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intheorangebedroom · 2 years ago

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Pleased to meet you, chapter 17

Summary: You're going back to Paris. There's only one thing left for you to do, here: break up with Benny. Meanwhile, Frankie tries to find a way to love you that doesn't mean letting you go.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x French fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞

A/N: Ok orange besties, we're in the endgame (yes I've always wanted to say that). Thank you to everyone who's still here 🧡 It's been a hot minute, and I'm so very sorry. Some wonderful, brilliant, beautiful human beings helped me. I want to humbly thank them. @frannyzooey beta read this chapter, which is a very dull and formal way to express how much she's improved (my entire life) it with her kindness, goddess's brain and generosity. Kelli my love, you know, you know everything 🧡 (I adore you). @the-ginger-hedge-witch immediately "unblocked" me when I couldn't even make out my own characters' thoughts because I'm dumb and she's a genius... Ren ma Reine, you are truly my Queen, I love you and admire you so damn much and I miss your voice and your hugs like a ghost limb 🧡 @dreamymyrrh made sure I wouldn't give up. You brilliant little devil you, I love you to pieces, you make my life brighter every day, I'm just the luckiest. You deserve the world and you will get it 🧡

Word count: 6.9k

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Chapter 17: Auf Achse

“This is a Brooklyn bound L train. Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

Frankie exits the train on the Union Square platform in a brooding rush. He barely falters when his left shoulder collides with another passenger. The man steps into the car hurling incoherent slurs that don't reach his ears, the giant overhead rotor fan annihilating all surrounding noises and Frankie remains unfazed, trapped within the din of his own mind.

Ducking his head to avoid the stale air fanned into his face, and under the familiar shelter provided by the brim of his cap, he moves his body forward amid the roiling motion of his thoughts.

He has seldom known peace, never experienced quiet, and when he has, it was only too briefly. In the orange, in the ocean. But the storm has picked up speed since April, hitting the walls of his skull, and the same vision resurfaces above the mess, relentless and without mercy: you, disappearing inside your red brick building without a look back for him.

As you laid naked on top of him, your sweet face resting in the palm of his hand, he had wanted to believe it. That the disrupted promise for a bright future together had been restored. Yet you all but ran away from him.

It’s Thursday again, the middle of the afternoon. The connection to the 6 train is already crowded, tourists and kids in uniform teeming around him in tight clusters, but he doesn’t register any of it, walking on autopilot, with the looming threat of your resentment hovering in and out of focus in his overworked brain.

Should he have told you back in his car, when you had questioned him about that damn 15 year gap, about the true meaning of his scar? In Will’s kitchen? Back in the bar? When is the start?

Striding down the tiled corridors is downright brutal, each and every muscle in his sore body battling his will to turn around and hurry back to you, to tuck your body away against his chest underneath his clothes and your face into the crook of his neck and explain. Explain in words that are not his because his words have failed him. And you.

No te vayas por una hora porque entonces…

Borrowed words he struggles to remember, would they make any difference?

Truth is, he betrayed you long ago. When he doubted you, when he gave way to anger and rage and easy, degrading escapes.

I never stopped waiting, this you have to understand.

You never ran away from him, not really. You ran away for him.

Beyond his pain, yours claws at his heart, threatening his precarious balance, like a hindered scream catching at his throat and constricting his chest. He can’t think of you alone, emptily gazing out your window like a desolate figure in a Hopper painting. Can’t live with the fact that he’s the reason you finally stopped waiting.

What could have he said? Were there any words that would have held the power to bend your mind and turn you around, erase your guilt and keep you to him? Why didn’t he try harder?

I don’t fucking care.

Tilting up his head, he finds himself sitting on the hard plastic bench of the 6 train. Across the central aisle, a small boy propped on his father’s lap is staring at him, the bottom half of his face smeared in apple sauce. The dried flakes of yellow compote shape a beard around his plump lips, and his wide, intrigued eyes make him look old beyond his years.

Frankie’s eyes flick upward to the map, where the blinking dot reminds him to get out at the next stop.

He resurfaces on Bleecker St, to an unexpected cool breeze, and tries to let it clear his mind so he will be able to present his sister with an intelligible account of the situation.

