Archive of Our Own

The first time Frank calls her sweetheart is a joke. The sort of endearment term that he uses because the southern in him hasn't drained out and he's trying to soften the blow of telling Mel off about the mistake she made in that trauma room. It’s not a big deal, not really, and he’s only telling her because he knows Mel can do better and because she’s asked him to always correct her if he thinks there is a better course of action. So he pulls her aside after they’ve shed the bloody gloves and the protect gowns, away from the ears of nosy staff, and says, “Well, sweetheart, the incision wasn’t right.”

The reaction Mel has to the words, though, is anything but normal. Her eyes widen, her lower lip shakes a little bit and her fingers tighten around the fabric of her scrub. “Um, okay,” she nods but clearly she hasn’t registered the words just yet. 

“I mean,” he tries to explain, “I know that under usual circumstances, we tend to go for a straight incision down the trachea but when we don’t know about the extent of the damage done to the throat and because the carotid could’ve been relocated under the force of the blunt trauma, it's better to go for a zigzag motion while feeling the trachea along.”

“Uh-huh,” Mel nods, distracted, her fingers now twisting together and it looks painful if the white joints are anything to go by. Okay. Maybe he hurt her feelings? He can’t see how — they’ve held tons of conversations along the same lines and never once has Mel been anything less than receptive and appreciative. That’s why Frank keeps pushing — keeps correcting her — because she seems to thrive when it’s him teaching her. 

But this does not look like thriving to him. 

“Mel, it wasn’t a big deal. It all went great, I’m just saying for future references—” he starts but before he can, Dana interrupts,

“Sorry to break up your little team huddle but we have a small incident. Three cars crashed into each other, five victims. ETA two minutes. Langdon, you are needed in the bay.”

Mel scrambles away before Frank can get two words out and then he sighs and walks to the ambulance bay, still confused. What the actual fuck was that?

———

She must’ve done something very wrong. She knows Dr. Langdon wasn’t happy about the incision she made — she saw the press of his lips and the small twist in his fingers when she made it and then Garcia snapped at her and he barked back at Yolanda for telling his resident off — but she didn’t imagine he was quite so cross with her as to call her that. It keeps repeating in her head, “Well, sweetheart, the incision wasn’t right.” 

The moment she heard the word, she felt her brain freeze. It was tangible — like she could reach out and feel the ropes wrapped around her tightly as she allowed the words to settle in the pit of her stomach, the shame washing over her viscerally. Dr. Langdon has never been quite mad at her. Disappointed, dismissive, distracted; sure. But never angry. But she’s heard that word before — she’s felt the anger laced up under the sweetness of the word, the disappointment, the mocking. 

Almost every pet name she’s ever been called has been in response to some deep seated sense of resentment towards Mel. Mel, baby, you can do better than this, her mother told her when she was three and she never looked back. Every pet name was associated with a negative deep hole inside of her sucking all of her joy. 

Honey, you’re aware that he’s my boyfriend, right? I can take care of my own man. (Her roommate in first year of med school said that when she offered to share her bio-chem notes with a classmate of hers that happened to be her boyfriend.) 

Mel, you’re so… lovely. (Max Jonathan — he insisted to be called by his full name for some reason — said that when he wanted to break up with her because he had his eyes set on Aurelia whose parents were rich and who wore above knee cute skirts and didn’t have glasses and braces like Mel did. Her hair was pink, too. For some reason, Mel liked that about her. It was very ‘My little strawberry’-coded.)

You don’t think that’s right. Do you, sweetheart? (Professor Montgomery when she was a second year med student in the cadaver lab said that to her right after she vaguely dodged a pass he was making at her. Or at least she thinks he was making a pass. Maybe it was nothing at all. But then she drew back and cut the femoral artery just as he told her with a loud tune to cut open the femoral sheath and she maimed the artery.) (And it wasn’t right.)

All in all, she felt herself tense up every time someone so much as mentioned a pet name — baby, babe, honey, sugarplum (her ex-boyfriend from college, Nathan, tried that and after that, they lasted three weeks before she felt like he was pressing on her breastbone and he was very close to crushing it altogether), sweetie pie (Becca and Mel’s neighbor from when they lived in Michigan called her that only to ask her about their personal lives and Becca’s meltdown in the stairway right after as a way of accessing some gossip), babes (her British roommate in college during junior year called her that when she wanted to tell her that she looked like a nerd and it was better if they didn’t acknowledge each other in the halls because she was… ‘cool’ and Mel decidedly wasn’t) (she also wore loads of eyeliner so, Mel agreed with her cool statement), love (she heard that one when the aforementioned roommate and her shitty boyfriend argued with each other and that just tends to leave a bitter aftertaste in her mouth) and eventually, sweetheart. 

So, no, Mel can’t quite shake off Frank saying that word. Can’t help the dread settling deep in her stomach, the way her fingers curl into a fist and she avoids him for the rest of the shift. She can see that he tries to catch her eyes on more than one occasion, tries to pull her onto a trauma case about three hours after the ‘incidence’ and then again when he offers her a chocolate milk during their break. She doesn’t exactly run up and bounce away but she can’t look into his eyes. 

She’s scared she’ll see the same thing she’s seen time and time again in situations like this: anger, disappointment, that bitter feeling born behind her sternum, somewhere in her heart and then spreading all across her limbs. 

But she can’t avoid him when they’re getting off the shift and she’s too slow to walk to the bus stop. “Mel!” someone — well, it’s very obviously Frank. She can recognize his voice anywhere, Jesus — calls from behind. She presses her nails into the palm of her hand and decides to tempt her luck and pretend like she didn’t hear him; it’s feasible, the bustle and hustle of the ambulance bay, the loud whooshing of the cars, the fact that in his head, she might be wearing AirPods, make it possible to miss the calling. It would be so nice if he gave up and bee-lined to his car. Mel’s almost out of the parking lot anyway. “Mel! Melissa! Dr. King!” he keeps calling and his voice is getting closer because his legs are longer and it’s not like Mel can sprint away without raising his suspicion. 

She just can’t handle a lecture right now — she just needs to go home and lick her wound and not think of Frank and disappointment and his deep voice saying ‘sweetheart’. 

