Dr. Mel King enthusiast

It’s only when he and Mel are letting the battery charge that he realizes he hasn’t looped Charlie in. Much to their father’s chagrin, Frank has been useless with cars his whole life, while Charlie (who hasn’t even owned a car in a decade, since she moved to New York) is some kind of car savant. Or, again, just really confident about using the internet to research things.

His phone rings immediately, and he feels stupid for not seeing it coming. He tries to get out of Mel’s hearing range before answering.

“Hey Charlie—”

“What dumbassery have you gotten involved in this time, Frankie?”

Frank sighs. “No, I didn’t do something dumb. I’m helping a friend.”

“Yolanda should have other lesbians to consult, not this game of telephone. If she wants my number—”

“Shut up.” Why did he think Charlie would be helpful, again? “I have friends other than Yoyo.”

“Oh my God, is it Mel? Is Mel there?”

Frank checks to see if Mel’s listening. She’s staring at him pretty unabashedly, so he lowers his voice. “Ok, yes, it’s her, but—”

“Does she know that you’re friends?”

That’s so dumb. Charlie knows he actually listened to her advice about that, even though he hasn’t updated her on their name conversation from the morning. Jesus, he feels like a middle school girl, texting his friends every time he talks to his crush. What a terrible look for him, especially since there’s no way he’s going to change.

“We’re friends, Charlie! Did you call just to bully me or—”

Charlie launches into a detailed explanation of how car batteries work, then, which is unbelievably boring, but he tries to retain the main points: make sure to check the dash when it turns back on, leave it running for at least 15-20 minutes, preferably going highway speeds for part of it, and get the battery checked out ASAP, either with a mechanic or by using a multimeter, which he should be able to get at most hardware stores.

“But don’t fuck around with a multimeter because you’re trying to impress her,” Charlie orders him just as he’s trying to end the call. “Her car and peace  of mind are way more important than you trying to flex non-existent car skills, ok? Call me if you need another consult, although that might come with a tax.”

Charlie hangs up on him, which is just rude, but she did help a lot, so it balances out, probably. 

It shouldn’t surprise him that he ends up calling her back in the parking lot of the Ace Hardware, especially since he’s already accepted that this will somehow end in his embarrassment. Charlie was right, though, that he shouldn’t fuck around with Mel’s car, so he only feels a little chagrined as he hits dial.

“If it isn’t my favorite baby brother,” Charlie answers, already smug.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re going to make me pay, whatever. Listen, the guide says that you should leave your car off for an hour or the read might not be accurate—”

Charlie switches into helpful mode, talking him through why it might say that and why the reading he’s getting is probably fine anyway.

“You should test it again in the morning, if possible,” Charlie tells him as he shuts the hood. “But yeah, I think it seems like the battery is working. The lights were probably left on overnight or something.”

“Amazing, thanks!” Frank rushes out, as though he can avoid what’s inevitably coming next.

“Not so fast, buster.”

“What does that even mean?” Frank mutters rhetorically. Charlie, as expected, ignores him.

“In exchange for the generous donation of my time towards your hopeless cause, I think I should be allowed to say hi to Mel.”

Frank groans. “No fucking way. You’re going to say something embarrassing and it’ll be a whole thing, I just know it.” 

“Ye of little faith,” Charlie tuts. 

“This is an overpayment,” Frank tells her, rounding the car but not opening the passenger door yet. “Mel’s time is priceless.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re so gross,” Charlie groans. “Just let me say hi. I promise not to say anything weird.”

Given that Charlie lives with her ex-girlfriend and has a tattoo of boobs on her ankle, Frank doesn’t put a ton of stock in Charlie’s definition of weird.

Mel startles when he gets back in the car, clearly in her own little world of grading. She seems a little nervous when he tells her about Charlie’s demand, and he suspects her reasoning of why it’s not fair is probably different than his own, but at least neither of them agree with Charlie, and that’s what counts.

(Sometimes he can feel himself mentally regressing to his middle school self when he talks to Charlie. Other times he worries that’s how he always is, but talking to her just makes him aware of how annoying he actually is.)

He puts the phone on speaker and braces himself.

“Alright, Charlie, behave.”

“Hi!” Mel says brightly, voice betraying none of the nerves or confusion on her face. “Thanks for your help!”

