Work Text:
He’s barely conscious when he picks up her call, can’t make out the name on the blinding LED screen as his eyes acclimate from darkness to light, spots swarming his vision. He just slams his hand down on the phone where it rests on his nightstand, pawing around until he gets ahold of the thing, squinting up at it for a moment, before answering with a hoarse, irritated:
“Hello?”
“Frank. Hi.”
He perks up almost instantaneously at the sound of her voice; a bit breathless, verging on nervous. “Hey. Somethin’ wrong, Laurel?”
“No, I, uh…” She gives an indistinct little huff on the other end of the line. “Well, kind of. Are… you busy?”
He can’t help but smirk, at that. “Busy doin’ what people usually do at three AM. What’s up?”
“I, um…” Laurel drifts off, going silent. He thinks maybe he’s lost her for a second, before she clears her throat and begins again. “I need your help. I have a craving.”
He narrows his eyes. “Okay…?”
“For your sauce. You know the one you… put on spaghetti and meatballs? That one.”
Frank’s smirk widens; if she’s going to ask him to do what he thinks she’s about to ask in the middle of the night, at this horrifically ungodly hour, he’s at least going to get her to say the words. “You mean my special sauce?”
Laurel sighs, giving in, though he can tell she’s a bit exasperated and increasingly unsure, like she’s beginning to think she shouldn’t have called at all. “Yes, your special sauce. I was wondering if you could maybe-”
“Come over and chef it up for you at three AM?” he finishes for her, more amused than annoyed. “Am I Meals on Wheels now?”
There’s another pause; longer, potentially more pregnant than she is. Then, finally-
“Nevermind, it’s dumb,” she mutters. “I’ll just use Prego again I guess-”
He bolts upright all at once, genuinely offended by the idea.
“Uh uh. No way, that shit’s an abomination. You get the kid hooked on that bastardized Italian crap he’s gonna come out all sorts of screwed up.” Frank swings his legs over the side of the bed, abruptly determined; a man on a culinary mission. “I’ll run to the store. Sit tight.”
He’s not going to lie and say he’s ecstatic about this situation. Really, it could’ve come at a much better time, and maybe it says something about him, how willing he is to drop everything at once to come to Laurel’s aid the second she calls. How completely goddamn whipped she has him.
But he accepted that about himself a long time ago, so. This isn’t exactly some profound realization.
So he pulls on a t-shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket, and grabs the few ingredients he knows he has at his place; spices, basil, a box of spaghetti. He assesses a pair of old, shriveled tomatoes, before deciding they won’t do, tossing them in the garbage, and heading to the store; one of the few 24-hour groceries in Philly, which is a not entirely convenient distance from his apartment. He makes the trek anyway, and there he buys the rest of the necessities, triple checking his mental list in his sleep-addled state, before driving to her place and arriving at her door with a fairly copious amount of brown plastic grocery bags hanging from his arms.
The things he does for love.
Laurel comes to the door in her pajamas – a Middleton Law t-shirt that isn’t nearly as baggy on her as he remembers it used to be, and sweatpants – hair messy from sleep, looking only slightly more awake than he is, all kinds of adorably disheveled. He can’t help but grin as she comes into view – because this may be a massive pain in the ass, sure, but he’ll do it for her. He’d probably do just about anything for her.
Also, he knows better than to deny a pregnant woman food.
“Hey,” she greets, perking up, returning his smile slowly, with something like trepidation in it. Her face is half thrown into shadow from the dimly lit entryway, colors dancing across her face like a kaleidoscope as refracted beams of light filter in through the stain glass door.
“Hey,” he replies, holding up his bags. “Frankie D and the special sauce has arrived.”
That gets a soft laugh out of her, as she steps aside. “Is that your new band name or something?”
“How’d you know? It’s my new side hustle,” he quips, following her as she makes her way into her kitchen and setting down his bags on the counter, falling back into their old routine with the same ease as someone speaking a mother tongue. Like riding a bike; they say you never forget how to ride a bike.
He’s never forgotten how to be with her, either. It feels like muscle memory drifting up from somewhere deep within, stitched into his sinews, guiding him step by step.
Laurel hangs back in the doorway, barefoot, assessing him without a word, before folding her arms. “You really didn’t have to come. I shouldn’t have asked-”
He shrugs, unconcerned, and sets about rummaging through his bags. “It’s not a big deal. ‘Sides, I’m here now.”