“Christ, you are a fast-walker,” she hears Frank saying under his breath just before he catches up with her and instead of taking her hand abruptly and making her stop in her tracks, he blocks her by… well, physically blocking her path with his body. Mel stares at the ground — at the worn-out asphalt and the small crack in it. Mel wonders when the crack got there. Was it during the last rain storm? She had heard that— “Mel, sweetheart, can you please look at me?”

There is that word again. 

He probably doesn’t mean anything by it. Probably. 

But maybe he’s angry — maybe he’s cross with her that she ignored his calls and made a grown man sprint through the PTMC parking lot. He’s angry that a resident could be so rude towards him — on top of messing up in that trauma room! — and he wants to make it very clear that he wants nothing to do with Mel. 

She feels the tears pricking her eyes — the sort that she can’t push back after an exhaustive shift and when she’s stuck in her own head, like she has been all day — and she can’t look up. But he said ‘please’ and she doesn’t want to anger him any more than he already is. He’s sort of her only real friend in the department — he’s the one who texts her out of work hours, sending her pictures of Tanner and Penny and sometimes Goldie, the goldendoodle he owns. He is the one who gives her a ride on rainy days and when he needs to decompress after a shitty shift before going home to the kids. He’s the one who answers all her questions and then allows her to ask follow up questions and when he doesn’t know the answer or when she’s not satisfied with the answer he gives (he says that he can see it in her face) he goes and searches and then answers her the next day. He’s the one who asks her questions, too — who values her opinions and her voice. He’s the one who treated Becca on his first day back and won over her sister, too. The one who listened to her insecurities when Becca told Mel that she wanted to split permanently and get an apartment in the center. 

So she can’t afford to lose him. To shut down like she has. 

She doesn’t want him to be angry at her anymore. To call her ‘sweetheart’ or ‘honey’. She just wants to be Mel or Melissa to him — to have him say her name with that mischievous edge and that twinkle in his eyes when he leans down a bit to catch her eyes because he’s too tall or when he chuckles fondly when he says something pretentious and philosophical and Mel can find a pop-culture equivalent for it immediately. 

So she looks up, seeing his blue eyes through the blur of her tears that she tries to blink away. “Yes. Dr. Langdon?” she tries to get the words out but her voice is too thin, too shaky. 

“Christ alive, Mel,” he curses and when he says stuff like that, he sounds more southern; like one of those cowboys that she sees with Becca. She would tease him about it but she’s in no mood. “What the hell is happening right now? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she shakes her head quickly. “I’m sorry.”

“What the hell are you sorry for, sweetheart?” he asks, his eyes wild as he runs his fingers through his hair. 

“I’m sorry that I did something wrong,” she tries to rush out the words as quickly as she can as she twists her fingers together in front of herself, picking at the skin of her nailbed, “I don’t know what I did. Or more like — I know that you didn’t agree with me for the best possible plan for the patient and I respect that but I didn’t think you would be angry with me for it. Or for right now — I didn’t hear you calling me, sorry,” — she feels her face heat up when she lies through her teeth when they both know she’s lying — “I’m just… really sorry. Can you please not be angry at me anymore?”

“Okay,” he says, a hint of amusement in his voice, the way he gets when she talks about the episode of Love Island that Becca and she watch together during Love Island season as he takes a step closer and Mel looks at his eyes. “Take a breath for me, sweetheart—”

“See! You’re still mad at me!” she snaps.

“Why the fuck would I be mad at you, Mel?” he huffs out his breath, frustrated. “I feel like I’m talking gibberish or something. Because why would you interpret that as me being mad at you, Melissa?”

She likes it when he calls her ‘Melissa’. He’s the only one who does that and when he does, it makes her feel seen. Special. 

“You call me that,” she says in a small voice. “Sweetheart.” 

“And that would mean I’m mad at you?”

She feels herself heat up. He is not mad at her — but her body can’t accept that. The blood rushing through her ears, make a loud whooshing sound — the sweaty palms — tell her that she’s under attack. Her fight or flight mode is activated when faced with that word. The one that makes her crawl out of her own skin, the one that makes her want to take back everything she’s ever done. 

“Aren’t you?”

“Obviously not!” he says, leaning forward, his hands hovering over her arms, but not quite touching her. She wishes he wasn’t so considerate about her touch aversion because right now, she would like to feel his hands. He always runs hot, his body temperature always higher than hers, the heat moving through the clothes fabrics and seeping into her body, making her stop shaking. “Fuck, Mel, were you weird all day because you thought I was mad at you?”

“Yes,” it comes out more like a question than an affirmative answer. “I just—” How can she explain all that to Frank? How can she tell him about her roommate and her ex and her professor and her mother and the echoes of the words that have tangled up inside of her to leave her a mess — to make her forever squirm in the face of ‘niceties’? Because it’s almost never nice — it’s always a way to make her feel small, unwanted, stupid. 

She can’t. 

It would just feel worse. 

“Well, Melissa,” he takes a steps closer — half a step, really, barely recognizable except when his heat comes closer; warming her up. “I’m sorry for the miscommunication and I’m sorry for… using that word. I am not mad at you — I haven’t been mad at you, Mel. You did nothing wrong. I’m sorry.” 

He doesn’t sound like he’s mocking her — or that she’s stupid, sensitive, or overreacting to this. Mel suddenly feels the irresistible urge to harrow closer to him, to put her ears against his heartbeat to make sure he’s not lying, that he’s really not mad, that he’s still her friend. But she doesn’t — because they’re not that sort of friends. She doesn’t think that he can be friends with her like that. For moral reasons. Probably. 

“Oh,” is all Mel can say in the end, a knot forming in her throat. 

“Yeah — I, um, I didn’t know that you wouldn’t like that word. Or that you would think a certain sort of way because of it. Yeah, sorry.”

“No, you don’t have to apologize, Dr. Langdon!”

“I sorta do, though, sweetheart,” he winces, “Fuck, I can’t seem to stop. Blame the state of North Carolina for it. I’ll try to — reel it in.”

She nods, “okay.” 

“Okay,” he grins, “Can I give you a ride home to make up for it?”

And so because she doesn’t have to pick up Becca and because Frank’s not mad at her and because she really wants to spend time with him now because she’s spent all day avoiding him and she hasn’t gotten her daily dose of Frank Langdon, she smiles. 