Growing up in the Morales household meant evolving in a crowded, shape-shifting space ; the small two-bedroom apartment serving as a workshop for Eva’s sewing business. In the cramped living-room, numerous piles of seemingly orderless clothes and fabric laid in what felt like an endless rotation, on top of beaten pieces of furniture that was bought at garage sales or found on the curb. For the two siblings, lounging on the couch to watch a movie or sitting at the table to do their homework meant having to move a heap of clothes that would invariably crumble to the floor a few minutes later. Only Eva seemed able to balance the precarious stacks that earned her a living and provided for her children.

Frankie rapidly became skilled at fixing just about anything, from a chest drawer to a toaster, because it was in his answer-seeking nature and because it gave him a sense of purpose. Izzy began bringing money home when she was fifteen, tutoring kids and baby-sitting young children from posh neighbourhoods, but both her and Eva denied Frankie when he expressed his intention to get an after-school part-time job. It had little or nothing to do with the fact that he was a boy, but rather the two Morales women were determined to clear the path that would lead him to an airport runway.

Having been brought up in a space intended for two people and shared by four, as they alternately navigated and evaded their father’s ghost, as a result, Izzy and Frankie curated sparsely furnished, minimally decorated homes.

The transient soldier’s path Frankie walked for most of his life made his relative material asceticism a practical choice and still, two years after settling down, it’s reflected in his utilitarian interior, where the only items in surplus are books.

Similarly, Izzy’s place, on the top floor of a Mott Street brick building, doesn’t reflect the social status to which she has risen. Childless by choice and conviction, Izzy is rarely single, but prefers to live alone, and her comfortable income could afford her much more than the pricey location she has chosen to live in, the only luxury she indulges in.

Throughout the years, her place has become as close to a family home as Frankie’s fragmented life could have had him hope for. The tastefully arranged apartment is where he spent his leaves and tended to his wounds, both tangible and the ones that wouldn’t heal. The walls, adorned with modern and old black and white prints, watched over his restless nights as he laid curled up on the opening sofa, fresh off the Army, sleep eluding him. Where his sister admonished his excesses without ever speaking a word, and forgave him everything speaking too many, always providing practical ways out along with unwavering love and support.

So, quite naturally, it is where his steps take him now, because a phone conversation wouldn’t cut through the fog.

When she opens her door, Izzy’s taken aback by her brother’s drawn features, even though the tension in his voice earlier on the phone had cued her in as to what to expect.

“Damn, you look like shit, hermanito,” she whispers. “¿Qué te pasa?”

Frankie sighs as deeply as his constricted chest will allow, fails to look her in the eyes and snaps, “Yea, can I get in, first?”

She steps to the side and lets him in, and as Frankie walks past her and into the bright living-room, she scrunches her nose.

“When was the last time you showered?”

The comment earns her a roguish look but he doesn’t argue with it. He has yet to wash you off his skin, or change the denim shirt he put on to drive you back.

Standing by the door, her left hand still grasping the doorknob, she surveys his tall, dark frame standing out in the centre of the white room, and before he can sit, she says with unusual softness, “The hat.”

Pausing imperceptibly, he removes his cap and swivels around to place it on the nearby oak dining table. They stand still in the afternoon light, with distant street noises from the world that exists outside the narrow windows dwarfing time and space.

“¿Querés un mate?”

“Sure.”

Speaking feels physically insurmountable. He has to engage all his muscles, reach for air at the very end of his lungs.

When Izzy comes out of the small kitchen, Frankie’s in a leather armchair with tubular iron armrests, and rubbing his clammy palms over his jeans. She places two round cups with metallic straws on the dark kidney coffee table and sits on the edge of the off-white couch, doing her very best to conceal the concern that reads plainly on her open face.

“You haven’t been using ag-“ she starts, but stops short when her brother looks her straight in the eyes with a warning on his face, lips pinched, jaw clenched.

“I’m clean, Izzy,” he grumbles.

“No because if you are-” she trails off, and her uncharacteristic hesitancy drums on his nerves.

Frankie knows his sister can listen. She’s been his sole confidant for over forty years. The only living soul who knows of what happened to you and him in the orange bedroom. She just needs a little reminder.

“I’m gonna tell you everything, Izzy. Just let me talk, alright?” he tries, his neck strained around the words to keep his tone down.

She nods and smooths down the wrinkles of her blouse.

“Ok,” he starts, and the waver in his voice surprises them both, “I don’t know if you remember… the girl…“

How the hell does he explain that? Is he supposed to say your name?

“The French girl?” she asks. “The one who got away?”

The one who got away.

