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Frank met his step sister Mel for the first time at the wedding while wrangling his out-of-control toddler who yelled like a viking storming into battle: AHHHHHHH! Tanner leapt into Mel’s lap, his hands pawing at her in her sky-blue bridesmaid’s dress, pulling the bodice down, strapless, no resistance. AHHHH!!!! Mama! Tanner cried in his victory, freeing the boob.
“No, not mama– sorry, Mel,” Frank said, and tried very very hard not to stare at her exposed breasts as he pried Tanner off of her. He could see the resemblance right away between her and Abby: same strawberry blonde hair, small features, big eyes. But Frank knew Tanner didn't actually think Mel was his mother, but she had boobs, and he had hunger, and Mama was the only word he knew.
Mel’s eyes snapped up to him, smiling as she pulled her top back up, covering her dusty pink nipples. “Good thing you’re my step brother.”
Her words soaked him like cold water, to the core. Step brother. Oh, okay. Technically, it would be true within the next three hours, as his dad walked down the aisle to her mom. He thought: oh, I’ve just met you too late, as he got snippets of her all day long: her breasts, bare in the bridal suite. Her eyes, misty, as her mom said her vows. Her touch, on Frank’s elbow, while they danced to ABBA. Her voice, soft. Her perfume, wild rose, and the brush of her hair when he fixed a bobby pin sticking out.
AHHHH!!! Tanner called from somewhere across the dance floor, mid-song, so Frank tore himself away, and didn’t speak to Mel directly for another year and a half.
By then, she’d already taken the family name: Melissa Langdon.
Dr. Langdon, very soon.
+
Frank and Joyce talked every Sunday, because Joyce had a degree in early childhood education and taught every grade up through third and he could text her just about any question, like, Tanner just ate a crayon, is his poop going to be purple? and she’d reassure him that he would be fine. And she wouldn’t make him feel badly about it, not like Abby, who would snipe at him: you’re a medical doctor, those are non toxic, it’s fine, you should know that.
Dr. Abigail Langdon specialized in plastic surgery, and she hired the three best nannies on the east coast for Tanner, and booked a C-section for Millie because she’d determined the tearing on the first round was too painful to endure again.
“Plus they’ll sew my abs closed,” Abby said, as if that was a real pro.
So yeah, Frank called Joyce, Mel’s mom, and they talked every Sunday and she never hung up because Tanner was doing his warrior shout in the background. She accepted every finger painting and sent back photos of it hung on the fridge. She visited Frank every week in the first round of rehab, and took his hand and said, “Mel would be here too, but she’s in Oregon and can’t get away.”
University of Oregon, her med school program. Frank didn’t take it personally, because he’d only spent five days with Mel in between the wedding and his spiraling drug problem during a family trip to Key Biscayne Florida.
“I think you two would really get along,” Joyce said, and squeezed his hand.
So no, Mel never visited him during the 90 days he spent in rehab right after Millie was born and Abby’s abs got sewn shut. But she wrote him letters, beautiful, longform letters on pink stationary and she sent one a day, so he’d always have something in his mailbox.
+
During his first relapse the following year, the family took a trip to the Rockies, and stayed at their log cabin. By three a.m, on the second day he’d run out of pills, having swallowed his last oxy hours earlier. He had that itch under his skin, pulsing, and he knew Abby would crush his balls with her pointy elbow if he woke her up to fuck, so he padded downstairs, already on Tinder trying to find someone local to hook him up with more pills.
He spotted Mel in the kitchen, leaning into the fridge. It was the only light cutting through the darkness. He saw her bare feet, long pajama bottoms and skimpy tank top, one strap already hanging off her shoulder. He crossed the room without thinking, and noticed her headphones in, perfect, and his excuse for touching her would be I thought you were Abby because they’d both worn the same “L” monogrammed pajama pants that night, the supersoft ones from her side hustle Etsy shop.
He’d touch her ass, he decided. It stuck out from the fridge as she pushed all the Yoplait aside to try to reach the waters. He stood behind her and bracketed his hands on her hips, thumbs pressing up into the depressions in her lower back, fingers splayed across her stomach, and she jumped, made a yelp, and then she backed up right into his erection, the fridge swinging closed, lights out, he thought, like at summer camp, and he held her steady as she caught her breath and felt him, long line of his cock hitting the place where her bottom met her quad.
She grabbed one of his hands, chest heaving, he could hear how loud she was breathing, and the tinny music coming out the headphone, and she spun and Frank thought, oh she’s going to hit me, and she gripped the hair right on the base of his neck and pulled. She might’ve meant it as a warning, but it turned him on, so he swooped down and captured her lips, and then he couldn’t stop touching her, like he’d turned seventeen again, the clock striking back to a time when nothing could ever quench him.
He kept kissing her, so hungry, making a mark on her, surely, from his teeth on her lip and then her neck, right by the shell of her ear. “You’re so pretty,” he whispered and spun her to the counter, and said, “Baby girl, get up for me,” and she hopped up on the counter because while he could probably lift her, the oxy was wearing off and he didn’t want the twinge in his back, no not when he needed his discs in tip top shape so he could kneel between her legs and taste her.
He considered using his fingers, but she might be a virgin, because she had that good girl charm and Joyce mentioned once she didn’t have a date to senior prom.
“I’m going to eat you, honey,” and then, pulled her pants off and inhaled, and left her cotton underwear. He added, a “Abby, baby,” just for good measure, before he touched her, in case that’s the hard firm line she wanted to draw for him, but she was so turned on. He could tell. It made her tighten her grip on his hair, so, that’s all–that’s all he needed to tongue at her underwear, taste the fabric before sucking it, ruining the pair of panties, making a wet patch over her clit. She always wore this crazy monogrammed shit, and he wondered if the lights were on if it would say Melissa Landgon on the back of them, or maybe, Monday, or maybe, slut, because she shuddered so hard when he sucked her, and then swiped into her with his tongue.
Oh, she was trying to be so quiet for him, he thought. Her moan was shuddery, twisted off, contained. He only heard the sound of her breath drumming in his ears, her sharp inhale as he tasted her.
Abby waxed and Mel didn’t, but even that wouldn’t have mattered, because he’d know his wife’s pussy anywhere, he’d know her taste, he’d know her moans. He’d know the soft plane of her belly. He’d feel the scar there, and Frank palmed right above her cunt, pressing there, because some girls liked that, tilting the hips back for a better angle. He lapped at her until she was sobbing, so close to the edge, and then he had to know if she really was a virgin, the addict brain taking over, and he felt very carefully along the seam of her labia, one finger, so soft, and felt a the rubbery push of resistance, and oh she was, so he stopped that and sucked so hard she’d forget all about his finger, the plausible deniability shattering if he felt a hymen on his wife who’d had two fucking kids. Abby hadn’t even been a virgin when they met, her so racy and cool she’d already slept with a celebrity, some rock star. Good for her.
Good for him, to be the first man to make Mel Lagdon come, her head thrown back with a thunk on the counter. Be careful baby, he wanted to say, but couldn’t, because he couldn’t move his mouth as she seized and clenched, coming with a long sob, her hands gripping so tight in his hair, and her thighs moving with it. He lapped her through it, until she finally relaxed, and he didn’t stop, even when her hand relaxed in his hair.
“Get down,” he said. “You can do one more for me, right honey?”
Mel slid off the counter, gripping it as her legs wobbled and got on the tiled floor, and Frank gave her five seconds to recover before he looped her thighs over his shoulders and went back for seconds, licking her up, trying to commit it to memory. He couldn’t use his fingers, not there, not risk it, so he snaked a hand under her top and played with her nipple, pulling, tugging so hard, rolling it as she flexed her hips to meet him, grinding against his face, chasing that second high.
“Can’t wake the kids, honey,” Frank said when she got a little too loud, and pulled a dishcloth off the oven and placed it in her mouth. “You know how hard it is to get Tanner down.”
He could feel how wet her face was, and that made him pause, even the addict brain recoiling.
“Baby we can take a break,” he said, because he didn’t want to scare her, lifting his head. He couldn’t see her, not in the very pitch black kitchen, the only light from the clock on the microwave, a pinprick of blue right above him. Mel moaned through the fabric, a cut-off, frustrated sound, and gripped his hair and put his face back on her cunt. “Okay, Abby, baby,” he said, and went back to work.
He wondered if the towel in her mouth were monogrammed. L, for Langdon. Or maybe something witty, like Happy Hunting with a big buck on it. She sold a lot of those types of towels. He’d have to take these back with him, stuff them in his suitcase. Dirty, her spit all over them. He’d take her laundry too, claim he’d mixed it with the kids and they’d just do it all later. Her underwear, where was it? Somewhere around her ankles. He scrabbled for it, struggling to multi-task, but he unlooped them from her ankles and stuffed them in his pocket.