“Sure.” 

———

Frank tries to let it go. He really does. But he can’t stop thinking about it. How can a word as harmless as ‘sweetheart’ — especially when exchanged between friends — make one think that one is mad at them? He would understand it if Mel said that it made her uncomfortable and asked him not to do it again. (It makes sense to do that when your younger, single, hot colleague asked you, the divorcee of the department with a drug addiction history and very undesirable coping mechanisms, not to call her ‘sweetheart’ because it’s… well, creepy.) But that wasn’t it — she seemed shaken by it. Like that word instilled the belief that she had done something wrong and not that Frank had crossed a line. 

So he can’t let it go. 

He can’t stop wanting to dig around until he gets a clue as to what makes her hate that word so much. Is it just ‘sweetheart’ or is she opposed to every pet name? When did that start? What’s the story behind it? Does she get weirded out only because Frank’s just a friend? If he was her boyfriend — or just a hypothetical boyfriend. Not just in context of him. Obviously. Because it would be creepy to think like that. Right? — and he called her sweetheart, would she have the same reaction? Can he instill in her the belief that the word is a nice thing? 

Eventually, he just doesn’t let it go. 

He prods and pushes. “Mel, honey,” he calls one days, “can you hand me that chart?” he tries to soften his tone as much as he possibly can in order to avoid the assumption that he’s mad at her and then hold eye contact and send her a smile as Mel hands him the iPad but she gets shifty again and after half an hour, Frank has to tell her that he didn’t call her that because he’s mad. He’s not. It was slip of the tongue. She looks immediately relieved. 

All pet names then, his mind tracks like he’s taking a very important medical note. 

Next step is getting someone else to call Mel a pet name. But it’s not like he can go up to Cassie or Samira and tell them, “Hey for a medical experiment and for no reason at all, can y’all call m+Mel ‘baby’ or ‘honey’ when handing her something or asking her something? Ignore that I am asking you this.” He can’t. Because that would definitely warrant a harassment case filed with the HR. but he doesn’t have to wait long for that because once he becomes sensitive to the word, he catches Cassie two weeks later, calling Mel “sweetie” as she tries to comfort her after the death of her patient. 

“Anyone would’ve done the same things you did, sweetie,” Cassie tells Mel and she gets the same sympathetic wrinkle between her eyebrows and just below her lips — just like the one she gave him when he broke down and told her that every overdose patient just scares him more because what if he ends up there, what if he slips up, what if he ruins everything all over again because he sometimes forgets how hard it was to get clean and just craves the high of benzos, that moment of carelessness, of utter bliss, oblivion — but then Mel flinches (invisible to the naked eye but Frank has a Mel-antenna installed somewhere inside of him) and later, very ‘casually’ asks Frank if Cassie’s mad at her so he comes to the conclusion that it’s just everyone. She just doesn’t like the word. 

And so phase three starts — recon. 

First, he tries Becca. When Mel has to pull a longer shift and Frank doesn’t have the kids, she shoots him a text asking him if he can please pick Becca up because Mel can’t get out of there and it’s their weekly movie night and he’s the only one Becca likes and she doesn’t want to blow off their one night together. You can drop her at the hospital, she writes when he says that he will, she can wait in the waiting room until we wrap up this mess. I already asked Kiara if she could keep an eye on her. 

But then Frank thinks about how ER can be a loud and bright place — overwhelming was the word Mel used on that first shift together — and she tells Mel that he can take Becca for gelato and then come and pick Mel up. It’s my free day, he writes, you’d be the one doing me a favor, honestly. I was so close to calling Abbot and asking for a night shift emergency slot. And eventually she folds.

So that’s how he ends up with his second favorite King sister in an ice-cream shop as she winces trying Frank’s chocolate mint and then announces that her vanilla, chocolate and strawberry flavor was the right choice. 

“So, Becs, honey,” he braces for impact but Becca doesn’t recoil, doesn’t seem to even notice the pleasantry falling off his tongue, “how has it been living in the apartments on your own?”

“Great,” she grins, “It’s great now that my boyfriend can visit me any time he wants.” 

“Ah, the guy who gave you the UTI?” Frank smirks. 

“No, we broke up,” she shakes her head, “I’m seeing this new guy. Alex. He doesn’t live with his parents. He lives three floor below me, and his place always smells like his perfume and because of that, I just prefer that he comes up to my house.” 

Too much information. Way too much. But then again, that’s the way it is with Becca. Mel says it’s because she feels comfortable with Frank — she trusts him not to tell anyone because he didn’t that first time around — and he feels a vague sense of flattery when she shares about her personal life with him. “That’s great?” he tries, “Abby wore a lot of perfume, too. I didn’t like that.” 

“How’s it with the divorce?” Becca asks sympathetically. 

“Normal,” Frank shrugs. It wasn’t like they were much of a family even before the divorce. Ever since rehab, something has broken that he couldn’t fix. Neither of them seemed to be able to bridge that canyon. They kept trying over and over again — they went to couple’s counseling, they tried dating for a while like they used to in the beginning, ditching the kids whenever they could and just trying to reignite the spark, they tried living apart for a while and then coming back together. They read about every book under the sky concerning family matters. Eventually, they had to admit that it wasn’t going to work. By then, they were too wary to keep up the pretenses and so, it felt good. Better than Frank had felt in a while. “I mean, I know it sounds a bit mean but I feel like we’re both better off. Like a weight has been lifted off our shoulders.” 

“That’s not mean,” Becca shakes her head thoughtfully. “I think it’s nice. That you don’t feel heavy anymore.” 

“Yup,” he nods. He doesn’t want to keep talking about it, though — the Catholic guilt inside of him that has been calling him weak for getting divorced gets even stronger when he talks about The Divorce™ out loud. And then, because he has a purpose and he needs to do recon, he pivots. “Speaking of not feeling heavy, I’ve noticed something.” 

“What?”

“About Mel,” Frank says, “that um, she doesn’t like being called… certain things.” 

“Is someone calling Mel bad names?” Becca frowns. “Is someone bullying Mel at the hospital?”

“No!” Frank blurts out, wincing. God, for all his practices at ‘talking’ he sucks at it when it comes to the King sisters, it seems. “No, not like that, but I noticed that she doesn’t like being called ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart’ or things like that — pet names, you know.” 

