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She isn’t altogether surprised when she ends up alone on Christmas.
Granted, it is partially her fault. She isn’t about to be within fifty feet of her father, let alone spend a week trading tight-jawed pleasantries with her stepmom and trying not to guzzle down half a dozen consecutive glasses of wine as she’s forced to make conversation with her step-siblings; glasses of wine she can’t drink anyway. But she turns down Michaela’s offer to spend the day with her and the others at her place, begging off and pleading a headache. Normally she thinks the other girl would’ve protested, but with the myriad of strange maladies she finds herself afflicted with as of late, she seems to buy it and leaves her be.
She’s probably glad to leave her be. Probably wants to be around her just as much as Connor does, after everything she’s said. Everything she’s done.
So she’s alone, and she can deal with that. Really, she can; she’s spent most of her life alone, a lonely child growing into a lonely teenager who became a lonely adult, and no matter what happens, who she meets, who she dates, one way or another, she always seems to end up alone in the end. She’s cursed, probably. Like the universe decided to pick her sorry ass of all people to fuck with on a more than regular basis and her entire life is a series of terrible cosmic jokes. She can rely on herself, at least. Keep her own company. She’s never truly alone now anyway, and she has to banish that thought, the memory of the sound of that heartbeat she’d heard that day at the doctor, because she thinks she’ll go crazy if she doesn’t.
Not that she isn’t already.
She spends the day moping about, like she’s spent most of winter break, eating ice cream and watching daytime TV, but it’s only when dark falls that the feeling of loneliness really settles in, hardening like a pit between her ribs, making her entire chest feel like some hollow, gaping chasm. So she wraps herself in a long grey cardigan and makes herself a cup of tea, tuning the radio to a station playing cheesy, grating Christmas carols and settling under a blanket on her couch, holding her head high, because she refuses to wallow. She will not wallow. Wallowing isn’t something she does.
It’s all she can seem to do, lately. And if it makes her a Scrooge, then so be it.
She’s halfway done with her tea and roughly three-fourths of the way done with her wallowing when there’s a knock on the door, and she hauls herself to her feet with a frown, plodding over towards it. She can only assume it’s Michaela and the others, well-meaning ghosts of Christmas present, showing up at her doorstep to bring the party to her, and she can’t imagine anyone she’d like to see less; really, she can’t imagine anyone she’d like to see right now at all.
But then she yanks open the door, and finds herself face to face with the ghost of Christmas past instead, and all of that kind of, sort of changes.
It isn’t a ghost, though she figures it might as well be; it’s only Frank, standing there in his wool winter coat, with grocery bags and what looks like a box for a little Christmas tree in his hands, snow falling in fat flakes around him, and she furrows her brow at the sight of him. It’s Frank, of all people, showing up at her door, because of course it would be. It’s always Frank. Trying to run from Frank feels much the same as trying to run from gravity.
All roads lead to Frank, one way or another.
She doesn’t say anything at first, just looks at him a bit warily, and after a moment he clears his throat. “Uh, hey.”
“Hi,” she greets, then frowns, looking at the bags and box, then back up at him. She folds her arms, assuming a defensive stance almost unconsciously. “What’re you… what’re you doing here?”
He shrugs, in that simple unassuming way that’s so totally, frustratingly Frank.
“Thought I could make you dinner. Help you decorate. Doubt you’ve had time to, with… everything that’s gone on.” There’s a beat, and the air is no less thick between them, no less tense, so he lowers his eyes, thinking for a moment. Finally, he wrestles a weak grin onto his lips. “No Christmas is complete without a ham and a tree and a shitton of eggnog, right?”
Laurel bristles, automatically. “I can’t drink eggnog.”
Frank blinks. It’s clear he’d been trying to joke, albeit half-heartedly, make things seem at least somewhat normal between them, somewhat normal for her sake. He hadn’t really been thinking, and when he realizes what she means he shifts a bit awkwardly, looking guilty.
“Yeah, I, uh, I know. Just meant-”
“I know what you meant,” she says, breathing the words on a sigh and letting her shoulders slump. “Look, I… I don’t really feel good, I’d rather just be alone.”