She moaned so hard when he sucked on her clit and stroked her vulva with his fingers, the outside, not touching the tender place, and she came so hard this time he tasted the fluid she released, a rush of it, like she was preparing already for his cock to take her, it to smooth the way. No baby, not like that, not on the floor. He’d fuck her in a very soft bed and film it, immortalize it. How cool would that be? A tape of it. The deflowering. Slow, methodical, and he could direct her to look into the camera and speak to her future self, insisting on how much she loved it.
But even his addict brain figured he’d hit his limit on sexing Mel Langdon in the dark, so after she came, he pulled her pajama pants back up, and took the towel from her mouth. He threw it under the sink to fetch later. Before someone helpful came along to try and clean it.
“There you go,” Frank said. “You can thank me later.” And since he couldn’t see her, he said. “With your mouth, baby.” Yes, in her mouth. Not her cunt, he’d save that.
He had her underwear in his pocket and he left her on the floor to pull herself together, wipe her face. He’d made it half-way back to his and Abby’s room when the lights came on.
“Oh shit,” Frank said, recoiling from it, and he spotted Becca staring at him from the hallway, one eye screwed shut from the sudden brightness.
“Oh it’s you.” Her voice was laden with sleep. “I thought a racoon got in.”
Frank glanced back at the kitchen. He couldn’t see Mel, her body blocked by the island.
Becca rubbed her eyes. She turned the lights off. “Stop being so loud.”
On the way back to the room, Frank tried to keep the lie straight– maybe he’d been upstairs, in the library, and thought Abby was grabbing water? He couldn’t go back to his room and find her, right? How could his fucking wife be in two places at once? So he went to the study and put Mel’s panties in his mouth, and turned all the lights off and stroked himself and he came so hard, and once he stopped panting he cleaned himself up and climbed into the marital bed.
Then he climbed out when his Tinder catfish matched with a druggy and Frank left to buy more pills, and drifted off to sleep after taking two more.
Abby actually wanted to fuck that next morning, miracle of all miracles, so he pushed into her from behind, and felt the difference in the swing of her hips and thought, yeah, no way. No fucking way he’d have missed that. He was still a little high for that sex, too, so he really only snapped into it at lunch the following day, and thought, so crisp and clear: holy shit.
Holy. Shit.
He’d slept with his step sister. (Whom he’d only really known for seven business days, but still).
His step sister, who had said she’d had the flu that day and refused to leave her room. Frank could literally see the closed door to her and Becca’s shared bedroom. And she’d been crying. He’d probably get arrested. And unlike his first DUI, this would probably stick.
“Can you give me five minutes?” He asked Abby, who glared at him, because she had one boob out for Millie and she was pulling at her hair. “I want to check on Mel.”
“Fetch me a drink,” Abby said, and Frank fished a lemonade out of the fridge and poured it in her special Stanley and filled it with fresh ice, and when she flashed a grateful smile at him, he felt like the shittest person in the world. She released him with a word and Frank forced himself to go knock on Mel’s door.
“Mel- uh– are you okay?” Frank asked.
“No,” Mel said.
“Can I come in?”
She mumbled her reply, a yes, and Frank pushed open the door, realizing he didn’t have a plan to avoid jail time. But would he ever? What the fuck did people do, after messing up so badly? Come clean, his rational brain said.
Mel was under the covers in a lump. He couldn’t see her face but heard the tremor in her voice earlier that suggested she’d been crying.
“I had four oxys last night,” Frank said, deciding only the truth could save him. “So—clearly–”
“You’ve relapsed?” Mel asked, sitting up in bed. She wore a white button down, Landgon Family est. 2018 stitched on her right breast pocket. Her top seller for brides. Her pink silk sleeping mask was rucked up in her hair, and her eyes were red rimmed, and her bottom lip trembled when she looked at him, like that was the most devastating thing he could’ve said to her.
“Maybe six, I lost count.”
Mel got out of bed, and she wasn’t wearing the plaid pants from before, her legs bare save for pink fuzzy socks. She bit her lip. And then she grasped her hands around his neck and squeezed, rocking him with it. “I’m so sorry.”
“Uh?” Frank said, totally confused. “Thanks?”
She pulled away, and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Um, that makes more sense now.” She gestured to his face. “Being high.”
“Very,” Frank said. “Super.”
“I– uh— should I tell Abby?”
Oh. Sucking in a breath, Frank tried to process it. How much would Abby kill him? What with her long talons and pointy elbows and inescapable wit, he’d be toast.
Mel started crying harder, and retreated to the bed. Sitting on the edge, she gripped the mattress with her hands. “I was just surprised, Frank, I’m sorry.”
Why was she apologizing to him? Was this some fucked up byproduct of the patriarchy?
Her brow furrowed at him, and then she mouthed ah. “I knew I wasn’t Abby, Frank.”
“Oh.” Oh— he hadn’t thought this was potentially a mutually assured destruction kind of scenario. But he didn’t think she should take on a shred of culpability.
“How about this, I’ll confess the oxy to Abby and the rest of this never happened?”
“Deal,” Mel said.
Frank told Abby, as soon as Millie unlatched from the boob, she didn’t even cry, just dialed the number for the rehab center and he left three hours later.
He didn’t see Mel Langdon in person for the next four years.
What happened next - in summary:
2019 - Rehab.
2020 - Pandemic, divorce – here, he removed the dueling sources of his stress: his marriage and parenting his very young children. Yes, tha was the horrible truth. He couldn’t work sixty hours as a resident and come back to screaming kids and a wife he didn’t love and not get high. So, Abby took primary custody, and Frank toiled through the pandemic, his penance, and thanked a higher power that it all happened that way, as his colleagues worried about infecting their loved ones, and he just— endured, singularly. Served his patients, alone. Stayed sober. And through that crucible, it was like all the shit he’d pulled people through mattered, because it meant he was alive when other people needed him. He took all the extra shifts, carried as much of that weight as he could, even with his bad back.
2021 - Joyce died from COVID and Frank sent flowers and worked a double in her honor the whole day of the funeral, trying to help other mothers from reaching the same fate.
2022 - His only text to Mel the whole year was a “Happy Birthday.” No response.
+
In 2023, he got a voicemail from Mel inviting him to Thanksgiving. I made new sweatshirts, Mel told him. You can pick up yours in person.
Thanks, but I’ll be working, he sent her. He was a R3 now, but he couldn’t ask the others to work over the holidays when they had families to return to.
Please come to dinner, Mel texted.
So Frank asked for the day off and Dana gave it to him, because he’d worked every single shift he could over the past three years, and he flew to his dad’s third vacation house in Nashville, Southwest, $79 because he tried not to use his trust fund anymore, living like a pauper on $48k a year, because that’s how Mel and Joyce had lived, willingly, gratefully, like they had their health and their friends and their family, and that’s all they needed, not really nice clothes or vacations or cars that could go more than 65 MPH on the highway without the front axle shaking.
Frank still didn’t have custody of his kids, only supervised visitation. But Abby wasn’t cruel about it. She never made him feel like a deadbeat, instead she’d reach across her kitchen table with a manicured hand and say, whatever you need to do to stay sober is the most important thing for them, and said it like it was actually true, like that’s what his kids needed most of all, not the paper doll version of him before, the one he’d made through crushed pills and getting high and fucking his step sister, seeking all these ways to escape the play room.. Abby made it seem like leaving was the right thing to do, the noble thing, to peer in through the doll house’s plastic windows, observe everything he’d left behind, and somehow– somehow his kids would be better for it in the end.
At dinner, it was him, Becca and his dad, and Frank realized how lonely they must’ve all been, with Joyce gone. Abby gone, the kids gone. His dad grabbed two dozen donuts on Black Friday, an absurd amount, way too many, but Frank realized, had Abby been there, and the kids— that would’ve been right. Abby would’ve had three, and Tanner two, and Millie one, and him three, and there, that was nine donuts alone. Joyce made twelve.
Mel’s R1 year at the VA in Huntsville wasn’t going well, because she hated the south, and wanted to come back home. Her mom’s grave was in Pittsburgh.
“An RI spot just opened up at PTMH,” Frank said. “ATV accident.” Dr. Leonardo would be out the entire year as he recovered. “If you got an interview there, Presby might be interested too.”
Mel’s attention focused on him. “You’d do that?”
“Sure,” Frank said. “I mean, you’d have to endure being within city limits with me, but–” but it would be fine, he told himself. He’d been sober four and a half years, divorced for three.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Mel said. Not– not true, but okay.
After dinner, Mel found him on the back porch.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “It means a lot to your dad.”
Frank wondered when his dad and Mel became so close, and then decided it didn’t matter, because he’d loved Joyce right from the start too.
Mel gripped a Mike’s hard lemonade in one hand, the other arm hugging her stomach. She hesitated, and checked that no one was listening before she leaned in. “I wanted to apologize in person.”
“For what?”
Mel’s eyes widened, and she took a big sip of her drink, wincing from the alcohol. She coughed. “The assault, Frank.”
“What?” Frank couldn’t understand what she was talking about.
Mel bit her lip. “You were both incapacitated and under the impression I was someone else. You wouldn’t normally have consented to have sex with me.”