“Oh yeah,” Becca nods. “Don’t call her that.” 

“Well, why does she feel like that?”

Becca frowns. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?” 

“Because it’s not right,” she says like it’s obvious, “If you want to know, ask her.” 

“Right,” Frank nods, “Yeah, you’re right, Becs. I should ask her myself.” 

“That’s right,” Becca smiles and then Frank sighs, offering her the ‘banana’ flavor gelato that he got just because Becca couldn’t make a decision and he promised to let her try it. Becca smiles at the gesture, seemingly forgetting their conversation. “I’m glad I didn’t get this, either,” she winces again, quickly taking a bite of strawberry to rectify that. 

Well, there goes plan A. Or you know — the only plan.

——— 

“Mel,” Frank calls out her name just as the leaves are starting to turn golden, telling her that fall is around the corner and with that, comes the answers to the fellowships she’s applied for — including but not limited to pedes, ICU and health humanities because she just couldn’t decide — and hence the anxiety she feels bubbling inside. “Can I ask you something?” They’ve just finished up their night shift together. 

She always feels a sort of trance after staying up all night — a fuzzy feeling in the pit of her stomach, like sleepiness makes the world softer, brighter. She feels like she’s in a movie at times like this and there is somewhere out there where a soundtrack is getting played in the background. And now, as her handsome colleague leans in, his hands in his pocket, so he can get a better look at her, she feels anything is possible. She can give Frank anything he asks for, too. It’s a movie — there are no consequences, only the truth. 

“Yes, Frank?” They’re trying that, too. Frank’s been telling her to stop calling him ‘Dr. Langdon’ and just opt for ‘Frank’. They’re friends, after all. He keeps saying that — that they’re friends. That Mel can lean on him. That it’s alright that he now drives her home after almost every shift they share together or that he’s invited to Becca and Mel’s movie nights or that when there’s a particularly handsy or aggravated patient, she always reaches for him first. 

“It’s just a question and you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to,” he says which just makes Mel nervous. She’s tempted to lift her hands and push her teeth through the skin around her nails and pull it off. But instead she curls them up and intertwines her fingers in front of herself, clasping them together. Frank’s eyes flicker to her hands and Mel is pretty sure his gaze softens when he looks back at her. “Why don’t you like being called pet names?”

“What?”

“I can understand it if they weird you out,” he adds, straightening up and rubbing the back of his head like he’s trying to scratch an itch away, “Because I’m your superior and your colleague. But I don’t think that’s it.” She used to like this — him being able to read her, him, knowing what she’s thinking when it’s so confusing to literally anyone else in the world. He’s been able to do that since the first shift; since he sat on the floor next to her and read her mind so swiftly that she thought maybe she had said some words out loud. But right now, it annoys her a little bit — she can’t keep any secrets from him. There is no part of her that is solely hers anymore. “You can just tell me to fuck off, Mel. I won’t be offended.” 

“I don’t want to do that,” she shakes her head.

“Tell my why you don’t like pet names?”

“No,” she feels her cheeks flame up as is commonplace when it comes to Frank. “The second thing.”

“Okay,” he chuckles softly. “That’s good. I’m glad.” 

And then he doesn’t say anything. Mel has noticed that sometimes he does that — when he thinks that she needs more time to sort out her thoughts, to put words together and make coherent sentences and get them out on her own terms, taking her time. When he does that, she tries to work quicker; to piece together the words as fast as she can so that the silence doesn’t stretch around them, becoming uncomfortable. “Okay, so,” she takes a deep breath, “the thing is… I…” 

She feels her heartrate picking up as she presses her eyelids shut and tries to sort through her thoughts. It’s not that she doesn’t know why but that she has no idea how to get the words out in a way that wouldn’t sound so utterly ridiculous. She doesn’t want Frank to think that she’s weak, or overtly sensitive. 

“Every time someone’s said things like that to me — like ‘honey’,” — she winces trying to get the words out — “or ‘baby’ or ‘sweetheart’,” — she tries to throw an apologetic look at Frank at that which just falls flat when faced with his narrowed eyes and focused gaze — “it was followed by something bad. Either they were mad at me, or they wanted to insult me, or they were disappointed and wanted to let me down easy,” she shakes her head trying to push the thoughts away, “and it’s like — okay, it’s like my body has worked up a sort of resistance to the words. Like they’re trigger words and my body just reacts to them negatively. And — well, yeah.” 

“That can’t be right,” he tilts his head, a confused look on his face. He always look so boyish when he does that — like his whole body is trying to work out a reasonable solve to a problem. She is tempted to reach forward and detangle his eyebrows in the middle. She doesn’t, of course. She’s long trained herself to fight her impulses when it comes to tall, dark handsome, married men. Well. Divorced men, in his case. But that’s a new development that Mel’s not gotten used to yet. “How can no one have used them to compliment you?”

She shrugs, “I don’t know. But no one has.” 

“Do you react the same way even if they are used in positive ways?” he asks and in Mel’s mind, he’s like a goat who is stroking his beard. It makes her smile a little bit. 

“I don’t know,” she repeats. “I mean, I haven’t really thought of that. It hasn’t… happened. I think.” 

“Really?” he narrows his eyes. “No boyfriends? Girlfriends?” 

“Not really, no,” she shakes and then remembers ‘sugarplum’ gate and winces, “once, an ex-boyfriend tried ‘sugarplum’ but I don’t think that’s for me. But other than that, it just never seemed… positive when they said something like that for me.” 

“That’s crazy,” he says almost thoughtlessly and then he catches himself, “that no one has bothered to say it in a positive way. Not that — you know what I mean.” 

It’s very surprising that she does. More often than not, when it comes to people, she never knows what they mean. But here — in his presence, when he’s the one saying the words — she feels like she does know what he means. That somehow, their minds are as connected as Mel’s and Becca’s used to be when they were younger and Becca hadn’t deemed it entirely embarrassing to be close to her sister. Frank doesn’t think she’s embarrassing. 

He gets her. 

“I think we should change that.”

“We?” 