“Hi, Mel,” Charlie starts, and Frank realizes he didn’t even set any ground rules. Amateur hours. “What’s Frankie like as a teacher?” That could be worse. “What’s the most embarrassing thing he’s ever done in your classes?” He could have expected that one. He’s probably already told Charlie most of his embarrassing teaching stories, though, so he’s not sure what she expects to hear. “And are you dating anyone?”

Jesus Christ, Charlie. This is why Langdons can’t have nice things.

He hangs up as fast as he can, since he’s sure it can only get worse from there, and he’s relieved that Mel latches onto the Frankie of it all instead of asking something like why did your sister ask me about my love life, something you have never done? Do you speculate wildly about it to her?

He ignores the way his phone keeps buzzing throughout dinner (because he’s with Mel eating food outside of school!!), more focused on figuring out ways to bump his foot against hers without being weird about it. She makes a point of handing him the receipt, even though she’s the one who paid, so he tosses it for her as they pass the trash can on the way out. 

She drops him back at his car, both a little relieved that Bert started totally normally after dinner, and he feels a little like he just tricked Mel into going on a date with him. At the very least, he can pretend that other people might have thought that, probably all clocking the fucking cartoon hearts floating around his head every time he looks at her.

He finally checks his phone as he walks Bunny.

“What’s up with you and her hair?”

Frank sighs. What is up with him and her hair?

“I mean, she has beautiful hair,” Frank hedges. Charlie levels him with an unimpressed look. “What! She does! There are so many different colors in it, like it’s blonde but it’s really dark, but it looks so good in sunlight—”

“Didn’t you say she always wears it in a braid?”

“Yeah,” Frank says, which does not come out as a lovelorn sigh, thank you very much. “And that’s so smart, because it looks really nice but also keeps it out of her way during instruction.” Charlie’s face has traveled from unimpressed to actively judgmental. “I know I sound crazy! I’m not pretending not to!”

“I still can’t believe she only has a Facebook. Boomer behavior, tbh.” Frank wishes he could argue that point, but it’s a little true. “So you’ve never even, like, seen it down or anything?”

Frank flashes back to the one time he was graced by the sight of Mel with her hair down, live and in-person, when she was upset about that student in instructional Chem lying to her. It seemed like she got the Mel version of angry, which was distinctly similar to how kittens look when they get mad, and he’d been faintly amused until the hair got involved.

She’d paced around the room, clever fingers deftly separating the strands of her braid, and Frank had to press his knuckles against the underside of the table to keep his head in the game. Her hair was a little longer than he expected, falling past the sleeves of her short-sleeved shirt, and wavy in that way hair gets after being in a braid all day. It didn’t answer the question he’s wondered all year (is her hair curly or straight?), but watching her pace back and forth, hair fanning out behind her, gave him a distressingly clear visual of what it might look like in other contexts.

He’d been pretty useless in that conversation, too distracted by her everything, but he had been a little encouraged that she asked about him in high school. That seemed like a friend move, right? Unfortunately he had absolutely nothing cool to say about what he was like in high school, of course, and that wasn’t even mentioning the buzz cut or the long hair phase. He’s tried to scrub all evidence of that from Facebook.

He wanted to know more about what she was like in high school (or elementary school or college or any time of her life, even last week), but she didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Sometimes it feels like she didn’t even exist as a real person before she started teaching, the way she only talks about Becca and what Becca wanted or needed as a kid. Not that it keeps Frank up at night or anything, of course.

“Not really,” Frank replies, realizing he’s gone a suspicious amount of time without replying. “She did some different things during spirit week, though. It was super cute.”

Charlie makes a noise that’s somewhere between a coo (look how cute little Frankie is) and fake vomiting (look how gross this idiot is). He wishes he weren’t so familiar with it. 

He stares at his draft. Deletes and then re-adds the salute emoji. Fuck it. What’s the worst that can happen? She ignores him? He hits send. 

“Anyway, are you poly now or—”

Charlie groans and starts bemoaning the loss of both her situationships/fuckbuddies/maybe actual relationships (?). Apparently she’s just not poly, no matter how hard she tries (?). Frank thinks his role is mostly making sympathetic noises, not asking clarifying questions, especially because there’s only so much he can handle hearing her talk about sex.

Charlie made them FaceTime instead of a normal phone call so that she could tell when he got distracted and stopped listening, which is the only thing stopping him from watching his text thread with Mel. Like, she could be typing this very second.

“Jesus, you’re twitchy.”