“I just…” She drifts off, still hesitant, more on edge than he’d like. “I’m sorry I woke you. I couldn’t sleep. I’m so hungry it kept me up.”
“Good thing I live to serve then,” he teases, sending her a wink. “I can sleep when I’m dead anyway.”
Something flashes in Laurel’s eyes; dark, sudden. Fear, he thinks, as fast as a bolt of lightning separating the sky, but it’s gone before he can tell for sure one way or another, and she tightens her arms against her chest.
“Don’t say that.”
He sobers up the moment his eyes fall on her. She isn’t joking, even though he was; she has an almost paralyzing fear of losing people now, after Wes. Fear of losing anyone. She’s consumed by it. She’s lost so much already that he’s not sure she can survive anything else, and with that in mind he flattens his lips into a line, repentant, stomach roiling with guilt. He’s made a misstep.
There seem to be a lot of ways to make those around her, now. He feels like he’s eternally walking a tightrope.
“I’ll get it goin’,” Frank tells her, finally, gently, forced back onto his tiptoes just when he’d been trying to inject some levity into the air around them. “Go sit down. I’ll be out in a bit.”
Laurel seems to hesitate, again, but finally she relents, zombie-walking her way out into the living room, her step heavy and feet dragging. He sets about prepping the ingredients once she’s gone, doing a bit of a rush job before tossing it all in one large saucepan to marinate, sprinkling in a dash of red pepper flakes and then starting on the meatballs. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, no recipe either; he knows how to make this as well as he knows the back of his hand. He would’ve been disowned by his ma if he hadn’t learned. Tossed over the damn city walls like the Trojans used to do with their sickly, subpar kids.
After setting the pasta water to a boil and dumping the box in, he joins her in the living room, socks scraping across the carpet near-silently, on the off chance she’s fallen asleep on the couch. She hasn’t, though, and her eyes fly right to him the instant he steps inside, tracking him without a word as he moves, glazed over with exhaustion. She’s sprawled out on the cushions, a pillow stuffed behind her back and her feet propped up on the opposite armrest, squirming around with a grimace; he knows how much of a strain her growing belly is on her body, already petite and thin and not handling the added weight very well. He worries, about that. He worries about her all the time.
But Frank casts those thoughts from his mind and comes to a stop beside her, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Sauce’s got a while to go. I put the pasta on.”
She yawns, her nose wrinkling up like a rabbit’s. “ETA?”
“Half hour, maybe.” He pauses, looking her over, gaze settling on the ponderous lump of her stomach beneath her t-shirt, then lower, on her bare feet. “You okay?”
“My back hurts,” she grumbles, angling herself ever so slightly to one side, before deciding whatever she’d been trying to do isn’t working as intended and resigning herself to lying flat on her back. “I’m fine.”
“Foot rub?” he offers, almost unthinkingly, blurting the words out, but he doesn’t regret them.
Laurel seems nonplussed. “What, for real?”
“Supposed to help with back pain. Here. Lemme.”
Again, another second of hesitation, apprehension; and it stings, to know they’re not completely past that yet, but he can’t fault her for it either. She narrows her eyes but eventually relents, lifting her legs up long enough for him to slip underneath, settling them down onto his lap, and letting him take hold of a foot, curling his fingers around it. She gives a soft mewl when he goes to work in earnest, her body rising, mouth dropping open – and without warning, all of a sudden, she moans; all the pent-up, coiled tension flooding out of her, limbs going loose, limp, pliant as clay. It isn’t quiet or muffled, either. It’s loud, feverish, throaty. If he didn’t know better, if he were one of her neighbors, he’d almost think it was sexual.
Now it’s his turn to blink.
“Y’know,” he undertones, raising his eyebrows and biting back a snicker, “this ain’t how I usually make women moan.”
Laurel’s eyes fall shut before she can give him what he’s assuming is an incoming glower. “Don’t make me kick you – oh God, this is better than sex.” She cracks an eyelid open, glancing down at him. “Sorry. Was that too much?”
He shrugs, turns his attention back down to her feet: soft beneath his touch, with stubby, well-manicured toes. She’s ticklish on her feet, he remembers, though it’s useless information at this point in time. He’d used to kiss them in the mornings just to make her laugh, even though it’d earned him a few involuntary kicks in the face.
The memory doesn’t have a place, here and now. Somehow it doesn’t entirely feel out of place, either.
“I just dunno whether to be insulted or glad.”