Izzy’s eyes have grown as wide as her glasses, but her demeanour has shifted, no longer wary. Frankie’s jaw unclenches for the first time since you’ve left him yesterday, surprise untangling his brow for a fleeting second. Arms crossed on his chest, he leans back into the leather back of the chair, searching her dark eyes.

“Go ahead, hermanito,” she encourages, “I’m listening.”

He unfolds his arms. Sits up straight. Draws in one last breath.

Then, he jumps.

The first words are the most difficult, the ones that define your relationship to his friend, but once he spits them out, the rest freely flows, and he talks. He talks more than he ever has, with Izzy or Santiago or William, using words he can’t recall ever pronouncing before, like longing and certainty and craving and peacefulness, “her skin, Izzy, her fucking skin,” and to his attentive sister, he bares it all.

The years spent losing himself when he couldn’t find you, regrets, remorse, errors and shame. The blind wildfire of his hatred when you walked back into his life with another man, with this other man. How you gently extinguished the blaze without so much as a word. How it only took five encounters, stretched over the course of three months, before you found yourselves coming apart around each other again. How you ran from him, in the end, and how he’d been powerless to hold you back.

How he didn’t even try.

That you were going home and how far away that meant, just so you could protect a friendship he wasn’t even sure could be saved.

What he sees play across Izzy’s face doesn’t reflect any of the ugly feelings throbbing in his chest. There’s understanding in her eyes, and hope in her smile; relief in her posture. For Isolda Morales remembers what Francisco Jr cannot: the ashen neon light of a military hospital room, and the lean, lifeless figure of her brother lying under a coarse sheet that looked like a shroud. She remembers the blood-stained dressing wrapped around his waist. She remembers his face, gleaming a waxy yellow as the morphine flooded his system, and his wistful realisation, spoken around a drug-heavy tongue, “if I die now, she will never even know.”

Izzy could have cursed your name, then, Gabrielle, but for the second time in her lifetime, and for her baby brother’s sake, she walked her mother’s path, and formulated a silent prayer.

For the lost lovers to be reunited.

When her brother falls silent, Izzy feels like herself again.

“I knew you to be more persistent, Francisco,” she says sternly.

The statement hits him square in the chest with lethal precision. The soft leather creaks in protest when he leans back into the armchair, scrutinizing his sister’s face.

“I don’t have much latitude, here,” he argues. “If she wants to go–”

“You’re not really considering letting her go?” she cuts him with ill-concealed impatience.

“I can’t hold her back, Izzy. She’s a free woman,” he says, and he hates that it sounds like an apology.

Izzy lunges forward, reaching for her untouched cup of mate. She takes a long, slow sip, mulling over her next words while Frankie waits, running his hand over his mouth, bracing himself.

“Why are you here?” she asks eventually, replacing the cup on its glass coaster. When he doesn’t answer, she presses further. “You’ve never been one to seek comfort, and I can’t imagine you coming here so I can give you a sisterly pat on the back and tell you everything’s gonna be alright. Nothing will, by the way. So what is it that you want from me? Why did you come?”

He can see it. See it so clearly. The shame on your face the first time he touched your breasts and then your relieved abandon when he came on your skin after only one night together. He remembers how this victory made him feel, the single most meaningful thing he could ever achieve. How you kept saying “sorry,” how you still say “please,” consistently moving through life as if you take up too much space.

“I want her, Izzy. I want to be with her. Take care of her,” he says, a nod punctuating each affirmation. “But I can’t coerce her into choosing me, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” he continues, his blood brought to a simmering level by the uncomfortable truth in her words, by the paralysing contradiction in his.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Frankie! She is choosing you. It’s herself she’s not choosing, here.”

Frankie flinches, trying to swallow the handful of pins and needles she just shoved down his throat.

“Is that what it is?” she asks in a softer tone. “You think getting her to stay would make you, what, selfish? A bad man? Because it would fuck things up with the guys? Are you afraid that she would despise you for that?”

Bending forward, he rests his elbows on his lap, his fingernail worrying at the little tattoo on his left thumb. Izzy’s eyes rapidly flick down from his hands to his tense face, in time to see him mutely nod his agreement, his gaze floorward.

“I know,” he starts, his voice hoarse and so quiet she has to lean forward not to miss a word, “I know that if I’m with her… if she’s mine… I could fix it.”

“Are you talking about yourself or the group’s dynamics?” Izzy asks without malice.

Her. I’m talking about her. She’s the only one that matters.

