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hazellvsq · 1 year ago

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trc au - drive

Leo leaned his forehead against the door. Remembered the vision of Frank. Frank as a ghost, bathed in ethereal flames. Burning forever.

If you kiss your true love, he will die.

Leo picked up the phone, dialed without trying to think too hard. Frank answered. “Valdez?”

“Frank. Can you pick me up?”

“Yes! Yeah.” He sounded worried. “Are you okay?”

No, Leo wanted to say, but he wasn’t hurt or anything and he didn’t want to worry Frank. He settled on something simple, keeping his head against the wood of the door. “I just...I can’t be home right now. If you’re not doing anything-” He let the words hang.

��I’ll come by, I’m not busy.” Leo heard muffled movement from Frank’s end. “Did you see Hazel this afternoon?”

Silence. Only the crackling of the line. Then Leo said, “Can we talk about something else?”

A month and a half ago he would have said nothing, because Frank very clearly had feelings for Hazel and very clearly thought Leo was a shithead. Four weeks ago he would have said nothing because Frank was mad at Hazel and trying to hide it, and Leo wanted to be nowhere near the inevitable eruption. Three weeks ago Leo wasn’t sure if he and Frank were even really friends. Two weeks ago even, they were, but Hazel was still Frank’s older friend, the one who was there first, the one who would win the friend group when she and Leo’s whatever had imploded.

Now Leo didn’t know if Frank and Hazel were still friends at all. And after this afternoon, he didn’t know if Hazel would ever speak to him again.

The quiet static hissed for another long moment. Frank said, “I’ll be there in five.”

Leo waited on the curb, knees hunched towards his chest, trying to think of nothing at all. The air was humid, breezeless, almost oppressively tense. Mosquitos hummed and whined. Frank made it in four, a knight in shining Volvo. He pushed open the door and tossed the keys at Leo.

“Yeah?” he asked, surprised.

“You need it,” Frank said seriously.

Both Frank and Leo struggled with carsickness, but Leo could typically withstand Frank’s cautious driving. Frank would also give Leo shotgun recently, despite Leo having way shorter legs than Reyna. This had made Reyna like Leo even less, if possible. Oh well.

Leo took it easy on the way out of Jo and Emmie’s neighborhood, kept the speed of the road past the residential areas, but the second the empty streets straightened out he hit the gas and held it. Instead of grimacing, which Leo was watching for, Frank rolled down his window and held on. Under the streetlights over head, appearing in flashes and bursts, Frank’s white T-shirt practically glowed. Looking ahead at the road, eyes narrowed against the wind, he held none of his normal awkwardness. He had all the solidity of a tree trunk, a thousand year old boulder.

Frank reached forwards toward the radio, turning it on and skipping past the dad rock station Leo had laughed at him for liking. Settled on something more interesting, with a heavy bassline that matched the rumble of the center strip beneath Leo’s feet.

“How was Canada?” Leo asked. Neither he nor Reyna had been invited. He was annoyed about it deep down, so he was sure Reyna was madder. Neither of them had voiced it, to his knowledge. He kept the annoyance tamped down, tough - he’d already used all his words on the topic on Hazel earlier. Now he was just curious about Frank’s family home.

Frank frowned in the corner of Leo’s eye. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about Hazel.”

“I don’t,” Leo said. “I’ve just never been to Canada. Or met your family. How was it?”

Frank told him about the coniferous forests around his house, the national park he lived in the backyard of, and grizzly bears and little red foxes that roamed nearby. Then he talked about downtown Vancouver, the places he’d hang out as a kid. Seafood by the harbor and a trip to Seattle, once. He talked about his grandma conscripting him into kitchen duty, described how homesick the food made him.

Leo listened. Before Jo and Emmie, he’d been a foster kid for six years. Before that, he lived in a crappy part of one of the hottest cities in the country, but he missed his mom’s apartment there with an intensity that made his heart feel like it was withering away to ashes.

Whatever was replacing it was steelier, harder.

The tiny glow of the stereo lit Frank’s knees, the thick muscle in his calves, the sparse hair on his legs. The furrow of his brow, the finally-relaxed set to his shoulders. Leo stopped looking, checked back at the road. Then looked back at Frank.

“It sounds nice.” They had reached the mountains. Leo slowed down a little to drive uphill. “I mean it. I’m glad you went.”

He was, now. He had been mad that Frank left, but he wanted him to be happy.

“What did you get up to?” Frank asked.

“Oh, you know. Worked on the truck. Kissed Nico. I saw Reyna across the street and waved at her.”

“Liar.”

Leo was lying. About Reyna, who he hadn’t seen once.

“Me and Hazel are done, I think.” He hadn’t meant to say that. Not now?

Frank didn’t look at him, kept his voice neutral as he stared out the window. “I was never sure if you two actually got together or not.”

Do you still like her? Leo wanted to ask. He couldn’t. Everything was too loaded.

“I don’t know what we were doing. But we’re not anything now.”

He couldn’t say who had dumped who. The fight had gotten too heated for specifics.

Suddenly, Leo couldn’t stand it. He pulled the car over, and the lights of the city spread out before them. He slammed it into park.

“Well,” Frank said. “You got out of the house.”

Leo huffed a half-laugh. Drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Both of them stared out at the city. Leo reclined his seat a little, then realized that that action, in this context, felt more than a little illicit. Because Frank, still sitting up, was now above him, and staring down at him.

Leo stared back, now very self-conscious about being half-leaned back. He felt like he’d just ripped off his shirt. He wanted Frank to recline his own seat and rescue Leo from this feeling. He wanted to crawl out of his skin.

Frank swallowed. Leo still didn’t move, just looked back up at him.

Then Frank grimaced and shook his head, turning his head away. His ears were red. Now he was awkward. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I don’t...”