“Not like I have any shame left,” she huffs, readjusting herself. “After you have doctors talk to you in extensive detail about your vagina a hundred thousand times you just kind of… lose every scrap of your dignity.”
“I-” He genuinely doesn’t know what to say to that; she seems to be falling asleep, drifting, her tongue loosened, almost drunk on fatigue. “Yeah, guess that’d do it.”
“That was TMI. I’m sorry. You really… really don’t want to hear any of this.”
“I may know nothing about birthin’ babies,” he jokes, “but I can take it. Do your worst.”
He can sense Laurel relaxing beneath his ministrations, opening up; all he wants is to get her talking, coax a conversation out of her, get her to smile, laugh. Anything. He doesn’t have many moments like this with her, anymore, where they can be free and open with each other, just be together – like they were, before, in that past life. Things have been different between them, since; there’s no denying that, the baby only serving to complicate matters, but he’s taking it in stride. He’d like to think they’re making it work.
He’d like to think they’re working their way toward something.
“I need to take one of those birthing classes,” she mentions, humming softly, as though the thought has just occurred to her. “They have them at this community center down the street. But… I don’t know. I don’t wanna go alone. Everyone else’ll have a partner and I…”
She falls silent, solemn, setting her hands on her belly and picking idly at a hangnail on her finger until it’s mangled and bloody; an anxious habit she’s always had, one he knows has grown worse as of late. Suddenly there’s something sinister about the curve of her stomach, like a time bomb, ticking down the seconds until imminent disaster. Not happiness. Not anticipation. Not like there should be.
Frank ceases his movements, without warning. “I’ll go.”
A drowsy smile tugs at the corners of her lips, small, slow, but laced with hope. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Gimme a time and place and I’m there.”
“You do realize what you’re getting yourself into, right?” she says, snickering. “You’d be my birthing partner. I was gonna ask Michaela to do it, but I think she’s way too squeamish.”
He shrugs, switching feet. “I got a strong stomach. And haven’t we always been partners?”
Her eyes light up at that, in a way he hasn’t seen in ages. They always have been partners, a team – and they weren’t partners in the creation of this baby, maybe, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be there now, in whatever capacity she wishes.
She cocks her head to one side, inquisitive. “Would you be in the delivery room with me for it? I don’t… I don’t think I’d want anyone in there but you.”
Again, he nods. Of course he does. He isn’t able to do anything but nod, and he smiles, small and subdued, wrapping a hand around her ankle in a show of comfort, solidarity. He loves her. He loves her so much.
He doesn’t know how to tell her. And he never will, maybe. But he can, at least, tell her this. “‘Course.”
“It won’t be pretty,” she cautions, only semi-serious. “Trust me. You’re… not gonna be able to un-see some of those things.”
“I’m sure I can handle it.”
They sink into a meditative silence, for a while, punctuated only by Laurel’s occasional sounds of satisfaction – hums and lilting little whimpers – like tiny songs. Just touching her again feels like a revelation, though they’ve been on progressively better terms these past few months, settling into something of a friendship. That’s what they never were, first: friends, their love rooted in lust instead, raging like fire, incinerating everything in its wake, leaving no lasting bed of embers beneath to burn slow, to endure. Frank thinks he hadn’t realized what he’d missed out on, just being her friend.
He wants more. That goes without saying. But he’s content with this, for now. Happy, even.
He is happy – until a smell drifts into his nostrils. And not a pleasant one, to put it delicately.
“Jesus,” he mock-grimaces, dropping her foot momentarily. “You tryin’ to smoke me out here or somethin’?”
Laurel covers her face with her hands, groaning. “The baby has gas, okay – look, it’s not my fault-”
“Oh, sure. Blame the kid when he ain’t here to defend himself.”
Instead of being embarrassed, she laughs, throwing her head back and moving her foot into an offensive position. “I’ll kick you.”
Frank stands, chuckling when he leaves her foot waggling uselessly in the air. “Sauce’ll be done soon. Come out and tie a napkin around your neck, and tell junior to prepare for the meal of a lifetime in there.”
Laurel follows, a noticeable hop in her step that wasn’t there before, a certain degree of brightness in her eyes, and it comforts him more than he can say, to see those glimpses of the old her, back when she still had some capacity for joy. She doesn’t seem to, anymore – or at least not much of one, and even if all he can give her are these fleeting moments of happiness… Well.
It’s still better than nothing.
