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waiting-for-motivation · 2 years ago

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Something Old, Something Borrowed

Summary: You wear Frankie's clothes a lot and Santiago has feelings about that.

A/N: This was going to be a desperate sexy oneshot and then I wrote it and decided, it doesn't need the sex (I DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE). Fluff, aaaaaall fluff.

Pairing: Santiago x female reader (you) x (hints of Frankie)

Wordcount: 4.1k words

[Series Masterlist] [Main Masterlist]

You wear Frankie’s clothing a lot around the house. It’s not a complaint. It’s a very good look on you, Santiago thinks.

Softworn flannel shirts in chequered patterns of loud screechy red, or blue and yellows that Santiago cannot resist making fun of Frankie for wearing. You’ll sit on the couch, wearing one with a book in your lap and a warm cup of chocolate. On you those ugly fashion crimes look soft and inviting like you were wrapped in one big comfort blanket.

There are also old knitted sweaters that you wear whenever you do house chores. They’re washed out and threading at the seams. Oversized enough to be little bit too big on Frankie, never mind on you, but he still loves them on you.

Frankie’s old corduroy jacket that smells of worn leather and wood chips, that he wraps around your shoulders when you’re out and the Florida climate gets a bit too chilly in the evening.

Santiago has a special kind of fondness for all of them. His favorite though? It’s the old military sweatshirt, a standardized edition they were issued with back in basics when they first joined. It’s a drab old thing. Grey cotton, loose-fitting without any shape or form.

Santiago has the same one. He hates it. It’s scratchy and uncomfortable, the material is not even 100% cotton, some weird cheap polyester and wool blend that left him with red bumps every time he used to wear it. It’s why he had left it with his mom in the early days, stuffed in one of the mountain-pile of boxes packed away in his mom’s old attic along with all his other worldly possessions that he couldn’t carry on his back as he found himself increasingly on foot, never stationary long enough in one place to call it a home.

It’s a horrible sweatshirt. But it’s your favorite and in some odd way, that makes it his favorite too.

You wear it all the time.

On chilly mornings, when you’ve made up your mind to stay inside the house to take care of chores and lazily lounge on the sofa watching some new Netflix show. Whenever you’re down with a cold or a flu, sucking on lemon drops and nursing hot tea.

Back when he was still on missions, taking on long strings of soul-crushing assignments, finding himself in an endless series of forgettable motels and safeholds in one nameless place after another that all congealed into an abstract concept of not home, he’d start feeling homesick. Not for Florida, not for a place, just… maybe, you, and maybe Frankie. Your voices, and your face. There would be a handful of occasions when he finally gave into temptation and just called you (too chicken shit to call Frankie in case he’d still be mad at Santiago for leaving in the first place).

On those occasions, when the dial tone clicked and you finally answered his video call, more often than not the battered old grey sweatshirt would fill his phone screen.

It’s why, when Santiago thinks of that sweatshirt, he thinks of home.

“Shit,” you exclaim.

You’re holding up Frankie’s grey army sweatshirt, inspecting it in your hands, as your face scrunches up tight with a frown.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a hole in the sweatshirt. Gonna have to ask Molly to help me mend it again. I swear lately everytime I fix up one hole on this thing, two more appears.”

Santiago leans down, grabbing the old garment from you. He runs the fabric between his fingers as he inspects it. Close up like this, he really takes a new appreciation for how old and worn this thing has become. There are soy sauce stains that haven’t quite come off during the wash. Fraying threads, the shoulder’s stretched and drooping. There’s clear evidence of your previous attempts to hold this tattered old thing together, patches of threadwork that are starting to wear in the seams along the arm.

It makes him sad to look at it. Even sadder to see you tending to the garment like it’s a wounded bleeding creature. Favorite or not, it’s a lost cause. It needs to go.

“You should throw the old thing out,” Santiago says. “Pretty sure you can just order something similar online.”

You take the sweatshirt back from him, hugging it close to your chest with an indignant huff and puff of your chest. “Yeah, thanks, no. I like this one.”

“Fine, I can ask one of my buddies still in the army to get you the same one.”

“It won’t be the same one, there is just the one,” you mutter as you cling onto the old rag.