“Yeah,” Frank nods his head, brushing his eyebrow with his thumb, “I mean, I come from the south, I’m bound to slip up and call you ‘honey’ or something and I don’t want you thinking that I’m mad at you like you did before. So — you know. Replacement therapy.”

“Isn’t that for fluids?”

“Well, we’re using the same formula but with pet names,” he smirks, “like, if you hear enough of them in the context of something positive, then you can flush the negative out of your system.” 

When he says it like that it makes sense. But… “How would I know they’re really positive and not some thinly-veiled negative comment?”

“Because when I say them, to you, they will be positive. I never lie to you about that, do I?” he looks at her and she believes him — like she did when he came back and admitted to being an addict. Like when he said that he was truly sorry, that he didn’t know what to do and that he was scared when he came to her a week later and admitted that he had stolen the pills. She didn’t feel like he was a criminal then, like Santos insisted. He was just lost, confused, scared, wanting to protect himself — just like all addicts were. Not that Mel thought of him as that — she only thought of him as… Frank Langdon. Dr. Langdon. Her friend. 

“Okay,” she agrees. It sounds reasonable and she’d like to stop hating the words. They seems lovely — ugh, that word, too. It’s like the nicest word in the world has been put through dirt! “Can we add ‘lovely’ to the pet names, too?” she tilts her head, “I would like to like that word, too, Dr. Langdon.” 

“Frank,” he corrects. 

“Frank,” she concedes. 

———

It’s a good thing he’s not married anymore. Because if he were married, then it would definitely not be right that he’s planning on calling Mel every pet name under the sky. He’s excited at the prospect, too — at being the only one allowed to call her ‘sweetheart’ (that’s his favorite and since Abby didn’t like it either, he’s very excited to try that one as often as he can), ‘honey’, ‘baby’ (that’s a very nice one, too. Christ, he feels like a school boy), and better yet, ‘lovely’. He plans to call her lovely as often as he can — though he can think of other words, too. Words that are a little too vulgar, words that she’s not avert to but he thinks about them nonetheless when it comes to Mel. 

Sexy, attractive, pretty, beautiful, so fucking smart that it almost hurts, so fucking lovely. 

“Sweetheart,” he tries the day after they have the conversation and her shoulders tense for a second and then ease up when she realizes that it’s him standing next to her at central. “Which one you’re talking?” 

“North five,” she looks down at her iPad. “Abdominal pain in RUQ.” 

“Probably gallstones,” he clicks his tongue. “Need help?”

“No, I’ve got it,” she pushes up her glasses, “Though I don’t think it’s cholecystitis. Her murphy’s sign isn’t positive and it hasn’t happened after fatty meals or anything. It’s just been getting worse persistently for a while. Oh, and it says icteric sclera and jaundice in her charts.” 

“Cirrhosis then?” Frank offers. 

It ends up being FNH and Mel is very excited when she manages to snag a bed upstairs in GI for her patient. “Good job, baby,” Frank says when no one’s around to hear it but her and it’s not really a scheme, it’s not planned. He just looks at the pure joy on her face and the sparkling eyes and the wide smile and he wants to— do a lot of thing. Calling her ‘baby’ is the least of them, really. 

“Thank you, Frank,” she smiles back, this time managing not to wince. “It was really fun.” 

“I bet it was,” he clicks his tongue, “But not as interesting as the trauma we’re having on the way will be.” And she lights up again — like a Christmas tree. That’s the way it is with Mel, Frank has come to realize. She does everything with every bit of her heart — when she’s sad, her whole face crumples up and breaks, when she cries, she does so with all her body; she coils into herself. And so when she laughs, she does that with all her body, too — it lights up the room, it makes him want to become a fucking stand-up comedian just to make her laugh. It comes up in bits and pieces until they are connected together and it’s one coherent sound, spilling warmth into every space that she occupies. Her smiles are like that too — like the one she’s wearing right now; wide and all encompassing, taking up her whole face, making her eyes nearly vanish and her nose wrinkle up like a rabbit’s. 

“You want me on that trauma?”

“Of course, Mel,” he is surprised that it’s even a question. He wants her around all the time and the urge has only gotten stronger. At first, when he came back, it was a fondness for her quirks — for the way she seemed so sincere and loud about how glad she was that he was back, so forgiving and understanding about anything about this shitty past that he revealed to her, always seeing the best in him. And then slowly but surely, it grew. He wanted her around when they split a protein bar, or when he got her tea in the mornings because she didn’t like coffee, or when they went home at the end of a grueling shift and he got to drive her home. He now finds that he doesn’t want to take a case if it’s not with her, doesn’t want to have a break if she’s not somehow involved in the conversation. 

Which is… crazy. To say the least. 

“Great,” she says and there is that smile again. He doesn’t want to see it gone so he doesn’t add ‘I always want you around, honey’. You know, just to not spoil the mood. 

—

This is going to be a problem for Frank. He thought it would be easy peasy — how hard would it be to call Mel by every single word that he’s already thought of when it comes to Mel anyway? — but it is decidedly not. Because Mel has gone from flinching, to taking it in her stride to now furiously blushing when Frank sees her come into work with her hair down and tangled up for the first time in two years and without thinking he says, “Fucking hell, Mel, you look lovely.” 

He doesn’t mean to. 

But she does look… well, lovely can’t seem to be covering just how good she looks and how he’s decidedly frozen in place. “Oh, thank you,” she says, running her fingers through her hair. “I was running late this morning — didn’t have time to braid it.” 

“Right,” he nods. Words. It would be really good if he could think of words some time soon. Words that are not about her hair being down and falling on her shoulder as she leans down to unlock her locker and how they move as she takes off her cardigan and reveals her scrubs and then reaches for a hair tie, roaming around her backpack. 

“Shit,” she whispers under her breath. “No, don’t do this to me.” 

“What’s that?”

“I think I left my hair tie at home,” she mumbles, not looking up. Frank doesn’t even think as he pulls out the tie from around his wrist and extends it to Mel. it’s Penny’s because she always wants to let her hair down on her shoulder but exactly thirteen minutes into it, she gets overwhelmed with hair on her neck and starts having a meltdown and so Daddy is always there to the rescue with a promising hair tie and an adequate ability to braid hair. 

“There you go, sweetheart,” he hands her the hair tie. 