The sauce is still marinating, emanating a warm, spicy aroma which fills the kitchen and makes Laurel’s stomach growl loud enough for him to hear, even from a number of feet away. He peers over the pot and nods approvingly, before dipping a wooden spoon in and drawing it back, holding it out with one hand, cupping his other beneath it to catch any spillage, offering it to her.
“Wanna taste?”
She rolls her eyes, good-naturedly. “I know what it tastes like, Frank.”
“C’mon,” he coaxes, wriggling his eyebrows. “You know you want to.”
She pretends to glare but steps forward nonetheless, leaning towards him and closing her lips around the spoon, sucking daintily until she’s drained the sauce from it. He watches, silent, transfixed by her even though she’s doing hardly anything at all – because they’ve been here, before. They were here in a past life, together; he recalls it so clearly. Thing is, he’s no longer sure he’d go back there if he could.
They’re working toward something now, together; something real, true, with roots that run so much deeper than the time before, something they can build. Neither one of them has explicitly said it, but he knows it to be true. There’s something and he can’t name it. All he knows is that it’s there.
Maybe that’s all that matters. All he needs to know.
“Mmm,” she hums, pulling away, giving a nod as if out of admiration. “My compliments to the chef.”
“You got, uh-” he reaches out, then stops himself, grinning. “You got a little bit…”
Laurel frowns, unsure what he means, and so Frank reaches out again, wiping a stray blotch of sauce beside her lips away with the pad of his thumb, almost unthinkingly. He tenses the instant he does, scared he’s made another misstep, crumbled the very fragile ground upon which they stand, a house of cards in an earthquake. But she gives no indication he has, and after a moment he clears his throat, swallowing the lump forming there, heavy as lead.
“I’ll grab plates,” she tells him, fidgeting a little, like she’s trying to ignore the drop in pressure in the air around them, the palpable shift, the electric current running through their veins when he touched her, supercharging their blood. “One for you?”
“Nah, I’m not hungry. Don’t wanna stand between you and your cravings.”
She scoffs and withdraws two from a nearby cabinet anyway. “That’s a pregnant lady stereotype; I’m not going to eat an entire vat of spaghetti and meatballs. Have some.”
They end up eating around her coffee table in the living room, though she has a perfectly good table in the kitchen. Time passes mostly in silence, only a bit of idle chatter, and halfway through Laurel turns on the television, flicking through infomercial after infomercial, bathing the both of them in the blue light from the screen, before finally giving up and switching it off with a sigh. He’s never seen anyone eat the way she’s eating before in his life, lowering her face over her plate and inhaling her food like a Shop-Vac – and that’s saying something, because he thought he’d seen it all, growing up with cousins and brothers who scarfed down plates of spaghetti in sixty seconds flat on the regular.
“Mmm,” she hums in between bites, mouth full. “Okay, I take back what I said. This is better than sex.”
“Slow down,” he chides, jokingly, twirling his fork, wondering if he should sacrifice his plate to her. “You keep going like that, you’ll hurl all this up and my hard work will’ve been for nothing.”
She looks ridiculous, a napkin tucked into her t-shirt, wayward streaks of red sauce around her mouth, as close to a human iteration of Hungry Hungry Hippos as he thinks he’s ever seen; he’s not even sure she’s chewing, at this point. It’s a complete, utter mess, but he can stand a little mess. It’s endearing, more than anything, and after she finishes her plate he hands over his, without complaint.
To her credit, she does pretend to demur at first. It may not last long. But she does try.
Laurel insists on clearing the table, afterward, reasoning that he’s done everything else and she doesn’t mind. He protests, of course, but she won’t take no for an answer and he knows better than to press, make her feel useless, only good for lounging around all day, in her condition; he knows she feels that way in class, the way the others look at her, the things they whisper behind her back, all those things he can’t protect her from. She doesn’t like being pregnant, not in the least. He suspects she resents it, though she’s never outright said so.
If he exists right now solely to make it all a bit more tolerable for her… then so be it.
Frank settles on pacing around her living room while she’s in the kitchen, inspecting things idly but never venturing close enough to give the impression of snooping. And he isn’t, not really; he’s fascinated by her things, by the way they seem to be mostly the same as they were before, before he left, before everything proceeded to go to shit almost immediately after his leaving. She never has liked change much, appreciates steadiness, constancy when she can get it. Same metal wall-hanging over her fireplace, a sun stretching its rays out, as if in a yawn. Same potted plant in the corner, which he knows she habitually neglects and sometimes pours her coffee out on but which also seems to be stubborn as hell, refusing to give up the ghost.
