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She’s the only one left in Bonnie’s apartment when he steps through the door.
It’s become their new home base, as of late, the kitchen table a veritable clusterfuck of files and papers and boxes, and he can tell Bonnie hates it, intensely introverted and suffocated by the constant flow of the kids in and out, but with both him and Annalise currently homeless it’s not like they have many alternatives. By this time of night it’s usually cleared out, though, and he frowns when he notices a light on by the couch, makes out the familiar shape of the back of her head; he’d know it anywhere, know her anywhere, even among a crowd of millions.
It ties his insides into a thousand knots he has no idea how to even begin to unravel, but somehow he musters his voice, makes his way over to where she sits. “Hey.”
She looks back, calmly, not at all surprised to see him – and as soon as he looks her in the eyes he can tell something is off; she’s too tense, jaw tight, eyes flickering with a faint spark of panic that anyone else might miss, but he doesn’t; he knows her, knows when something is wrong, and something is wrong, here. She looks jittery, pale, smaller than he’s ever seen her, and she’s clad in a sweater, knees tucked against her chest, hugging herself like she’s freezing cold.
And that’s when he sees the bottle of vodka sitting before her on the coffee table, a glass next to that. And he stops dead in his tracks.
“Was this the first thing Annalise did with her insurance check?” she deadpans, a terrible, wry grin on her face. Her voice is measured, not slurred, as far as he can tell, and he doesn’t know what to make of this – any of this. “Replenish her liquor cabinet?” She lets out a humorless chuckle. “Guess I don’t blame her.”
He approaches cautiously, like a man stepping over a field of landmines, holding his breath and waiting for one to trigger. He can’t seem to summon up any words to give her; all he can do is stare, mouth agape, brow furrowed, unsure how to proceed, and when Laurel takes another look at him, she just scoffs, at some joke he’s clearly on the outs of.
“Don’t worry. I’m not drinking it,” she remarks, a bite in her tone, because they both know why, and they both know she’s none too thrilled that she can’t. “I thought about it. I thought about it a long time. And God, I want to. But I can’t. Just looking at it, though… kinda makes me feel better.”
He swallows, thickly. “What’re you still doin’ here?”
“Waiting for you,” she says, simply, like it’s nothing unusual at all, and he can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, can’t decode the look in her eyes, the uneasy air about her that mixes with her calmness to become some almost otherworldly detachment, like she’s present but not present, her mind a million miles away. Laurel unfurls herself from the ball she’d tucked herself into, without warning, grabbing the glass and pouring a generous splash of vodka into it. “Want some?”
Frank sinks down into the armchair across from her, tense, shaking his head. “No, I, uh, I’m good.”
She snorts, and sets the glass down. “You can drink in front of me; I won’t get mad. I can… live vicariously through you.”
Silence swells between them, for a minute, hanging in the air like a storm cloud, smothering, oppressive, like they could reach out and touch it with their fingers. Laurel picks at a thread on her sweater absentmindedly, clearly not about to say anything else though he’d assumed that’s why she’s here, and Frank just sits there, watching her, his bones screaming at him to cross the gully between them, say something, anything, but his head continually holding him back. He hasn’t been alone with Laurel in what feels like years, and he’s lost his footing, forgotten how to be around her – especially when she’s like this, so much changed yet so much the same.
“You okay?” he asks, finally, voice low and raspy with tenderness.
It’s a simple question. But all at once that veneer of dark amusement fractures like a plaster mask, and her composure wavers, falters, before it vanishes altogether.
She’s wide-eyed, suddenly. She looks fucking scared stiff, her whole body curling in on itself like it’s trying to retreat, run away, and she looks somehow even smaller than she did, before, downright tiny, like a child. He’s seen in her tears more times than he can count, since the fire, but he’s never seen her like this, broken down and worn away and weathered by grief like a jagged stone, terrified for some reason he can’t pinpoint – but it’s quiet terror. Silent terror.