The look on his face is one of pleading and pain, eyes strained on his hands where he presses a finger onto the green mark, seeking focus through the discomfort.

“Frankie, look at me.”

Frankie finally lifts his head and finds her dark, lively eyes. They’re the same as his. Identical, yet so different.

“I think that’s what you came for. To hear me tell you to fight for yourself, for once.” She pauses to let it sink in. “It’s ok to fight for what you want. I know you’ve always put everyone else’s needs first, because you’re a good man, Francisco. But you can’t miss that shot. You’ve been so lucky. Twice over. I can’t say I’ve ever felt the way you do.”

“You had it pretty bad for Paula,” he mutters.

“True,” she agrees. “But I left, in the end.”

“What happened with that?”

“I think I was too independent. And she wanted kids. Listen, we’re not talking about me, here,” she shrugs away the topic with the back of her hand. “Hermanito, you’ll never be happy without her. You are right. You know you are. Go get your girl. The way you talk about her, it sounds like she needs you just as bad as you need her. You can make everything right after, later. Do whatever it takes to convince her. You’ve loved her forever.”

His mouth is parched but he’s still denying himself the drink that would soothe his throat, and it’s a hard swallow before he can articulate his next words.

“Fuck, Izzy, that’s all I ever want. To keep her safe.”

In the breast pocket of his shirt, a muffled buzzing signals an incoming text.

He pulls his phone out hastily, hoping to see your name lighting up the screen. What he reads instead draws a hissed curse from his tight lips and they dip downward, pulled by his corded neck.

“Fuck.”

“¿Quién es?”

“Ben. Wants to meet at the bar. Now.”

—

Pope arrives first, and when he steps into the bar, it’s as though the dim lights instantly grow brighter.

A thoughtful, personal greeting to everyone, from the regulars to the bartender, and their faces lighten up too, under the glow of his attention.

He orders beers for the five of them and leisurely struts over to their usual table, securing the spot before larger parties of the early evening start pouring in. Taking his favourite seat on the left, he waits for the bartender to bring over their drinks. Service at the table is a preferential treatment only Tom and him are ever granted.

The Millers come in shortly after, and Pope’s easy smile drops at the sight of the youngest man, who’s clearly missing more than a couple hours of sleep. Who, on closer observation, might have been crying.

He stands up to welcome them with a brotherly embrace, but he has to wait to ask his many questions. The glasses and ice-cold pitcher are brought in, and when Fish arrives next, Pope straightens up in his seat. His gaze intensifies, strained on the two men sitting side by side to his right around the large wooden table. The blond and the dark-haired. There’s something at play here, something he’s been missing, and his increased attention darkens his handsome features.

“Damn, when I got your text I thought we would be celebrating something. What’s going on, guys?” The corner of his lips curls up with a charming smile, but his stare is cold, his eyes working on reading the scene.

So far unusually quiet, Benny’s about to speak when his brother lays a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s wait for Redfly,” he suggests in a firm tone, “I don’t think you wanna have to repeat that twice.”

Frankie slowly downs half his glass in long, uninterrupted gulps. He knows his quietness to be suspicious. If Benny has news that requires to be delivered in such an exceptional setting, and that he hasn’t heard of already, he should at least express concern or curiosity. But Benny's blotched face and his fraternal handshake told him everything he needs to know.

You carried out your plan and took the blow so he could walk out of this unscathed.

It’s going to take more than a beer to take off the edge.

Alone yet undeterred in his attempt to maintain the illusion of a friendly gathering, Pope proceeds to fill the uneasy silence with innocuous small talk.

Frankie’s eyes meet Will’s steely gaze for the briefest moment and gratitude flares in his chest for his sensible advice. The feeling doesn’t last, however, taken down by guilt, and shame. The man dropped you on his threshold, knowing enough about the history between you to figure out what could ensue.

When Redfly eventually shows up and takes his seat, the overhanging tension cranks up until Benny’s baritone breaks like thunder over the five of them. Unable to contain himself any longer, his account of your breakup, that he never names as such, spills out of him in an endless, vivacious stream with that larger than life petulance that’s always tugged at Frankie’s heartstrings. Only today, everything bites at his nerves and erodes his restraint, from the emotion brimming under the surface of Benny’s messy narrative to Pope’s genuine look of surprise and Redfly’s unfazed reaction.

Exhaustion comes in waves, and he has just enough control left in him to maintain a white knuckled grasp around his glass and not resort to the telling rubbing of the little target inked on his skin.

