#aaaand POST! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

idolatrybarbie · 11 months

Text

the world tipped on its side

chapter six - the adults are talking

series masterlist | read on ao3

pairing: francisco "frankie" morales x f!reader

word count: 4.9k

rating & summary: explicit | life is ugly. life is beautiful.

warnings: explicit sexual content, oral sex, unprotected vaginal sex, longing, angst, mention of surgery, physical injury, blood, emergency services, depictions of post-traumatic stress disorder.

notes: i put angst in the middle of the porn and i'm not even sorry. alas, we have reached the penultimate chapter and therefor the consequences of @wannab-urs actions (hurting my feewings through fic).

Frankie ducks low below your waist, kissing up your calves. He’s been moving up and down your legs and between your thighs for a while now; never where you need him. Fifteen minutes of gentle touches and kitten licks to the sensitive skin between your legs. Another five, and you’re going to kill him.

“Frankie,” you groan, tugging at his hair.

He chuckles, nosing at your thigh. “Yes?”

“Please. Please just—Frankie, touch me.”

“I like to watch you,” he says.

“And I like to come,” you say.

Frankie glances at the alarm clock by your bedside. “I know that if the last hour proves anything.”

It’s barely four o’clock in the morning.

Nightmares startled you from sleep at around two-thirty. You’d woken up thrashing in bed, almost elbowing him in the nose. His arms, warm and weighty around you, had you melting back into his chest.

Now he’s halfway down the mattress, teasing you. You can’t help but roll your eyes.

“You’re pretty when you’re pissy,” Frankie says.

You hook a leg around his back, toes digging into his shoulder. “Then I must be fucking gorgeous.” You think back to when you first met him: an interaction dripping in sarcasm, and god, his smile. The same smile is flashing up at you now.

“Can’t disagree with you there,” Frankie says.

“You aren’t being a very good unicorn, Francisco.” You give another tug to his brown locks, strands of grey peppered in here and there.

Frankie runs a finger over your core, sliding gently through wetness. You shift your legs, moving yourself closer. He’s right there. If only you could just…

Abruptly, he puts his mouth on you. You gasp at the contact. Frankie flattens his tongue and licks at you. Cursing under your breath, you pull his head closer to you. He groans against your skin as his nose nicks your clit.

Frankie makes out with your cunt, holding your legs open with his hands. He’s been gentle with you, taking you apart over and over as the hours grow longer into the day. Carefully, he gives you two fingers, words catching in your throat. He moves them in and out of you slowly, thumb moving up to your sensitive bundle of nerves.

With the teasing, the tasting, and the fact that he’s brought you there twice already, it doesn’t take long to fall over the edge again.

Baring teeth, you turn your face into the pillow. “Fuck Frankie.”

“Good?” he asks.

Your leg falls from his shoulder back onto the sheets. “Sorry.”

Frankie’s brow furrows. “You’ve lost me,” he says, kissing his way back up your body. He stops when he’s at eye level, uncertainty awash on his face.

“Came early. I’m like the old men in those commercials.”

It’s still slightly embarrassing, the span of time you’ve been out of practice sexually. Frankie usually foregoes the conversation in favour of screwing your brains out when you mention it; that’s been the pattern for the last three days. Still, it sits with you.

“I don’t think there’s a through-line between you and seniors on Cialis,” Frankie says.

“Other than both being Johnny-come-lately in the stamina department,” you say.

He frowns, then presses a kiss to your nose. “It’s not a competition.”

“Tell yourself that. Three in a row.”

“Okay, fine—the only competition here,” Frankie says, bringing a hand up to hold your cheek, “is between me and myself. You think too much.”

“I feel—”

“Bad, yeah, which makes you feel insecure. You said this in the car yesterday,” he supplies for you. The both of you have been driving to work together. It makes the most sense when he’s sleeping over anyway. “And I’m telling you it’s no biggie.”

You stare at him, the word biggie bouncing between your ears too long before a snort escapes you. How is this man real?

“Sorry, sorry. You were reassuring me emotionally,” you say.

“I don’t wanna be…dismissive,” he chooses the word carefully. “I get that—you know, and we can always talk about it. But don’t stress about me. I like you the way you are. All the ways you are. So don’t go changing.”