“Oh,” Frank said. And then thought, goddamn the patriarchy really runs deep, doesn’t it? Because how else could she twist that whole thing into being her fault?
“Yeah,” Mel took another sip of her lemonade, and didn’t look at him.
It was only because he’d been sober for so long, done all the very hard awful work of dredging up how terrible of a person he was that Frank could admit this: “I knew it was you,” Frank said, but that wasn’t good enough, so he continued: “The whole time.”
His words startled Mel. “What?”
“I knew.”
Her face twisted with confusion, and she set the drink down. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” Frank said, annoyed at her. “I wanted to, so I did. I did a lot of reckless, impulsive and frankly totally batshit insane things when I was high.”
Mel nodded, and picked the drink back up, and had the rest, crushing the can. “Wow.”
“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “I really am.”
They sat in silence on the porch for a half hour, stewing over it, but they both didn’t have any words left to talk about it. He asked if she wanted that PTMH interview, and she said she did.
So Frank nodded, and later called Robby on the way to the airport, explaining Mel’s VA situation. He took a 9 o’clock red eye back to Pittsburgh, so he could keep the tally to seven business days.
Eight, if he counted all the passing thoughts he’d had about her over the time he’d been gone, every two-second snippet of him seeking her out in a crowded room, fooled by the flash of a stranger’s blonde hair. Every thirty-second highlight reel of his mouth on her cunt. Every hour long session he had with his therapist about it. Every dream he’d had about her. Every shudder he felt when he smelled fresh cut roses. All of that, he’d bottle up and count as a single day.
So, Eight. He’d spent eight business days with Dr. Mel Landgon when she accepted the offer to transfer to PMTH.
+
“We need to move in with Frank.” Becca said, eyes wide, pixels glitching out on the family zoom call. “I don’t want to live alone in the city,
“No– absolutely not,” Frank said, and then had Becca, Mel and his dad all cajoling him.
When he spoke to Abby about it a week later, a bite of her tuna nicoise salad already speared and mid-air, approaching her mouth, she froze. The fork hovered while she thought about it, and then, three seconds later she snapped at the salad like a shark catching a baby seal. “I think it’s a great idea,” she said, mouth full.
“A great idea?” Frank repeated. He leaned across the table, her, not getting it. “I barely know them.” Abby waved her hand in front of her face as she chewed. “That’s your fault. They’re both wonderful. Mel and I spent a week in New Mexico in the dry heat spas and she’s a blast. Becca too.”
Frank had declined every family trip since the Rockies, for obvious reasons. “I don’t need two roommates.” His salary had ballooned to $342k that year as a baby attending. This, plus his trust fund, meant he’d never need a roommate ever again.
“You could have the kids a couple nights a week.” Abby said. Her eyes met his - they were the same color as Mel’s, honey brown, but lined with kohl. Abby wore makeup. Mel never did. Frank felt this sudden urge to catalogue all the differences between them, tally them all up and keep a list so that he could quantify all the ways Mel Langdon could never be his. Not like Abby, who he’d somehow tricked into loving him, all those years ago.
Visitation. He didn’t have overnight visitation yet. “I’ve just made attending,” he said as a warning. Big change. Big changes meant instability. Meant the cravings might come back.
“You can’t live your whole life with training wheels on,” Abby said, and ate more of her salad. “Besides, the kids love her, and I would personally feel more comfortable if there’s a known sober adult in the house at all times.” She chewed. “Plus, if you get overwhelmed–” she put her hand over his and squeezed. Her nails were red, long, polished. “She can always take the kids, at any time.”
“She’s not a servant,” Frank said, annoyed that Abby was signing Mel up to be his live-in nanny.
Abby shook her head. “No, she’s not. But let’s have the decency not to sit here and pretend that it wouldn’t be good for you.”
“And why’s that?” Frank asked, going in for the kill. Because he always, always suspected Abby knew that something had happened between him and Mel. She didn’t seem to take it personally, because she had the self confidence of a Victoria’s Secret supermodel and knew it was Frank’s pond scum self that was the problem.
Abby shrugged. “I gave you my opinion. You do what you want with it.”
Visitation. Overnight. Frank needed that. Needed to not feel like such a deadbeat all the time. He wanted some of the luster he got at work, the respect from saving people’s lives, to follow him home, actually permeate his body, worm its way into his heart.
“Okay, roommates,” he said, and rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Great, fantastic. Two roommates at 33.”
“You’re 34.” Abby corrected him
+
Frank’s dad insisted on buying them a huge two-story brownstone with a small backyard. Five beds. One for each member of the family. It would mean the kids would have to double up if a guest came over, but Abby said Tanner was old enough to understand sharing and wouldn’t mind someone in his Ralph Lauren themed room.
Frank didn’t even get the master. Mel did. Becca assigned him a small room on the first floor that opened up to the garden. All the other bedrooms were upstairs, and Becca told him he had to take that one to fight off any robbers.
“Okay, I’ll get right on it,” he said as they moved in. He didn’t touch the boxes due to his back, but instead directed the flow of traffic.
Becca gestured at him, a come hither motion. “Frank, I need your help.” She gestured for him to follow her and they snaked through the movers and made it to the master bedroom. There, she’d already started putting away Mel’s clothes in her dresser. “Help.”
With his own room to unsnarl, Frank hesitated. Becca patted the floor next to him. “Fold.”
Frank grumbled as he got down on the floor and Becca pushed him a box labeled underwear and intimates. Frank pushed it back to her. “I’m not unpacking that.”
“Why not?” Becca asked. She held up one of Mel’s sports bras from her athleisure box and folded it in half.
Why? Frank wasn’t going to paw through and fold her fucking underwear. “It’s not appropriate."
“Why not?” Becca asked, and picked up another sports bra, a crop top. “You fold Millie’s underwear. Mel has underwear.”
Frank’s brain short circuited. “Why are you being so weird?”
That seemed to pierce Becca, and she stopped folding. She paused, then reached for a pair of leggings. She shrugged. “I figure you’ve already been intimate.”
Oh shit, Frank thought. Becca stared at him, but she didn’t seem mad about it. She must’ve known it wasn’t a raccoon moaning in the night.
“That was–”
Becca pushed the box to him. “Put it away, Frank.”
He obeyed.
+
So now Frank knew every single possibility for what kind of underwear Mel Langdon could be wearing under her black PTMH scrubs, every color of the rainbow in cotton thong, and he mentally steeled himself by leaning across the nurse’s station and wondering what he’d done to deserve this level of cosmic torment. The answer, of course: drugs. He’d done a shit ton of drugs.
He imagined that every time he’d fast-forwarded through a negative emotion by getting high, he’d accumulated them like raindrops, and now it would never stop pouring with Dr. Mel Langdon bounding onto the floor her very first day and waving at everyone, vibrating with excitement.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Langdon, but everyone calls me Mel.” She squealed. “I’m so excited to be here.”
Everyone stared at her. Half the staff must’ve gotten the step sister memo, but the rest, slack-jawed, searched for Frank.
“And would you like to share your relation to our other Dr. Langdon?” Robby said, facing the group at huddle up.
Mel beamed. “Oh, we’re married,” she said, and Robby’s head whipped to her so fast.
“That wasn’t on the HR form.”
Holding up her left hand, she wiggled her bare fingers. “I’m kidding. That was– that was a joke.” She cleared her throat and looked at her shoes. “I’m sorry if that was inappropriate.”
“We’re step siblings,” Frank said, and Mel pointed at him as if to say bingo.
“We do live together though,” Mel said to Robby. “Do we need to tell HR?”
Frank wanted to melt into the floor. “We’re roommates.”
“Ew, why?” Santos said. “You’re an attending.”
“My sister has special needs and didn’t want us to live alone.”
Mouthing, ah, Santos seemed satisfied, like everything checked out: Mel, socially awkward. Frank, not a lecherous beast who’d already moved on to his first wife’s clone.
“I’ve only known her for eight business days,” Frank said, deciding that helpful information needed to be public knowledge.
“Our parents were married for three years,” Mel said. “You were on the groupchat.”
Frank ignored the barb. “Immaterrial. Eight days.”
“There’s no way that’s right,” Mel said, and started counting days on her fingers. There was the wedding, and then Key Biscayne, and then we saw each other at Christmas…
“I’ve been taking excellent records, Dr. King.” Frank said, salt in the wound.
Mel straightened. “It’s Dr. Langdon. Ever since med school.” She turned her chin up at Frank, in a very, we’ll settle this later kind of attitude and then beamed at the rest of the PTMH staff.
“Okay, well,” Robby said, clearly too stunned to even care. “Step sibling roommates.”
“Eight days,” Frank reminded them, because that part was super super important. “I don’t participate in the group chat.”
+
Mel nipped at his heels all morning, the one resident who refused to be pawned off on some other schmuck. “There’s no way it was only eight days,” she said. “No way.”
“Business days,” he clarified. He didn’t count weekends.
“I saw you on Thanksgiving!” Mel said, as she followed two steps behind him all the way to the trauma bay. “That alone was a whole day.”