“Laurel,” he starts, and she tries not to melt at the guileless, beseeching look in his eyes, at the way he says her name; the way he’s shown up at her door like a stray dog, bearing gifts, coming back to her no matter how many times she’s been cruel, no matter how many times she’s kicked him away. “Nobody should be alone on Christmas.”
It’s a simple truth. She knows he’s not wrong, and his company wouldn’t even be entirely unwelcome, but stepping aside, letting him in again… It’d be something more, something bigger than doing that alone. It’d be crossing a line between them again, rebuilding a bridge she’s still not entirely sure she wants to rebuild, breathing life into something she isn’t sure she ought to; something that perhaps ought to remain dead and buried. She remembers, suddenly, the night he’d come to her after returning to Philly, with nowhere else to go, looking much the same as he does now, and she’d followed him out the door, made him stay with her. She’d let him in then.
She’d damned herself in that instant, when it comes to Frank – wholly and completely. She can’t pretend she didn’t. So maybe there’s not much harm any further damnation can do.
Finally, without a word, Laurel steps aside.
Frank hesitates, at first, his eyes widening further, as if he’d been so certain she’d turn him away, leave him out in the cold. He doesn’t seem certain what to do now that he’s been granted entry, but after a moment he gives her another tiny, almost sheepish grin and steps inside, setting down his bags by the door and shrugging off his coat. She grabs her mug of tea and watches him from the doorway of the kitchen as he unpacks what he’s brought onto her countertops; the fixings for a ham dinner, she thinks, the thought of which either makes her want to stuff her face or puke her guts out, and she can’t decide which it’ll be, quite yet.
After a moment of silence, she clears her throat, making her way over to the mini Christmas tree in its box where he’d left it and eyeing it with a thoughtful frown. “How’d you know I was alone?”
“Talked to Michaela,” he answers, rummaging through his grocery bags. “She said you weren’t with her and the others. You weren’t with Annalise and Bon. Knew you weren’t at your family’s either.”
“And you?” she asks, pointedly, voice sharper than she means it to be. “Your family? Shouldn’t you be with them?”
“Probably. But it’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” she insists, and exhales sharply, suddenly grasping for any reason she can find for him to go, to convince him to leave, because surely letting him in was a mistake. It can only ever realistically be a mistake. “You should go. Be with your family. Or… Bonnie and Annalise.”
He starts to say something. She swears to God he almost starts to say that she’s his family, but at the very last second he has the good sense to stop himself, and she’s grateful for it; she has no idea what she’d do if he did say that.
Frank settles on giving her a wounded look, but his reply is simple. “Rather be with you.”
They’re silent, for a long moment, and Laurel leans against the doorway, arms still tucked in tight against her chest, and Frank stands by the counter, and neither of them have even the most remote idea of what to do; that much is clear. Laurel knows she doesn’t, at least, because letting him in tonight has opened a door – literally and figuratively – and she doesn’t know how to close it now, and the most terrifying thing is she’s not entirely sure she even wants to.
She doesn’t know how to bridge this distance between them either, though; distance that feels like it’s galaxies-wide, like it spans oceans. Like it spans entire worlds.
“I’ll get dinner goin’,” Frank tells her, breaking into her foggy reverie. He musters up that same forced grin, like he’s trying so hard to pretend everything is normal, that everything is fine, patching a veneer over the ugly, hidden layers of truth beneath. “You go sit down.”
Irrationally, Laurel thinks about protesting, telling him she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do, that she doesn’t need to sit down or rest, but eventually she just nods, making her way back out into the living room and plopping down onto the couch. It’s a while before Frank reemerges, and when he does he’s flushed from the heat of the kitchen, clad in a green sweater with the sleeves rolled up and jeans but still beardless; familiar and so unfamiliar, a paradox of a man. He doesn’t say anything at first, just tears open the Christmas tree box and dumps out its contents onto her rug, then sets about assembling the skinny little dollar-store thing, with cheap, plastic branches and a crooked base.
A shitty tree for a shitty Christmas. At least it’s suitable for the occasion.
“So,” he breaks the silence, at last, from his spot where he kneels by her fireplace. “You didn’t wanna join Prom Queen for her Christmas extravaganza?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re just getting hammered,” she remarks, staring down into the cooling remnants of her tea. “Not exactly like I can partake. I doubt they really want me there anyway.”