Looking at his friend’s hunched posture and wet eyes proves itself impossible, but more than once his gaze lingers on Will’s face, in a vain attempt to read the man’s thoughts. There’s nothing to see there, nothing to grasp, and suddenly an alarming doubt has him uncomfortably shifting in his seat: what does he let on? Ducking his head, he finds the shelter of his cap brim.

His heart thumps louder than Benny’s voice at what’s missing from his story. What did you feel? What did you look like? What were you wearing? Did you cry? Did you brush a strand of hair off his forehead like he watched you doing once? Did you cup his face, give him one last kiss? Did you fuck one last time?

Benny marks a pause, which leaves space for Pope and Redfly to express their sympathy. Frankie registers plainly the lack of sincerity in Redfly’s short sentence, and he’s reminded of that very first night, when you were introduced to the group and had the audacity to tell him off. He had wondered, no, hoped, truly, that you had done so on his account. He has his answer now. Most of the things you’ve ever done have been either because or for him.

Why hadn’t he said something, then? Anything. “We’ve met before,” simple, non-committal. In retrospect, this had been the biggest mistake of all. There might have been a chance to salvage something from this wreck if he had spoken there and then, instead of letting his friend proudly parade you in front of everyone. But he’d been too consumed by anger to think straight. Anger and jealousy. And something else. Your skin. The mad beating of your heart under the pulse point of your neck. Had you shown him that piece of paper then, he might have fucked you on the table.

You hadn’t said anything either. You looked as if you’d seen death itself, which he mistook for an admission of guilt. In truth you had instantly fathomed the depth of the mess you two were in. Clever, clever girl.

In the end, your tacit, instinctual agreement over your conjoint secret spoke of the intensity of your feelings. Unescapable. And everlasting.

“Shit Benny, I’m really sorry. That’s tough,” Pope says for the third time. “When did she say she was leaving?”

“I don’t know, man, and I don’t care cause it’s not happening,” Benny shoots back, shaking his head left and right like a scared kid.

Will tuts and when he speaks, his tone suggests they’ve already been over that a hundred times. “Come on buddy, you know she does what she—“

“The hell she does!” he all but shouts.

Under the brim of his cap, Frankie clenches his eyes, your voice on loop in his mind, “he’s your best friend…” He’s painfully aware that he has yet to say something, anything.

“Did she explain why she’s going back to Paris?” he eventually asks under his breath.

“I don’t know, something about her boss offering back her former position,” Benny answers dismissively.

“That boss a man, by any chance?” Redfly snarls.

“Jesus, man,” Will breathes out.

All of a sudden, the situation feels uncomfortably familiar. The stench of gasoline fills up his nostrils and cold sweat breaks out along his spine. Questionable orders and deflected responsibility. Frankie’s gaze moves up to focus on Tom and it’s as though he sees the man, their undisputed leader, for the very first time. Flawed, sad, and bitter.

“Look,” Pope starts, another attempt to ease the heavy atmosphere, “Yovanna likes her, and she has a pretty good bullshit radar. Maybe it’s just that. Maybe she’s really just homesick, maybe she does need to go back.“

“Yeah, maybe it’s this, or maybe it’s that,” Tom persists.

Pope raises an eyebrow at the comment. Crossing his arms over his chest, he tilts his chin up to address Will. “You know her the best. After Benny, I mean. She didn’t tell you anything?”

Will sits up straight, unfurling his sturdy frame. “Talks about Paris all the time. She’s homesick, alright,” he confirms.

“She is,” Frankie whispers.

The words slip out of him before he can hold them. All eyes turn to him, save for Tom’s, who slaps his palm on the table and starts rambling.

“And that’s just the French for you, guys. A bunch of double-faced, unreliable people. Lazy, always fucking protesting something, never falling in line…”

“Ok, we get it,” Will grunts.

“No I mean, let that be a lesson to you, Benny. Because she really just said ‘it’s not you it’s me’ and dumped you for–”

“Hey, here’s an idea for you, Tom.”

The air stills around the five men, wrapped around the anger in Frankie’s commanding tone.

“Fish, easy, man,” Will warns with a tilt of his head, but Frankie’s already raising up to his feet, right fist resting knuckle down on top of the table, squaring up with his former commanding officer who’s staring back at him, dumbfounded.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?”

Hushed conversations fade around them; most of the room turning its attention to their group.