Frank shook his head as he gloved up. “Nope, not overnight, doesn’t count.”
“That’s insane!” Mel said. “You’d have to count every thirteen hour increment, because that’s more than half of day–”
“I really can’t do this right now,” Frank said as a patient came in, and Mel just stunned him and was superb the whole way through, and they completed an intra-aortic balloon in 56 minutes, and he knew the more they worked together the faster they’d get to the PTMH record: 51 minutes.
They could even get to 49, he knew, because he saw it in her instantly, the way she’d latch right onto his train of thought and move through it, handed him what he needed without asking. Like a livewire, he knew he’d get burned if he touched her again, if thought about her thighs looped over his shoulders, so he didn’t even say “Good job, Dr. Langdon,” when they finished. Because that would be confirming things, he thought, confirming that he wanted her there at PTMH. Wanted her, period.
+
Becca’s special interest was the occult. It came in handy two weeks later, because Mel kept walking around the house in her underwear (boyshorts – how could he have predicted that those would be the problem for him?).
He bought one of her spells from her Etsy shop, a $50 deluxe package, and put in the order notes: spell for peace and QUIET with my roommates who will now be FULLY CLOTHED at all times. He printed out the receipt and taped it to the fridge, underlining the “fully clothed” part for good measure.
It worked, and Mel started wearing the same plaid pajama pants as before, and Frank considered it a threat, a veiled fuck you after he’d let her think she assaulted him for three years, so he didn’t say anything about it and didn’t request a lifeline from Becca.
“You know, I sell love spells,” Becca said to him as she ate ice cream at the kitchen counter.
Frank didn’t take the bait. “That’s nice.”
“Powerful ones,” she said. “One ninety-nine.” She eyed him. “I’d even give you a discount.”
“I see,” Frank said.
“I have an exceptionally high success rate.”
Great, a love spell. Frank bought one later that night.
He put in the order notes: Millie + Tanner + Me.
Becca refunded him immediately, and knocked on his door and gave him a hug and said, “I don’t think you need that.” And as she hugged him, she whispered: “Even if you did, I’d do that one for free.”
“Thanks Becca.”
While he really wanted to evict his super weird step sisters, Abby was right, it did make him less nervous to start overnight visitation, because they already knew their step-aunties, so that made it less foreign, one less stranger in the room when they came over.
One day, he’d hit 70/30 custody. That was the goal. Well, the short-term goal. The long-term goal was that Tanner and Millie each could have one happy memory with him– one singular trip to the zoo or plate of scrambled eggs at breakfast. One time he picked them up from school with a stomachache and made things better. Oh– they’d tell their therapists all about him, he knew. He could even provide them with a printout, all the ways he’d already failed them. But he’d try, every day, stack the deck with better times, in hopes one would finally stick.
So, his kids. That made it so he could never move out, not until Mel found her true love from Becca’s spells, or hit attending and didn’t need the Langdon cash. He started a new countdown on his phone – days left, he titled it, imagining the finish line for her attending promotion. Probably some time in July 2027. 1095 days away.
+
Six months into their living arrangement, Mel started introducing herself exclusively as “Dr. Langdon,” and referred to him as “the other doctor Langdon.”
“I was here first!” Frank said. “I was first all along! I’m five years older than you.”
Garcia rolled her eyes over the patient (thankfully unconscious). “Not this again.”
“No! I’m Dr. Langdon,” Mel insisted. “Becca told me as much.”
“Oh great, let’s bring the witch into this,” he said, and Garcia stomped on his foot so hard he thought she must’ve broken a toe. “OW!”
Mel waved Garcia off. “No, no, she has an Etsy shop and everything.”
“Oh, sorry,” Garcia said. “I thought he was just flexing his particular brand of insufferable asshole.”
“Hey, I’m very respectful of Becca’s magical powers,” Frank said, because that was the joke, Becca had said once, that her shop played into the biases that all people with Autism somehow had superhuman strengths like card counting and polyglotism or the ability to speak to ghosts. He wasn’t 100% sure though, if it were a wink-wink kind of situation, or if she actually believed in communicating with the spirit realm. Both she and Mel were raised Catholic.
“Her spells finally got you to finally wear clothes around the house,” Frank said, a point in her favor.
Garica sucked in a breath, and then Mel stomped on his foot, same one. “Goddamn!”
“It’s my house too!” Mel said. “Besides, you’re my step brother, it’s fine.”
Frank shot a look at Garcia, to say, you hearing this? Garcia’s eyes were so wide she was frozen in place. “Uh–” she said.
“Exactly, thank you,” Frank said, because that’s the reaction he was looking for.
Mel glanced between them. “What? It’s my house too.”
After that exchange, Mel started introducing him to all her patients as “The other Dr. Langdon, whom I live with.” Or “Dr. Langdon, who made me breakfast this morning–” (Ok, it was eggs, he explained and he was already making them for his kids, so yes, she’d gotten some too). So then that started - “This is Dr. Langdon,” then she’d flash her home screen, and she’d say, “And these are the the Langdon clan,” and it was a picture of her and Millie and Tanner so it made it seem like they were her kids too.
And Frank just totally combusted every single time, and he complained to Robby about it, and then when Robby didn’t do anything, Dana, and then when Dana didn’t do anything, HR, and HR told him it wasn’t technically sexual harassment, but he could file a complaint if he wanted, so he just gave up on all that and took up smoking.
“That is literally so gross,” Mel would say, even though Frank very purposefully blew it out away from her face, general orbit. “That’s absolutely the most disgusting thing imaginable. Becca has asthma, you know.”
But the smoking worked great, and it allowed him to excuse himself when he and the rest of the MDs went out for happy hour, and he could lean against the building and plot all the ways to get out of the situation, which he could really only interpret as Mel’s very firm and weird style of flirting with him, which she did only to torture him, because she saw the way he looked at her in the stupid L plaid pajama pants, and she probably knew he woke up hard thinking about her, and she probably figured he’d one day snap and pull her to the new kitchen floor, because those exact same fucking monogram towels hung there, new ones, not the dirty spit ones which he’d thankfully thrown away when he’d gotten an ounce of self respect and dignity two years ago.
“Mel’s in there crying again,” Santos said, and asked to bum a cigarette.
“What now?” Frank asked, and gave her one. “Need a light?”
She did. Santos took a drag. “She’s convinced she’s undatable and damaged forever.” She eyed him. “You have anything to do with that?”
“No,” Frank said automatically. “She came pre-programmed with all that baggage.” No prom date. Not his fault.
“Okay, well, please give her a pep talk,” Santos said. She pulled out her phone, “My friend’s roommate is single and if she’s not a total lunatic she can probably get laid and calm down about it.”
“Dicey,” Frank said, because who knew how Mel would react around normal people, not freaks like them, ER doctors. “I give it 50-50.”
Santos snorted. “I see.”
“Or maybe Becca can cast one of her love spells and fix it.”
Santos wagged her finger at him. “You better be careful with that one. Mel said it’s a total monkey’s paw kind of a reading. You find out your future, but you might not want to know.”
“Fuck, what’s that supposed to mean?” He extinguished his cigarette, because Mel didn’t like it and he’d have to take her home and listen to her cry, most likely.
“She said, and I quote, that ‘Becca told me I’d be Dr. Langdon one day.’”
“Oh shit, that explains a lot.”
“Not Mrs.,” Santos said. “Doctor.”
Frank hadn’t planned on ever getting married again. But he wondered if Becca’s spell omitted the “Mrs” on purpose, or if that’s all the occult gave her: “Dr.” Then his brain caught up: “Why the fuck would it ever be ‘Mrs?’” So weird.
Santos clapped him on the arm. “Good luck with that, dude.”
Frank took Mel home, because she was absolutely hysterical. She and Samira had gotten into some kind of crying feedback loop, both comparing their complete lack of romantic success and connected it to their overachieving careers, and like, suppression of the self, or something, and at the end of the 15 minute conversation both women were sobbing and had convinced themselves they’d die alone surrounded by cats. But– in their defense, it had been a super bad day in the ER. They had gotten a sweet old woman who’d been fearful of losing her 13 furry companions after falling in her apartment, not really capable of living alone anymore.
“Oh my god, and I can’t even orgasm,” Mel said, hands buried in her face, sobbing, doubled over in the front seat. “I’m a freak.”
“You’re not a freak,” Frank said, and because he had first hand knowledge, he said, “And clearly, you can.” Twice, his rat brain supplied.
“I am,” Mel said, and cried even harder. “That was the only time.”
Well shit, that did kind of make it his responsibility, if he’d given her some kind of complex about oral sex now.
“It was probably just exciting,” he said, turning onto their street. “Adreanline. You just need to figure out what you like.”
“But I’ve tried,” Mel said. “It’s not the same.”
“I don’t know–” Frank said. “Maybe it’s a semi-public thing.” Being accused of being a raccoon, he thought dryly. “You’ll figure it out.” He pulled into the driveway. “Okay, out you go.”
