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Streetlights shine off of wet pavement and oil-slick puddles. Late November has painted the evening in washed-out yellows and blues, sun already long gone despite the early hour. Sepia-toned, like his old baby pictures, the ones that have faded through the years.
Frank’s body shivers against the chill in the air, but the cold doesn’t make it into his bones. At least not that he feels. He just feels damp and gutted like a fish. It finished raining half an hour ago, but Frank’s been walking longer than that. His shoes are soaked through. His shirt clings to his body like a second skin. He left his jacket -- somewhere. Doesn’t matter. It’s long gone.
The streets here are familiar, worn. Filled with garden-style condos that have been lived in for decades, turned over and over into different hands and families and eras. This neighborhood is nothing like the one Frank’s new apartment is in, new and unknown. Sterile like the hospital, but even less inviting. Maybe that’s why his feet let him here without thought, without any real input from his brain to tell him this was a bad idea. Or worse, a stupid one.
He’s made a lot of stupid mistakes lately. What’s one more for the road?
Before he knows it, he’s standing outside Robby’s door, toes curling in his wet shoes against a mat so worn that the welcome it used to promise is long gone. Frank should probably take heed. He doesn’t.
He reaches under the mat and snags the spare he knows Robby keeps there. It’s not safe, but Robby’s never been worried about his own safety. He’s always been more concerned about his apartment being a place where his loved ones could find solace, refuge. Frank is sure he’s not still on that list anymore, of people who Robby would want to keep safe, of people he cares about, but the key’s still there. So.
Sitting alone in an empty apartment that isn’t his isn’t exactly how Frank anticipated spending his evening. But if he’s being real honest with himself, a couple hours ago he wasn’t exactly planning on having much of an evening to spend at all.
The thought, when it hit him, was scary. Raw. Real. And so stark that he ended up here. He supposes being here is better than nothing, maybe. Doesn’t feel like it right now, though.
Once upon a time, in a past that’s difficult to dwell on for too long and sometimes even harder to recall, Robby’s apartment felt more like home than Frank’s own. It was full of warmth, full of safety, like pulling a blanket over your head as a kid and pretending the world outside that tiny, insulated space didn’t exist at all. After shifts or on the occasional weekend, Frank found a secret kind of solace here. An escape he never really knew how to name. Something he never knew to appreciate until he ripped it away with his own two hands.
It doesn’t much feel like that now, sitting in the middle of the floor of Robby’s living room because Frank’s too soaked-through to get on the furniture. Like a dog, Frank knows better. He knows his place.
At least Robby has a nice carpet in his living room. It’s oriental. Old. Ornate. Thick. Belonged to his grandparents, Frank knows. A cherished possession. A good place to sit and breathe for a little while longer, Frank thinks.
It’s raining again, harder this time than before. Frank can hear the sound of it on the window. Not a gentle tapping, but a mean, persistent thrum. His body shivers in time with it, the occasional click of his teeth matching up to the melody.
Besides the sound of the rain, it’s so quiet at Robby’s place. It feels empty. Cold, like all of the warmth Frank remembers from before was just a figment of his imagination. Maybe it was. Maybe he dreamed that up too, like he dreamed up his own stability, his handle on the situation. At least it was a pleasant dream while it lasted.
He sits there for too long. Until his hair, once plastered slick to his forehead, begins to dry. Until he realizes that too soon, Robby will be home from his shift. Frank was off today. Robby wasn’t. As much as Robby wants to keep an eye on him, their shifts don’t overlap all the time. Frank knows that he should leave before Robby gets back and finds him here. Too bad Frank can’t make himself move. He’s too frozen in place, in time. Stuck between a memory and tonight, today. The here and now of it all.
In the end, it’s maybe that he hurts too badly to get up. Body aching in ways familiar and not at all. But he tries not to think about that. It’s easier to focus on anything else. On the feeling of the gaping, carved-out space between his ribs and the nothingness left inside. On the twisted up, horrible mess of his own emotions, everything half cut off at the knees, but still burning despite it all.
