i want love that’s warm and sickeningly sweet like honey… the kind that makes your insides all gooey and causes your heart to flutter uncomfortably and causes heat to blossom on your cheeks… but i also want the cool and calm kind of love, the love that’s quiet and steady and stable, where they make you feel like you’re coming home.
Mel looks small and dim when Frank opens the front door to greet her.
“I didn’t know where else to go.” Her arms are wrapped tightly around her stomach. Her voice is low, as if she doesn’t want to disturb the very few stars the Pittsburgh sky is letting them see at three in the morning. As if, more likely, she doesn’t want to disturb Frank’s family sleeping only a floor above them.
But in the quiet of the night, her erratic breathing is the loudest sound he has ever heard. It starts and splutters and stops and restarts all over again every few seconds. Her face is dry. Her lips are pressed in a tight line. He knows what someone looks like on the verge of a breakdown. He knows what she looks like on the edge of a breakdown.
Wordlessly, he asks her to come in by extending his right hand out to her.
Wordlessly, she accepts his invitation by threading their fingers together and squeezing them so tightly his bones grind painfully.
Everything else in the world ceases to matter as soon as he has her in his arms. He closes the front door mostly on instinct, the routine of it ingrained in his brain so deeply he doesn’t even have to think about it. There is nothing else he can see except her, and her pain, and the vulnerability she is trusting him with.
She has never been more honest with him. She has never been more real.
He’s been lucky enough to see her naked, sighing and writhing and giving herself away to the pleasure of his hands, and his mouth, and his body. He’s touched her in places he knows no one else had explored before. That all required trust, absolutely.
But standing fully clothed with his arms around her shoulders, her face buried in the crook of his neck, and her hands gripping his sleep shirt by the back, is the most intimate they have ever been.
A noise from upstairs —halfway between a squeal and a groan— threatens to disturb their peace. But all he does is press their bodies closer together as he lets his lips lightly rest on top of her head. He murmurs, “I’m here,” and he feels her shudder against him, her lips grazing the tendon of his neck as she exhales.
A mere ten feet away, just up a short flight of stairs, Frank’s entire life lies in stillness. He knows his wife is curled up on herself on her side of their bed. He knows this because that is where he left here only a couple of minutes before, his own side of the bed most definitely still warm from his body. Every minute that passes, the coldness settles more and more over those sheets.
His children were peacefully sleeping when he checked on them just minutes before, their little bodies perfectly safe inside their cocoons of blankets, their little minds hopefully perfectly safe in their cocoon of dreams.
“Frank,” Mel whispers, loosening her grip on him as she tries to disentangle from their hug.
He gently shushes her, moving one of his hands to cup the back of her head, his fingers tangling with her hair as he begins to sway their bodies side to side, the movement somewhere between a repetitive shooting motion and a silly awkward dance.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he says, and he means it like he has never meant anything else in his life.
Her arms move slowly to circle his neck, and then, finally, he feels the moment she lets go of every fear and doubt. Her whole weight sags against his body, and his arms are the only thing holding her upright.
Frank tightens his grip on her, unwilling to ever let her go. He knows his crushing hold might not be the most comfortable for her, but there are things one simply must entrap with force and conviction: love, dreams, happiness, the future.
“Frank,” she murmurs again, and this time he can feel the tears leaving her eyes as they wet the side of his neck and the front of his t-shirt.
He doesn’t say anything, just begins massaging the back of her head with his fingers as he keeps swaying their bodies left and right, left and right.
It’s late. There’s no rush. She’s upset, she needs him, and he has been wanting her for so long he has completely forgotten what his life looked like without her in it.
langdon constantly being shown as someone who doesnt understand his wife’s basic needs and getting told how to treat her right vs langdon constantly being able to read and cater to mel’s specific needs without being prompted #thinking