His voice picks up in intensity as he speaks. “You don’t know anything about her, or where she’s from, or why she did what she did– in fact, you know jack shit, so why don’t you shut your mouth, for once, because if you don’t I swear I’ll make you.”

Tom is about to answer when Pope lifts his hands in the air, palms outward.

“Alright, what the hell is going on, here, guys?”

“Yeah, what the hell is going on, Fish?” Benny asks, standing up.

Frankie turns to face his friend and something flickers in his eyes. Almost regret, though not quite an apology, but rather a suppressed threat that twists his lips. In his peripheral vision, Will drops his head with a heavy sigh.

“Did you fuck my girl, Fish?” Benny quietly asks, a lingering doubt in his tone.

Frankie’s lived long enough to know this is the pivotal point of his adult life, and in his head, an image surfaces. The waves of the Pacific Ocean.

Raising a pointing index at the tall man, he licks his lips and slowly answers.

“She is not your girl.”

He only has time to register Tom’s sniggering snort before Ben’s fist collides with his face. A sharp pain blurs his vision and the violence of the blow sends his cap flying across the room. The back of his knees hit the chair and he topples backward in a loud clatter.

An instant uproar bursts around them. Frankie tries to sit up but Ben is on him before he can move, pinning him down to the floor in a straddle, his shirt clutched in his fist. Frankie tries shoving him back but there’s no fighting his strength and he takes the second punch; the back of his head hitting the hardwood floor with an ominous thud and the skin over his cheekbone breaking under the impact of Ben’s knuckles.

A piercing, ringing noise fills his ears, drowning out the other men’s voices along with Ben’s curses, and a surge of blind rage washes over him. He strikes Ben once, twice in rapid succession under the sternum, the sound of his own grunts splitting his skull and Ben collapses on top of him with a groan, warm breath fanning the side of his face. Frankie can’t breathe, crushed under the weight, but it’s lifted off his chest immediately.

Clutching his brother by the collar of his t-shirt and the waist of his jeans, Will pulls him off Frankie and away before he has a chance to dive in again. Frankie’s ready, getting up off the floor, Pope sliding both hands under his arms to hold him back, but Frankie’s voice is heavy with unreleased anger when he shouts, “It’s fine! I’m fine!”

In the dim bar, several people have stood up to get a better view of the commotion.

Shoulders heaving, he pushes Pope away, ready to counter or attack, but Will has both hands on his brother’s chest and is holding him back.

“Get him out of here!” he commands Pope, his words barely audible under Ben’s string of insults.

It’s a beat before Pope is able to snap out of it, his deep frown and curled lips betraying his horror. He turns to Frankie, who is still standing a few feet from the two brothers with his fists clenched and bared teeth, feet planted firmly on the ground and seemingly ready to launch his body forward. Pope comes closer to drag him toward the exit, a splayed hand on his shoulders forcing him backwards, a low rumble of “Come on, man, let’s go,” as if he were attempting to tame a wild beast.

Frankie catches sight of Tom, who hasn’t moved from his seat, beer in hand, staring him down with contempt.

“Go fuck yourself, Tom,” he coldly throws in his direction, but it’s Ben who answers.

“You go fuck yourself, man! I fucking trusted you!”

“Pope! Out!” Will shouts.

Before Pope has time to react, Frankie shrugs off his hands and takes a step forward. Ben stills under his brother’s hold, observing his moves, slow and deliberate as he bends down to pick his hat off the floor.

He stands up, and the two men glare at each other one last time.

“She was never yours,” he quietly states, before Pope gives him a hard push and they both disappear through the door.

Out in the street, the brutal daylight has him squinting. He winces at the pain in his cheek, letting Pope usher him toward his car, with a hand on his back to make sure he complies.

Once in the car, Pope doesn’t wait to start the ignition, forcing his way into the rush hour traffic, and they drive in silence for a while. Frankie’s eyes are trained on the windshield, his breathing evening out slowly, both hands braced on his knees. Adrenaline still pumping high through his system, he can’t bring himself to risk a glance at his friend’s face, knowing he can’t confront the disappointment he knows he’ll find there.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck, man? ¿Qué pasó? ¿Qué has hecho?” Pope bursts out vehemently.

Frankie sighs in frustration; he’s not telling this story again, not today, not now.