Stubborn.

“It’s just a sweatshirt Boa, not even a very good one. I’m pretty sure with the money and effort you’ve wasted patching this old thing up you can get ten of these”.

Santiago looks at you, your fingers brushing against the grey material that’s grown lint all over and the same pang of sadness, of watching you hold onto something old and broken and past its usage hits him all over again. He doesn’t want to look at it.

It’s more than he can bear as he plasters on a grin, to make a joke and make it all go away.

“Stop holding onto old trash, or you’ll become a hoarder like your mom.”

Fuck.

That was definitely the wrong thing to say.

You walk out the room without so much as another word to him. All he gets is a scathing glare that’s cold enough to hit below the freezing point for water, and that’s how Santiago knows he’s in the dog house.

On contemplation, it was a shitty thing to say. He always forgets that you and him, for all your similarities are also very different. Santiago doesn’t hold onto sentimental belongings, the army ironed that out of him before he reached 18. People don’t get to keep personal belongings there period. Any sentimentality and individuality is scrubbed right out of you after basics, they make sure of that.

You, on the other hand, wrap yourself in nostalgia and memorabilia. Trinkets or any old and quirky knick-knacks that make you happy. Anyone who stepped into your home would barely make it three steps before they learned that about you. There are photos of your closest friends hung all over the hallway walls, bookshelves crammed full of photo albums, books, and souvenirs and novelty coffee mugs you’ve picked up from antique markets and gas stations from your road trips with Frankie. You hoard them like little treasures.

So telling you to throw away your husband’s sweatshirt that you practically wear every day, that you’ve had with you through thick and thin through the last ten years, and jokingly calling it trash was… probably not Santiago’s best moment.

It’s how he ends up doing the unthinkable.

Calling his sister.

It shouldn't be as scary as it is. Something as simple as asking his oldest sister if she had held onto his things after selling their mom’s house. It should in theory lead to a simple yes or no answer. It’s not exactly a loaded question.

Except it absolutely fucking is.

And this is Santiago’s second, not brightest moment of the day.

“I’ve always known you’re an idiot, but everytime I talk to you, I’m surprised by just how much of an idiot you can be.”

It’s just the kind of thing you want to hear from your family.

Santiago closes his eyes, teeth clamping down on the tip of his tongue for calm. This is how every conversation between the two of them goes. It's the curse of being the youngest and only son in a family of three sisters. Every question is treated like an accusation. Every sentence of his, a crime.

Santiago is pretty sure he can ask about something as harmless as the weather and still earn himself an earful from his sister, about how the weather has treated her more kindly than Santiago.

Calm, he needs to stay calm.

“Look, Martina, can we just– I was just asking a question. Do you have my boxes or not? There is no need for you to get on my ass like this. I’m only asking because when we sold mom’s house, you took most of the things–”

“I’m sorry, are you accusing me of stealing mom’s things?”

For a millisecond, Santiago's sure his heart stops beating. Blood in his veins freezing cold. Fuck him.

“No, no! That’s not what I was saying at all– I was just asking if you–”

There’s yelling. So much yelling through the earpiece of his phone. His only choice is to put down the receiver against the kitchen counter and wait it out unless he wants to get permanent tinnitus. Hunching across the kitchen counter, he rests his face against the palm of his hand, trying to rub out the tension that’s built between his temples. Getting out of bed today, might have been a mistake for Santiago cause it's proving to be a disaster from start to finish.

The kitchen porch door slides open letting in a draft that draws Santiago’s eyes up far enough to see Frankie enter the house.

The man takes one look at Santiago’s miserably hunched up form then eyes the screaming phone and shoots him a quizzing look.

“Martina,” Santiago offers. It’s the only word of explanation he gives Frankie, but it doesn’t seem like Frankie needs anything else to know what’s going on.

He simply nods, with a sympathetic expression. “She called just to yell at you?”

Santiago eyes the phone where it’s at the counter, it shouldn’t be picking up his and Frankie’s conversation, face down as it is, but he’s not taking risks. He flips the phone face up and mutes it, before continuing.

“No, I called her. Wanted to ask her if she still had my old stuff from mom’s attic.”