Your heart beats heavily in your chest. Communication between the two of you has been open since that night you found him outside your door, and it’s a little dizzying how nice it all feels; a little scary how much you want him. He’s looking at you again. Looking capital L, adoration and all. Those eyes hold your secrets, and yours his. How he makes you feel is almost too much to bear. A part of you that had been laid to rest is alive and clicking. Now here you are, sitting on the grenade.

You say, “I want you inside of me,” and Frankie complies immediately.

He fists his cock for a moment before he slides in, filling you. Staying like that for a moment, he watches. You bite your tongue between your teeth, running a hand over the span of his chest down to his stomach. Then your hand moves to your own body, caressing your breasts, fingers sliding over your pelvis. Pressing down on the skin there coincides with his first few thrusts. You swear you can feel him through your skin.

Every kiss of his hips to yours is a promise. Every breath, rough in your ear, sounds like a prayer. Frankie won’t stop saying something. You can barely process the words. Any more and you think you might choke.

He’s inside of you, all around you. Your body is cold while he is roasting. Joined together now, you must be running a fever. You want this forever. Want him forever. One day, there will be words adequate enough to tell him. To say it. Until then, you have to hope that the way you hug him closer to your body is enough.

You think Frankie knows, but you think a lot of things. You think you know how he’s going to react to the news of your surgery, but the uncertainty is what’s kept you from telling him. It’s all still fresh. Mia doesn’t even know. She is first on the list, then him.

You think you wish you had more people to tell, more people to celebrate or commiserate with. A family that dreams about all the vacations you could go on if things go well. Someone else who would bite their fingernails at night over it, worry lodged deep in the back of their skull. Someone to get sick over it for you.

That thought’s a little too blurry and sharp to touch right now.

A sharper jab of Frankie’s hips brings you back to him.

“Shit, right there,” you whine.

“You’re distracted,” he says.

“Thinking.”

“Well, stop.” Frankie emphasizes the point with another slam of his hips, jostling your body.

He watches your tits jiggle, leaning down to kiss at your throat. He finds a faster pace inside you, pulling you up from the mattress carefully to sit in his lap. The new angle has Frankie deeper within you, thoughts all but erased as you bask in the feeling. Face to face, he uses the flesh at your waist for leverage to thrust up into you. You lift your hips to meet him on each push, mashing his face into yours in an ugly kiss.

Like this. Things should always be like this.

Frankie drives your car this morning, letting you rest your head against the cool condensation of the window. The drive started with the stereo on, but he’s been gradually turning it down until the front seat is left in almost silence. One of your CD’s is stuck in the player, lodged in the mouth after you fed it the disk last week. Frankie says he’ll fix it for you once shooting wraps, but you don’t mind. It’s a mix Mia made for you ages ago, back in school. You used to play it on the clunky, thick laptop you brought with you everywhere, scratched to shit as the motors turned painfully.

Stringy folk guitar and muttering, stripped-back vocals barely hum above the intuitive sound and sensation of the car’s wheels rolling. The window trembles between your skin and the open air, many a pothole gracing this stretch of pavement. Frankie’s coffee sits in a travel mug next to yours, the bold and smoky smell wafting throughout the vehicle. You tell yourself everything right now is perfect, even though you’ve never had a chance to witness perfection. This is probably as close as anyone ever gets.

Now would be the best time to tell him. Slip it in between the passing trees and Frankie’s occasional taps on the steering wheel. I’ve decided to go under the knife for a life-changing surgery. Life changing in either direction, I could be royally screwed here. I’ve known for weeks and didn’t say anything. No, Mia doesn’t know. What do you wanna do for lunch?

Not…great.

Frankie won’t be mad. You know that. And yet whenever you play out potential

scenarios in your head, the conversation always devolves into angry yelling. Frankie morphs into your father and suddenly it’s game over. You’ve come up with a dozen horrible, lying little schemes to skirt around telling him or anyone. Maybe you decide to up and take a vacation. Or perhaps there’s a quick job that’s untraceable through the union or the net, someplace far enough away. Philly, or maybe Portland…

Of course, your ideas always fall apart. They sound ridiculous when you rehearse them out loud. Mia would never let you disappear like that and guilt around Frankie would eat you whole before you’d even finished packing a bag. Your assuaged addiction to lying is what’s spurring them on. Frankie knows that there’s something up with you, but hopefully, that’s all he can tell.