He frowns. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“After everything I’ve said? The way I’ve been acting? I’ve been terrible to all of them.” She swallows, voice strained, vocal cords strung tight and aching, all at once. “I told Connor to kill himself, in front of Oliver. In front of all of them. I… sent Michaela after Charles Mahoney. Put her in danger. They probably hate me.” She swallows, the truth of her words washing over her. “They were never really my friends, anyway.”
Frank doesn’t answer, just kneels there, brow furrowed, visibly troubled by her words, and after a moment she manages a dark chuckle in a lame attempt to clear the air.
“Sorry. You didn’t come here for a pity party.”
Frank remains unperturbed. “Nah. What better time for a pity party than Christmas, right?”
Silence, for a moment. Laurel is the one to put it to an end this time, as she watches Frank assemble the tree then reach into another grocery bag, withdrawing a few packages of multi-colored ornaments.
“You didn’t wanna be with Annalise and Bonnie?”
“They don’t got a lot of Christmas spirit.”
Laurel scoffs. “What, and I do?”
“Nah,” he concedes, and grins. “Just figured you could use some company. They got each other, at least.”
“You’re here because you feel bad for me? Because if that’s the case, you can leave. I don’t want to be your Christmas charity case.”
“You’re not. I-” He cuts himself off, seemingly frustrated with his inability to communicate to her what he really wants to say. “I just wanted to be here. ‘Sides, if you kick me out…” He drifts off, nodding over at the pathetic, lopsided tree next to him. “Who’s gonna decorate the tree?”
He’s doing it, again. Steering the conversation towards the most mundane, trivial things he can think of, like decorating the tree, like Christmas spirit, like celebrating this holiday as if they aren’t all felons with a rap sheet twice the length of Santa’s list. He’s trying to make things feel normal for her, bring a bit of normalcy back into her life, and she can’t decide if she feels irritated or touched, and she’s also not sure she wants to know which one she feels. After everything, after Wes, something so ordinary as celebrating Christmas feels all sorts of wrong, like she isn’t allowed to be happy, allowed to do the things ordinary people do.
It’s laughable, Frank of all people trying to get her into the Christmas spirit; a pursuit she’s sure he can tell will be futile. It almost makes her smile.
Almost. Not quite.
Laurel does soften a little, though, and Frank must notice, because he perks up somewhat. “So, you gonna help me with this thing or not?”
“I-” She starts to say something, then thinks better of it. “Frank-”
“C’mon, I did the hard part already, set it all up.” He reaches for a package next to him, holding it up with raised eyebrows. “I got lights.”
“What, so you’re Saint Nick now?” she quips, and finally stands, making her way over to Frank and kneeling beside him with a look of mostly-feigned reluctance. “That only would’ve been convincing back when you still had the beard.”
Frank cocks his head to one side. “You just make a joke?”
She shrugs, and reaches out, unraveling the lights slowly. “Maybe.”
They fall into silence as they decorate the tree, looping the strands of lights and tinsel around it and dotting the branches with haphazardly-placed mini-ornaments, but it’s not uncomfortable, not uncomfortable at all. The only sound to be heard is the radio crooning faintly in the background, some old version of ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ Laurel has heard half a million times before, which sounds like little more than white noise to her now. But it feels welcome, in a way, the fact that they’ve returned to silence, that they’re able to return to silence without it feeling awkward or strange, like a burden that needs to be lifted. It feels as natural as anything, as natural as breathing; just being by Frank’s side. Decorating the tree serves as a pleasant distraction, for a while, and when they’re almost finished Frank reaches over, offers her the tree-topper; an equally cheap gold star that flakes glitter all over her carpet when he holds it out.
“Wanna do the honors?”
Laurel nods, evading his eyes by whatever means necessary, not sure what will happen if she looks back, but takes the topper and places it on the tree – only for the added weight to send the wobbly thing toppling to the ground before either of them can catch it, tinsel and lights and ornaments and all.
She wants to laugh. It seems an apt metaphor for the way her life is going, currently.
“Dammit,” Frank curses, and picks up the tree, righting its crooked base as best he can.