In the background Santiago can still hear his sister’s voice shouting and screaming even from a distance. There’s a creative stream of expletives blended seamlessly in English and Spanish until it’s baked into one well-cooked, fuck-you-Santiago-sandwich.

“Pope”, Frankie calls out, pulling Santiago’s attention back to him. “Your boxes are upstairs.”

“What do you mean?”

“Boa took the boxes when your sisters sold the house.”

“She did? Why?”

Frankie hums, one hand sliding over to his forehead to pull off his cap as he cocks his head to look at Santiago like he’s an idiot, before shaking his head at him.

Geez, everyone has it out for him today it seems.

“Your sister was threatening to take them out into her backyard and use them as kindle for a bonfire party. So Boa had me drive over. Thought we should hold onto it because you might still want your stuff someday. Guess she was right.”

Santiago ignores the stab of guilt in his chest, doesn't want to look at it right now. Instead, he picks his phone back up, unmuting it with a quick, “Martina I have to go,” as he presses the end button not a second too soon.

The attic is musty and hot, the smell of sawdust and plain dust hanging in the air. There’s a few humane mouse traps strategically placed in all corners of the space. Not that it seems to be doing any good (the humane ones rarely are, but neither you or Frankie would ever consider changing them for the other option). There’s mouse droppings scattered here and there.

Frankie walks ahead to the middle of the room, pulling a large moth-eaten sheet that reveals a mountain of boxes, with your handwriting scribbled on top marked with his name and descriptors like ‘clothes’, ‘LPs’, ‘school memories’, ‘books’ and finally ‘army stuff.’

There's a strange feeling brewing in his chest that he can't quite define at seeing all his old belongings stored up in yours and Frankie (and now, his) home. Boxes upon boxes, piled up together, the way they used to be in his mom's old place.

A quiet little voice in him that tells him, guess this is home now, and is completely at peace with it-- and Santiago is willfully ignoring the agitation in him at just how at ease he is with it, as he walks towards the boxes.

“This the one?,” Frankie asks as he taps the side of the one box marked 'army stuff', and as he does, a shimmer of dust rises and swirls in the air, leaving his hand coated in a sheen of white-grey soot.

At Santiago’s nod, Frankie drags the box out from the cluster and places it on the middle of the floor. “You wanna do this here or take it downstairs?”

It is one of the smaller boxes, barely spanning the breadth of Frankie's chest. For as much time as the army has been a domineering presence in his life, Santiago always imagined that the physical space it would leave behind would be much bigger than this small box. Even more surprised by how few things eleven years left behind.

“Here is fine.”

Frankie cuts the old tape open with a boxcutter knife, and unfolds the flap, as they both peek into it. There’s an old tin box. Medals that are kept in pristine condition in a glass case. His old service uniform, and other trinkets rattling around in the old cardbox. What is not here, however, is his old army sweatshirt.

“So is what you're looking for in here?” Frankie asks, as he picks up the small tin box and gently shakes it to his ear. Even without opening it Santiago can recognize the sound of the metal chain of his dog tag jingling inside.

"Nothing special," Santiago says, evading the question because he doesn't want to explain how he managed to upset you with his careless comments. Instead, he takes the box from Frankie and opens it.

There’s an old polaroid photo in the metal tin. It’s a bit weathered around the corners, the colors so faded that the blue skies and yellow sand have blended into a muted sepia glaze.

It's a photo of them at the beach, Frankie sitting in the sand, wearing only swim trunks and sunglasses, squinting like the sun is plaguing his eyes, and a grin spreads wide on Santiago's face.

"Holy crap."

From behind him, Frankie leans over, resting his jaw on Santiago's shoulder so he can take a peek at the photo too. "That's a blast from the past. How long ago was that now?"

"Summer before Redfly retired, so that must've been what? seven, eight years ago?" Santiago muses, still smiling at the photo as the memory of the warm heat of the Tunisian sun was blistering at his back, the relieving breeze from the ocean against his forehead like he's being transported right back into the moment and place.

“Remember when Benny nearly broke his leg jumping off the rocks to dive in and Will had to come get him.”

Frankie laughs, "thought Redfly was going to kill them both."

