Last name King, but she's a Queen

Warm Coffee | G | 3k+ | Day 1-Different First Meeting Frank bumps into Mel outside of a coffee shop right before her first day at PTMC.

Somewhere Only We Know | T | 23k+ | Day 2-Time and Space Sometimes plans change, and even the closest of friends grow apart. And sometimes, loss is the only thing that brings them back.

Tell Him | M | 7k+ | Day 3-It's Wedding Season Mel and Frank are in Trinity and Yolanda’s wedding party.

Take Care Of You | G | 4k+ | Day 4-Hurt and Comfort Mel and Frank both fall victim to the stomach bug and practically compete over who gets to take care of who.

Long Hard Road | E | 30k+ | Day 5-Nature Frank brings Mel to the Adirondacks.

Now That I See You | T | 13k+ | Day 6-Fame and Glory Mel makes educational YouTube videos for kids. Frank is a single dad to two wild children. Fate brings them together in the children's section of a library in Pittsburgh.

Mel wishes the library weren't packed with other med students going out of their minds during finals week. After all, it's her favorite place to study. It's not ideal that she has to settle for the little café ten blocks from campus, a place she doesn't even like that much. But her other five preferred study spots are just as packed, and desperation wins.

“Brown sugar boba for Mel!” calls the underpaid teen behind the counter over the loud crowd.  

She leaves her things there, her open book and her noise-cancelling headphones on the table, her backpack and cardigan on the opposite chair. She refuses to leave her things on the half-clean floor. And walks the ten steps separating her from the beloved brown sugar boba tea that would give her a sugar rush high enough to keep her up and focused for at least another two or three hours. 

As soon as she turns back around, she sees him. A guy is hunched over his own book, her things pushed to the far end of the table haphazardly. And Mel sees red. 

She hates confrontations. The mere idea of standing in front of a stranger and claiming back what's hers makes her skin prickle and her eyes water with unshed tears. But she is running high on adrenaline, poor sleep, and pre-finals anxiety. This is not really her best moment. 

She walks with firm steps towards her table, shouldering unassuming people that get in her way, and stomps her right foot into the sticky hardwood floor (who uses wood for a coffee shop?) once she reaches him. He keeps his eyes on the textbook, apparently oblivious to her presence.

“Excuse me, you are in my seat,” she says firmly, the liquid inside her plastic glass sloshing a little from the movement of her hands.

“There was no one here,” he says, dismissively shaking his right hand as if she were an annoying bug and not the owner (temporary at least) of the chair where he is lying his butt on. His voice is deep and rusty, like he hadn't used it for a long time, making something clench in the pit of her stomach. 

“My things are still here,” she fights back. It makes him finally look in front of him, and she can see the small frown on his forehead and the deep, purple circles under his eyes. 

Briefly, she wishes she had laser vision to melt him into the floor and reclaim what’s hers. She doesn't, so she settles for staring instead. 

The way his wet hair falls perfectly into place, a few strands over his forehead and the rest pushed back like a nineties heartthrob, makes her a little envious, considering hers gets frizzy if she doesn't pull it into a braid. His jaw is sharp, and his lashes are long and dark, which immediately makes her heart drum inside of her chest with annoyance.

“Jesus,” he mumbles, shaking his head as if he is finally realizing what he did. “Look, Melissa.”

“How do you know my name?”

“It's on everything here.” He points to the table, eyes still firmly on hers. 

“Oh, so now you see?” She shoots back, clearly on a roll.

“I do,” he says, the hint of a smirk on his lips, but sheepishness on his eyes. “Listen… Why don't we share?” 

She gives him a look, the I'm-offended-you-asked one that Becca jokes makes her look like an angry bunny. 

He runs a hand over his face.  “I really need to have some coffee and finish this chapter, but every other place is crowded, and my roommates are assholes who called dibs for the next hour.” 

“Black coffee for Langdon,” screamed the same teen. 

Both of them stop and stare.

“That's me. What do you say?”

Pondering seems in vain, and it requires a lot more brain power than what she has. Looking for a new place to sit seems inconvenient, too, and somehow his eyes look pleading under all the tiredness. Maybe this is her opportunity to be the bigger person, and the universe will compensate her with an outstanding mark on her test for this small kind action. 

“Fine. We will share.” 

Usually, she has a hard time sharing her personal space with someone, most of all when it's a stranger; it is not different with him at the beginning. They almost knocked both his coffee and her boba twice before settling down on opposite ends of the cramped table, with how much space his study books and her highlighters took.

He has long legs, which means his feet ended up intertwining with hers under the table. At first, it made her nervous, then he started to knock the side of her left knee with the inside of his so she put the tip of her shoe on top of his to tap without a clear rhythm. Playfully aggravating.

They've been sitting in silence. Reading, taking notes, and highlighting for what feels like an eternity when Mel’s brain wanders.

Langdon has neat handwriting, which seems like another unfair thing considering he is also a med student in a rush to get as much knowledge as possible in the shortest amount of time. On a positive note, he highlights too much, to the point that most of his page is neon yellow right now. He doesn't seem to use color-coded notes or subtitles.

And he grips his pen with too much force, probably to keep his writing tidy. His hands are big, wide palms and slender fingers —callouses on his right middle and thumb— and clean square nails. They look careful, capable. Makes her wonder if he is into surgery or something that requires steady hands like that. 

Her eyes keep moving on their own volition, traitorously. Up the tendons of his exposed forearms and biceps. To the width of his shoulders stretching just so the white fabric of his cotton shirt —tath makes her fingers flinch with the desire to check if it's as soft as it looks.

A deep cleft split his chin over the mandibular symphysis, becoming even more pronounced whenever he pressed his lower lip between his teeth.

Finally, her gaze lands on his eyes only to find his blue eyes already on her as if he was patiently waiting for her to catch up. 

Heat rushes to her cheeks from being caught, and she wishes she could look away. Instead, she stares, admires how his pupils are blown wide despite the afternoon sunlight slipping through the windows —dopamine and oxytocin release in response to attraction, her brain supplied unhelpfully— and her blush lowers to her neck. 

"Hey," he says.

"Hi."

The corner of his mouth lifts just enough that she can't tell whether he's amused or trying not to laugh.

"So, anything interesting on my face?"

"Your chin," she blurts. “It’s anatomically interesting," she continues —and wishes to be swallowed by the sticky floor. 

“I’ll tell my parents.” He seems amused by it, the knuckle of his proximal interphalangeal joint presses into it for a second. "You bite the inside of your cheek when you're reading."

"I do?"

"You've been doing it for the last twenty minutes."

"You looked at me for twenty minutes?"

His mouth opens and closes a few times, caught off guard for just a second. 

"You're very distracting”

“I'm not,” she says, a little confused.

“You keep frowning every time you turn over a page, and whenever something's hard, you mumble the words under your breath,” he provides. 

For a fleeting moment, she feels bad for interrupting his studying process with her fidgeting, but then she notices how softly he's looking at her, the hint of a smile tugging at his lips, as though he's waiting for her to catch up to the joke, and she smiles widely, her nose scrunching up. 

“Really?”

"Really,” he says and nods. “My brain needed a break. So... thanks, Melissa.”

Langdon stands up, closing his book with finality, and she finds herself suddenly fearing this will be their last interaction.​

“Everyone calls me Mel,” she says in a rush. 

His eyes shine into hers before replying, “Well, sadly, everyone calls me Langdon, but…” He grabs his pen and writes down something on the upper corner of her textbook. “You can call me anytime?”

And, oh god, he is lucky he is so handsome because that is the worst pick-up line she's ever heard.