Chapter Text
Mel arrived twenty minutes early for the day shift, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. She never understood how her colleagues could show up right in time for handoffs and jump right in like it was nothing. Mel had a routine. She needed to stop at her locker and drop off her bag and winter coat, then she would find the quietest place she could and do her morning crossword. She was incredibly fast, a skill developed over years and influenced by a strangely impressive interest in pop culture, so she could be done in around five minutes. It helped her center herself; you could argue that it put her in a problem-solving mood. Good mindset for an ER doctor.
This morning was no different as she hung up her coat on the hanger inside her locker, and placed two protein bars at the front. In the back, she could see a haphazardly-opened 4 pack of Red Bulls, of which 2 remained. Those were for a friend who had a real tendency to forget to bring his own. She liked to be prepared. She took a deep breath for focus, and closed the door.
“Alan says I need to get a hobby,” Frank said, his face previously obscured by the locker door. She nearly jumped out of her shoes, then quickly readjusted her glasses, which had flown off her nose in the process. She turned her attention to the source of her brief terror.
“Good morning, Frank.” He smiled and placed a palm on her shoulder, apologizing with his eyes for scaring her.
“Morning, Mel. Alan says I need to get a hobby.”
The Alan in question was Frank’s therapist, a middle-aged man with an easily noticeable interest in sweater vests and a serious hatred for nonsense. After Frank’s year from hell (addiction, rehab, divorce, divorced guy apartment hunting,) he had decided it was probably best to look after his own mental health, a more personalized version of the NA meetings he attended weekly. Mel strongly approved, and after a courtship period where he burned through countless therapists for the most trivial reasons, he finally made it stick with Alan.
Mel considered this with the typical seriousness she would employ when Frank wasn’t joking around. “That makes sense. It can be really beneficial for people in recovery to have a healthy outlet. It’s a good idea.”
“Yeah, you guys always agree,” Frank sighed, and dramatically slid down the locker wall to a seated position. Mel just smiled. Despite all of his grumbling, she knew that he liked Alan and trusted his recommendations. It didn’t hurt that she reinforced many of them. It was a two-front assault, but for being a healthy guy.
“So,” Frank said looking up at her, “we need to find a hobby.”
The “we” was already implied. In the past five months, Mel and Frank had developed the sort of codependency that blurred the line between kindred spirits and, well, a little weird. Langdon’s return to the Pitt as a divorced man with limited custody (days off, and the occasional night) had coincided perfectly with Mel suddenly having a lot more free time. Becca had gotten a boyfriend and made a group of friends at her day center, and that meant she didn’t always want to come home. The daily routine of picking Becca up, prepping a safe food option and watching a movie had dwindled to a few nights a week, as Becca often chose to stay for video game nights or card games. It was a big change for Mel, and it stung a bit more than she wanted to admit, but she reminded herself that this was the whole point in the first place, to give Becca a more fulfilling life.
So, these two suddenly lonely doctors had started spending a lot of time together. They were friends from the start, but they’d become each other’s person. On nights where neither of them had care responsibilities, they’d end up heading to Frank’s new apartment, which he jokingly called the Divorce Den. (Conveniently, it was a block away from Mel’s place, which definitely wasn’t on purpose, no sir.) They’d crash on his couch, watching old movies and adding their own sarcastic commentary, often falling asleep there and rushing to get ready in the morning. Mel had an extra key to Frank’s car, Frank knew Becca’s prescriptions and picked them up on busy days. The clothes situation was a nightmare, their wardrobes were constantly in each other’s washing machines. Frank swears he lost 4 sweatshirts in the process.
This was aided by a remarkably similar work schedule, which Mel had suspected was the product of Robby’s request that she “keep an eye on him” after his return. Robby had grown to trust Mel quite a bit, and he noticed that her and Frank had some sort of psychic mind meld that weirded everybody else out. It gave Robby a sense of security to have someone checking up on Frank, making sure he didn’t fall off the sobriety wagon without notice. Mel rejected the premise, and felt hurt for Frank’s sake that his mentor didn’t trust him, but she had no complaints about the outcome. They were attached at the hip, and if you couldn’t find one of them, you just had to find the other.
“Right. What hobby should we do?” Mel crinkled her nose a bit, like she often did when she was deep in thought, which always made Frank grin. He thought it was cute how much you could read her mind by focusing on her features. “Gardening? No, you don’t have a yard. Bird watching? No, too slow for you.”
“Let’s think about it tonight. I want it to be something we both enjoy.” Frank looked sincere, and Mel smiled as a bit of a blush hit her cheeks. Occasionally, Frank could be sweet, when he wasn’t moving at a pace of 5 jokes a minute. She appreciated those occasions. With that, his frantic energy was flinging him towards an incoming trauma, and his feet moved without him to the door. “2 across is ‘cacophony.”
“Frank, you don’t do the crossword, and you say that every day.”
The door was already flinging open as he turned back to her. “One day, it’s gonna be right, and it’ll blow your mind.” He mimicked his head exploding with his hands, and ran off satisfied after she finally laughed.
*****
The shift was q-word for Mel, which was an unexpected mercy in the middle of a rough week. Lots of stitching minor wounds, a couple UTIs, setting broken bones and sending for an ortho consult. Frank, who had been trying really hard to get on something interesting, came up empty-handed after that first trauma and left a little disappointed. Mel always thought it was funny how antsy he was when he just had a normal day. It was like he needed to bring 5 people back to life to feel like he earned the paycheck.