“I can’t even remember holding onto this one," Santiago says, as his fingers rub at the corner of the faded photo, unable to tamper down the smile tugging at his lips as he thinks of the memories. "We should frame this one and put it up with the other polaroids downstairs."

Frankie looks at him, still smiling, but there's a shift in his eyes into something warm and almost glowing.

“It was a good day,” Frankie says, looking down at the photo with a smile on his face that makes Santiago's veins buzz pleasantly.

"Can’t believe you and Boa didn’t just throw all this junk away," Santiago says, more to himself than even Frankie.

Frankie merely shrugs, as his hand reaches over and dips into the box, holding up Santiago's old dog tag and inspects it. “She's a sentimental person. She likes to hold onto things that reminds her of the people she cares about. Makes them feel like they're here even when they're not, she says."

It's a fraction of a millisecond. So brief, Santiago can't even make out fully what the flash of an image he's seeing is. A blurry form trying to rise up to the surface, that he pushes down. Brown eyes, a sharp nose, the same thick hair Santiago's supposedly inherited.

Santiago snaps the tin box in his hand shut. “Whether you hold onto things or not, they're still gone,” Santiago says.

Frankie looks away from the dog tag, eyes scrutinizing Santiago's face with something akin to concern, before he shakes his head and lets out a small chuckle. It's the quiet little laugh he has for Santiago, when Frankie sees something going on in him that Santiago can't himself. The one that tells Santiago, he needs a little bit more time to catch up before he sees it. It used to upset him, a strike to his stubborn pride. Nowadays, he's just made peace with the fact that this is a feeling he's going to constantly encounter when he is living with two people who know him better than he knows himself.

Frankie hums, taking the box from Santiago and carefully folding Santiago's dog tags back into the tin box.

Santiago looks around himself, eyeing the boxes. "My junk must take up what? At least one third of this space. Wouldn't have blamed her if she had just let Martina torch it up."

"I don’t know. I think part of her kept onto it hoping this day would come. You living here, with us.” He gets to his feet, observing the attic and casts one last look into the open box. “What are you looking for anyway?”

“Nothing important. Just uhm–" Santiago hesitates again. He doesn't know why he's being so coy about this, so he fesses up. "My old army sweatshirt. It’s stupid. We had a–" Santiago stops himself, it's not a fight, a tiff at best. But he feels silly as a grown man to call it that. He shakes his head.

"I said something stupid to her this morning, and I wanted to make it up to her. Thought I was going to dig up my old sweatshirt as a peace offering.”

Frankie's eyes squint, head cocking to the side as he regards Santiago with a puzzled look on his face. “Well Boa’s already wearing it isn’t she?”

For a moment, Santiago must've heard him wrong. When would you have had time to get up in the attic, unbox his things, grab his sweatshirt, put it on, and for Frankie to have seen you wear it?

“What do you mean?”

From across, Frankie's folding his arm, back leaning against one of the beams that go from floor to ceiling in the attic. He's giving Santiago that look. The one that tells Santiago that at this moment Frankie wonders if he really used to work in intelligence.

“She’s always wearing it. It's her favorite. Think I saw her with it this morning in the kitchen trying to patch up the latest hole.”

"It's your sweatshirt, Frankie."

"No, I threw mine out after the first year. The material is itchy as hell, gave me rashes all over... Everything okay, Santiago?"

You're standing by the washing machine, putting in another load of laundry, wearing his (not Frankie's) grey army sweatshirt. A warm surge rises in his chest, it spreads along his arms and legs until his fingers go numb with it.

He gets it now. Why he couldn't stand to look at the sweatshirt then. Why it bothered him so much. The way you looked at it, with the same expression in your eyes that you had every time you saw him off at the airport.

Idiot, he's a fucking idiot.

He strides over the length of the floor separating you. You turn when he's not even halfway there yet, his hands already outstretched, reaching for you. One hand cupping the back of your neck, pulling you close to him, the rest of the way, his other settling on the dip of your hip as he drags you closer still.

There's a hitch of a breath. A surprised and muffled attempt at saying his name that gets cut off. His head tilts down, claiming your lips with his, pouring everything he has to say, with a grace that his words can never achieve.

I love you, it says as he slips his tongue into your parted mouth and licks into you.