Mel locked the doors, and Frank sat back in his seat and grinded his teeth, because his step sister was really, really getting on his last nerve. “Mel, go get on Tinder, figure it out.”
“I’ve tried!” Mel said, and then suddenly unlocked the car and sprinted out and Frank thought no fucking way, because he knew she’d be doing something stupid, so he followed her to his bedroom and saw her there and just thought– no fucking way, and did a u-turn and went upstairs and went into Millie’s empty room, and locked the door.
Oral sex with M - pinged in their shared Google calendar, for later that night, and he texted her: holy shit, Becca can see that.
She doesn’t care, Mel texted back.
Fine! Fine. The whole way downstairs he gave himself a mental pep talk and decided on a very clear, very simple strategy: just be really bad at it. Be really, absurdly bad at licking Mel open that she’d get bored of him and push his head away, and then everything would be fine – well, except for Mel and the lack of orgasm, but that was her problem, and then he thought: holy shit I really am the patriarchy.
He froze, on the stairwell, torn. Addict brain said, go go go, and his rational brain said go go go, but in the other direction, back upstairs. He stayed frozen for so long that he heard Mel call out “Frank?”
Shit. Fuck. Back upstairs, he thought, but she spotted him and was faster than him, more nimble, and she cornered him on the landing.
“I think you owe it to me to prove this one way or another,” Mel said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I have a sample size of 1 for successful orgasms.”
“That’s really not my problem,” Frank said.
“And you have to stop smoking, it’s disgusting,” Mel said as she took off her top, and threw it over the edge of the stairwell. “I won’t kiss you until you do.”
Oh really? Frank thought, addict brain taking over, with her topless and he grabbed her and spun her close, one hand on her hip, the other cupping her chin, his thumb on her bottom lip, holding it there.
“I can smell it,” Mel said, and unbuttoned her jeans, wiggling out of them, swatting his hand away as she pulled them off. “Should I leave this on?” she asked, meaning, her underwear. “You liked it, last time.”
“This is literally just voyeurism," Frank said.
Mel cocked her head at him, and held her watch up to her mouth. “Hey Siri, text Becca, ‘please don’t come out of your room.’” She stepped back. “There.”
Frank swayed, trying to figure out what to do, because she was mostly naked in front of him, and his eyes lingered over her breasts, and she had him, right where she wanted him. He half thought it would all be some kind of practical joke, and she’d jump back and say, “Gotcha!”
“You still a virgin?” He asked, praying, pleading that the spirit world had hooked her up with someone by now.
Mel shook her head, eyes locked on his. “Nothing has fit.”
“Oh my fucking God,” Frank said, rolling his eyes, his cock deciding for him. “Get down.”
The landing wasn’t big, a 4x4 square, made of creaky wood, so he propped her up three steps up, and spread her legs and pushed her underwear aside with his nose because, why not? He thought? Keep with the weird-ass theme, and he stroked up her calf and her skin was so smooth he thought, motherfucker you shaved. It was November.
“Honey, tell me how much you want it,” he said. She eased her fingers into his hair, chest already trembling with excitement.
“Uh– it would help if you did something,” she said, and he licked into her, and she choked out an “oh, please.”
He wouldn’t tease her, not with his knees on the stairs, and thought, oh honey because she tasted so sweet, and he could only imagine how badly she needed to get off to beg him, strip off all her clothes and sink to the floor for him. He reached a hand up to her mouth and stuck his fingers in, and said, “wet them, baby,” and she sucked, holy shit, and as soon as he withdrew them to stroke her, she choked out: “I’ve been practicing my thank you, with my mouth.”
Oh, he’d get her there so fast, and sucked on her clit as she mewled and got really fucking loud, the brownstown old and creaky, the sound hitting the walls and reverberating, and he stroked at her opening but felt so much resistance he gave up on it, deciding he’d need to examine it later, scold her for being so slutty, practicing on cocks other than his, but she came so fast, chest heaving, pulling at his hair, hard, saying, thank you, like a sob, and then she covered her mouth with her hand and burst into tears again and said, “I thought I was broken.”
“Honey,” Frank said as he encouraged her to sit up. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
“Whew,” she said. “You can–” she sniffed. “Upstairs.”
She led him to the master, her room, and asked what was best for his back and so he laid back and she blew him, and then explained she’d had a procedure when she was fourteen, a surgical incision to open her closed hymen.
“But they left it mostly,” she said. Catholicism, she explained. Future husband shit. “I haven’t ever gone back.”
He could get one digit in, maybe two if he prepped her, he figured. “Want me to try?” He asked, half joking, and Mel bit her lip and said yeah, and scooted back on the bed.
He was half-tempted to get a glove and go to town, lube it and see what happened, but she was right there, laid back, and she said she didn’t have any lube, so problem number one right there, Frank thought, but he sure as hell wasn’t going back downstairs for it, so he went back in with his mouth, sucking on her, telling her how pretty she was, perfect, her cunt contracting as he did it, and then she relaxed, oh, and he could try to stroke her.
Right away, he could tell–nope, not happening, not past a digit, and that was pushing it, the tissue stretching some but not budging beyond that. It was thicker, more rubbery than average - scar tissue, maybe, from the first procedure. So he gave up on that, stroking her outside, licking her all over until she came so hard she cried, again, and then she proceeded to have another fifteen minute meltdown, during which she demanded Frank spoon her and tell her she was pretty again. Over her shoulder, he could see that she was texting Samira: so what do i need to do to finally get a boyfriend?
“Spells,” Frank suggested, and bit her shoulder, and she swatted at him.
“Not funny,” she said, but she put the phone on the charger and told him he wasn’t allowed to sneak out in the night.
He had the phenomenal opportunity to prove to her that it was all very bad sex with him the next morning, and the only thing that turned her on was the semi-public thing, so he bit the side of her neck and said, “again?” and she backed up into his erection and ground down into it, making a sigh and tossing her head back, and she said, “help me?” so he snaked his hand around, over hers, covering her fingers as she circled her clit, and he directed her that way, so really she was doing all the work, she was making herself stutter and cry out and take a big gulp of air, and she was the only saying, “Frank, please, please, a little more,” but he couldn’t give her any more, he had to tell her, not with her pussy like that, closed up for him, sealed tight, she’d just have to be happy like this, little circles, swinging her hips back into him, rubbing his dick up the cleft of her ass–and he thought, no fucking way– but goddman, she’d gone to Catholic school, hadn’t she? But maybe that was enough, just a catch and press of the head of his cock against her rim and she shuddered and came so hard, and he thought, well fuck, there goes that.
So anyway, he went into work totally spiraling, but at least all the sexing seemed to calm Mel down, because she acted like a normal person all day–not snipping at him, wearing non-monogrammed clothes, and introducing him to a patient as “Dr. Langdon, my stepbrother of 8 days,” which wasn’t true, technically, but it was a hell of a lot better than before.
Freak in the sheets, normal person in the streets. Great, he’d take it. He’d given up all semblance of trying to figure it out and decided he’d roll with it, as long as she wanted it, and then emigrate to Canada when it all went south. Well, maybe not that far. Ohio, maybe, because he could still drive and take his kids every other weekend.
But that still left the problem of her hymen, because he couldn’t exactly just spear her like a Capri-Sun, that would hurt. And honestly probably wouldn’t work, because his dick was not sharp and pointy like the sugary drink’s straw, so all he’d really succeed in doing was hurting her. And he’d already done so much of that, already, hadn’t he? With the kitchen and the lying and the drugs. And maybe also the teasing at work. And the not-boyfriend thing.
Which would be pretty hard, considering he was still her step brother.
+
“The spirit realm is very specific,” Becca said as she laid down the sun tarot card. “There will be a new Langdon baby.” Her eyes met Frank’s. “Human baby,” she clarified, as if he were worried about Mel giving birth to a minotaur. Already, he regretted asking her for a reading, but he’d been sexing Mel for the past six weeks, sans penetration, and he desperately wanted someone to grab him by the cuff and shake him out of it.
First card: The Hanged Man.
Second card: Ten of wands.
Third card: Sun.
She’d flipped over each card, pausing, tilting her head to the side. “The first card represents the past. The Hanged Man represents the death of self.” She eyed him. “In your case, I’d connect it to getting sober.” She dropped her voice a register, “the warning, of course, is to stay sober.” Her fingertip touched the drawing’s face. “You see, he dangles, unconcerned. He is sacrificing, waiting, embracing the moment. You would do well to remember this.
“Now this one represents the present: the ten of wands.” The drawing person hunched over, hugging the bundle of wands like it were his lover’s embrace. “It suggests a deeper burden, these things you must carry in the present.” She tapped it twice. “Not surprising. You will think about which of these you will drop.”
“Okay,” Frank said, the whole thing wasn’t super helpful, but he’d paid $79, and Becca had promised to do her best.
The last card. An infant riding a white horse. Oh shit, Frank thought.
“Final card, your future.” Becca studied it, and cleared her throat. “The Sun. Officially, possibilities. But the spirit realm is very specific. There will be a Langdon child.” Her mouth formed a thin line. She covered the card, like she didn’t want the baby and horse to hear. “Maybe you should consider birth control?”
