Work Text:
She hurls all over his shoes on a Thursday night.
One minute Frank is across the room, and he’s mentioning something about ordering take-out – Chinese or Thai, or whatever else it is she’s craving, because he isn’t picky and doesn't care – and the next she’s shooting to her feet, bending over and placing her hands on her knees and taking deep breathes, and focusing every ounce of energy in her body into the task of not throwing up at the mere mention of food, for once. It’s a stupid battle, and a losing one; she no longer has much control over her stomach and its hair trigger temper. But she stands there, hand over her mouth, and breathes deep, and she can hear Frank cross the room, come to a stop before her, not close, but close enough to reach out and touch her if he wanted.
It turns out to be an ill-advised distance either way.
“Laurel? Hey, you good?”
His voice, low and soothing and cautious. He’s always so cautious with her, these days. She lowers her hand, opens her mouth to say something, and realizes far too late that what’s coming up and out is not words, in any way, shape, or form. Her stomach lurches, and suddenly there’s a torrent of saltines and water and the few, chunky scraps of food she’d had for lunch pouring out of her, straight down onto the hardwood, onto Frank’s sneakers.
He steps back when he realizes what’s happened, startled, and Laurel covers her mouth, shaking her head, eyes watering and cheeks going red. “Oh, God. I’m-”
She clamps her hand over her mouth and tears toward the bathroom, before she can finish that sentence and let out anything else in the process. Luckily, she arrives in time to fall to her knees and lower her head over the bowl, coughing up the last bits of food, and then dry heaving for a while after that, her stomach trying to expel what simply isn’t there, her hands clutching the seat until they go bone-white. She’s too caught up in her own misery to hear Frank’s footsteps on the tile until she feels a presence of a body behind her, sinking down, moving in close.
Then, hands. Large, rough hands, sweeping her hair back, away from her mouth, off her shoulders.
Frank’s hands. Those violent hands so gentle now.
Under normal circumstances, she would shrink away, bat him off; they’re not here yet, in this place where they can freely touch each other, but his touch calms her right then, puts her at ease in a way she hasn’t felt in ages, relaxes and loosens her coiled muscles. He combs his fingers through her hair, gently, catching any wayward strands that escape, holding them firmly. It feels like it’s all that’s grounding her, right then; his hand in her hair, her only tether to a reality which seems more and more each day to slip from her grasp.
He’s here with her. Not asking for anything. Not demanding anything. Just here.
“Thanks,” she chokes out weakly, after her stomach settles and Frank releases her hair. She grabs a wad of toilet paper, dabbing her mouth, and he climbs to his feet – which are now bare, she notices, thanks to her – and fills a cup of water for her, holding it out wordlessly for her to take. She does, rinsing her mouth out and spitting into the bowl, before flushing it.
“’Course,” is all he says, simple, quiet. He sinks back down, clad in the sweatpants and flannel she’d kept for him, and Laurel is too weak and woozy to do anything but lean her weight sideways against the counter, pulling in deep breathes, letting her eyes slip closed.
It’s not like knowing she’s pregnant isn’t already fucking terrifying enough. She thinks she could do without her stomach’s constant reminders of the fact.
She’s facing him now, able to take in the sight of him where he sits, leaning back against the wall with his knees drawn up, but not tucked against him. It still feels surreal, sometimes; unfamiliar, like this is a stranger she’s let into her home, a stray dog she’s not sure she recognizes or one she can trust, but one she knows in so many ways that being with him still feels so easy, innate, like nothing has happened in the interim since his leaving. It’s been hard to get used to how he looks now; beard gone, reduced only to faint stubble which he hasn’t indicated any intent to grow back. He’d hidden behind it in a way, she thinks. Used it as a mask. And he has nowhere to hide his emotions from her, now. They’re all laid plain for her to see, every quirk of his mouth, every frown, even the slightest twitch of his lips that betray his every thought.
So much has happened since they were together. He’s crossed oceans to come back to her, and she always knew he would.