Her corner, over by the window, then. She keeps a stereo there, a rack of CDs beneath. She’s the only person he knows who still uses CDs, a bit of a Luddite when it comes to audio playback; he’s never asked why, but he flips his way through them, idly, not expecting to find anything of interest, until he comes upon a clear plastic case, with his name, Frank, scrawled on the top of the disc inside with Sharpie in her familiar messy script. His chest tightens, when he sees it.
He remembers this.
“What’re you doing?”
He turns, finding her there, eyeing him with a frown but not overt suspicion. Frank holds up the disc. “You kept this?”
She chuckles when she realizes what he’s holding, shifting back, at ease. “Oh. Yeah. From when-”
“You tried to educate me on Latin music,” he finishes for her, turning the case over in his hands, fingering a crack in the plastic. “Teach me to dance. It was terrible.”
She feigns offense. “All right, I was not that bad.”
“You were. It was like the blind leadin’ the blind.” Frank pauses, considering something, before removing the disc from its case and sliding it into the CD-ROM slot, hitting play before she can get a word in. Music comes over the speakers, and he extends his hand, only for her to bristle. “Let’s dance.”
She looks at him like he’s crazy. He supposes he is. “Uh, what?”
“You heard me. Let’s dance. C’mon.”
Laurel glances at a clock in the corner, grasping at straws for an excuse. “It’s almost five, shouldn’t you be getting back?”
“Dance with me. Just one song.” He lowers his voice, until it rasps, deep in his throat, heavy with longing. “Please.”
She has every reason in the world to say no. And he’s not going to deny it; it’s a sad excuse to get close to her. Pathetic, really.
He isn’t at all expecting her to nod.
“Fine,” she acquiesces, breathing the word out on a sigh and stomping over to him, though he can tell she’s gnawing on a smile, only putting up a front of annoyance. “But just know that I have a beach ball under my shirt and two left feet, so. If I break your foot, you brought it on yourself.”
He gives her a cheeky grin, bringing his hand up and settling it on the small of her back, his touch tentative, steady. “Got it.”
It’s a slow song; bolero, he remembers she’d called it. He remembers the words, too – bésame, bésame mucho, como si fuera esta noche la última vez – and he doesn’t remember what they all mean, but he knows bésame, kiss me; having a Mexican girlfriend had all but necessitated his understanding of that phrase. The high-pitched strum of the requinto is familiar, the sound fuzzy, distorted slightly with age. It’s an old song; a classic. One of her mother’s favorites, she’d told him.
They don’t make any real effort to dance. With her belly, it’s too awkward to manage, and so they settle into a lazy sway, silent, their breathing in sync. He should feel strange, on edge; it’s been ages since they’ve gotten this close, yet all he feels is a pervasive sense of calm settling over him. Peace. It’s not something he’s felt very often, this past year. Something he suspects she hasn’t, either.
He breathes her in, holds her deep in his lungs. Wonders if she can feel what he feels for her, right then, solely by virtue of their proximity to one another.
“This is horrible,” she says, suddenly, exhaling in frustration and staring down at her stomach, always a barrier, an uninvited guest wherever she goes. It’s brushing against him, now, which he finds more humorous than anything, though Laurel doesn’t seem to think the same. She seems to regard it as a blemish, a tumor, something unsightly she can no longer hide. “I can’t wait ‘til this is all over.”
Frank grins, lets the heaviness in her words roll off his shoulders. “Think he approved of my special sauce, at least?”
“He was using my lungs as punching bags while I was eating. So, I’d say… a resounding yes.”
“Good.” They fall silent, for a moment, before Frank cracks another, wider grin. “Ask him if he thinks it needs more oregano.”
That finally gets her to lighten up. “He’s a fetus, Frank, he doesn’t have any concept of flavor balance.”
“Hey, don’t underestimate him. He’s been eatin’ my cooking for a few months, hasn’t he?”
She smiles, her teeth just barely showing, but it’s more than she’s given him in a while, and he’ll take it. “Guess so.”
Silence, again. The song carries on in the background, the singers crooning, harmonies layering effortlessly over one another. It encases them like a membrane, seals them off from the outside world, anything beyond these four walls barely existent to them. After a while, her head must grow too heavy to hold up any longer, because she readjusts, resting it near his shoulder, turning it slightly to tuck herself beneath his chin, like she’s seeking some place to hide herself away, hide from the world. She makes a sound, sleepy and muffled against his shirt, and he glances down at her.