Today is the big day. Frankie has a few more dry runs of landing that helicopter before Ashton will start rolling, getting the real deal. After that, if there are no re-shoots required during post-production, you’ll be free and clear of this movie and its primadonna director. Life will return to being yours, at least for a little while. Frankie will start, continue being yours, hopefully for much longer than that.

Your car pulls into the flat, deadened grass that has been defined as the parking lot over the past few weeks. You wonder how long it will take the forest to heal from the damage. The grass, maybe a season—but you remember the front lawn of your dad’s house, how the edges he drove over never grew back quite right. The crew had a handful of shorter trees cut down to make sufficient space for Ashton’s extensive video village. Surely the studio will toss a couple thousand dollars at an environmentalist organization and find a way to shoehorn it into the movie’s credits.

You go through a handful of dry runs with Frankie in the chopper, the up-down-up-down of it all making you motion sick just watching. The sun is out, good weather lending itself kindly to the practice as Frankie moves through the sky over and over. You can feel Ashton’s agitation, even from almost fifteen feet away. He watches the helicopter through a pair of binoculars from his director’s chair, but you half wonder if the lenses are really trained on the back of your skull.

You call another run to get the camera movement down, more blocking taking place somewhere, somehow. You’d almost feel bad for the camera department if the director of photography didn’t enable Ashton Marilyn’s insanity. It’s hard to pity the above-the-line crew member making a grand a day to enable his on-set terrorism.

You text Mia an update when everyone breaks for the hour. She’s at home swatching fabrics like a mad woman, looking for the perfect shade of millennial pink for the wedding’s tablecloths.

They’re either too deep or too pasty, her message reads.

Pasty as in…? you send back.

Grey. Washed out. Fugly, she responds.

In your lap is paperwork from Dr. Lopez, sent to your apartment somewhere amidst the Frankie frenzy of the last few days. You haven’t had time to look it over with him around. Looking between the papers and your phone, you send Mia one more message.

I’m sure whatever pink you choose will look great. Hey—call me later OK? It’s important.

Before you receive a reply, Frankie finds you scarfing down your lunch alone in the production trailer. You’ve got a lawn chair wedged between two camera dollies, with plastic tubs of miscellaneous equipment at your back. The bones in your spine crinkle as you straighten up in your seat. You pull the earbuds from your ears to talk to him, tucking information on your surgery into your personal copy of the movie's script. The thick stack of paper in your lap looks fairly inconspicuous, the top page a neon yellow massacre over a random page of dialogue.

"Hey," you say quickly.

"Thought I'd find you here."

"Right. No office out in the woods."

Your bag is on the other side of the room. Balancing a plastic container and the papers in one hand and your phone and earbuds in the other, you cross the trailer past him.

Frankie's shoulder bumps yours as you pass him, fingers curling to keep the script in your precarious grip. The effort is futile. The pages slip from your hand, splaying across the floor as they fall in a flurry.

You and Frankie move into action at the same time, ducking low to collect them. Your salad spills as you let the container fall, your phone clattering down next to you.

"I've got it." The words rush out of your mouth.

It's too late; Frankie's already gathering up the paper.

"Frankie…"

He doesn't seem to hear you, too distracted by the words his eyes have caught on to notice the disaster you've created around you.

When he looks up at you, he's deeply confused.

"What's this?"

He turns the offending page over for you to see. Patient pre-surgical instruction packet. There's no denying it; you've been caught red-handed. He says your name, asking you again.

"I've been trying to figure out a way to tell you," you say. "My doctor, she had this opportunity for surgery…for my spine. Said it could really help me." Or hurt me.

"And you're going through with it." Frankie's words are not a question.

You nod, waiting for the heat and anger.

"That's amazing!" he grins. Truly, Frankie is beaming. This might be the brightest smile you've ever seen on a human being.