I'm here now, he promises, thumb caressing the dimple of your cheek.

You're everything to me.

The tension in your shoulder thaws, the rigidness in your back softens until you're humming on his tongue. You melt for him.

You part, and Santiago rests his forehead on yours as he lets you catch your breath, taking a moment to remember, etching the image of your half-lidded eyes and a blissed-out smile into his memory. No photograph or memorabilia could ever do this justice. Not when he gets to have the real thing every day.

"You don't need the sweatshirt," he says.

The warm shade in your eyes cools, specks of annoyance bleeding into them.

"Santiago" His name is a low simmering growl in your throat. The start of a warning that you do not want to have this discussion--and if Santiago keeps pushing it could very well escalate into an argument.

"You don't need it," he continues, eyes fixed on yours, hand gripping just the tiniest bit harder around you, "because I'm not going anywhere anymore."

You freeze on the spot. Eyes blinking, and Santiago can see how you've stopped breathing entirely.

"Santiago," you start, and he pauses, giving you the time for once to find what it is you want to say. But your mouth press close again, a slight trembling of your lower lip, then you look down at your feet without another word.

His heart breaks for you. You're always so put together that sometimes he forgets. You need assurances too.

He's never said anything.

Never made promises.

It's been a year and a half since he stayed, a part of him just assumed (the way he always does) that it'd be clear by now. That you, who know him better than anyone, would know that he's here to stay now.

It's unfair to you that he just assumes.

His hand comes to your chin, tilting you up to his eyes. "You don't need that sweatshirt to remind you of me," Santiago says.

You nod. But he can see it, the way the glossiness of your eyes shimmers in the light from the wet sheen there. Tears threatening to spill, and the same sadness he felt this morning, creeps up at him, clawing at his chest.

"I'm here. I'm not going away again. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before."

A sole tear escapes down your cheek, leaving a wet trail behind and his thumb comes up to brush it away. He's expecting the all familiar self-loathing at making you cry to settle in his spine, but it never comes, never has the chance to, because you choke back a smile, sweet and relieved. The back of your hand wipes away the rest of your tears, the grey matted sleeve, scratching against your soft skin.

He swears to God, if that thing makes you break out in hives.

Dipping down again, he presses his lips to your forehead.

"It's a shitty sweatshirt Boa, it's going to give you rashes, and I'm pretty sure it has asbestos in the threads," he jokes.

This time, instead of storming away, a peal of quiet laughter escapes your lips, and that makes him smile even wider. "But if you still want to hang onto it, next time it goes to pieces, I'll mend it for you. I'll fix it. Everytime it breaks okay?"

You nod against his head, and he just holds you, arms wrapped around you tight like a cocoon, unwilling to let this moment slip away.

"I have other sweatshirts too, you know," he murmurs into your hairline. "Better ones. Sweaters too. Better than Frankie's ugly grandma sweaters ones anyhow."

You laugh again, and a rush of happiness bubbles up his spine as he hears the small contented sigh on your lips that makes him know things are going to be okay before the word leaves your mouth.

"Okay," you murmur. "You fix the sweatshirt and I’ll wear some of your other stuff"

“Deal.”

Dedication and Credits:

@frannyzooey who has been so encouraging and opened a whole new world to me when she decided to harass me with her asks and it's led me to have so much fun with opening up my inbox to requests and prompts for the first time in my life and it's made writing so freeing. I love you and adore you! You are everything. I'm so sorry I butchered your beautiful ask about finding an old smexy photo of Frankie amongst Santiago's army stuff into this abomination. THERE IS NOT EVEN ANY SEX IN HERE.

@jazzelsaur who has been such an important key component to the homecoming universe since I started moving it beyond a one-shot. Her crazy ass avocado hair and her even crazier deranged sexy emotional thoughts and thots. I wrote this one while going ohfuckinghell I can't wait for her to read this, and it's so amazing to have a friend in your life like that when you write.

@thirstworldproblemss the other person that had me going ohfuckingyes I can't wait for her to read this! She is the fuel to my motor, the electricity to my batteries. She is everything you could ever ask for in a friend and so much more.

#sooo fucking cute #i love it soo much

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