After they both handed off their patients, they had made their way to Frank’s car, which had become the designated carpool vehicle. Mel didn’t mind driving, but her car was too small for Frank to have adequate leg room, and he always preferred to drive. Being a passenger was difficult for him, he needed something to do before he shook his legs so hard the floor broke and he could run them home like the Flintstones. Honestly, on really long days, Mel was thankful to be in the passenger seat and decompress.
They arrived at the Divorce Den (his words, not hers,) and Mel started navigating through streaming channels on Frank’s enormous TV while they decided what to order for dinner.
“I am really in the mood for pizza,” Frank said. “I don’t think anything could move me off of pizza.”
Mel shot him a look of mild disapproval. “I had a slice of Whitaker’s pizza today, I don’t know. I could go for Chinese.”
“I am really in the mood for Chinese. Forget what I said.” Frank grinned at her while she chuckled. He was such a pushover for her. If she said jump, he’d say how high. (She wouldn’t say jump, it didn’t seem ideal for his back. She took it more seriously than he did. She needed to pester him again about the stretches she’d asked him to do.)
*****
Once they had finished up their downright buffet, since Frank always ordered far too much for the two of them, Mel was taking tiny bites of the last egg roll and thinking about his comment from earlier. It’s hard to find a hobby for two ER doctors. They had a decent amount of free time, but she was usually pretty burnt out after a long shift, while he was still wired. Sometimes, she’d look over at him on the couch fiddling with his hands and think you could power a small city just from his kinetic energy.
“What about going for walks? It’s not the most interesting hobby, for sure, but it could be nice to see more of the city.” Mel studied his face for a reaction.
Frank shook his head a little bit. “It’s not a bad idea, but it’s January, and we’re usually free at night. I’d be worried you’d catch a cold.”
Mel always felt a little embarrassed when he worried about her, but it wasn’t a bad point. “What do you have in mind? It would be helpful for me to have a point of reference.”
Frank stared into space for a second, thinking. “Have you ever driven an ATV?”
Mel chucked a pillow at him, and he laughed in protest. “Frank Langdon, I cannot believe that you have managed to stay alive for 33 years. It is remarkable that you were still breathing by the time I got involved.”
“Hey, give me a little credit,” Frank said while pausing the movie. “I made it all this way to make sure you showed up.”
Mel looked away in embarrassment as her face flushed, while she locked her fingers together. Frank did this on purpose, he liked to fluster her and see her reaction. It was… very Frank of him to do. She would tell him to stop, but she’d reluctantly grown to accept that she kind of enjoyed it. She had decided not to interrogate that thought.
They went back and forth throwing out suggestions, all of them not being the right fit for one reason or another. Museums were closed when they were available, knitting was too much like suturing, LEGO sets involved too much bending over for Frank’s comfort. As Mel got up to put the leftovers in Frank’s fridge, which had basically become their shared fridge, the idea hit her like a lightning bolt.
“What about cooking?”
*****
Frank started to reply, then gave himself a second to consider it. When he could tell that she was serious about an idea, he always gave it real thought, shutting down his tendency to make the first joke on his mind. “Why cooking?”
“Well,” Mel began as she came back over to the couch and plopped down with authority, “think about it. How many times have we ordered delivery in the past week?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s every night, Frank, which makes a total of four nights.”
Frank smiled and shook his head a bit, knowing that she probably had that fact stored already, didn’t even need to think about it. Mel was always collecting information about the world around her, passively saving it for a time when it was useful. If he asked her what the weather was like, she didn’t say “you don’t need a jacket,” she said “54 degrees with low cloud cover.” He wanted to examine her brain with a microscope.
“And listen, what do you make for Tanner and Penny when they come over? We essentially share a pantry at this point, I see all the boxed mac and cheeses in your recycling. Wouldn’t it be nice to make them something healthy, from scratch?”
Frank did have to concede the point here. Despite everything he was great at, he had never really learned how to run a kitchen. Throughout college and early med school, he had survived on the typical diet of a single guy in his 20s: protein bars, energy drinks, and microwave ramen with an egg yolk with hot dogs on the side. Then, he met Abby, and she took care of all the cooking throughout med school and his residency. He had gotten used to coming home to a perfectly made meal waiting in the fridge for him, and a lunchbox packed with all of his nutrients. Looking back, he realizes he was kind of an asshole for expecting this. Maybe divorce was fair, to some extent.
“Yeah, I mean, you’re right. It is kind of pathetic that I can’t really make them anything other than eggs,” Frank stated, a little sheepishly.
Mel nodded, not out of agreement that he’s pathetic, but the nod she gave him when he started to agree with her. It was his favorite nod, which made conversations a little unfair. “I could benefit from lessons as well. All I really know how to make are Becca’s safe foods. I’d like to learn how to make something other than spaghetti, now that I have some dinners to myself.”
“You’re making strong arguments, Dr. King. But consider this: our delivery orders are kind of essential to our nightly routine. You’ve always been a fan of a strong routine.”
Mel was slightly annoyed that this was a good argument. He didn’t usually argue back. She liked it that way. “But imagine if we kept a very similar routine, but instead of ordering food, we could make a nice meal together in your kitchen. Personally, I think it could be great fun. It would be like at work, but way lower-stakes, and you can actually make jokes.”
Frank smiled, he had already sort of accepted he was fucked, and there was no getting out of this. He couldn’t say no to Mel King. But he put up a valiant effort. “It’s gonna be hard to find a class that we can make consistently, we’re gonna be tired from work, the lights in a real kitchen are usually bright,”
Mel had heard about enough, and pulled the trick that always worked. She furrowed her brow, and looked directly into his eyes. “Frank. I want to do this.”
“Okay. I’ll find a class.”