“Well,” Laurel deadpans. “Have yourselves a shitty little Christmas.”
“Won’t be shitty,” Frank tells her, as optimistically as he can manage. “No Christmas is shitty long as you got a tree.” Laurel begs to differ, but she doesn’t mention it, and after a moment Frank stands, holding out his hand to help her up too. “Now c’mon. I got a killer recipe for virgin eggnog I been dyin’ to try out.”
She wrinkles her nose, and doesn’t take his hand, rising on her own. “You know I don’t like eggnog.”
“Bet you’ve never had virgin eggnog, though,” he presses, and makes his way back into the kitchen. “Give it a try. If it sucks, you got advance permission to throw it in my face. Deal?”
Laurel wants to argue. Really, she wants to tell him she’d much prefer eggnog with a shitton of liquor in it, as much as he has on hand, but again she refrains and instead only gives him a terse nod. Suddenly the familiarity between them, the familiarity he shows for her, sets her ill-at-ease, and before she can help it her defenses kick in, wall her off and shut her down. She can’t let herself be familiar with him, again. Can’t let herself be friendly.
Even if it hurts him. Even if it hurts her more.
“Fine,” she mutters, and sinks back down onto the couch. Clearly he’d meant for her to follow, and she’s not going to follow, cross that line. She’s crossed far too many lines already, tonight. “You make it. I’ll be… here.”
Hurt, again. She’s hurting him, over and over, with these tiny, subtle aggressions she can pretend are harmless but which really speak volumes. Frank doesn’t seem to dwell on it for long, though, and again he disappears into the kitchen, leaving her alone with her only thoughts and the radio for company. It isn’t long before another song comes on; a familiar song, with a story Laurel remembers well. It’d used to be a favorite of her mother, she thinks; a ballad about lost love, its lyrics telling a tale of old lovers meeting by chance in a grocery store on Christmas Eve and drinking together, reminiscing while lamenting all the distance between them, not knowing how to overcome the years that’ve separated them.
It unnerves Laurel more than she wants to admit, but just as she’s starting to stand and switch it off, Frank reappears, two glasses of eggnog with cinnamon sticks in his hands and a disarming grin on his face. She stills as he approaches, letting the radio play, and takes the glass from him when he offers it, settling back into the couch and letting herself sink into the cushions. Frank takes a seat in the armchair next to her, holding up his glass in a sort of careful, uncommitted way, as though prepared to drop it back down in a second if she refuses to do the same.
“A toast,” he says, and again forces that same grin onto his features; a grin that’s starting to look more and more like a grimace each time. Laurel doesn’t blame him. She’s not exactly the life of the party, these days. “To havin’ ourselves a shitty little Christmas.”
Laurel raises her eyebrows as enthusiastically as she can manage. “Bottoms up.”
They drink, and Laurel is surprised to find she doesn’t hate it like she’d used to; there’s something warm about the faint taste of nutmeg mixed with all the sweet, homey and warm though it’s served cold. She finds herself hoping, somewhat irrationally, that Frank had forgotten not to add the liquor, but of course he’d remembered. He wouldn’t be careless about something like that. She’s sure he never forgets she’s pregnant; it’s an always-present elephant in the room now, and she knows she certainly doesn’t, though God knows she tries to, most days.
A moment passes, and Laurel cracks a grin, peering down into her drink and finally allowing herself to speak.
“It’s stupid, y’know. How much I miss drinking. If I could, these days, I’d just be drunk all the time. Being sober… really fucking sucks.” Frank doesn’t seem to know what to say, just looks at her, and she shifts beneath his gaze, draping the blanket back over her lap. “Does that make me a bad person? Wanting to drink when I’m…” She can’t bring herself to say the word; she avoids it, at all costs, because she’s always been partial to avoiding things, and in particular, avoiding her problems. Frank almost answers, but she keeps going, cutting him off with a humorless chuckle. “Probably just makes me an alcoholic.”
“It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“I just keep… waiting. Putting it off. I don’t wanna have to make a decision.” She frowns. “I guess if I wait around long enough, the state of Pennsylvania will just end up making it for me.”