"Well it isn't perfect," you rush out. His smile only falters a little. "There could be…complications."

"What kind of complications?" he asks.

"I don't know…it could make things easier. Or much, much worse. Most patients see improvements to their health overall."

"Okay," Frankie nods.

He gets off of his knees, giving you a hand up before he gives you the stack of papers back.

"Okay? That's it?"

Frankie blinks. "Yeah…?"

"You don't have any questions? Comments, concerns?"

"You'll tell me what you want me to know," he says. Frankie speaks as if it's obvious. Everything is so easy with him, sometimes infuriatingly so. Like right now.

"You're not worried at all?" you ask.

"I didn't say that," Frankie says. "I mean—clearly it's happening, right? I'm happy for you. What else is there to say?"

Your simmering anger is unjustified. You're being an ass, really, but you expected something more; braced yourself for it, prepped for doom. Now that you know it's not coming, you feel cheated.

"Something could go wrong." Horribly, horribly wrong.

"You said most—"

"But not all."

“I like those odds,” says Frankie. You give him a look, almost disbelieving. “What? I’m a little bit of a gambling man.”

“You’re a gambling man, you’re a bartering man. Next, you’re going to tell me that you’re a snake oil salesman.”

Frankie’s face softens the slightest bit, a splash of hurt in his body language. You’re accusing him, and you can’t help it. Sometimes love feels like catching someone in a lie.

“There’s nothing phony here,” he says firmly. You stand feet away from him, and yet you feel caged in. This warmth from Frankie is still settling in, determining itself as welcome or weary. “I’m just a man. A man who sees you and—”

“I get it,” you cut him off, backtracking. The bitch is back. “It’s sweet. I understand.”

“Can I finish?” Frankie asks. “I see you, and I want you. Will always want you. Even when you don’t want me to.” His words weigh down the air between you like lead.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

He doesn't have to do this with you—put up with you. He's become your soft spot, a place safe away from the rigidity of the rest of life. You feel yourself getting comfortable, even as you bristle against him like this. As much as you want him to be that for you, need him to, you feel culpable somehow. Your wagon is hitched to Francisco Morales now, for better or for worse. The only way it’s coming off is if you’re run off the goddamn road.

Frankie shakes his head. “We never have to do anything,” he says.

That’s one of the many good things here, you suppose. Choice. The freedom to live and to love. This thing between you exists based on choice. You hope that Frankie keeps his word and never stops choosing you.

Nodding, you ask, "You're sure?"

Frankie approaches slowly, arms already out when he wraps them around your waist.

"Yes," he says, resting his forehead against yours.

"Serious?" It's not really you asking. There's some version of you that remembers promises long broken, words that dripped like poison into your heart. You can't do that again.

"As a heart attack," he whispers, features deathly serious. And then, "I love you."

You let out a small, airy gasp. It brings a smile back to Frankie's face.

"I-I love you too," you say.

"Good," he sighs. "I was going out on a limb there." The smile grows and grows, morphing into a shit-eating grin.

You slap at his chest lightly, biting your tongue between your teeth. "You're such a dick."

"Yes I am."

You kiss him and time stops. The world is frozen, tipped on its side as Frankie presses himself closer to you. A life like this. Just like this.

After lunch, Ashton forgoes another dry run on the helicopter stunt, opting to finally go to camera. You walk with Frankie to the spot where the helicopter sits along the brush. You’re running through the process with him once more, clipboard in your hand as you go over everything. At some point, you start rambling.

“Hey,” he stops you.

“Hi.”

“It’s gonna be fine.”

You nod. “Right, yeah.”

Your stomach twists in knots. Really, you’d like another dry run. Really, you’d like for Frankie to forego the scene altogether. This is what he does for a living, but you can’t help your nerves. The wind is blowing a little harder than it was this morning, causing blankets of leaves to shake and sway, potentially into the flight path he’s going to follow.

You want to tell him not to get in; call the whole production off or push it back another day. Maybe you could manage to convince Ashton that the movie doesn’t need a live helicopter—that CGI suits it just fine. Frankie winks at you. Another gut lurch.