“You all right?”
“No,” she mutters; the obvious answer. “I’m not.” Laurel pauses for a moment, before continuing, half her words garbled. “I’m miserable. And hideous.”
“For what it’s worth,” he offers, something tight clenching in his chest, his heart a bloody fist, “I think you’re beautiful.”
She gives a low humph. “You say that like you don’t think it’s worth anything.”
It throws him – because she’s right; he doesn’t think it’s worth a lot. He doesn’t think it’s worth anything at all, really, when he isn’t her boyfriend, not even her sort of-boyfriend, not the father of her child, not anything to her, anymore. Not someone who’s opinion should matter, at least.
“I…” He swallows, mouth dry. “I dunno why it would be.”
“It is,” Laurel confesses, face still against his chest. “Worth something.”
A pause. Then-
“You said you’d always loved me. That night you came back.” Laurel mulls something over, sighing against him. “Do you still?”
“Yeah,” he says, simple, sincere. Because he did. He did.
He does. There’s nothing more to say.
“Even like this?” she presses, disbelieving, like she’s sure he can’t possibly now, when she’s like this, with all the complications between them.
“Even like this,” he affirms. “What’s not to love? You’re two for the price of one now.”
Laurel smacks his chest, weakly, and chortles. “That was a stupid joke.” She sobers up quickly, though, heaves another sigh, and slumps against him, curling into his body. “This is a mess. This is all… such a fucking mess.”
It is. But it’s their mess, at least, and they’re starting to carve out their piece of happiness in it. They’re working their way towards something. Frank doesn’t know what, can’t give it a name, define the parameters of it, but it’s something. It feels like possibility. Like a chance. Like the very faintest, weakest roots of hope.
The business of loving Laurel has always been messy anyway. That doesn’t mean he’ll ever stop doing it.
“Well…” His voice is a whisper, caught in his throat like glue. “Good thing there’s no one else I’d rather be in this mess with.”
The song comes to a close, fading slowly, and they slip apart, Frank making the first move to step away. They need to have distance between them; he’s acutely aware of the fact. This needs to move slow. They need to move slow. It won’t work, otherwise, if they fall back into things the way they were, if they become only each other’s bad habit, again. He can wait. He’s a patient man.
“I should get goin’,” he tells her, a bit sadly, reluctant. Probably noticeably so. “You got class in the morning. Should get some sleep.”
“You can stay,” she says, suddenly, the words like a palisade driven straight through his chest, stunning him into stillness. She shifts, a bit awkwardly, but stands firm. “There’s… the couch. Or the bed. The bed’s big."
He feels like he’s always been the one asking her to stay, over and over. And now she’s asking him, stitching her heart to her sleeve, placing it into his hands, and he doesn’t know what to say, how to answer her.
“I’m good,” he tells her, finally. “Got work in the morning.”
Her face falls, ever so slightly. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, right.”
There’s a distinct heaviness in the air, the weight of all the words they aren’t saying, all the things they’ve yet to say, suspended above them like a cloud. Once, maybe, it would’ve bothered Frank, but now he knows they have time to say them; there’s no hurry. They have time, to get to a place where they can say them. All the time in the world.
He turns to go, grabbing his leather jacket off the coat rack, opening the door; and that’s when Laurel calls out after him, disappearing into the kitchen and reemerging with something in her hand, small, glinting silver in the moonlight.
A key. Her spare.
“Wait. Here.”
He holds out his hand, and she drops it into his palm, and the confusion on his face must be plain because she hastens to explain, flushing a little.
“It’s… You should take it. In case we have an ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up situation.’ Which, let’s be real…” she gestures down in the vague direction of her stomach, a wry grin on her face, “is getting more and more likely every day.”
He nods, turning the key over in his hand for a moment, before looking up at her. “I’m just a call away. You get anymore three AM cravings, just lemme know.”
Laurel nods, laughing under her breath, so softly he almost doesn’t hear. “I, um… I will.”
He takes one last look – eyes lingering on her just one half-second too long to be meaningless – before finally Frank nods back, wordless, stepping outside into the entryway with the cool metal of the key pressed into the center of his palm, clutched tight, something of a little prayer. A promise.
The door shuts behind him, latching with a click. In a way now, though, it doesn’t really feel closed at all.