“Bonnie told me, about that night. What happened. The gun,” is all she says, finally, and the words burst like bombs in the space between them, silencing all else, hurling shrapnel every which way. She looks up at him, and all at once it’s like she’s staring up at him through two crystalline blue puddles, depthless, brimming with tears like a dam threatening to crest its edges. “You were gonna kill yourself.”
He can’t speak, suddenly. Can’t look her in the eyes. He’s too ashamed, and that shame comes crashing over him in fresh waves, all those feelings of worthlessness drug up from the deep, all of Annalise’s sharply spoken words – pull it, do it, do it do it – playing on repeat in his head, that darkest hour of his darkest night. He’d been hoping, perhaps irrationally, that Laurel would never find out, never know how weak and broken he’d become, how low he’d fallen, that he could bury it deep somewhere and forget how close he’d come to the brink.
He hadn’t wanted her to know, hadn’t wanted her to worry about him when she’s got so much of her own worrying to do, when surely his pain doesn’t amount to even a drop in the ocean of hers. Most of all he hadn’t wanted her to see him that way, as a goddamn coward who’d almost blown his brains out, not even giving a thought about what it might do to her. He feels sick, and he can’t look at her, and Laurel seems to notice, because Laurel notices everything. Laurel knows him so well.
“Look at me,” she pleads, almost crying outright, now, and when he refuses to obey, she sharpens her voice. “Look at me.”
He drags his eyes up like they’re the heaviest weights in the world. He doesn’t think he deserves to lay them on her, and before Frank can help it that familiar spike of self-loathing hits him square in the chest – because he isn’t good enough for her, isn’t good enough for anyone, and he’s a fucking fucked up son of a bitch who almost killed himself because he was too scared to face the hell of his own making, and he never wanted her to see him like this, exposed, stripped down to his bones, at his lowest low.
She already wants him dead, wishes he were gone in Wes’s place. Hates him. Now she thinks he’s weak, too, and he can’t take that. He wants to run, but her eyes have cemented him in place, pinned him down like an insect. All he can do is sit here and take it, take whatever she has to say – if she tells him he should’ve done it, like Annalise had. If she told him to, if she wanted that, he thinks he might actually listen, this time.
But there’s no anger in Laurel’s eyes. There’s still just that same, heart-fracturing terror, but not fear of him. Fear for him.
“No one-” She cuts herself off, shaking her head. “No one ever told me, you never-”
He lowers his eyes, again. “Nobody wanted to worry you. Not after everything-”
“You almost died,” she breathes, again. “You almost… you almost killed yourself, Frank.”
Eyes lowered. He still can’t look at her. It’ll kill him. She’s crying for him, because of him, and he never wanted her to know, fuck, he just never wanted her to know, that secret shame, that utter humiliation. He isn’t worth her tears.
And then she asks the question. Because he knew it was coming, knew there was no way around it, and so out it comes, charging at him like a bull.
“Why?”
He doesn’t know what to say. His speech has been disabled, sucked right out of him, and all he can do is sit there, hang his head, cheeks burning, and if she’s terrified for him then he’s just as terrified of her, of the way she can see inside him, right through him, of the way she knows, now, he isn’t half as strong as he pretends to be, though he imagines she’s known that all along. This is another level, though. This is something so much darker. He’s had that darkness inside him all along, that volatility, always on the brink of spontaneous human combustion, one strike of a match away from going up in flames. All it’d taken was the right trigger – or, well, two triggers: Annalise and the trigger on that gun, and he’d come so close. So close to not being here with her today at all. So close to being cold bones in the ground, forgotten and reviled.
Fuck. Fuck, he hadn’t even thought about Laurel, about what losing him might do to her. He thinks he’d probably figured she wouldn’t care, content in her new life with Wes, yet looking at her now, seeing the sheer horror in her eyes, he knows it would’ve broken her, dismantled her, been the last straw. Bonnie had said she wouldn’t have survived it and right now, looking at her, he’s not sure Laurel would have either; he would’ve gone up in flames and burned them both to ash right along with him. He’s selfish.
He’s so, so fucking selfish.
