The Heart Palace

It got easier the older he got. He wasn’t quite as embarrassed about his name, but he wasn’t really inviting people to call him by it either. It wasn’t until he started interviewing for med school that he truly got over it. There was something more professional in introducing himself as Frank Langdon, maybe. He wasn’t quite sure what the shift was, but he offered his first name up to the people he was closest to: his girlfriend, the friends he saw every day. There weren’t very many people that took him up on it, and most everyone he knew continued to call him Langdon.

Even Abby, when he got serious enough with her to offer, declined to call him Frank. She made a comment about it once, with a little frown: “It makes me feel like I’m talking about my grandfather. I can’t moan the name Frank.”

Frank resisted the urge to point out that Abby’s grandfather’s name was Milton, which was different (and arguably worse) than Frank. Still, he didn’t push it. He’d been Langdon for years, and it was fine. It was all fine.

It wasn’t until he’d come back—back from his ten months of leave, his two stays in rehab, his deteriorating marriage and his new divorced dad apartment—that he gave Mel the option to call him Frank. It was the fourth shift they worked together, and they were taking a break out in the ambulance bay. Mel turned to him, eyes wide behind her glasses with that sweet smile on her face, asking him a question and getting his attention by saying, “Dr. Langdon?”

So he blurted, “You can call me Frank. If you want.”

There was a long pause, and Frank imagined it would be like every other time. She’d acknowledge his offer, but she’d go on calling him Dr. Langdon. In fact, he was pretty sure that she never referred to him as anything other than Dr. Langdon, almost as if she was trying to remind him that he still deserved the honorific. Or at least that he was worthy of it.

And out there, on a very hot and humid but beautiful summer afternoon, Mel King smiled. “Sure,” she said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “Frank.”

Generally, she didn’t do it while they were working cases together. If they were in the breakroom, though, he was Frank. If they were charting together and he tugged on her braid, he was Frank. When they got pizza together after shifts, he was Frank. When they met up in the park while he was walking his dog, he was Frank.

Mel always said it with ease, like she didn’t mind that it was an old-fashioned name. Like she liked it. For the first month that she called him by his first name, Frank had to constantly remind himself not to smile like an idiot. Mel looked at him, and he was Frank.

Everyone else they worked with continued to call him Langdon. He got it, of course. Frank wasn’t the best name ever. It usually brought to mind a grandfather, so at least he’d be set for when he was seventy. Plus, they were used to it, and it wouldn’t be an easy habit to break even if he insisted on the change. Frank was his name, though. It was nice to hear someone saying it without making that weird face.

He tugged on the end of Mel’s braid and didn’t bother to try and hide that he wanted her attention. Mel would turn around and shoot him a look, and he would tug on her braid (or the end of her ponytail if he was lucky and it was a really good day) again. Then she would say, “Frank!” in that voice that was half-amused and half-exasperated and it always got to him.

They would run into each other at the farmer’s market and she would always greet him warmly: “Hello, Frank.” They walked together and would eventually end up getting lunch from a nearby cafe. Frank cherished those weekends, knowing that Mel was giving up time that she could be doing something on her own.

She called him Frank in front of his kids, which delighted him to no end. He couldn’t explain it, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to look too deeply at it. There was something in him that felt a little lighter when Mel would say, “Hey, Frank!” and then Tanner would turn around and smile at him.

Sometimes he would tease her in other ways, too, like when he would take the box of tea that she wanted off the highest shelf in the breakroom, holding it above her head, just out of her reach. Mel stretched up on her tiptoes, fingertips just grazing his wrist while she wrinkled her nose and sucked her teeth and frowned at him. (He didn’t think that she would appreciate the fact that he thought it was adorable.)

Mel would huff and puff and poke his side and still he wouldn’t give in. He inevitably said something that bordered right on the line of inappropriate, just to see her blush. Usually it was a variation on, “Tell me what you want.”

Without realizing it, Mel gave him exactly what he wanted. She would huff again, roll her eyes, and exclaim, “Frank!” And then she would settle down and sweetly ask, “Can I have my tea, please?” Frank felt like he could fly every time.

The first time that he kissed her—hands in her hair, tongue swiping against her bottom lip, body shaking against hers—she breathed, “Frank,” against his mouth, almost like a prayer. Frank wanted to bottle that feeling up, knowing that it would be worth millions if he tried to sell it (He would never. He couldn't give that up, or let anyone else feel it. It was for him and him alone).

The first time his cock was deep inside her, his hands tight on her hips, Mel pressed whispers of his name into the skin over his throat and his clavicles and his chest. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders, and held him close as they rocked together. He’d already heard it from her a million times, but he wanted to hear it again.

“Say my name,” Frank panted against her lips. Fingers digging into the soft skin of her waist, he tilted her hips to angle that much deeper inside her. “Say it, baby. Say my name.”

Mel arched beautifully beneath him, eyelashes fluttering. “Frank!” she gasped. Everything—her arms, her legs, her cunt—tightened around him, making Frank groan and drop his head against her neck. “Frank, oh, I… oh please, oh…”

“No one else can make you feel like this,” Frank grunted, feeling a little insane. How could he feel anything less, when Mel King was so beautiful beneath him? “Who’s… Who is…?”

It felt so good, and he was so close, and he knew that she was, too. And because Mel knew him as well as he knew her, she moaned and said, “You, Frank. It’s you. You make me feel this good.”

Two years later, while they lounged on their porch swing together, Mel slid her hand over the baby bump poking out from beneath her t-shirt. She grinned up at him, and the absolutely delighted look on her face made Frank lean over to press a tender kiss to her lips. She slid her hand over his heart, her fingers curling into the soft fabric of his t-shirt.

“What do you think of the name Frank for the baby?” Mel asked, her eyes alight with mischief.

Frank laughed out loud and kissed Mel again, because she was just too damn cute. “Our baby deserves their own name,” he said, and Mel giggled, confirming that she was fully just messing with him.