“It’s cool,” Leo said. He had absolutely no clue if it was cool. He thought it might not have been, actually. He rolled sideways to face Frank so that he wasn’t feeling quite so vulnerable.

Frank swallowed again, then sniffled. “I don’t know if we’re still gonna be friends.” He wasn’t talking about Leo. “I’m scared she hates me right now.”

“She doesn’t, man.” Leo might have been lying, and he was fairly sure that Hazel hated him right now. But Hazel and Frank were different. “She thinks you’re hot shit. A fight won’t change that.”

Frank’s voice was small. Defeated. “This thing is...it’s so much bigger than us, and she wants to take it on by herself. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix it.”

Leo couldn’t answer that. He’d gone out with Hazel to avoid his prophetically-ordained male true love. He probably shouldn’t give others advice. He’d been wrong about Hazel, wrong about Frank.

Frank had seemed so bumbling and insecure at first. Leo thought it was nearly unforgivable for someone to have access to all that money and strength and potential and still not know what to do with themselves. He had been mean to Frank in a way that made him squirm now. Then again, Frank had been nasty right back. So Leo had allied himself firmly with Hazel.

Before Hazel had made a deal with a creepy primordial entity that would sometimes seize her mind and soul.

“I don’t know either,” Leo said to Frank. He exhaled. “All this stuff she was seeing was scaring me.” Hazel had scared him. And the way she buttoned up every single thing - her silence didn’t scare Leo, no matter how ominous it became. It just worried him, but Hazel had made it very, very clear that he should keep that to himself.

Frank hunched forward. “I just want her to be okay,” he muttered. “I can’t stand it when she’s hurting.”

Leo watched his profile. If he reached-

No.

There was no way to go through here without wounding somebody. Hazel was hurting. Leo was hurting. Frank was hurting.

If he did what he wanted to do, here, now, would Frank survive it?

No.

Leo checked the backseat in the mirror, wondering for a second if some spectral Hazel would be there, if she could materialize like Nico did. He did not want the presence of her here. He wanted to be able to be her friend, or her boyfriend, in something that wasn’t going to blow up. Something that wouldn’t be ruined.

Or, as he watched Frank, something that wouldn’t be a betrayal. Destroy three friendships for the price of one.

He wondered if Hazel and Frank had actually hooked up last year. If he’d been crushing on not just Hazel’s best friend but her ex boyfriend, or at least ex something. Nico didn’t even know, because he’d made a face when Leo had asked and said he made a point of not finding out.

Frank scrubbed a hand over his face. “God. This is miserable.”

“And you’re usually such a ray of sunshine,” Leo said, ducking away when Frank swiped a hand at him.

“I wish we could just...” Leo flapped both hands at the windshield. “Get a redo. Through this car.” The city kept glowing beneath them. Leo would forgive any billionaire all their crimes if one invented a flying car that he could have.

“Did I get one with you?” Frank asked.

Leo snorted. “You know I actually wasn’t mad at you, right? I was messing with you.”

“You got me.” Frank smiled for the first time all night. “Easy target, though.”

“Very.” Leo smiled too, almost helplessly. For once, he wasn’t fidgeting, wasn’t wandering off.

Frank looked at Leo’s mouth.

Never, thought Leo. Never. He couldn’t know if Frank was his true love or if he’d wake up tomorrow feeling nothing towards him. So he couldn’t kiss him.

A ghost on fire, a boy built like a man, his face obscured by the flame.

Who are you? Fai.

Burning, burning.

Frank reached forward. Touched Leo on the cheek.

Leo stopped breathing. Imagined that his face was combusting with heat.

His other hand. His other cheek. Frank was looking right at him. Leo could nearly hear his own blood sloshing through his heart, quickening, hurting his chest.

He wanted to push Frank away. He wanted to pull Frank on top of him. He reached up and wrapped his hand around Frank’s wrist, not tugging or shoving, just leaving it there.

Frank leaned towards him, and Leo finally flinched. “You can’t.”

“I won’t.” Frank was still looking at him. “Trust me, I won’t.”

Leo hesitated, then nodded. Frank leaned in until they were chest to chest, cheek to cheek - Frank was as red as Leo imagined he was himself, which was a little vindicating. Leo reached up, touched his neck, then moved his arms up behind it, around Frank’s shoulders. Breathed out slowly. Their chests were touching, moving together. He could feel Frank close his eyes, feel his lashes brush against Leo’s temple. Leo’s next breath in was a little shakier.

A car passed by, headlights briefly flicking into the Volvo. Both of them tensed. Frank hung on a moment longer to Leo, then pulled back, taking his hands off, returning to his seat. Leo sat up and followed him over, reaching out and covering Frank’s mouth with his hand. Kissproof.

“I’m going to start having to do this,” he said. “If you’re gonna go around doing stuff like that.”

He could feel Frank’s smile underneath his palm. He wanted to pull it off and keep it with him, in his pocket so he could pull it out whenever he needed it. They had to go back to real life in a moment, a real life where they couldn’t blow up their friend group or kill each other, and having that smile with him would make everything easier. Make anything more possible.

He pulled his hand away. “Let’s go home.”

#valzhang #frank zhang #leo valdez #trc au #they are all - in the spirit of trc - incorrigible homie hoppers #dont worry though they will make up with hazel soon and figure it all out they're friends #and i left their fights vague but she's hosting a weird entity and not dealing with it well and they aren't dealing with her well either #not sure if i will continue this but i do want to write the leo nico kiss and maybeeee some reyna and hazel #or possibly prequel frank and hazel #bc they absolutely did hook up the year before leo's right #or both #plus reyna and frank being roomates for fun #sorry for my plagiarism maggie stief it will happen again

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