“I haven’t done anything wrong, Santiago, ok? It’s fucking bad luck if–”

“Bad luck? Really, Frankie, bad luck? Your fucking face is bleeding! You served together for ten years! The man saved your life!”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t thought about it?” his voice raises to a near breaking point. “Gabrielle and I, we met– fifteen fucking years ago, ok? She was never his. To me, she’s everything. I lost her once, I’m not losing her again. That’s it, that’s what’s happening.”

The cab falls quiet again. The car stops at a red light and Santiago pivots in his seat, trying to catch Frankie’s distant gaze, and his dark eyes soften.

“Why did you never tell me? I would have listened,” he says.

“I know.”

He wants to explain. And he hopes that one day he will get the chance. His silence didn’t spring from lack of trust, but from lack of faith. From the unexplainable absence that left him broken. But right now his jaw is too tightly clenched to articulate the intricate feeling, and his tongue too heavy with the bitter taste of loss that is only too familiar to him.

“Makes sense, though,” Santiago continues.

“What?” he asks with a dry mouth, eyes to his knees.

“You. Missing someone. All these years. I think I always assumed it was your parents, but with all the compulsive fucking I should have guessed it was a girl.”

Frankie doesn’t answer. Santi’s offering open-minded understanding, just like he always has. It might be just who he is. Or it might be that Frankie is right in his gut feeling: he can fix it.

The grey sedan in front of them starts moving, and Santiago activates the right-turn signal.

“Where are you going?” Frankie asks.

“Your place, where you wanna go?”

“No, leave me at the corner of Seaview and County. You need to turn around.”

“What’s there?” Santi frowns. “Her place? You really serious about this?” he asks kindly.

“Yea I'm fucking serious. I'm not going back,” Frankie mutters.

“Well, you’re going back to her,” Santi quips with a grin.

Frankie finally looks at his friend, who’s flashing him his most radiant smile. “Ok, Pablo Neruda, calla y conduce.”

—

You called in sick, and then you simply gave up. What’s the point anyway? For what purpose? To whose benefit?

Countless times you reached for your phone to dial up Rosie, missing her so much you could have screamed, but even for that sort of relief you were too exhausted.

You drafted an email to your boss in Paris, enquiring about the modalities of a possible reinstatement, and failed to send it.

You sat under the shower until the water ran cold, until your eyes ran dry, until your whole body began shivering from the loss of his scent on your skin.

You stared at your ashen reflection in the bathroom mirror, setting a mental countdown to the disappearance of the purple flecks he had left on your neck, your shoulders, your breasts, the swell of your ass. They’ll be gone in a few days. Then your life will reverse to being contained into a memory.

You crossed your arms over your belly and clasped your hips in the same way he had on the fire escape and in his kitchen.

Underwear, socks, high collar T-shirt, jeans. You dressed methodically and remembered to take your Metrocard and to lock your door and walked over to Walgreens to buy some cheap concealer you weren’t sure how to use, applying it in the pharmacy aisle to cover the stubborn marks your clothes wouldn’t hide.

All this, so you could finally, finally ride the bus one last time to Benny’s place.

The conversation didn’t go down easy. That’s one hell of an understatement. He wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t even let you speak. He followed you around his house as you gathered your belongings, (they were everywhere, fuck, what had you been thinking), and kept tugging at your arm for you to face him, trying to cup your face but you wouldn’t let him. Imploring eyes and vows to give you anything you ever needed, and you would have given ten years of your useless life to get out of there, to stop wanting to take him in your arms and thread your fingers through his hair.

You were going to miss him. You missed him already. The realisation struck you like lightning and brought a foul taste to your mouth.

In the end, you still kissed him. Or, you let him kiss you.

“You’ll be fine,” you breathed into his mouth and his hold on you was bruising but it was not the same. Nothing ever was.

Your best friend’s words rang in your ears, true and prophetic.

Rosie, Will, Benny. You were, you are, throwing away the best relationships you’ve ever had over a one-night stand.

Only there’s this space, between his jaw and his collarbone, along the strong line of his neck, where your face fits perfectly. Where you’re important, primordial. Where you’re protected and safe. And free to be what you can or want to be. That space was made just for you, along the strong line of Frankie’s neck, and that space is worth everything. Even if you can only know of it in your most valuable memory.

You’ll choose him, again and again and again: over yourself and over everything.

You wish Rosie had chosen you. You’ll be lost without her. You are, already.

You’re confident you’ve taken the best possible decision. You couldn’t live with the guilt, nor the threat of his eventual resentment.