“Oh, thank you, Frank,” she smiles down at the hair tie, not bothering with a braid and just simply throwing it in a ponytail. “Have they done hand outs yet?”

“Yup,” he pops the ‘p’. “Shen had to leave earlier. But Henderson’s patients are still in his possession because since breaking up with his girl, he doesn’t seem to want to leave the hospital. So I would check in with him.” 

“Oh, okay,” she nods, her face still flushed. “See you out there.”

“See you out there,” he says but Mel is already gone, making Frank stare at her rapidly moving ponytail. 

Christ alive. 

—

Okay so this is a problem for Frank — the not braiding thing. For one thing, strands of hair seem to fall out of the ponytail as more traumas come through the bay and more chaos is revealed all around them. For another, he can’t stop staring at the swirling and twirling of her honey blonde hair as she moves through the ER. 

He’s never been much of a hair guy, he doesn’t think. Abby has great red hair — voluminous and bright and always shiny and curly in the right places — but Frank never found himself mesmerized, staring at the hair like it’s hypnotizing him. It hasn’t been the case with any of his ex girlfriends from college or high school either. He was always more a sleaze, if you will; a body first type of guy. (His brother says that’s the reason he ended up with two kids before the age of thirty and he can’t say that he disagrees with that assessment.)

But Jesus. Christ. 

“Mel,” he calls out her name eight hours into their shift when they are managing to catch a moment in the ambulance bay as they always try to do. “Do you want me to braid your hair?”

“What?”

“I mean—” he cuts himself off, shaking his head when he sees Mel’s widened, round eyes and the faint flush of her face. Fucking hell, he is sick and twisted and… did he mention sick? “I can do that — if it’s overwhelming you.” Please say ‘yes’, because it’s definitely overwhelming me like a school boy. 

“Oh, I thought it was protocol,” she lets out a relieved sigh. “Or that it looked bad.” 

“No,” he rushes, shaking his head rapidly. “No, I swear — it’s really lovely, sweetheart.” Two words — she doesn’t even have a reaction to them anymore, well done. Now he feels a little robbed, to be fair, though — he would like a blush, a flush, or at least a little flustered shaky breath! “I just was offering. For your comfort.” 

“Thank you, but I’m good,” she nods. “Shouldn’t we get back inside?” She doesn’t wait for the answer as she heads to the door. Frank stays behind for a little while longer, staring at nothing. So… This is obviously a problem for him. 

He could pretend he didn’t know the reason and fool himself like he would when he was a college student and he was trying to get a degree in nonchalance but as a thirty-five year old doctor, it would just be… embarrassing to not admit to himself that this pet names experiment has caused him trouble now. 

Namely, having a crush on who might be his best friend: Melissa King. 

———

She would like to go back please. To the time when pet names unsettled her and she would’ve much rather not heard them. Because this is harder — wanting to make Frank call her by any one of them. She works harder for it. When Frank calls her ‘lovely’ four times in a day when her hair is down with his mouth half open in 75% of those times and an awed look on his face in 25% of those times, she opts for new hairstyles. When he calls her ‘sweetheart’ when he comes to chit-chat after a case at central, she tries to wrap up her cases quicker. When he calls her ‘baby’ accompanied with ‘good job’ when she finds rare diagnoses in patients, she just wants to dig deeper into every patient. Suffice to say, it’s had a very good effect on her patient satisfaction scores and her stats and a very distraughting effect on her mental sanity. 

She thinks about what it means — she feels good when she hears the words coming from Frank because she knows he means to be kind and praising and genuine. She feels flushed when he comes too close while saying them, his voice low, sending electric bolts up her spine because he wants the words to be for her ears only, leaving goosebumps behind. She finds herself thinking about him at the strangest times of the day; when she’s taking a shower in the morning, or when she’s splitting a milkshake with Becca or when she’s watching Love Island and texting her sister back and forth with their opinions about the show. 

And now, when she’s sitting in their pizzeria with Becca (they go once a month so Mel can stop feeling sorry for herself that Becca has a life for herself and Mel decidedly does not), sharing a giant pepperoni. He’d be very proud of Mel for eating three slices so far and even reaching for a forth. She wonders if he’d say ‘good job, baby’ or ‘nice work, sweetheart’. 

“Mel?” Becca’s voice comes. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” she blinks, trying to push away the thoughts about one Frank Langdon. “Sorry, Becca. Yeah, I’m all good.” 

“You sure?”

Mel can do as she always does — brush it away and push it under the rug and spend the night obsessing over Frank’s tone delivery or what not and spend the evening putting on a show for Becca. But Becca has made it clear that since they are thirty-year-old women now and they have lives, they need to be sophisticated people and ‘proper’ sisters whatever that means. When she told that to Frank, he said that maybe they should do what all siblings do — hang out once in a while and gossip and talk about either their partners, their jobs or their newfound hobbies just as he does once a week with his sister over FaceTime; updating her about the kids and their grades and his mostly successful co-parenting with Abby. 

And it would help to get a second opinion about this… ailment. Especially since Becca is the self-declared love expert now that she’s had two boyfriends. 

“Um, Becca, can you give me some… advice?”

“Sure, what is this about?”

“A — A guy.”

“A guy?!” Becca’s eyes widen, her voice getting louder by the second, her face scandalous like Mel’s a virgin blushing girl from the 1800s who was never familiar with the concept of men until this very second. “Mel, have you found a boyfriend?”

“No,” she rushes the word out quickly. That’s not what Frank is — that’s not what he… Jesus. No. “No, it’s just… there is someone that calls me… ‘sweetheart’ and ‘baby’ and ‘honey’ and um, sometimes, even ‘lovely’...”

“But you hate those words.”

“Right,” she agrees, as both of them push up their glasses at the same time. Their mother used to be fascinated by that — call it ‘twin telepathy’. Mel finds herself smiling at that before shaking her head and continuing. “Exactly. But I don’t hate them when he’s the one saying all that — because he told me that whenever he uses those words, it’s because he really means them and… now, I can’t stop thinking about him saying those words to me.”

“Who is this guy?” Becca asks, crossing her arms on her chest. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Mel shakes her head. She can’t tell Becca that it’s Frank, the guy she knows, the father of two and a divorcee who happens to be technically still her boss. It would scandalize Becca since she’s a big fan of him, too. She would never hear the end of it especially since when Mel mentioned Frank the first hundred times (and it was after only spending one shift with him) she suggested that maybe she should kiss him. “I just — I don’t know what it means.” 