“There was… nothin’ left,” he manages, by some miracle, to wrangle the words out of his throat, scratchy, pathetic things that they are. Still, he refuses to look at her, head bowed, hands clasped as if in a confessional, and she’s his confessor and he’s the lowly penitent, the black-hearted sinner. “Annalise was gone. Bon. You were, too. And you were right, when you said it was my fault I had nowhere to go. It was. I did that to myself. It’s all my fuckin’ fault – and it shoulda been me. You were right about that, too.” He pauses, swallowing. “It just felt dark. Like there was never gonna be another day past that one. No point in goin’ on. World would probably be better without me in it, everything I’ve done…” Finally, somehow, he makes himself meet her eyes, and she’s sitting there, crying silently, crying for him. The sight makes him hate himself all over again. “I deserved it. Thought it’d make things right, if I did it. Thought everyone would be better off with me gone. You, too.”
“You’re selfish.” She shoots to her feet, suddenly, eyes blazing, before she softens, sniffles again. “You don’t get to decide that! You’re… you were just going to… God, Frank, you-”
He shrinks beneath her gaze. He feels like the child, now. “I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for. It feels like he's apologizing for everything, for this entire goddamn life; giving every atrocity he's ever committed over into her hands like she's Christ on Judgement Day and he's waiting for her to pass his sentence down. I’m sorry I’m not enough. I’m sorry you ever loved me. I’m sorry. Sorry for everything. So fucking sorry.
Laurel shakes her head, swiping at her cheeks with contempt, trying desperately to plug up her tears. “Bonnie said… Annalise told you to do it. She kept telling you do it. Over and over.”
All he can do is nod. There’s no point in speaking, really. She sees him for what he is, now, a pathetic, craven man, a coward too scared to do what needed and perhaps still needs to be done, and he deserves whatever tongue lashing she’s going to give him, whatever cruel words she’s going to sling at him. He can take it. He’s borne her lashes before, in the hospital, borne her scathing words, and he can bear them again; he’s too numb to recognize the blows as pain, by now, because they’re all he knows. He feels like the worst piece of shit in the world sitting before her, right then.
She deserves so much better than to be loved by someone like him.
He waits for her to yell. To say something. For the longest moment, though, she says nothing at all, and finally he glances up, and sees something he wasn’t expecting at all. It's like all the anger has washed out of her in the way a tide flows out to sea, and she’s slumped, hunched in on herself. There’s something else behind her eyes now, and he can’t tell what it is, at first, not until she opens her mouth, not until she gives him her words.
“I told Connor to kill himself,” she chokes out, finally, and that’s when he sees it – it’s guilt, that same self-loathing that festers in his chest like pus, stinking, putrid, hidden but seeping up all at once. Suddenly he realizes he’s not the only one confessing, here. “I thought… he killed Wes. So I told him the one good thing he could do in his life was kill himself. I said that to him. And if he’d listened to me? Done it? It… it would’ve been my fault. It would’ve been on me.”
Her breathing picks up, until she can’t seem to catch a breath, until she can’t seem to breathe at all, tendrils of panic snaking around her lungs. Laurel freezes, all at once, an apparent realization shocking her into stillness. “If you’d listened to her… you’d be dead. I’m as bad as she is.”
The guilt rises up over her like a shadow, sinks its claws into her, rippling through her, and all he can do is watch as Laurel crumbles before him, horrified by herself, by what he’d come so close to doing, by what she was so close to making Connor do, too. Before he can think twice he’s springing to his feet, shaking his head and approaching her where she stands beside the sofa, pacing, trembling faintly.
“You’re not-”
She shakes her head, eyes gleaming with certainty. “I am. I said… I wished you were dead. That it should’ve been you. I’m-” She sucks in a breath, and she’s crying, now, tears tracking down her cheeks, forming rivers and waterways and carving the landscape of her face. And just like he’s not the only one confessing, here, he knows he’s not the only broken one, either. “I’m so sorry.”
Every inch of her is vibrating with horror, and he doesn’t know how to help her, how to stop it – and so he goes to her, placing his hands on her arms to steady her, to tether her to earth, ground her, keep her from being eaten alive by the panic he can feel welling inside her.