“Everything is going to be fine,” he says. Out of sight from anyone else, Frankie gives you a light peck on the cheek.

“Fine. Everything will be fine,” you nod. To both of you, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself. “Break a leg.” Walking away now, you give him a wave.

“I’ll try!” Frankie calls back to you.

As the tall Georgia grass slides over your ankles, you shake your head. Who knew life could be like this? Who knew that someone could get almost everything they wanted and then some? For the longest time, you were unlovable. Damaged goods. A failure in your career and in your personal life, relegated to working on shitty B flicks; taking jobs where they came as you rotted alone in the southern heat of your apartment. Now, anything feels possible. Anything is possible. We change. For worse or for better.

Trudging back to the video village, you wait to hear the rumble of a helicopter engine before settling the muffs of the intercom over your ears. The headset sits heavy on your skull, agitating the base of your neck as you watch the helicopter ascend above the green. Then it sits in the air, blades spinning as Frankie waits.

“Action!” Ashton yells.

“That’s you,” you say, queuing Frankie over the comms.

You watch the helicopter veer closer to the grass, just like he’s practiced. It’s a tight squeeze, but Frankie always makes it. You’re smiling as the helicopter gets closer to the ground. Really, it’s only a few seconds, but it’s all drawn out in your mind. You can see each piece of the machine move exactly when it’s supposed to, a body that breathes when you do, twisting as it adjusts.

That’s why you don’t have to hear the horrible chattering noise before you know something’s wrong.

“Fish?” you call over the line.

“Yeah, hold on a sec,” Frankie grits out.

“Is everything alright?”

The helicopter jerks slightly, like it’s being pushed around on the playground. “I just—think I nicked a tree or something…”

Shit. “Fish, talk to me. What’s going on up there?”

He doesn’t answer, and you watch as the helicopter swerves directly against the movements you’ve rehearsed. It’s falling fast now, dipping onto its side.

“Frankie, please talk to me,” your voice grows frantic. Still nothing.

All you can do is watch in the few moments it takes for the helicopter to crash into the dirt, skidding to a halt as soil and green spray in every direction. Someone is screaming, an ugly shriek that cuts like ripped paper. It takes a minute to realize that it’s you. You start to run for the first time in years, legs pumping behind you. Your lungs are ready to quit the closer you get to the wreckage, pulling in rough and smoky air. Something is burning inside. You really shouldn’t be here, but you can’t leave him. No, not ever.

The helicopter’s blades have stopped spinning, digging into the ground as the machine acknowledges that something is very wrong. Just over your own breathing and the yells of the rest of the crew, you can hear a banging. One of the windshield panels rattles with the noise as you approach.

“Frankie?! Frankie! Are you alright?” A stupid question.

You don’t hear a reply, but the opaque glass continues to move and crack. You kick at it from your side, getting your foot through. Some of the glass slices through your pant leg—a worry for another time.

“Frankie?”

“I’m here,” comes a voice.

His voice, and then his hand, strong and tan and slightly bloody. You take hold of him, pulling Frankie out through jagged, glassy jaws. There’s a deep gash on his face packed with grime. Blood trickles into his beard and down his neck. Some of the dirt must have flown inside with the force of the impact, flecks of it in his hair and around his eyes. But Frankie is here. He’s breathing.

You’re fussing over him too close to danger, running your hands over his body to sense any damage when he pulls you away.

“We gotta move!” he yells, and immediately you can tell: this is not your Frankie.

His eyes are steely and dark, no vulnerability there. He tugs on you a little too rough, pain flaring in your wrist as Frankie twists it. He begins dragging you away from the burning aircraft, back to relative safety near the treeline. You know what this is; it’s the reason you can never comfortably see the beach again, why swimming pools are a no-go. All those years of fighting other people’s wars put something bad in Frankie’s brain, engulfing his psyche and taking control.

Once you’re closer to the rest of the crew, you pry his hand off of you and take a step back.

“Frankie, it’s okay,” you say gently. “You’re having a panic attack. It’s going to be alright.”

“We need to go!” he yells.

“I know it feels very real and very scary, but you’re going to be okay.”