Frank shrugs, not really sure how else to be. He took Bunny on a long run after school, hoping to tire them both out, but it only worked for one of them. (Bunny is passed out on her dog bed, nose and paws twitching in sleep. He loves her, but she also taunts him sometimes.) He’s already stress-cleaned most of the apartment, even the dishes created from cooking and eating his dinner, and Mel insisted it was her turn to grade their classes’ quizzes, so he didn’t even have work to bring home.

His phone starts buzzing with an incoming call before he can respond to Charlie, and he drops it in surprise when he sees who it is.

“The fuck?” Charlie asks, voice a little muffled, and he scrambles to pick it up.

“Mel’scallinggottagobye,” he says, one breathless, smashed-together word, and ends the FaceTime before she can reply. 

The phone call is a blur. He actually pinches himself when it becomes clear that she’s not only accepting his help, but actually asking for it, and then again when she gives her address, because what the fuck? Charlie calls back twice while they’re still talking and he ignores them, already sliding his shoes on and grabbing his jacket. 

He stares at Google Maps for a minute after the call ends, still not believing that she’s lived 0.3 miles—4 min by car, 8 min walking, 4 min by bike - no transit suggested because it’s such a short walk—away the whole fucking time. Holy shit, can he get her to let him give her rides?? Maybe he can introduce it as a carpool and then gradually start driving more and more. She’ll probably realize what he’s doing, though. Hmm. Food for thought.

Charlie calls a third time as he heads out, which he accepts. He already regrets that he didn’t put his gloves on before leaving his building, but doesn’t want to juggle that with his phone now. Oh well. Maybe the cold will stop him from getting too carried away in his head. And stop him from popping a boner because he’s going to touch her hair, Jesus Christ—

“The fuck?” Charlie repeats, which, fair.

“Dude, Mel asked me to come check if she has lice.”

“No way.”

“Right?”

“Ok, wow,” Charlie says, switching into the same voice Frank uses when he’s coaching. Having a sibling is so creepy sometimes. “This is your moment. Prime friend material. For God’s sake, don’t make it weird, Frankie.”

Frank rolls his eyes. “Thanks, Charlie. I was planning to make it weird, but now that you said that, I definitely won’t.”

“You know what I mean.”

Frank wishes he didn’t. He is, unfortunately, the king of making it weird.

“You didn’t listen to my advice about Abby and look where that ended up.”

If Frank weren’t speedwalking down a public sidewalk (FaceTime call on speaker like an asshole, oops), he would stare judgmentally at Charlie until she backtracked and apologized. He settles for staying quiet and hoping she gets the message. He’s seen how effective it is when Mel does that with students, but he’s still terrible at doing it himself. Silence wants to be filled, dammit.

“And you didn’t even ask my advice about your back, and look where that ended up,” Charlie continues. 

So the blank stare is a key part of the equation. Good to know.

“This is such a great pep talk,” Frank says, looking both ways before he jogs across the street on a red. “I feel super great about myself and totally get why Mel should want me as a friend.”

“When will you get this through your stupid man brain: it’s not about you!” Charlie says, sounding frustrated. “You’re great, Frankie, and anyone would be lucky to have you as a friend. Except Yolanda, she can do better.” Frank sputters indignantly. “But this situation is about helping Mel and also about clearly communicating to her that you see her as more than a coworker. I bet you haven’t even said that you think of her as a friend, have you?”

Frank scrunches up his nose. “That’s not a normal thing that people say in casual conversation.”

“When have you ever cared about what’s normal to say in conversation?”

Which...fair. He’s pretty sure he spent five entire minutes telling Abby about the Chernow biography of Hamilton on their first date. Luckily for him, she thought his nerdiness was cute. Well. She did back then, at least.

 “You have two objectives tonight, Frankie,” Charlie tells him, as though she’s M and he’s Bond. Which is kind of flattering, actually, so he’s happy to go along with it. “One is to do whatever Mel asks you to do to help. The other is to explicitly say something about being friends.”

“I can do that,” Frank says, switching back to Google Maps for a second to confirm that he’s in the right place. He is. “Ok, gotta go. Love you.”

“Love you too, Frankie. Don’t be weird.”

She hangs up before he can thank her for the vote of confidence. He takes a minute to rub his hands together and blow on them, realizing now just how stupid it was not to wear gloves when his hands are going to be in her hair, and hits the buzzer when they’re less ice cube and more stethoscope on the back (how are they always so cold?). 