Feeling truly numb is all he wants. It used to be all he felt and it was so easy. He aches for it again, with a yearning that guts him worse than anything else.
Tears burn his eyes and he digs his nails into his palms instead. Hard. Harder. Until he can choke out a breath and not sob with it.
Too soon, a key turns in Robby’s lock. The door opens. Closes with a click.
He can hear how Robby pauses in the entryway. How he assesses the state of his apartment to be different than how he left it. Not empty. He’s not sure how Robby knows -- Frank didn’t turn any of the lights on, didn’t leave his dirty shoes by the door -- but does it even matter? Robby always knows. Robby’s always known him better than anyone else. And even then, that wasn’t enough.
The entry way light clicks on and Robby’s shadow darkens the living room door. A silhouette against a yellow glow.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Sorry,” Frank says. “Lost my keys.”
His throat feels rough. Like he swallowed steel wool. Maybe some barbed wire, too. He doesn’t remember doing that, but he doesn’t remember a lot of things anymore. Maybe it’s just the ghost of hands around his throat. A bruised trachea, his mind supplies.
“Lost your keys but not mine?”
Frank makes a noise. He thinks it was supposed to be a laugh, but instead it just sounds choked. Like he forgot how to breathe. Maybe he forgot that, too.
“Used your spare,” Frank confesses. “Under the mat.”
Robby does laugh, but it’s a horrible sound. Mean, biting. Too loud. The sound of it makes Frank flinch. He’s pretty sure it was supposed to.
“Get out, Frank,” Robby tells him.
Despite the sudden bark of the laugh, now Robby just sounds tired. As exhausted as Frank feels. Frank doesn’t blame him. He’d want him gone, too. It’s maybe why he came here, so he didn’t have to be all alone with himself in his own empty apartment. At least here, there are memories. At least here, even with its owner at work, the place is full of Robby. Packed to the brim with the warm feeling of home.
A home that isn’t Frank’s. That never was. Even if he wanted to pretend, for a little while.
Then. And now.
Frank pushes himself off the ground and wobbles to a stand, blinking through the immediate head rush. His legs are numb and his body is cold, shaking, but even still he feels so stiflingly hot. Flushed with the adrenaline of Robby’s return, however expected, and under the weight of his anger, his disdain.
But Frank sat unmoving on Robby’s floor for far too long. His muscles have gone tense from disuse and now they complain with every movement. He’s slow, too slow. And Frank knows it -- he’s not moving fast enough for the command to get out. But he can’t make himself move faster, no matter how much he tries to push himself. He feels underwater, adrift. Like the world is just too far away.
Impatient, Robby scoffs and crosses the room and grabs at him, moving to pull-push Frank toward the door.
It’s too fast, maybe. Or maybe it’s just that Robby is tall and broad and Frank wasn’t expecting him to come anywhere close. He never does anymore; he always keeps Frank at arms’ length now. Or maybe Frank has just fully lost it completely. Not that Frank has much time to think about the root of it at all, because one second Robby’s across the room, darkening the doorway at a safe distance, and in the next he’s right there, towering over Frank and grabbing him around the arm with a big, hot hand and yanking him hard toward the door.
And it’s stupid, Frank thinks. It’s Robby.
But Frank’s been stupid, as of late. He’s made stupid decisions and won himself some real stupid prizes for it.
His heart does something strange in his chest. Flip flops like a giant, dying fish heaved onto a pier. He flinches. He rears back. Tries to squirm and pull away from Robby’s grasp without any real cognitive thought on the matter. It’s just a reaction. His lizard brain moving his body for him.
Unfortunately, Robby’s expecting it. Or maybe he’s just fast. He’s always been good at catching patients as they flinch or run away. Why should Frank be any different?
So, Robby grabs harder, gets a good grip on Frank with both hands like he’s liable to get away. Frank thinks Robby curses, but he can’t hear much past the sudden, deafening rush in his ears.