“Jesus Christ,” Frank said and shoved his face in between his palms. “Becca. Please–”
She held up her hand. “I can’t change what the spirit world is telling me.” She sighed. “I am merely a conduit.”
“A conduit, got it,” Frank said. He locked eyes with Becca. “So. Birth control.”
She nodded. “Birth control.”
+
See, the problem was that was the total batshit insane thing that Mel would try to pull, baby trapping him, because when he mentioned her getting an IUD, her hands already down the front of his scrub pants, palming him, demanding he be hard for her, she cocked her head to the side as she sunk to her knees.
“Would that be a bad thing?” she asked.
“Mel, Jesus Christ, Mel,” he babbled, because yes, absolutely yes.
Already, he knew this was the wand to drop, sexing up his step sister. Stop it, the spirit realm warned, swatting him across the shoulder with a rolled up newspaper. But it was hard, really hard, with Mel’s soft mouth around him, enveloping him after a very long, frustrating day, her practiced thank you perfect, lips plush. He’d make her swallow. No genetic material floating around, virgin birth.
She talked about it, all the time, getting the surgery. No, Mel, no, he told her. Absolutely not.
Mel pouted, but seemed to bordering on listening to him. That is, until the new flock of interns arrived.
+
“Okay so that’s Dr. Langdon and his wife,” Santos said, introducing the gaggle of interns to the floor.
“Whoa,” Frank said, holding his hand up. “Not married.”
Santos winked at the interns. “I’ll give one-hundred dollars to whoever gets them to admit they’re already married.” She smiled and did a half turn. “Follow me, losers.” As they walked away, she swatted Langdon’s chest. “You see, he’s running his own bet trying to convince you they’re step siblings.”
+
“Have you ever slept together?” One of the interns probed Mel the following week.
“Well-” Mel said, at the same time that Frank said, “No!”
“Mel!” he said. “MEL! THE ANSWER IS NO!” Goddamn, how could the answer be anything other than no, out in public at work? The vein in his forehead bulged. So little oxygen traveled to Frank’s brain as he huffed that he worried he might pass out. He needed a paper bag, desperately.
Mel’s eyes swept over him, and she turned back to the intern. “Him, Tanner and me have shared a bed in Key Biscayne.”
“Tanner?” the intern said, eyes wide, expecting a threesome.
Mel clicked into her phone and shared a photo: Tanner, covered in spaghetti.
“Oh,” the intern said, deflated.
“Everyone else had norovirus,” Mel said with a shrug. “Thus,” she winked at Frank. “The bed sharing.”
+
After he refused to have anal sex with her four times, Mel prepped herself and snuck into his bedroom, and blew him but wouldn’t let him come, and stared him right in the eye and said, “It’ll be so easy. You’ll just slip right in.”
“Jesus Christ, Mel,” Frank said, and covered his eyes with his hands. He needed an MRI, stat, to uncover if he were at risk of an aneurysm. Maybe the spirit world could hook him up with an easy trip into oblivion. “Fine, you know what, fine.” He scooted back on the bed. “Hop on.”
Mel shot him a devilish expression, and climbed on top of him. She still wore her short shorts and she pulled a condom from back pocket, and a bottle of lube, and Frank was slightly shocked at the use of a prophylactic, but he wasn’t questioning it. All vibes, no sanity at this point.
“There’s literally nothing anatomically gratifying about this for you,” he said, describing the flexures of the rectum in excruciating detail, lest she have skipped that day in medical school.
“Then why does it feel good?” Mel asked, and Frank debated explaining nerve endings and the mythos of female desire, but gave up when she rolled the condom on him, and smeared more lube on him, and slid right on his dick, goddamn, she prepped great, and she shuddered as she took him in, a goosebump prickle that made her twitch. “Holy shit, Frank,” she said, one palm flat on her chest as she braced herself, the other on the bed, her half bent over him.
She rocked forward, a jerky, half-motion that caused her to gasp.
“Jesus,” he grabbed her hip to steady her. Already, sweat prickled at the back of his neck, his dick totally onboard with being inside of her, hot, tight, totally unlike vaginal sex. “Go slow.”
Mel shook her head, and made another rock, another hiss and bucking up with her hips involuntarily.
“Baby,” Frank said, “Just– stay there.” He said, and stroked, finding her so wet, dripping.
Mel nodded, biting her lip, eyes scrunched closed. She let out a soft, “oh,” as he rubbed her, thumb rooted at her clit, very firm and soft pressure, feeling her thighs flex and her pelvis jump from the inside as she warmed up to the pleasure, the blood rushing to her face in a hot blush.
“I uh– have an appointment with Abby,” Mel said, and gasped, and shook her head as he kept stroking her. Her thighs started flexing, grinding on him involuntarily, as she chased the clitorial stimulation.
“You don’t need a plastic surgeon.” Frank said. Not a thing on her needed changing.
She shook her hand, and grabbed his other hand, pulling it up to her breast. He tugged at her nipple and she gasped and leaned forward, then inched back, seemingly trapped with his cock in her ass, the one angle that lit her up as she panted and canted her hips.
“Frank, please,” she said. She was so close, her cunt hot under his fingers. “Please let me.”
“Do it properly,” he said, releasing her breast. “Up and down.”
Mel bit her lip and nodded, scrunching her eyes closed. She let out a shaky breath, and pulled her hips up, so tense, and then sank back down, one fluid, slow stroke.
“That’s it,” he said, and rewarded her with some very firm touches, until her thighs trembled, and kept trembling, flexing again, the slow grind as she lost her mind, panting how much she loved it. He pinched her nipple with his other and she shouted, whole chest seizing up as she came, helpless, rocking her hips into her touch, which caused his dick to rub her deeper in her ass, and made her toss her head back and curse and squeeze him so tight as she shook through it.
“Shit, Frank,” she said as she recovered, and she huffed out a breath. “You’re still?”
“Yes,” he said, voice tight.
Mel carefully lowered herself down, chest to chest, and pulled his hands up to her breasts, instructing him to make her feel good again, and how could he resist with her nipples rolling under his fingers, and her mouth on his, slotting her head to the side so she could taste him.
“I love it,” she chanted. “Frank, I love it.” Her hips flexed, all she could manage with no leverage, dick clamped in her ass, sensitive. “Please, please.” Oh, this girl, crazy. Crazy hot, her grip on him.
Frank threw his head back, concentrating on not ramming into her, but that gave her his neck to suck, which she did, and that did it, her hot words in his ear: “You’ll be able to do this for real so soon.”
He came, so hard, filling her up if not for the condom. Thank fuck, Frank thought when she finally climbed off and figured it all out, and then demanded he come up to her very clean bed.
“I’ll fix it later,” she said, dismissively, meaning his bed, and whatever state they’d left it in. That meant, probably never. She’d probably never wash his sheets, and instead throw everything away, maybe even the mattress too, so he’d be forced up into the master with her.
Whatever, he couldn’t fucking care, and went upstairs with her, and cuddled with her, and then licked into her, such a good girl for him, to reward her, for being so gutsy.
She held his head there by threading her fingers through his hair and pushing him down. “Abby will fix me,” she said. “I’ve got the appointment.”
And then he thought, oh shit, about three seconds before she came for him, the idea obviously ridiculously hot to her, because really, it would be so much more easier for her to ruin his life with endless orgasms if she could sneak around and offer a quick fuck.
She settled down after that, seemingly satisfied.
But Frank needed to know more. “So you’ve told Abby,” he said, probing.
“Abby knows everything,” Mel confirmed.
“What do you mean, everything?” he asked, post orgasm glow fading so fast.
Mel settled into being the little spoon, and at his stiff posture, grabbed his arm to loop around her. “Cliffnotes version. I would like penetrative sex. You have agreed to provide it. Abby will do the procedure.”
“Mel– that’s–”
“Dr. Langdon was always going to take my virginity,” Mel said with a yawn. “That’s what the spirit world said.” She let out a laugh. “It’ll just be the other one, and then the other one.”
He pulled back like he’d been stunned. “Mel, that’s so not cool.” Where was his phone? Downstairs? Why didn’t his ex-wife clue him in?
“It’s actually the epitome of cool, Frank,” Mel said, turning over. “I told her I understood if she wasn’t comfortable with either outcome.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I really do love the kids,” Mel said. “And Abby has a right to know if we’re in a relationship if I’m around them.”
“Mel–”
“She said she’d do it, and then she said I could do better.”
That was a very Abby thing to say: Him, pond scum. Mel, sublime.
Her eyes slid over him. “But if I’m sure, there’s likely not a better partner for you. Practically speaking.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mel shrugged. “Scheduling. Careers. Kids.” She paused. “Family.”
He got out of bed and practically ran to find his phone: what the fuck is going on with mel and this appointment we have had ZERO conversations about it.
Abby sent back a winky emoji.