She’d tried to run. Tried to escape it, and this, and him, all of it. More often than not she’s still cold to him, keeping him at a distance whenever he ventures too close; a reflex more than it is what she really wants. After the fire and Wes, she’s not the same. He isn’t either. Most of their time now is spent relearning each other, finding their footing on this new ground with everything between them, and she’ll never admit it to him, or anyone, but she’s glad he’s here. Glad he found his way back to her.
It was inevitable, all along. They’ve never been able to wander far from each other. They’re fated, like two planets colliding, hopelessly tangled in each other’s gravity.
This was never going to end any other way than with him back by her side.
“I’m sorry,” she says, finally, grimacing at the taste of vomit in her mouth. She lets out a breath, feeling her body deflate like one giant balloon along with her lungs. “About your shoes.”
Frank shrugs, unperturbed. So understanding. She doesn’t know why. Probably she never will. “‘S okay.”
“It’s not okay,” she insists, protesting weakly, though she can’t summon up her voice to sound very emphatic. “None of this is okay.”
“It is-”
“It’s not.” Anger surges through her, right then, hits her and pounds through her body, however irrational it may be. He’s so mild-mannered, so understanding, so patient with her it’s infuriating. Still, though, she can’t find it in herself to snap at him in earnest. “I get you sent to jail and it’s like you… you don’t even care. And I puke on your shoes and you’re fine with it. You’re so…” She drifts off, huffing, letting her head fall against the wooden counter with a thick clunk. “I don’t understand.”
“They’re just shoes,” he tells her, though Laurel can tell he knows this isn’t about the damn shoes, that this stretches far deeper than the shoes. It’s what the shoes represent.
It’s how she could puke on his shoes every day, every single day, and that still wouldn’t be enough to drive him away. It’s how she could tell him she wants him dead, say horrible, awful things to him, get him sent to jail, get knocked up by another guy, puke on his shoes – and he would still stay, stubbornly loyal as a pit bull.
She hates him sometimes, for that. Almost as much as she loves him.
They fall into silence, thick but oddly soothing, not really uncomfortable, not really anything, just there. Laurel draws her knees up to her chest, resting her elbows on them and sitting up ever so slightly straighter; she doesn’t think she’s at risk to hurl again, at least not anytime soon, so she can back away from the toilet for now.
“You could go,” Laurel says, suddenly, fracturing the silence into a million and one tiny pieces with that simple truth. “Stay with Bonnie. She wouldn’t throw up on your shoes, at least.”
Frank almost, almost smiles. Almost – because he doesn’t quite dare it.
“I can handle gettin’ my hands dirty. Or my shoes.” He pauses, meeting her eyes timidly, still never entirely sure where he stands with her, what she thinks of him, how much eye contact is too much. “Somebody’s gotta hold your hair, right?”
“I can hold my own hair,” she mutters, feeling a faint wave of nausea pass over her.
“Yeah,” he replies, letting that truth sink in; that she would be fine on her own. That she can do this alone. That she does not, and has never, and will never, need him – even though she does, God she does, more than she’ll ever admit to anyone. “I know.”
A moment. He looks at her. She looks at him, face half thrown into shadow where he sits, silent and faithful as a sentinel, eyes locked on her so intensely she can almost feel them as though he were touching her. He looks at her with a sort of unwavering devotion no one has ever directed towards her before, not even remotely; not her father’s hired goons, her short-lived line of bodyguards who probably would’ve slit her throat at the drop of a hat the instant someone offered them more than her father was paying. He would do anything for her, and she knows that. And she doesn’t know what she feels for him, right then; she’s too tired, too angry, too overwhelmed to know. All she can do is sit there and feel.
Sit here and take it.
“If I keep it, the baby,” she wonders aloud, though the words are pointed. She meets his eyes, jaw set, testing him, “would you still wanna stay then?”
His answer is simple. A nod. He doesn’t so much as hesitate; the reply is automatic, as if she’s only asked him to tell her his name. “Yeah.”