Frank swallows thickly. “Laurel…”
“That would make me a bad person, though. If I got rid of it. What kind of heartless… bitch loses her boyfriend then kills his baby? Annalise would hate me.” She clenches her jaw. “Even if it’s a shitty reason to have a baby. Because… I’d be a shitty mom, too. So.” Laurel sniffs. “Either way I lose. No matter what I do, I’m a bad person in the end.”
“You’re not,” Frank says suddenly, and he seems to surprise himself by how emphatically he speaks the words, because he lowers his voice. “You’re not a bad person.”
“That’s not really very reassuring,” she quips, “coming from another bad person.”
Frank doesn’t flinch. This time, there’s no hurt in his eyes. He’s a bad person. He knows it. It’s something he’s accepted by now, part of his identity as much as his name, so he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even blink. He just sighs, and it’s a very sad sigh, and leans back in the chair, leaving his eggnog resting on the coffee table, apparently having lost his taste for it.
She frowns, guilt solidifying like a stone in her stomach. “Sorry. That was…”
“No,” he says, and shakes his head, an air of resignation about him. “It’s okay. Not like you’re wrong.”
It’s not. It’s not okay. It’s not okay like everything she said to him in the hospital wasn’t okay, and she doesn’t have the faintest fucking clue how to go about apologizing to Frank for that, all that awful shit she’d spewed at him that night, angry and doped up on a veritable cocktail of medications and in near-constant pain from her burns. She is a bad person, for saying that. For everything she’s said and done since, and everything she’s probably yet to do.
But he is too, at least. And oddly enough, in some really twisted way, that sort of makes her feel better.
Silence, again, but it’s not really silence – the song is still playing on the radio, and the lyrics fade back into Laurel’s consciousness all at once, the soothing melody of the piano accompanying them.
We drank a toast to innocence.
We drank a toast to now.
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness,
But neither one knew how.
Fuck, she’s always hated this song. She hates it especially more, now.
“How, uh,” Frank cuts in, clearing his throat. “How’s your break been?”
“I’ve watched a lot of Judge Judy,” she answers, shrugging and stirring the cinnamon stick in her glass. “Eaten a lot of ice cream.”
Amusement flashes in his eyes. “You seen the others much?”
“Some. Michaela comes over a lot. She keeps trying to get me to go out and do things. Shop for groceries. Sometimes she drags Asher along with us. But I think Connor’s avoiding me. And… the worst part is I don’t really blame him.” She meets his eyes, sagging as a sudden wave of exhaustion passes over her. “I wouldn’t blame you if you avoided me too.”
“Laurel-”
“None of them know how to be around me, anymore,” she interrupts him. “They all act like I’ll… have a breakdown the second they say or do something wrong. Well – except Connor.” She bites out a laugh, staring down into the swirls of cream in her drink. “He’s said some pretty terrible shit to me.” Again, Frank seems unable to formulate a response to that, so she looks up at him suddenly, words pointed. “Anyway. You? What about you?”
He seems caught off guard, but remembers himself after a moment and shrugs. “Haven’t done much. Just glad to be outta jail. Eat hot food and sleep in a real bed, for once.”
She frowns, that familiar sinking feeling overcoming her. Jail. That part was her fault, too; she’d been so angry, God, so mad, at him and everyone, and when Bonnie had come to her she’d gone along with the plan without question, though she won’t deny that it’d hurt, eaten her hollow, like acid. She’d condemned him. Could’ve condemned him for life – but then she’d seen him, that day, that day they’d met, and she’d known. Known he was innocent.
She’d known all along, really. She just hadn’t been able to admit it to herself until then.
“I’m sorry. About that,” she says, softer this time, markedly more sorrowful.
“Laurel, it-”
“I’m sorry,” Laurel repeats. She swallows, grinding her teeth, and a surge of anger hits her; probably the fault of her hormones, all out of whack and hopelessly rewiring her emotions. “Just… just don’t say anything. Don’t say I don’t have to be. Just let me say I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry. For what? Everything. The words they’d had that day. She is sorry, for everything. He is, too.
Sorry for so much. Sorry for so many things she’s not sure being sorry even makes a difference, anymore.
“Okay,” he says, softly, so accepting. He always is, of her, though sometimes she wishes he wouldn’t be. “Uh, okay.”
A beat. They stop talking.