Hands on him. Big, hot, mean. His mind does something similar to his heart, flip flopping and slipping back in time. Hands, pushing him to a wall. A rough palm against his cheek, holding his head against cold, damp brick. The smell of wet cement. The taste of his own tears. The sound of his own heartbeat.
Fingers mean against his throat.
Frank shoves out. He fights, this time. Last time, earlier, he didn’t. He was too caught off guard. Too stupid. Too scared.
He’s scared now, too.
But while Robby might have been expecting Frank to pull away that first time, he wasn’t expecting the reaction of a wild animal, a fight. Wasn’t expecting Frank to shove him back, to rip away in a frenzy like his life depended on it, teeth bared. And he’s definitely not expecting Frank to stumble a few steps away, fall to his knees, and upend the contents of his stomach on Robby’s cherished, beautiful living room carpet. It’s not much, because Frank couldn’t stomach eating much today -- just bile and stomach acid -- but it’s enough to make Robby curse and shift in Frank’s periphery as his vision swims, black dots swimming in the center of his focus.
“Are you high?” Robby asks. It’s accusatory. It’s mean.
Frank wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His tongue tastes sour. His stomach churns.
“Sorry. Shit. I’ll—I’ll clean it up. Just. Give me a second.”
His head is spinning. Robby’s no longer touching him, but he’s hovering like he might. Still too close. Looming. If things were different, if they lived in a different world and not one born of Frank’s arrogant creation, Frank would give him shit for his bedside manner. But they don’t. So Frank stays quiet. He bites down on his own tongue and wishes he tasted blood.
He threw up on the way here, too. There was more to eject, then. Water. His meagre lunch. Stomach acid. And, swirling with all the rest, a stranger’s bitter --
Frank gags again, doubling over on himself. Thinking of it, the taste on his tongue, the memory of it on the way out, makes his eyes burn, his gut turn over.
Like he’s forgotten himself, like he’s forgotten Frank, Robby jolts toward him.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” Frank snarls.
He retches again, involuntary. It hurts.
Robby doesn’t touch him. He still looms, backlit by the yellow fucking entryway light, because Robby never bothered to turn any any more lights, just beelined straight for Frank because he’d rather look at Frank in the dark of the living room. At least it’s probably for the best. Frank probably looks like a fucking mess. A disaster. Dark eyes. Split lip. Bruises on his neck in the shape of someone else’s desire.
In the shape of his own stupid mistakes.
“Frank. Are you high?” Robby asks again. The accusation is still there, but the question is almost gentler this time. Closer to it, anyway. Somehow, that makes it worse.
Frank wishes he were high. He wishes he were so high he wasn’t here anymore.
Robby’s grandparents’ carpet swims in his blurry vision. Swirling, geometric and floral medallions that he can barely make out in the low light. Even still, he’s spent a lot of time staring at this rug. He knows it like the back of his own hand.
Frank swallows.
“No,” Frank manages. “No. Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here.”
He wills himself to get up. To go to the kitchen and get all the supplies to clean up the mess he made on Robby’s rug like a bad dog. But his body doesn’t move, doesn’t obey him, no matter how much he begs. Instead, he stays frozen in place, on his knees in a home that isn’t his, staring down at his own bile and feeling like a piece of gum on the bottom of Robby’s shoe.
“Sorry,” he says again, like the repetition will do anything other than make Robby mad.
For a little while, Robby disappears. When he comes back, he places a glass of water next to Frank’s hand and Frank tries not to flinch at how close he gets. How he drops to a crouch to get closer to Frank’s level and just stays there. Fucking hovering.
Frank takes a long, shaky breath. It burns in his lungs. In his throat. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but closes it when nothing comes out.
“You shouldn’t be here. Why did you come here, Frank?" Robby asks.
“Lost my keys,” Frank says. He tries to make it sound like a joke, which is stupid because of course it doesn’t land. