#and where did the truck go that it wasn't consistently towed?

[so-long-soldier28]

where did theo sleep when the dread doctors were still in town, and if he slept in the sewers, where did he put his truck??

[budddywells]

for: @rafacarreno

where: somewhere in the 'burbs, around 3am

He doesn't know how he got here.

Not physically, he knew exactly how he found himself sat on a curb in a street that felt like a suburban liminal space, pulling a drag from the only cigarette that had survived in the box in his back pocket when he connected with the edge of a marble kitchen island due to a deliberate shove from one angry looking stock broker.

( That was an easy enough thread to follow: stripping at a bachelorette party was fine, going home with the bride who's husband wasn't away on business as expected was where it got messy. )

What he had a hard time discerning was how he got here in a bigger sense. Existentially, it was difficult to discern an exact moment in time that he could point to and say that's where life had went from trucking along to hard then to straight out of his control.

The last two years had put him through the ringer, and it seemed that was now what he did to everyone else around him, intentional or not.

In the scuffle with the now unhappy groom, his phone had fallen victim to the deliberate way it had been thrown to the ground and smashed for good measure, leaving him to try and figure out how the hell he was supposed to get home without the ease of an app.

The kindness of the drunken Samaritan that had spilled out of a taxi with her husband in tow (returning from what he assumed was some sort of PTA gone wild evening out) had started and stopped at letting him use her phone as long as he didn't loiter on her perfectly maintained lawn.

There was only one number he knew off by heart, and that was down to the owner being the kind of consistent he's not sure existed in folks these days. His number never changed, it was the same one that Buddy used to prank call with his friends as a teen on an odd Friday night when he thought that shit was funny just to see if he could get a rise out of him.

It was the same set of digits he had scribbled on the back of a bar mat and offered as a resource when he found himself in conversation with a kid that was too young to be in the same bar as him, and the only number that came to mind when he had been told by HR to provide an emergency contact for his file when he had been working at the bank.

Despite all the ways Buddy had tried to prove his reliability as something alternate, something more sinister -- a facade, an illusion, a kind of long-con before he showed some true colours that were more in line with everyone else in his life that let him down -- Rafael always showed up.

So, he stretched his legs out in front of him, finished off his cigarette and ignored how the ache just under his eye from where a fist had connected with it got more gnawing as the warmth of the whiskey he had been drinking tempered off as he inched closer to sobriety and he waited.

[givemethatgold]

Fix’er Upper Pt. 5

Pairing: Frankie Morales x F!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of past abusive relationship, swearing, past drug use, alcohol

Word Count: 1.8k

Notes:

Parts ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR

Your injury, and consequential recovery time, couldn’t have come at a better time. The harvest was done and the apples had to rest before being pressed, which meant Frankie was now free to start working on your home. The work didn’t often require more than two hands so the days found you doing menial tasks being his gopher.

“You know,” Frankie had had to explain to you, “Go’fer this, go’fer that.”

This mainly consisted of you passing him tools while he was swearing under his breath in the attic, or groaning after rapping his knuckles under the sink, or white-faced and clinging to the weathervane on the roof. 

You had discovered Frankie’s sweet tooth on the first day of renovations, not noticing until after he’d left for the day that more than half the cookies you’d baked that morning were already gone. Making sure he was kept happy, you had a new treat ready for when he walked in the door. 

He was a coffee drinker though, and while you owned a coffee press you had never actually used it yourself, preferring tea leaves for your dose of caffeine. You’d tried, the first morning, to make a cup for him. You even googled How to Make a Cup of Coffee? to make sure you didn’t fuck it up. 

You could laugh about it now, but the look on Frankie’s face after he’d taken his first sip made you worry you had poisoned him. He had spat the black sludge out and handed you back the mug with a look of bewildered disgust. Apparently, you needed to grind the beans first, who knew?

An efficient, if not quite comfortable, rhythm had been forged between the two of you over the past week and a half. Frankie would arrive at nine in the morning, scarf down half a dozen treats while discussing the day’s projects. You would run to town in his truck (yours was still at the autobody shop awaiting parts) and buy any supplies that would be needed while he set up the worksites and organized the tools that would be required.

You had added popping into the local café for a large coffee for Frankie and a red rooibos latte with almond milk for yourself. The first couple of days you had bought him a brownie too but stopped after he’d only half-finished the first one and mumbled through the crumbs in his mouth that yours were better. It only took you three days before the owner had your order ready for you before you even walked in the door, five days before you noticed the sidelong glances the little old ladies were giving each other as you walked out.

Small towns, you thought to yourself, rolling your eyes, had the unique benefit and downfall of everyone knowing everyone else’s business. They’d quit with the hardly-concealed smirks if they knew how awkward working with Frankie was becoming.

You had been sure, in the immediate aftermath of waking up in Frankie’s arms while his truck sat in your driveway, that he was never going to speak to you again. The two of you and hopped out and began explaining away whatever conclusions Jacquie and Mark had made. Then Frankie, without even looking in your general direction, told Jacquie to get you inside and have your wrist looked at. 

To his credit, he had taken care of everything regarding your truck for you. The tow truck came and hauled it to the yard, Frankie had commandeered the inspection report and, after calling them out on trying to swindle you into buying unnecessary parts, had ordered what was needed and paid. 

You had, naturally, argued against this but you both knew you weren’t in a position to afford it. Frankie shut down your arguments gracefully, and broke his apparent vow of silence, with a gruff “I’m just doing it so I can drive my damn truck without you changing the radio station.” The absolute charmer.