They stop talking, and the song takes over for them instead.
She said she's married her an architect,
Who kept her warm and safe and dry.
She would have liked to say she loved the man,
But she didn't like to lie-
An abrupt click. The music cuts out.
Suddenly Laurel blinks, and she finds herself across the room, her finger on the power button of the radio, switching it off with what is probably an unnecessary amount of force. She can’t listen to that song, can’t hear the truth those lyrics are speaking; it isn’t one she’s ready for, so soon after losing Wes, when she’s still so confused about everything and unsure what she’d felt for him in the first place. She can’t think about it, now. If she thinks about it long enough, she might go mad.
If she thinks about it long enough, she might realize she wasn’t in love with him at all. And it’s so, so much simpler to go on believing she was.
Frank is looking at her strangely, and she folds her arms, shifting a bit awkwardly. “I, uh… I hate that song.”
She does. She does hate it, and she doesn’t need to hear the end anyway; she knows how the ending goes, how the old lovers eventually run out of things to talk about and part ways, probably never to meet again, and return to the lives they’ve built in their own separate worlds; worlds that no longer have a place for the other. There’s no passionate kiss. No tearful reunion. No grand, flowery declarations of love. It ends like all things end, with little pomp and ceremony, and they go back to their lives, like normal people do.
But they aren’t normal people, she and Frank. They aren’t like the lovers in the song. There’s no staying away, no returning to their separate, ordinary lives, not when their lives are so hopelessly tangled together, their orbits locked and always fated to cross. Maybe they will be those people, someday.
Laurel doubts it, though.
The oven timer erupts into a blaring beep not long after that, and Frank clears his throat, standing and declaring dinner ready to be served. They don’t eat at her table, or bother with fine china or any of that fancy shit; they take their plates to her couch instead and eat sitting cross-legged around her coffee table, juicy, tender ham and green beans and buttery mashed potatoes. It’s the first real meal Laurel has had in what feels like ages, and suddenly she’s ravenous, scarfing down her plate in what must be record time and prompting Frank to raise an eyebrow
“Sorry,” she says, mouth full; though she isn’t, not really. She’s just hungry, and she hasn’t been eating well, or eating nearly as much as she probably should be, so she thinks she can be forgiven just this once.
Frank chuckles, unbothered. “’S all right. Anytime you need a good meal, just gimme a call, yeah? Can be like meals on wheels.”
She blinks, and a reel of memories plays behind her eyes, suddenly, projected as if in a theater. Her and Frank cooking dinner together, on Friday nights, on weekends; on the nights when they had time to do anything other than cram shitty takeout down their throats for sustenance. Eating and laughing. She’d always get half-tipsy on a bottle of Italian wine, and after doing the dishes they’d go to bed together laughing, and he’d pull her down and make love to her gently, hold her afterward, pepper her skin with kisses.
She sees something flicker in his eyes, a muted little spark. She wonders if somehow, some way, he’s remembering the same thing.
It makes her ache, with longing and something else she can’t quite identify, and Laurel frowns, throwing the memories from her mind. Frank seems to sense her disquiet and doesn’t say anything further, as they finish their plates and he takes them into the kitchen to be washed. When he returns, she’s wrapped herself once more in the blanket from the sofa, not having budged from her cramped spot wedged in between it and the coffee table. He stands there, idle for a moment, as if contemplating something, before returning to the shopping bags he’d stowed the tree decorations in and reaching in, withdrawing a small wrapped box. She watches, brow furrowed, as he crosses the room and holds it out to her, looking more than a little timid, just as he had when he’d shown up at her door.
“I, uh… I got you something,” he tells her, and she frowns.
“Frank…” She sighs. He seems intent on making this harder on her – on the both of them. “You didn’t have to, I-”
“’S not anything big,” he says, and once she finally takes it, he crams his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t do the best wrapping paper job either, but. It’s Christmas. Figured I couldn’t show up empty handed.”
She doesn’t know why he’s doing this; giving her a Christmas gift like he’s her boyfriend, like he’s her anything. They aren’t anything to each other, not anymore, yet somehow that doesn’t feel true at all; they aren’t something, not anything she can define with any kind of conventional label, anyway, but that doesn’t mean they’re nothing to each other. If they were, she knows she wouldn’t feel like this, wouldn’t have this tightness in her chest, this hitch in her breath.