Yeah. He would. He’d stay with her. Laurel had been expecting that, even if she can’t fathom why. He has no reason to stay, no obligation to her, not tied by flesh or blood to the child growing inside her, the child of a dead man. He has nothing keeping him here except maybe his own inexplicable, stupid fucking hopeless devotion to her, and she knows he isn’t lying; he would stay. Stay even when she’s puking all over his shoes and screaming at him when her hormones run wild and craving ungodly combinations of food and swelling all over like a balloon. Stay even after those nine months are up, when there’s a baby screaming in the middle of the night every night, waking the both of them constantly; a baby that isn’t his, will never be his. He’d take on all that, the both of them, so long as it means being with her.
He would. He’d stay.
“Why?”
A simple question. Again, his answer is just as simple.
“Because I love you.”
She bites out a chuckle. “It can’t be that simple.”
It can’t be. Nothing is so black and white as that, no motivation ever so pure. He loves her, so he stays. Like the thought processes of a child, the simplest cause and effect. Frank’s eyes soften, those pools of blue a warm caress, drinking in the sight of her as if trying to absorb her into them. It makes her want to melt, but she’s been fighting so long her first instinct is to fight again, fight him off, fight the impulse, so she does, and she doesn’t. She makes herself harden to steel, instead.
“What if I said it was?”
She clenches her jaw, anger and sorrow rising up inside her. “I’d say you’re stupid. I’d say you’re just gonna leave anyway, like you did before. Because everyone always does. I’d say…” Her throat tightens. Her voice sounds strained, and she hates it, but she can’t force it back open, steady herself. She lowers her eyes, picking idly at her hands. “I’d say you’re wrong.”
“’M not wrong,” he asserts, shaking his head. “Whatever you decide. Whatever you need. I’m here.” He looks, briefly, as though he’s going to move closer, do away with the distance between them though they’re only feet apart on the cold tile floor, but ultimately he thinks better of it, and stays still. “You’re not in this alone, Laurel.”
She smiles. It’s a pitying, barely-smile, accompanied by a humorless chuckle. “Yeah, well. You’re wrong about that too.”
“L-”
“You’d stay because you feel sorry for me. Not because you love me,” she cuts him off before he can continue, voice thick and tearful. “Poor little Laurel. Pregnant and alone. Like you said I’d be, right? The stupid girl from Brown who… just gets knocked up and gives up everything. You took one look at me and knew.” Another laugh. It comes out in a burst, a cutting, awful burst, and she swears Frank flinches at the sound. She can remember those words so clearly; those words of prophecy. “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t,” he insists, but she shakes her head, ignoring him.
“You did,” she says, and sniffs, wiping the tears from her cheeks, hating them for the show of weakness they are. She can’t afford weakness. Can’t afford to be anything less than strong, now. “So. Guess you’re not wrong about everything.”
Frank opens his mouth, starts to say something, but decides against it and lets it fall shut. After a moment, Laurel sucks in a breath.
“I can’t have it, y’know,” she remarks, lowering her eyes. She doesn’t know what will happen if she looks at him. She doesn’t want to know. “Bring a baby into all this. All this blood. What kind of life is that?” She swallows, feeling her lower lip quiver, her tears spilling over like a dam cresting its edges. “And if I have it, and it grows up, finds out about Wes, how they pinned it all on him, made him into some psychopath… I can’t hurt it like that. Maybe it’s better, just getting rid of it.”
Closer. It occurs to her that Frank is moving closer, though he’s a blur through her tears, barely visible at all. He moves across the floor until he’s at her side, back pressed up against the counter too, body angled slightly toward her, and she can feel him looking at her but she won’t look back, can’t look back. If she looks back she’s not sure what will happen.
If she looks back it feels, somehow, like everything will change.
“I’m here,” he says again, and he’s so close now. After so many months apart, having him so close is jarring. “However this pans out. Not because I feel sorry for you. ‘Cause I love you. I’ll be… here.”
Anger spikes through her again, like a flash of lightning. “And what if I don’t want you here?”
Frank blinks. She can see him through her tears, now that they’ve dissipated for the most part, and he’s looking at her with all that blue-eyed earnestness, wide open, worshipful. She can see the thought wounds him, makes him shrink back ever so slightly almost as though he’s wilting.
“Then I’ll go,” Frank answers. “You want me to leave for good, never come back… I’ll go. Just say the word.”