Back in your apartment, you wiped the concealer off your skin and undressed to your panties. You put on a threadbare red T-shirt, flocked with the name “Chamonix” and a skiing figure that belonged to your grandfather.

Then you drew the curtains. You crawled into bed and pulled the blue sheet over your head.

You'll think about everything later. Rosie, work, packing, moving –for now you just need to sleep, because you’re too tired to hurt, too tired to weep. Heavy heart, heavy lids, heavy limbs.

Time passes, and then a strong, repetitive banging rattles your front door, slowly penetrating the dazed limbo your mind has slipped into. It might be the morning, or the middle of the night. Your body is curled up and sore and you scramble out of bed, hitting your shoulder on the door frame as you step into the living-room. It doesn’t even occur to you to put on some pants before you open the door.

He’s here.

His broad silhouette backlit against the neon lit corridor, the left side of his face bruised and bloodied.

He’s here.

He steps into the dark apartment and closes the door behind him. His hands find your hips, and he pulls you in.

He’s here.

“Who did that to you?” you whisper. “Frankie, what did you do?”

Everyone he’s ever known has asked him a variation of this question, today. What has he done. What did he do. And for each version, there’s only one answer: he’s come back to you.

“It’s fine,” he tells you, his heart painfully pulsating under the cut on his skin but you take his hands off your hips and instruct him to sit.

In the bathroom, your numb fingers fumble noisily in the cabinet for a cotton pad and some alcohol. When you close the mirrored door, you’re met with your reflection again. You might be on the brink of tears or the verge of laughter.

When you come out, something feels different. It’s a minute before you realise he’s opened the curtains he came in to install with his friend less than a week ago. The setting sun casts a golden hue in your small living-room. He hasn’t sat, but he's taken off his cap and he’s pacing the small room.

“It’s over, Gabrielle. I told him. Ben knows. So that’s that, he knows everything.”

It’s a half-truth but the details can wait. Frankie stills when you approach him, knee popped to the side and hands on his hips, but his eyes betray his nervousness.

They follow your trembling hands as they soak the rectangular pad with the yellow liquid. They search your face for a reaction, an emotion, but you give him nothing, focused on your task.

You bring your hand to his face and start wiping his cheek before you stop, hesitant, your fingers releasing their grasp on the cotton pad that falls onto the carpet without a sound. Raising to your tiptoes, you peck an open-mouthed kiss to his wound.

His skin quivers under your lips. You look up at him when you lick your lips clean of his blood, it tastes of copper and salt, and his eyebrows go so high, the crease between them nearly disappears. His shoulders ease down, almost unwillingly, there’s a twitch in his arm, and he sighs heavily. His hands go back to your hips, where they belong, and his heart is pounding.

“You’re staying,” he says, his voice coarse and urgent. “I need to hear you say it, baby. With words. Say you’re staying.”

The fabric of your T-shirt paints your vision red when you slide it off above your head. One by one, you unfasten the press-stud of his shirt and open it wide. There’s a large bruise on the right side of his chest, under his collarbone. You brush your fingers over the purple mark, all the way down to the scar on his side.

Your hands skate up along his sides and find their way around his waist to splay over his back and you press your breasts to the warmth of his solid body. You tuck your face into the crook of his neck, and you tell him.

“I’ll stay. I’ll stay right here.”

You still can’t describe it, and you probably never will, but it’s fine, you won’t have to anymore. His scent. Ever present. Unforgotten. It surrounds you, now. And as Frankie takes the sides of his shirt and wraps them around you in a tight embrace, you both smile with relief.

It’s been a long journey, but you made it home in the end.

****

Bonus (because I had a hard time choosing between the two and I love @nicolethered 🧡):

Additional note: I HC that Santi and Frankie, and especially Izzy and Frankie, would speak a lot more in Spanish, between them. Unfortunately, I don't. So this is what it is 😔 A (French) friend who speaks Spanish kindly helped me with the translations. If you're a native speaker and I've messed it up, please slap me over the back of the head.

Taglist (thank you 🧡): @elegantduckturtle @mashomasho @lola766 @flowersandpotplantsandsunshine @nicolethered @littleone65 @bands-tv-movies-is-me @the-rambling-nerd @saintbedelia @pedrostories @trickstersp8 @all-the-way-down-here @deadmantis @hbc8 @princessdjarin @harriedandharassed @girlofchaos @gracie7209 @mrsparknuts @mylostloversbookmarks

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