If they were nothing to each other, they wouldn’t keep finding their way back together like this. They wouldn’t feel fated, like they do.
So Laurel sighs again, but doesn’t protest; instead, she tears off the red and green wrapping paper quickly and finds a simple, unremarkable cardboard box beneath. It’s taped rather poorly with scotch tape, but she has it open in seconds – and when she does, and she sees the contents of what’s inside, she freezes.
She isn’t sure quite what it is, at first; it just looks like an indistinct grey lump, but after a moment she makes out the shape of ears, a trunk, eyes. It’s a ratty old stuffed elephant, she realizes, with part of its tail torn off, its fabric old and pilled at places. The side looks like it’d been stitched, once, probably after a tear, and there’s a tuft of white stuffing peeking out beneath the messy stitching. There’s a certain charm to the wear, though; it’s clear it must have been well-loved by someone.
But she doesn’t understand.
“What…” she drifts off, shaking her head. “What is this?”
“It was mine,” he replies, voice low, gentle. He’s watching her closely, trying to gauge her reaction, and growing more nervous by the second; she can feel it in the air, feel the anxiety float off of him in waves. “When I was little. Used to be inseparable from that thing. Sleep with it every night, lug it around wherever I went. My ma called him Stitches from all the times she had to sew him up.”
Her scowl deepens. “Why’re you giving this to me?”
“’Cause,” he says, and shrugs, shifting his weight from leg to leg. “I… thought you could give to the kid. One day. If you wanted to. It’s old… I know it’s pretty ugly, but – it was important to me.” He swallows. “I don’t got a lot of happy childhood memories. Except that.”
For the longest moment in the world she just stares at him, holding the stuffed toy, turning it over and over in her hands and grinding her teeth, before she shakes her head and meets his eyes, a spike of that all-too-familiar, unfounded anger piercing her chest.
“Why would you do this?”
Frank seems to realize that he’s made a misstep, and tenses. “I…”
“What… what kind of person does this?” she demands, rising to her feet and bunching the elephant up in her fist. “You know I-I don’t know what I’m doing yet, you-” She cuts herself off, her throat tightening. “You know I didn’t want this. I didn’t… plan for this. Why would you assume I’m gonna go through with it? Th-that there’s gonna even be a kid to give this to? Why-”
She can’t believe him. She can’t, and she can, because God, he knows her; he knows her so fucking well, well enough to have already figured out that she can’t go through with an abortion, no matter how badly she wants to; that she can’t deal with more blood on her hands, more pain and loss and death; that her guilt over Wes won’t allow her to, shitty a reason as it may be. He knows that, because he knows her. He knows her better than anyone else ever has, and she hates him for it, wants to get him out of her head, out of her apartment, out of her life, because she hates him, more than she’s ever hated anyone. Hates him because she can’t hate him. Hates him because he did the worst thing to her anyone could ever do.
He made her love him. And that’s unforgivable.
She stalks up to him and holds out the toy, jaw set. “Take it back. I-I don’t want it.”
“Laurel-”
“Keep it. Or – give it to some other girl, one day. Some girl who’s… having your baby. Just-” She grits her teeth. “Just take it back, Frank, I don’t want your stupid toy.”
It’s a low blow. It’s entirely unnecessary, and it hurts him, and she can’t seem to stop doing that; hurting him, hurting everyone. Saying awful shit to people, the worst shit possible, lashing out for no reason. She’s like a shard of broken glass; there are sharp, jagged edges under her skin everywhere she turns, and she’s been pulverized to bits, beyond the point where she can still recognize herself. People get close to her. They get cut. They get hurt. They bleed, and it’s because of her. All her fault.
And again, for what must be the hundredth time tonight because of her, there’s that hurt in his eyes. He looks so much like a child, and it kills her to hurt him, yet all she wants to do is hurt him. Hurt everyone. Make everyone share in her pain. She’s like a tornado, a black hole; sucking in and destroying everything in its path, and this is why she should’ve been alone, tonight. Why she should be alone forever.
Finally, Frank takes it, and once he has, Laurel releases a breath, calming herself long enough to ask, “Why? Why would you do something like that?”