“It’s okay,” he soothes, and he thinks he may be crying now, too. He isn’t sure. He barely cares. “Hey, it’s okay, you didn’t know.”
They remain there like that for a moment, and he just breathes, steadily, long, slow pulls of air into his lungs, until finally Laurel matches his rhythm, relaxes against him, goes quiet and still as death. Things had been so tense, before, but now every wall has been broken down, smashed to bits; they have no boundaries, now. They never did. Embracing her doesn’t feel right, in this instant, so he does his best to anchor her instead – because he’s not the strong one, here, and they both know it, but for her he can try to be. For her he can try to be good.
“I should’ve,” she mutters, finally, voice no longer thick with tears but still breaking, scraping her throat roughly. She moves back, away from him, and shakes her head again. “You almost died. And I didn’t… I didn’t even know.”
He’s silent, again. She renders him deaf and dumb and mute and he can’t speak; he can never seem to find the right words to give her. After a moment Laurel clears her throat, swiping the last of the tears from her cheeks and raising her chin, cobbling together her composure as best she can, like a child trying to patch up a leak with Silly Putty.
“The worst part is? I think I would’ve tried to do it, too,” she admits, all at once, eyes downcast. He can feel that same shame flowing through her veins like it’d flowed through his, and he can’t say how he does, only that he does. “If it weren’t for the baby. I even thought about doing it anyway.” She sputters out a dark, biting laugh, and it cuts like acid, chews straight through his chest. “That’s how much of a terrible person I am.”
“You’re not, you-”
“Don’t ever do something like that again,” she cuts him off, sniffing. She stares him right in the eyes, and hers are steel, as fierce as ever. They slice right through him, bring him to his knees. “If I ever lost you-” Laurel swallows, lowering her voice. “I wouldn’t survive it.”
She wouldn’t survive it. She can’t lose him, too, after everything, when she’s already spiraling madly out of control, grief growing like a cancer on her heart, forming cracks in her fragile skin slowly, when it would only take one final blow to shatter her to bits. She couldn’t come back from that, and she’s terrified of losing him, and she doesn’t hate him at all, doesn’t want him dead. He’s not sure what it is she does feel for him, but she doesn’t want him dead, and now he’s looking at her, staring into her eyes, and he’s never wanted to live more.
Live for her. He can do that. He’d been lying trying to convince himself he hadn’t thought of her that night, the barrel of the gun jammed up underneath his chin, one click away from painting Annalise’s walls with the insides of his skull; the thought of Laurel had stilled his finger. He had been thinking of her. And even in this broken, bloody mess, even in this hell that has become their lives, he needs to be with her, needs to live for her, because he loves her, loves her hopelessly, agonizingly.
She deserves better than to be loved by someone like him. But all he has to give her is his love, however unworthy and pitiful a thing it is. He’ll never stop giving it. He can’t. It flows out of him with his breath, pumps through his blood. Sometimes he thinks it’s all he exists to do, all he’s good for, and even if she doesn’t want it, doesn’t want him, he’ll live to do it anyway.
“I won’t,” he rasps, and they’re so close, but not touching. It doesn’t feel right to touch her, even though he wants nothing more than to bring her close and circle his arms around her and hold her as tight as he can, reassure her that he’s real, that he’ll never leave. That’ll he’s alive, and real, and here. “I promise.” I’m sorry. I love you. I love you. I love you.
This is a confessional for the both of them, he thinks, again, and he loves her in spite of everything she’s told him, all the awful things she’s said in her anger, in her grief, and now she’s looking at him with those startlingly clear blue eyes – and he doesn’t know if she loves him, again, doesn’t know if she can, but he knows that she accepts him, knows the story of that darkest hour of his life and chooses not to shy away even so. She’s his confessor, his god, his broken altar and the crumbled pillars of his church and everything holy in the world, and they’re together. They’ve come out of this alive. They can keep each other that way.
He’s not the only broken one here. He can’t piece the two of them back together. But what he can do is keep breathing. All they can do is keep breathing, and by some miracle, by the skin of their fucking teeth, somehow they both still are.