He can’t help taking the stairs two or three at a time, not when he knows she’s waiting for him. He slows at the landing when he sees her hovering in the doorway, giving himself a minute to take her in and remember how to breathe because she’s in her PJs (shorts!! She’s wearing shorts!!) and her hair is down and she’s the most beautiful person in the universe, probably. 

He can’t help studying her as he gets closer, noting the unhappy tilt to her lips and the way she’s anxiously wringing her hands together, trying not to perv on how soft and smooth her legs look. He wants to run a hand all the way up her leg, feel every inch of skin and see how she responds the higher he goes. Is she ticklish? She seems like she’d be ticklish.

She ushers him in, and he tries not to look around too obviously as he kicks off his shoes and drops his stuff by the door. He recognizes the coffee table and TV from Becca’s Instagram over break, but most of it is new. Of course she has fairy lights strung around the room, casting a soft, ethereal glow over everything. There’s something so cozy about the space, nothing like his own apartment, despite attempts from him and the kids and Yo and Cassie and Charlie to make it less gray and boring, and he wishes he could pour over every inch, ask about every photo and poster and book, but he knows he’s here on a mission.

“What’s the plan, boss?” he asks, hoping she already knows how this should work. He probably should have reread a guide on lice on the way over instead of talking to Charlie. Oops.

Mel’s clearly prepared, though, even if she doesn’t know where to do it, and he thinks the arrangement he comes up with isn’t too weird, him behind her on the couch. She laughed at his suggestion of her sitting in his lap, which is better than looking openly revolted at the thought but worse than accepting it, so he’s counting it as a W. 

He crosses a leg in front of him so he’s halfway to sitting cross-legged to make sure there isn’t any accidental touching that will excite his body anymore than it already is. Don’t make it weird.

He tries to blow warmth into his hands surreptitiously, praying that his hands aren’t still cold enough to shock and repulse her, and relaxes slightly when she doesn’t really react to the first pass of his fingers along her part.

It’s genuinely like something he would dream up, sitting so close to Mel and listening to her low voice and carding his fingers through her hair. He has to keep reminding himself to look for lice and not just zone out at feeling how soft and silky her hair is, just like he imagined. The flashlight is a helpful visual prompt. 

It’s also easy not to get too lost in his own perverted thoughts when he’s desperate to hear every word Mel wants to share with him and when so many of those words are heartbreaking. 

(And distressingly vague, of course. What, exactly, is she kind of jealous of? Does she want a boyfriend? He volunteers as tribute.)

Frank doesn’t think Mel realizes just how sad the whole story is, the fact that her family forgot to check her hair because they were so focused on Becca, the idea that she had learned so young to stop herself from emoting too loudly for fear of setting Becca off, the way she’s clearly learned to cut any strong feelings about her own comfort or wellbeing off at the pass. Even when she describes how much fun they had the next day, she starts by saying how happy Becca was, that they got to do Becca’s favorite craft and watch her favorite TV show. 

When does Mel ever get to put herself first? Has she ever had somebody tell her that it’s ok to do that? Has she ever had somebody show her how?

“I feel like she’s leaving me behind,” Mel says, almost a whisper. Frank wishes he could wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her back. He wishes she would let herself cry the way she probably needs to. He wishes this meant anything to her, since it means so much to him. “Sorry, I’m not sure why I’m saying all of this to you.”

Frank stares at the back of her ear, which he somehow finds cute. (What the fuck?) This is his chance, right? Charlie will kill him if he doesn’t take it.

“You’ve had a long, hard day,” he says. She shivers and he leans back, realizing he’s a little too close to her ear and probably making her uncomfortable. “It can be nice to share what’s on your mind with a friend. I’m happy to listen.”

He lets her switch the subject to his own family since she’s clearly reached the limit of talking about herself and her own feelings. It’s hilarious that she thought being captain of the soccer team had anything to do with being cool, not just reminding everyone when the bus would leave and annoying TJ into actually doing his Geometry homework. 

He accidentally rambles about the Erie Triangle, flashing back to his Hamilton monologue to Abby on their first date yet somehow unable to stop himself from talking, but she sounds genuinely interested in it. As though he needed more reasons to find her perfect, Jesus. 

He doesn’t want to stop touching her, even when he’s gone around her whole head in excruciating detail, but he also doesn’t want to prolong her anxiety. He reluctantly draws back, and she turns to him with a devastatingly open expression. 

She trusts him, he realizes. She might not think of him as anything more than a co-teacher, but her trust of him extends here, to her quiet living room with its little glimpses into a whole life he knows so little about.