Then she sent a wall of text: She said you’ve both gotten to know each other and feel like the step-sibling thing doesn’t represent your friendship, and if you’d met through other circumstances, you’d be dating by now anyway.
Which was actually a pretty non fucked up way of looking at it.
And she knows the kids, and knows me, and in terms of step-parenting, she has a good sense that it would work for her.
Step parenting. Mel would need to give him exactly one hundred blowjobs before that stopped being the weirdest thing he’d ever heard.
So I guess you two just have to see if you have any chemistry???
Frank didn’t know what to type back, his mind devoid of language, of meaning.
She’s going to ask you out once it’s all healed, I guess, and you can say yes or not. I think you should just kiss first. Not everything has to be a one night stand.
You think Mel and I should kiss? Frank sent back.
I mean it’s kind of sweet, isn’t it? She’s trying to be mature about this, at least. She’s always had a crush on you, you know. So you should just let her down gently if it’s gross.
Gross, it was already gross. Grossly inappropriate. Grossly hot. His bed, ruined, probably, he wasn’t going back down there.
Mel grabbed her phone, and shared a google calendar invite with him: De-virginizing, Dr. Langdon, and then the street address of Abby’s clinic.
“Jesus Christ, Mel,” he said, but secretly he was absurdly grateful for the notice, because that meant he could book a spontaneous trip to the Rocky Mountains, and hide out in a cabin. Re-evaluate his life. Avoid sexing Mel King again. Prevent the birth of the minotaur baby.
+
Two days later, one of the interns clapped his hands and made an announcement. “I have irrefutable proof that the Langdons are actually married!” He held up his phone like an Olympic torch. “Gather, everyone.”
Santos squealed and pulled Frank over to the spectacle. His whole face heated up, and he wanted to melt into the floor. Perhaps they’d found out about the appointment. Abby’s website might now offer bespoke hymen removal as a featured service. He tried wriggling out of Santos’s grasp, but she had a firm grip on his scrub top. “Now, now, be a good sport,” she said. “Let’s see what he has to say.”
“Behold!” the intern said, and pulled up Mel’s instagram page (MLandgonMonograms). He flicked through the first photo: a mountain wedding, flowers everywhere. Then the next photo, Mel and Becca, dressed in their sky blue bridesmaid dresses, hugging. Then one of his mom and dad, from Thanksgiving a couple years back, then one of him and Abby– her back turned to the camera, strawberry blonde hair cascading behind her, her white wedding train extending into the grass. Him, reverent. Pre-drugs.
“See?” The intern said, zooming into the image of the bride. The back of her hair. “Proof.” He read the caption. “Family is what you make it. Est. 2018.”
Frank shook Santos off. “Not a chance.”
Santos’s mouth twisted in a half smile. “Could be a quickie Vegas wedding?”
The intern glanced between them, a frown on his face. “Proof. I have it.”
“That’s the other Dr. Langdon,” Frank said. “Abby. First wife.”
“First wife?” Santos said, eyebrows raised. “You already planning on your second?”
“No,” he shot back. He gestured to the phone. “That’s Dr. Langdon.”
“See!” The intern pointed at him. “He said it, he admitted it! Twice.”
Mel walked up to them, “What’s going on?” she asked, sweaty from taking an incoming trauma.
“I have proof you’re married,” the intern said, catching her up to speed on his theories.
Mel listened intently, as if this were a valid attempt. When he finished, she shook her head and pulled out her own phone, pulling up a pic of her and Abby, practically clones.
The intern deflated. “Oh.”
“Nice try,” Mel said, putting her phone back in her pocket. “But I will say, Langdon men do have a type.”
+
Frank hid out in the mountains during the weekend of Mel’s procedure, blowing up Abby’s phone to try and get her to stay out of it. But she kept texting him back all the incredibly reasonable things Mel was telling her, things like: I mean obviously, this isn’t an ideal way to meet someone, but we were both adults when our families came together, so it’s not like anything was ever inappropriate.
And:
I think it’s very rare to have a genuine romantic connection with someone who’s also your friend.
And:
It would be great for the kids to have a very stable couple in their lives, and all of Frank’s attempts at dating have been abysmal.
And:
I won’t take it personally if it doesn’t work out. Worth a shot, you know?
And:
Of course Frank is mortified, who wants to date their adult stepsister?
And it hit him: Holy shit, Mel Langdon knew enough to play the long game, getting Abby on board, and she’d already gotten her hooks into his kids (by which, he meant that she spoiled them rotten and wiped their sticky fingers and read them books at bedtime), and somehow the spirit world supported it, which really just left his father and PTMH. His dad, a non-issue, and PTMH, a maybe-issue, but even Santos’s teasing seemed to be laying the groundwork.
Mel, you absolutely need to get an IUD, he texted her. Can Abby do that?
She doesn’t have any Mel texted some time later, and then, besides, I don’t want anyone else touching me before you. Because, yeah, holy shit, she probably hadn’t even had a proper pelvic exam, so he really would be the first to touch her there, stroke her deeply.
Ok, he needed a gameplan. IUD. Wait a week, avoid babytrapping, still get to fuck Mel properly. Survive a week. A single week. He could do it.
+
Except Mel kept hedging, saying she didn’t want to go to a clinic for birth control, so Frank spent every night in the on-call room until he decided he needed to be firm about the whole no-baby thing, because condoms in her cunt were a total lost cause, never happening.
What if I do it? he asked her, and that got her on board. Thank God, so now he just needed to get an IUD, which as an Emergency Medicine physician, was absurdly easy. He texted her a picture of the package and she thumbs upped it.
He wouldn’t be able to manage an anesthetic, a lidocaine injection, so he’d just have to make do, but the IUD came with an applicator in the kit, so he’d just figure it out at home. Gloves, sanitizer, kit. He’d make it happen.
“It’s healing up fine,” Mel said, a week later, and he’d kept hiding out at the hospital. He had his kids over, and he blushed from forehead down to his chest when he realized what she was talking about.
“Mel, they’re here,” he said, nodding to Tanner and Millie and Becca. “Holy shit.”
“That’s a bad word, daddy,” Tanner said.
Becca nodded sagely. “He only curses when he’s stressed.” She eyed him. “He’s got too many things in motion, that’s what the spirit world says.”
“Becca,” Frank warned, because he really didn’t want his kids getting sucked into her prophecies.
She winced. “Sorry, sorry. I forgot.”
“We’ll be taking one thing off his plate tonight,” Mel said, bouncing up on her heels. “Right, Frank?”
“I thought the other Dr. Langdon did that,” Becca said.
Mel beamed. “She did.” She raised a fist. “Girl power!”
“Okay, that’s.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s get these guys to bed.”
As Frank poured bubbles into the bath, he came up with a game plan: IUD. That was the plan, one he drummed into his skull. IUD. IUD. IUD. No more Langdon babies, please dear God no more Langdon babies.
After tucking them in, he headed for Mel’s room, package in hand, prepared to fight her, present his list of pros (him willing to fuck her without a condom) and hope she’d agree. But when he entered her room, she sat crossed legged in the middle of the bed, wearing purple daisy long pajamas: today’s a beautiful day, she’d monogrammed across the breast pocket. She held her phone up to her ear, cradling it between her neck and shoulders.
“No, I feel good about where we are now,” Mel said, locking eyes with him as he entered. “I mean, we’ll always be a family, but I can’t ignore how compatible I think we are.”
Oh shit, oh crap, Frank thought, because there really was a very small number of people she could be talking to for that sentence to make sense as uttered.
Mmmhmm, she hummed into the phone as agreement, and pulled her bottoms off, no underwear, of course. She beckoned for him to join her on the bed. “Oh no we’ll be so careful,” she promised the person on the other end of the line.
She scooted back until her butt hit her pillows, and she opened her thighs, and when Frank stood ramrod still, watching her, she unbuttoned her pajama top, letting it hang open.
“I think this is what Joyce would’ve wanted,” she said. “For us to be close.”
She trailed her fingers down, petting her cunt, very softly.
Hang up, he mouthed to her, and she shook her head. Her top fell open more, and he saw the swell of her breasts, and her pink nipples and thought: she could be quiet, right? He crossed the room to her, and climbed up on the bed, flipping into clinician mode, and realized he had to wash his fucking hands, duh, he wasn’t an animal. As he moved to the bathroom, the abrupt u-turn, Mel’s voice took on a stronger tone.
“I think we’ll be together for a very long time. I know you’re not supposed to say those kinds of things but I think you should know the truth about that.”
A warning. This girl. He washed them and came back, and Mel’s expression softened, oh, realization passing across her features as she nodded and gave a quick “uh-huh, yes.” Her eyes met his and he knew this was part of the crucible, the wand he needed to drop, giving a shit about who knew about them and Mel.
“Hand me the phone,” he said, because he knew it was his dad on the other end of the line.
“Frankie, my boy,” His dad said as Mel passed it to him.
Frank put it on speaker, and put the phone face up on the bedspread a couple feet away. He pressed a finger to his lips, quiet, and Mel nodded, snapping her mouth shut.
“What has Mel been telling you?” he asked, probing for information.