“I wanted you to have it,” he tells her, and it’s a simple answer, almost childlike in its simplicity. “For the baby. A part of me. Or who I was. Something that… made me happy.”
“But… but why?”
He gives her a smile, and it’s a very slow, very sad, very sweet smile. “You know why.”
“Don’t,” she spits, harsher than she intends to. He flinches, and she withers a bit more, wilts like a flower, though she tries hard not to show it. He loves her. He loves her. She can’t hear those words. If she does, she thinks they might kill her. “Don’t say it. You know I’m not gonna say it back, Frank, so just… just don’t.”
“I know,” is all Frank says, unquestioning. Still so accepting. “I won’t say it. Promise.”
“I need to…” She sucks in a breath, lowering her eyes. “I need to be alone. For a long time.”
She does. They both know it. Again, Frank just nods, accepting her words as truth and letting them wash over him, sink underneath his skin. He glances down, for a moment, at the stuffed toy in his hands, before letting out a slow breath and looking back toward her door.
“I should, uh… I should go.”
He should. She wants to tell him that; that he should go and never come back, even though inevitably, one way or another, he will. He always does, and it makes her hate fate and destiny infinitely fucking more, because it all seems like part of one of their jokes; like he’s a demon she can’t exorcise, like of all the people in the universe it chose to shackle her to Frank, ball and chain. He can leave tonight, and he can leave a million times more after that, but they can never stray too far from each other, never really be parted.
She doesn’t want him to go. His words make faint panic shoot through her veins, against all sense, but Laurel gives no outward sign of it and instead only nods, walking him over to the door, watching as he puts on his coat, the sad, threadbare elephant still clutched in his hand. He doesn’t look at her, as he does it, and Laurel just shifts awkwardly by the door as she waits, as he takes a step outside of it.
And then he turns. Because of course he has to.
He’s looking at her with a sort of desperation, as if this well may be the last time he ever sees her, and God, she comes so close to saying something, telling him to stay, that the snow is coming down harder now and the streets will be bad, but she bites her tongue, doesn’t let herself. She feels so guilty for wanting to at all, guilty for the longing bottled up in her heart, guilty for the way it breaks out past the grief, for one short second, and makes her feel so dizzyingly alive again. She feels like the worst, most despicable person in the world, right then – but Frank isn’t looking at her like he thinks that, like he hates her. He looks at her with love, and she knows how Frank loves, how he loves her; with all the hopeless, fatalistic perseverance of a spider spinning its web in the dark, over and over every day, no matter how many times that web will be torn to bits by a one wrong, careless move, one careless word.
He’ll always be doing the spinning. She’ll always be doing the tearing. It seems to be a cycle they’re locked in, as of late.
“You said you need to be alone. And I get what you mean. I get that,” he undertones, with that familiar rasp of tenderness in his voice. “But you don’t… You don’t have to be alone.”
He’s right. Frank is right more often than she’d like to admit, really, and she opens her mouth to answer, but before she can he’s bending down, setting the stuffed elephant just inside her door, making it clear he’s not going to let her give it back, that olive branch, that overture of peace – of something much more than peace. He stands up straight, after a moment, and chances a little smile; perhaps the first genuine one all night, she thinks, not faked for her sake, for the sake of putting up some thin veil of normalcy. Just there. She told him that he can’t tell her he loves her – not with words, at least – so he tells her with his eyes instead, with all that ocean-clear, blue adoration. Those eyes can’t hide anything from her, now, when once they’d used to so often. There’s nowhere for them to hide.
She can run – from this, from what they are. But she can never hide. Same goes for him.
“Merry Christmas, Laurel.”
Frank turns and leaves her with that, and once he’s out the door she reaches down, picking up the sad little elephant, taking it inside with her – even in spite of all that it represents, all the things that could have been, the things that can still be, this terrifying, uncertain future laid out before her. She watches him go out her front window, as he crosses the street back to his car, sloshing through the black ice on the sidewalk and tucking his hands into his pockets.
The snowflakes become pattering drops of rain, as his car vanishes down the street, leaving tire tracks in the snow. And when they do, maybe, just maybe, Laurel finally allows herself a smile.