Frankie puts his hands over your shoulders. “This isn’t safe,” he says, the closest he can get to calm. “We have to go. You’re in danger.”

You don’t touch him now, resisting the urge to cup his bleeding cheek in your palm. His grip on you loosens slightly, but you stay with him. “Look at where we are,” you say, nodding in the direction away from the wreck. Frankie follows your eyes. “Those gorgeous trees, all those fuckin’ ugly cars. The green leaves, the tall grass.”

A breeze whispers between you downwind, blessedly ushering smoke in the opposite direction. Frankie keeps his eyes open and breathes in deep, trying to ground himself. Carefully, he drops his hands from you. He’s still agitated, twitchy as his eyes dart around. Someone from the crew—you’ve forgotten his name—offers you a blanket for Frankie. He takes it from you immediately, cocooning his broad shoulders as you both sit under a tree and wait for an ambulance. There is a good foot of space between you. Frankie doesn’t say anything for a long while, somewhere in his head. You stand to leave him be.

He looks up at you immediately. “Are you leaving?”

“Don’t you want me to?” you ask. In moments like this, all you wish for is to be alone. You don't need to be another thing keeping him on edge, even if the prospect of leaving him like this pinches at your lungs as much as the smoke.

“No,” Frankie says. Simple as.

“Okay.”

You sit back down. Your wrist is still sore. Cradling it with your other hand, you stare at it, hoping the flesh and muscle will somehow tell you what’s wrong.

“I’m sorry." Frankie's voice comes out small and broken.

You look up from your arm to meet his eyes. “For what?”

“I grabbed you,” he says.

“You didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Still.”

“Thank you,” you say, accepting the apology.

You’re playing it cool for his sake. Under the sleeves of your shirt, stains of stress sweat are surely soaking through the fabric. Your heart can’t seem to stop the cascading surge against your ribs, an unstoppable harsh beat in your chest. You’re both triggered and a mess, but for some reason, you’ve taken to focusing on Frankie right now. Probably because that is doing something; taking action instead of flailing hopelessly and drowning in the feeling. You can’t make him feel better, but being here makes you a little less scared. Your relationship with Frankie is symbiotic. Not co-dependence, a parasitic latch, but unifying. He has become your partner, with all the details that word entails.

Sirens stutter in the distance, getting closer with every blink of your eyes. The ambulance pulls into the empty space between your car and a tall patch of grass. A pair of young people get out of the vehicle. Ashton is there before you can take another breath, pointing in your direction. As the paramedics approach, Frankie touches a hand to your arm. He takes your good hand in his own, squeezing lightly.

The woman in uniform tells the both of you her name, that she's here to help. Her words are garbled in your ears. You watch as she lays a trauma blanket over Frankie’s shoulders before she takes one look at you. Shaking, you're barely holding it together physically. Your cheeks are tight with dried tears, though you're unsure when you started crying. She starts walking back to the ambulance for another.

Several fire trucks arrive on the scene, their thick hoses snaking between nature and equipment to reach the fire that's started up around the wreck. It's small, manageable, you think. Your eyes focus in on the flames as they lick at the grass. Orange meets yellow and red dangerously, the fire growing and falling. Harsh sprays of water try to fight it off. You stare at the broken helicopter with pity. It looks so sad, personhood possessing its wheels and shattered window. Consumed by fire, surely it's destroyed as it burns. All that will be left is char and broken glass, a mangled machine.

The thought that Frankie could have died in there pops up, ugly and dirty as bile touches your throat. He didn't. He didn't and that's what matters. Nothing else. He's alive.

They put Frankie up on a stretcher, despite his protests that he absolutely does not need one. It takes a minute—you brace yourself, ready to stop him from decking the man trying to help him—but he settles. As Frankie relents, they load him into the box. You watch as they get ready to leave from the grass, one door already closed. He tells them to wait.

“She’s coming with me,” Frankie says, pointing at you.

You blink, standing up at the acknowledgment. You look between Frankie’s face and the two EMS workers. The woman offers you her hand to help you up into the back. Meeting Frankie’s eyes again, you ask him a silent question.

You’re sure?

He nods. You take her hand. Partners. That’s what this is