His dad rattled on, about Mel’s version of events, as Frank pushed her thighs aside to view Dr. Langdon’s handiwork, trace the seam of her vaginal opening with two digits, palpating for tenderness. She winced, hips bucking back, but it didn’t seem swollen, well-healed, so that meant she could take him. He switched to stroking her g-spot, the two fingers dipping in and out, very soft, firm pressure, and with a thrill he realized she hadn’t been able to do this before, take anything, feel anything up that high part of her inner channel.
Her head tipped back, and she bit her lip.
“What will the folks at the country club say? But you kids only got one life to live, so you gotta live it.”
“I agree.” Frank said. He withdrew his hand, and picked up the IUD package, shaking it. Mel glanced at it, brow wrinkled in confusion. Staring at her very firmly, Frank asked the question you will do this, yes? She nodded, already reaching to put his hand back on her cunt.
“I’m going to ask her on a date,” he said, and Mel’s eyes widened in delight.
His dad laughed. “A little late for that, right? But that’s the smart way to go about things. Old fashioned.”
“Yep, yep,” Frank agreed as Mel drew his hand back. “Okay, going to let you go. One of the kids is crying.”
His dad said cheery goodbyes and Frank cut him off mid-sentence, hanging up.
Mel blinked up at him, gorgeous, totally enthralled. “A date?” she asked, like the spirit world had only promised her handjobs in back alleys and Frank fucking her in the dark.
“Yes, baby,” he said, and put his clean hand back on her, and considered how dirty her phone must be (ten trillion germs, he decided, worse than a toilet seat), so it would be just his dominant hand, stroking up inside her, feeling her clench and shudder around his touch.
“Little more,” she huffed, throwing her head to the side, and Frank grabbed the package. “No, Frank,” she said, voice already soft and resigned.
He reminded her of the deal, and her overall acceptance of birth control as a concept, and she folded. He washed his hands again, and figured it out, Mel letting out a yelp with the bite of the insertion. But he soothed her with his hands, made her come, and she sighed.
“Seven days,” he said, because he had no fucking clue when her period had been, and didn’t trust her enough to tell him. And then, because she tugged his wrist down for a kiss, he paused. “I’ll plan the date. You’ll show up?”
Mel nodded, uh-huh.
“Something nice,” he said. A dinner date on the water. Sparkling lanterns swinging from a patio. Something they could tell people about later, a good story.
Better than this god-awful stepsibling thing.
+
Frank planned a perfect date for him and Mel: a new place down by the water. They could dress up and have a wonderful time and kiss under the twinkle lights prominently featured on their Google reviews.
But as he came home from work a week later- a grueling double shift – he noticed Mel in his bed. Naked. He showered and ignored it.
Whatever Mel, he thought as he collapsed into bed next to her.
“Frank?” Mel asked him. “You’re back?”
He didn’t respond. He was so tired he was already half asleep. As he lay there, sinking and becoming one with the mattress, Mel’s soft hand traced his chest.
“It’s been seven days,” she reminded him, and her fingers skated lower.
No response is the best response, Frank thought, which worked until she wrapped around his limp cock and started tugging.
“I’m exhausted,” he said. He wouldn’t get hard, not with the physical strain of the day he’d had.
Making a humming noise, Mel threw back the covers and mouthed at him, slipping his soft dick into her mouth.
Fuck. The tingling, blood-pooling, toe-curling sensation started rising in his pelvis.
“Mel– I’m not– you have to let me sleep first.”
She opened her big doe eyes at him as she worked him to full hardness, her mouth sloppy and wet as she relaxed her throat and encouraged him to buck up into the back of her throat. Fuck, this girl, he thought. What a minx. What a tease.
Right when he’d started a good rhythm, felt the bolts of pleasure starting to outweigh his complete and total exhaustion, Mel pulled away with a pop.
“It’s okay,” she said as she straddled him. “I’ll do all the work.”
Frank watched her, transfixed, as she lowered himself onto his cock. Her brow wrinkled as she adjusted to it. Her pussy was so tight Frank didn’t think it would fit, but she was wet, slick – like she’d come already, or she’d planned this.
“Oh that’s so good,” she said as she bit her lip and rocked. “Does it feel like that for you?”
“Yeah, baby,” he said. Her pussy was divine and he hadn’t even gotten to greet it properly. Didn’t get his face in there or his fingers or even get in deeper like she’d need. He alternated between craning his neck forward to watch her sink and then giving up and lying flat-backed on the bed, relishing how fucking hot she was.
Mel sunk in more, rocking her hips forward experimentally before she seemed to find the spot she liked. “That’s it,” she said, and braced her hand on his shoulder so she’d have leverage to push herself up.
“Baby, you–” Frank struggled with what he wanted to say. “It’s more than just sticking it in.”
Mel shook her head. “I like it.”
This girl, Frank thought in exasperation and he channeled the absolute last of his strength and resilience to grab her by the hips and urge her up, forward. She gasped and he kept doing it, coaxing her to fuck herself on him.
“Oh– no,” she said in a twist of pleasure as he urged her to move faster. She finally got the picture with a particularly sweet kick of her hips and started fucking him to the right pace. “Please, more,” she begged as he got her going.
“You want more? You gotta do all the work, baby,” Frank said as he slid his grip back to her ass. Mel threw her head forward and moaned and kept going.
“I can’t–I can’t–” she said as she sped up, her whole chest tight with exertion as she rode him. “Please, Frank?”
He wanted to please what her but he knew what she needed and thumbed at her clit, rubbing it hard while not relenting on the face pace of his urging. She tightened and kept clenching so hard around him as he worked her. His own pleasure was galloping ahead with the tightening of his balls and the electric warmth spreading down his tailbone. He needed to spill in this girl. Fill her up with his come and make her so dirty for everything she’d done for him.
She whimpered as he kept up the delicious rubbing and she finally let out a huge sigh as her orgasm washed over her, relief flooding her features as his dick dug into her. He worked her through it as she bit her lip and spasmed around him, squeezing him so tight, and it was the sight of her flushed face and gorgeous breasts and wet cunt that pushed him over the edge to spill in her.
“Oh, yes,” she said, and squeezed her walls around him. Leaning forward, she rubbed her hand on his chest and came in to kiss him. “Please please Frank.”
He gripped her hair and pulled her up for a dirty kiss, what a slut the thought as he emptied into her. What a slut for him, so delighted to be filled with hot come.
“We’ll do it again,” she promised him, eyes so wide when he finally broke the kiss. His cock was still in her, softening. “Yeah?” she begged.
“After I sleep,” Frank said. The headiness and overwhelming sensation from his orgasm was making sleeping an inevitability. “Be a good girl and don’t clean up.”
Mel’s eyes brightened.
+
Frank was pretty sure Mel hadn’t tampered with her IUD because he could feel the strings later. Mel was a medical doctor. She wasn’t going to like, put a bread twist-tie up there or a foreign object to try and fool him.
Sometimes Becca’s eyes followed him as he came out of Mel’s room. But she didn’t seem to judge him. If anything, the spirit realm had already cast the two of them together and Becca’s meddling only affirmed their divine intentions.
Drs. Langdon, together at last.
+
The interns wouldn’t fucking shut up about them already being married. Santos snickered whenever they huddled to compare notes and Frank found it unfair that his love life was somehow the center of the hospital gossip.
“It’s a slow time of year,” Garcia explained. “No pregnancies. No affairs. What are we supposed to talk about, the weather?”
“Maybe some deadly contagious diseases,” Frank said. “Or we could learn things.”
Garcia snorted. “Okay, pick up a book and school us then,” she said. “You first.”
As if that would work, Frank thought.
So one day, about a month into him finally fucking Mel, he mounted the nurses’s station. “Announcement,” he said. “Mel and I are dating.” He locked eyes with Mel as a huge smile broke out across her face. Then she coughed, like she needed to clear it. Her eyebrows bunched together and she turned back to her patient acting like nothing had happened. But as he climbed off his makeshift podium he could see the light in her eyes when she stole kitten-shy glances at him.
One of the interns' mouths opened in shock. “Does this mean–”
“I’ll give one-hundred dollars to whoever never mentions this to me again,” he said and that intern’s mouth shut so fast Frank figured they must be calculating how many ramens it would buy them.
“I sincerely hope you’re kidding,” Santos said as she made a beeline for him. “That’s disgusting.”
“We knew each other for eight whole days, get over it,” Frank said.
And that was the last of that he thought.
+
Two weeks later everyone got thoroughly annoyed with Frank and Mel being in love. It was so boring. Like a repeat of a soap opera. Who cares that Ronaldo got beheaded? It happened eighty-nine episodes ago. His ghost was already back in the regular season making out with Francesca.
+
Six months into Mel and Frank dating, Abby arrived at their condo unannounced. “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said as she gripped her stomach. “I’m pregnant.”
Becca whooped in delight. “Dr. Langdon’s having a baby!” As she clapped her hands together she smirked. “The spirit realm is never wrong about these kinds of things.”