It was your damn house, though, so you decided you'd talk as much as you wanted and it would be up to him to interact. Either that or you had music blaring from the radio, never playing his favourite country station purely out of spite. 

Never quite sure if he was listening or not, you rambled on about anything and everything. You explained your vision for the house and the plans you had for a greenhouse in the yard. Memories from your childhood were described in great detail, as were embarrassing stories from your year in college. Baking tips, waxing poetic about your love for sunflowers, interesting animal facts, you'd even downloaded a Word of the Day App and made a game of fitting the words into your daily uninterrupted monologues.

It took three days for Frankie to break.

You had been reminiscing about your trip to Disneyland as a child when he abruptly cut in, voice muffled due to the nails being held between his lips.

"You never talk about it."

You assumed he was referring to the little all-day nap you’d shared in his truck, as it had yet to be spoken of, but were taken aback by the slight accusatory tone.

"Talk about what?"

He took so long to reply, you started to think that he had interrupted purely to shut you up. The silence demanded an explanation though, so you kept your mouth shut and waited.

Clambering down from the attic, where he had been strengthening the trusses throughout the sagging section of roof, Frankie pinned you with his gaze and softly repeated himself.

"You never talk about it. The time in your life when you were married." He must have seen your hackles rise because he quickly set down the hammer and held his hands up in a placating wave.

"You still haven't answered my question about being in the army," was your quick response, finished with an ever-so-mature, "so there."

With a resigned sigh, Frankie twisted his hat around backward and scrubbed his hands across his face. "Come on" -waving you towards the patio doors- "these kinds of conversations require fresh air and a drink."

Reluctantly you followed him outside but rather than sinking down onto the porch swing you opted to lean against the post facing it. Opening two ciders, which you now had free access to, you handed one to Frankie and watched him over the top of the bottle.

Half of your drink was gone and your mind had wandered to greenhouse and flower garden placement before Frankie spoke again. His voice low and quiet catching you by surprise.

"Yeah," he broke the silence with another ragged sigh, "I, uh, I served. Started in the Air Force, worked my way up to Special Tactics Squadron. Made enough noise there to get recruited to Delta Force."

"Oh, fuck," your exclamation was soft with shock "you've seen some shit then." Blast your runaway mouth and its inability to wait for your brain to catch up before blurting out your inner thoughts. "I'm sorry!-"

"No, it's okay" Frankie interrupted, trying to reassure you and remove the horrified look that had come across your face. 

"No, no, that was totally uncalled for. Brad, my um, my husband, he was a Marine. He hated talking about it, said no one liked talking about it. I should have known."

"It's not that," Frankie reassured you again, "You were the first person to ever ask me about it, in all the time I've lived here. Just took me by surprise."

Leaning over in the swing, Frankie pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and handed you a photo from inside it. Five men beamed up at you. You could recognize them from a few of the photos that had rested on Frankie's mantle, they looked older in this one.

"Tell me about them?" you asked, knowing that most of the request was due to curiosity but a small part of you hoped that if you kept him talking you could avoid the subject of your marriage.

The sun was beginning to set and you'd long moved inside to eat dinner by the time Frankie was done sharing. It must have been cathartic, you mused, for him to bare this much about himself. He had never looked more relaxed in all the time you'd known him, which wasn't saying much and it could just as easily been due to the amount of alcohol thrumming through his system.

The room fell into a companionable silence, each of you digesting the information that had been revealed. You were in awe of the fact that, despite the life of violence he had witnessed, Frankie still maintained his humanity. Even after a messy divorce and lost custody battle, Frankie continued to choose the path of healing. He was clean, was fighting for shared custody of his daughter again, running his own business, and still had found time to endear himself into the town's hearts.

Frankie was, for all his sharp edges and gruff words, a sweetheart.

It put into stark comparison how Brad had reacted to the lemons life had served him. Born into an upper-middle-class home, the only son, doted on by his parents, Brad had been raised into a life where every door was open to him. Despite this, or maybe because of it, he had grown hateful of those weaker than him. He was controlling but had just the right amount of charm to pass it off as caring.

"I've met men like that," 

You nearly jumped out of your skin from surprise. Looking at Frankie with wide-eyed shock you wondered again what the hell was in the cider. This was the second time you'd poured your heart out to a virtual stranger, but this time you hadn't even realized you'd started speaking your thoughts aloud. 

Squaring your shoulders and holding Frankie's gaze you continued, almost challenging him to find someone worse than Brad had been.

"He made me quit college because he said he wanted to start a family. Then berated me and acted like it was all my fault every time the pregnancy test came back negative. You know what that asshole did?" Tears were threatening to fall but you held on to Frankie's gaze, "He had gotten a vasectomy months earlier. I didn't find out about it until after he died; going through paperwork that had been stored in his desk."

Frankie was up on his feet now, pacing around the kitchen island, too distraught to keep still. How could anyone be so cruel? Let alone be so cruel to someone as sweet and pure as you. He hated seeing you cry but knowing you weren't receptive to people being in your personal space, wasn't sure how to comfort you. 

Acting on pure instinct he grabbed the kettle and started preparing you some tea, not allowing himself to ruminate how he knew which flavour you preferred. Setting your favourite pottery mug in front of you, along with the little honey pot, he also decided to grab the fluffy throw blanket off your couch. 

"I get it now," he thought to himself offhandedly, "why women have so many fuckin' blankets and pillows in every room."

Placing the throw around your shoulders he was preparing to say goodnight and let you have some peace but was stilled by your hand reaching up and covering his.

"Please. Stay."

Part SIX

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