“You have a crush on him,” she says like it’s that simple. “You want him to call you pet names and you think about him all the time. It’s really clear.” 

She nearly chokes on the pizza she’s holding. “Becca!”

“Have you thought of kissing him?” 

Has Mel thought of kissing Frank? 

What kind of a question is that? Frank is her best friend — he’s the person she calls when she needs a ride or when the night is scary or when she feels sick and she needs some Tylenol picked up or when—

Yes. 

“Yes,” her voice comes out meek. “But it’s just a thought — it’s just a dream.” 

“You’ve had a sex dream about him,” is naturally the conclusion Becca comes to. Which is not very far off from what happens on a very regular basis. (Or it’s exactly what happens on a very regular basis, especially around the two week mark after her period, known as the ‘I just need a man’ era of the cycle.) 

“Becca!” Mel berates. 

“It’s very natural, Mel,” she replies calmly. “I was the same way about Alex before he asked me out. I had a crush on him and I liked it when we did activities together at the center and I had a sex dream about him.” Ever since Mel’s eased up on the reactions about the ‘sex’ stuff with Becca, she’s been more forthcoming and honest about the entire thing. Mel doesn’t know whether to be glad or to cringe horribly. “Why don’t you just tell him? If he’s calling you call that nicely, chances are he has a crush on you, too.”

It would be true except that Frank is doing her a favor. He’s just being nice the way he always is when it comes to Mel, trying to be considerate and friendly and lovely. 

But then he looks at her sometimes — with her mouth half open and his eyes widened and his face frozen like he can’t believe he’s looking at her and that she’s real and it makes Mel want to go and hide somewhere and also run to him at the same times — and she wonders if it is mutual. If he does like her. 

She’s not too sure. And she can’t ruin what they have by not being sure and making a move — whatever that means — and losing the most important person in her life aside from Becca. He’s ER Ken, she’s just Mel. 

“Yeah, maybe, Becca,” she nods, trying to smile. 

“Definitely,” Becca says smugly. “Will you tell me who he is when you become his girlfriend?” 

And because there is no way that is happening, Mel nods and says, “For sure.” 

———

Frank has to ask her out. 

Not that they don’t go out. They do. They drink boba together and they hang out on their days off when he doesn’t have the kids and once, the five of them (Becca, kids, Mel and him) went to the amusement park together and he got to see her become pretty green after riding the roller-coaster and he even got to pull her hair back as she vomited and Penny shrieked with amusement. It was really lovely even though Mel had other words like ‘disgusting’ describing the whole affair. 

He likes everything about her — her laugh, her smile, her eyes, the way her glasses become crooked when she’s too lost in the motions and then because it would be unsanitary she tries to fix that with weird face scrunches until he is forced to discard his gloves and fix it and get a new pair of gloves for himself, the way she calls his name, the way she blushes when he sometimes manages to catch her off guard and sneak up behind her and lean down and whisper ‘sweetheart’ in her ears, the way she dozes off after long shifts in the passenger seat of his car and the way she always asks about Penny and Tanner and spends hours watching their artwork and their crafts when she comes over to his place on nights that the electricity on her side of town is cut off after a storm. He likes the way she exists — in a uniquely Mel King sort of way. 

And she might like him back. 

Sure, he can be a fool about this — oblivious and self-deprecating and be on his whole ‘I don’t deserve her’ gear because he’s a divorced drug addict and a father of two and he had to repeat his fourth residency year and he’s in PHP and he’s sure nearly all his attendings have hated him at one point or the other and that at some point in his life, he was a fucking criminal and of course, he doesn’t deserve Mel King. But he’s spent thousands of dollars he didn’t really have on therapy and rehab, both of them trying to beat out this exact sort of thinking out of him; the pattern that makes him think he’s not worthy of being happy. 

And so, he doesn’t. He thinks that maybe, despite all his flaws and fuck-ups and just because he’s a lucky son of a bitch and because Mel King is everything kind and good, she likes him, too. And he’s sure that if she doesn’t, she won’t make it weird — she won’t pity him, or avoid him, or laugh in his face. 

Still, every time he thinks of asking her out, he gets tongue-tied. Or rather, he gets the word out  and they do go out but he never ends up on a date. They go to the movies the first time he manages to get the words out and then, they try on the new sushi place which makes Mel gag the first ten minutes they are there and they end up getting burgers in front of the television back in her place, falling asleep on the couch. Then, on his latest attempt, he asks her out on what is undoubtedly romantic: a date to the gala that the hospital holds for the medical-aid charity of the hospital and though it’s far too public and too pronounced, Frank finds no other way to make it clear that he likes her without… saying the words. 

He just doesn’t know how it works anymore — do people say the words? ‘I like you. Please date me?’ It sounds so corny even in his head. 

But then he is in front of her house and she looks so beautiful in her black dress and her hair up with pins in it and Frank is sure that Mel knows that this is a date. Probably. “You look lovely, Mel,” he says and he means it with his whole heart — lovely and mesmerizing and eye-catching and the most beautiful woman that he has ever seen in his life. 

“Thank you,” she smiles, “You seem really nice yourself, Frank.”

“Why, thank you so much, sweetheart.” He opens the door for her, helps her in the car, watches her intensely whenever they stop behind a red light and offers his arm when they enter the gala. 

And this is a date. Right? 

But then Mel makes a comment about how nice it is that he feels comfortable enough with her as a friend to bring her to his first gala without Abby. Which is bollocks because he hadn’t even noticed that Abby wasn’t there and she wasn’t a fan of galas hosted by the hospital because Frank and Robby used to say that admin was a monstrous entity and whatnot. But at least that tells Frank that she does not think that it’s a date and he really plans to let it go and try some other time but she’s near and she smells nice and she looks magnificent and he doesn’t know whether it’s because she isn’t interested in him because he is a drug addict or it’s because she doesn’t find him attractive or—

“Mel,” he says, her name already out before he can stop himself and behind that, he can sense that a word vomit is very close by and unstoppable. “Sweetheart, I have to tell you something. Or — I don’t know.”

