter, shifting his hips again. “My dream girl, baby. Your body fits me so well, you’re doing so well. Told me what you needed and now you’re taking it. My smart girl.”
He knows he’s babbling but he can’t stop, not when she’s so pretty and warm and covered in his bruises and bite marks. Not when he’s filled every part of her and she’s finally, finally, beginning to look like herself again—there’s desire, sure, but also this relief that she’s okay. Frank leans forward and takes the cartilage of her ear in between his teeth, careful with his bite around such thin skin, the metallic sting from those adorable fucking horseshoe earrings she’s always wearing hot in his mouth. She gasps against his fingers, her tongue curling on them and he starts rolling his hips into her, fucking her with his cock and this toy and his fingers, catching every moan and whimper that slips into his hand.
“I need you to come, baby,” he coaxes into her ear. “Because you feel too fucking good and it’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long already.”
He can feel her grin around his fingers and he kisses her ear, then her cheek, leaving his nose pressed there, inhaling.
“Oh, you find this funny, huh?” he teases. “I’ll leave you right here and you can do it yourself.”
Mel grips his wrist tighter as if that could truly hold him there, but they both know either way there’s no way in hell he could ever even think of leaving.
“You want me to stay?” he questions, and she nods, “You want to come?”
Another nod, when she glances at him her eyes are sparkling. God, he loves her.
“I want to touch you to get you there but you need to nod if that’s okay,” he says, worried she’d be overstimulated but she’s nodding before he even finishes his sentence. He huffs a laugh and he feels her smile grow. “Silly girl. Lift your hips a little—good, that’s it—yeah? Yeah, there we go, honey, I got you, just—”
It only takes a few direct swipes of his fingers on her clit for her to tense, for her to bite down on his fingers to muffle the deep moan that’s lodged itself in her throat. His hand is practically trapped between her pelvis and the mattress but he leaves it there, wondering if he can manage to draw another orgasm out of her as he can feel his own building.
He keeps his front glued to her back, thrusting into her hard enough that he has to take his hand from her mouth and put it against her headboard so he wouldn’t accidentally hurt her. It makes him laugh, slightly hysterical, remembering just how many bruises he put on her body tonight.
“Are you—”
“Not laughing at you, baby,” he promises through labored pants. “Just happy… you make me so fucking happy. And you’re okay.”
“I’m o-okay,” she confirms. She makes a long humming noise and he feels her start grinding her clit on his hand again. “I think I might… maybe when you come inside me and I feel you, I can—”
“Jesus, fuck,” Frank swears. Whatever level of sanity he was barely holding onto snaps and with only a few more haggard thrusts he does end up spilling inside of her. He barely hears her over the blood rushing through his ears—something about her feeling warm and possibly another thank you—but he can feel her slump too and then paws at his hand up at her headboard to drag it back to her mouth so she can kiss his knuckles repeatedly.
The gesture makes him want to cry, struck by how much he loves her, how… perfect this all was despite how scared she made him. He kisses whatever skin he can reach—her cheek, her neck, the freckle there that he spent too many hours at work staring at, barely a kiss at all, just open-mouthed and inhaling, trying to take every part of her in.
“Mel?” he breathes into her shoulder. She hums. “How are we feeling? Better?”
“Better,” she rasps. It’s muffled by her pillow and the weight of him but it rings loud in his ears. “Cured by my own personal dose of Dr. Langdon.”
His laugh tears out of him in surprise and he moves his hand from out under her body in favor of pinching her lightly on the hip.
“Not sure this is a treatment I’ll ever be prescribing to anyone else.”
Mel wiggles under him slightly and he can tell, even like this, that it’s one that’s both nervous and excited.
“So you’re only gonna prescribe it to me then?” Mel asks gently. “Right?”
Frank kisses her cheek and thinks about cleaning her up, rubbing lotion into her skin and getting cold compresses for her bruises if she needs them. Brushing her hair before she falls asleep so it won’t knot and doing the dishes in her sink so when they wake up tomorrow, it’s one less thing she has to worry about. Maybe they can get breakfast before they pick up her sister. Maybe they can go to that museum downtown Mel’s been talking about and he can pay and hold the door open for her and buy her whatever magnet she wants from the gift shop. Maybe, if she wants, just as badly as he does, he can kiss her.
“Just you, Mel,” he promises. “It’s just you.”
There’s conversations to be had later, things he needs to tell her, things he hopes she says in return, but for now it’s enough. She’s warm and she’s here and she’s safe and she’s loved. He kisses her shoulder again. Inhales.
It’s enough.
fin.