He’s offering himself up, she realizes. Holding out his heart, bloody and aching and ripped from his chest, for her to accept into her hands or stomp into the dust. Sacrificing himself to her, kneeling before her altar almost as if in an act of self-flagellation – or rather, offering her the whip, allowing her the chance to hurt him herself.
One word. One word is all it would take. He’d do it, if she wanted him to; if she decided she wanted him gone for good. This is how it’d been before, in the hospital, when he’d come to her and she’d been cruel in every possible way a person can be cruel to another, but worse, somehow; cruel with her own particular kind of cruelty, the perfect ammunition fired in precisely the right way.
And God, she wants so badly to tell him to go, tell him there’s no way they can be together now, after everything, after all the hurt he’s caused, after all the suffering they’ve endured and now there’s this baby, and now everything is different. It’s transformed them, made them into these two people she no longer recognizes. Maybe they aren’t fated. Or maybe they’re fated only to hurt each other. Kill each other.
She doesn’t say anything. She can’t find her voice, and it’s not like she’d mean it anyway.
They don’t say anything for a long moment. There’s too much to say it feels like too daunting a task to ever begin to tackle. She’s still made no definite decisions; she doesn’t feel equipped to. The only thing she truly feels able to do, right in this moment, is exist, breathe, operate that basic biological process of her body to keep her heart beating, keep the heart inside her beating. Breathe for both of them. It’s not just her she lives for now, and the thought petrifies her. She’s never been more scared in her life.
Frank seems to sense her fear, see the subtle rigidity of her muscles as they go tense, perhaps maybe even the change in the pace of her breathing, because he presses his lips together, looking at her closely. He wants to touch her, she’s sure he does, but Frank won’t dare; he knows better. Knows she doesn't want him to.
Although Laurel is no longer really sure that's true.
“You want me to give you a sec?”
Laurel considers it. But after a moment she shakes her head, turning towards him very slightly, barely an inch, in a show of acceptance as he sits there in silent solidarity beside her.
A shake of her head. No. That seems to confuse Frank, who wrinkles his brow, but doesn’t budge.
“Want me to stay?”
Laurel doesn’t quite feel equipped to say those words just yet. Tell him she wants him to stay. That feels like too big a step. He’s crossed oceans to come back to her, maybe, but they still have many oceans yet to go, miles and light years and galaxies to traverse. She thinks they can do it. Knows Frank loves her enough to do it, to try, baby or no baby, whatever comes their way; if it’s hell or high water or both. He loves her, and she thinks that’s the only truth she really knows, anymore, the only certainty she can cling to.
So, finally, she opens her mouth.
“Can we just sit here?” she croaks, voice but a whisper. So soft she’s not even sure he can hear. “I just… I think I need to sit here, for a while.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, just as softly. The words meet her ears, smooth across her skin; calm her like his touch. “’Course.”
So they do. She sits there, and he sits with her, not speaking, not touching her; doing what he’d done before. Just being there, with no expectations, no demands, no obligations. He could be anywhere else; any sane man would’ve run for the hills weeks ago, but he’s here because he wants to be. She’s let him be here because she wants him to be.
They’ve done a lot of terrible, awful shit to each other. Maybe there’s no way back from all that. Or maybe there is.
Maybe this is the start of it.
“I’m sorry about your shoes,” Laurel says, again, her words garbled, edging closer to closer to slumber. She drifts out into that hazy blackness, and it loosens her tongue, the further she slips. “I’ll buy you new ones.”
Frank chuckles. It sounds warm, familiar. Sounds like home. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I do,” she insists, with a yawn. “I will.”
“Okay,” he concedes. She can hear the smile in his voice. “Whatever you want.”
She hasn’t slept in God knows how long, but somehow with Frank her body feels at liberty to let down its guard, shut off for a while, give her a respite from the hell she lives in – so it does. She slips, lets the tide of exhaustion carry her out to sea, her limbs boneless and wrung out, body slumped against the counter like a ragdoll.
With the last few fading bits of her consciousness, she thinks she might feel him dare to reach out, take her hand, press a kiss to the back of it. She doesn’t know if he does. Can’t be sure.
Maybe she dreams it. But Laurel has the sense, in her bones, that it's real.