“Frank…”

“No, just — let me. I have been meaning to ask you this for a while and I’m… I thought you knew but it’s obvious that you don’t and I just want to tell you that…” — Mel’s eyes are widened and her glasses are crooked and he doesn’t think words can describe how he feels when he looks at her — the way his heart blooms and dances and skips in his chest, how she’s become the thing that consumes him on the daily so simply, just through existing, being herself. He wants her to know that she is his sweetheart, his honey, his baby, the object of his affections and the loveliest person he’s ever seen in his life. He can’t find the words. “Can I kiss you?”

The words are out there before he can pull them back and lodge them deep in his chest. Mel’s eyes widen and her mouth falls half open and she only has to get half a nod out before Frank’s mouth is on hers, pulling her flush against him. 

He’s now a blind man who has seen for the first time, a thirsty fellow looking for a lake in the middle of Sahara who has found a spring of fresh cold water, a hurt cat who is now curled up in the lap of kind girl. “Sweetheart,” he breathes out against her lips. He wishes he could stay here forever — reside in this moment, in this first gulp of water, the first taste of Mel. “Baby,” he pushes her against the wall, presses his thigh between her feet and Mel lets out a soft moan that he swallows. He’s desperate to be there, surrounded by her, just near her. “Honey.” 

He pulls back only when Mel pushes him softly on the chest, very obviously gulping for air and even then he’s sorry to leave, to feel the cold air against his lips where she was moments ago. “Oh my god,” her eyes are wide, round, her hands flying to her lips as she flushes up, looking at him. “Oh my god, Frank.” 

“Yes, darling?” he smiles. What else can he do when he’s just kissed her. 

“You like me too?”

Too? She likes him? She’s liked him all along? 

“Mel, I have asked you out like three separate times. Of course, I like you!” 

“You asked me out?” she asks even more outraged, her eyes wider than usual. “Holy… Oh my god. Becca was right.” 

“What?”

“You have a crush on me, too!” she exclaims. “That’s why when you call me lovely, you mean it. That’s why you’re allowed to call me ‘sweetheart’ and ‘baby’. You have a crush on me, too.” Crush is too mild a word to describe what Frank feels for her — the all-encompassing, sneaking feeling that caught him off guard and he was dropped in the middle of before he ever really knew it was starting. But it’s a word that makes sense to Mel. so… 

“Yes,” he nods, “I have a crush on you.” 

———

“Well, I do too!” Mel exclaims. Her heart is racing, her cells are on fire. This is happening — everything that she had convinced herself was far out of her reach was happening right now. In this gala. When she’s looking great! This is great! “This is so exciting. I’ve never had a crush on anyone who had a crush on me!” 

“Is that so?” he smirks, his blue eyes shining. Mel can think anything she wants about him now — like how she likes to bite down on her lips and how she’s thought of pulling on his chest hair and how she would very much like to touch his chin dimple; just lodge her finger there to see how it feels. “Well, I’m glad to be your first, Melissa.” 

“Call me ‘baby’, again,” she asks because she’s allowed to now. That’s what people do when they are interested in each other. She thinks he might want to be her boyfriend, now — would it feel more deep when he uses the word this time around? 

“Oh, baby,” he whispers, his breath hot against her skin as he presses a kiss to the corner of her lips. “Honey,” he kisses her pulse. “Sweetheart,” he’s slid all the way down to her collar bones. 

And she knows, with certainty, that he’s not mad at her. He wants her. He needs her. He’s looking at her like she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him and she knows he means it. 

Oh hey. She’s gotten better at reading him, too.

———

One year later:

Frank’s really lost the track of how many times he’s called Mel ‘sweetheart’. The number ought to be in the thousands by now and yet, every time he does, he feels the same rush of emotions going through him as he looks at the person who is undoubtedly the love of his life. It’s so easy to talk to Mel — to have the pet name and niceties and compliments slip out when he watches her. Even more so when she is not looking at him and he wants to prompt her to do so. “Mel, sweetheart,” he reaches out and pushes a loose strand of behind her ears. “You gotta take a breath.” 

“But Becca’s bringing Alex home and I just want to—”

“I know,” he interrupts her because he can see her getting worked up, having the words coiled up inside of her hurts her. “And we’ll be the greatest hosts but right now, I just need you to take a breath, sweetie.” She scrunches up her nose. 

“Nope, this one just doesn’t work,” she shakes her head, letting out a soft laugh.

“I will crack the code if that’s the last thing I do,” he huffs out his breath. He’s managed to lift the curse off of every pet name but sweetie and sugarplum still grate her. He doesn’t plan to touch the second one with a ten feet pole, if he’s honest, but he is trying ‘sweetie’. “Feeling better?”

“Much,” she nods. “I just want it to go well. She’s just letting me come around after the hassle with her last boyfriend.” 

“Oh, I know, baby,” he cooes, pulling her closer. “But we’ll get through this, okay? Together. And then Becs will stop gulping every time she mentions her boyfriend because she’s scared we’ll act like her parents.” 

“Ugh and she’s two minutes older than me!” Mel hides her face in Frank’s chest and he can’t help but run his fingers through her golden blond hair. “You promise to pull me back when I get too much, right?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he smiles. “Sweetie?” he adds after a moment and Mel groans. 

“Still not working,” she says as she pushes him away and goes back to the invisible stain on the counter that she insists will ruin Becca bringing her boyfriend home. 

“Alright, alright,” he laughs, shaking his head. “How about you let me deal with the stain and you go take a shower?”

“Will you braid my hair after?”

“Yes, sweetheart,” he takes the cloth. “Take your time, alright?”

“Alright,” she sighs, surrendering her position and walking to the bathroom in his room, only lingering in the hallway. “I love you, Frank.”

“I know, sweetheart,” he smiles. “I love you, too.” 

“I know,” she nods. “Make sure you get the stain out.”

“Of course,” he says once he’s sure she’s gone, “I’ll work on the invisible stain, Melissa.” And who knew calling Mel ‘sweetheart’ all that time ago and watching her squirm would end up here? Maybe if he calls her ‘sweetie’ enough times, she’ll marry him.

But hey, he’s getting ahead of himself. For now, he can call her honey if he wants and that’s good enough.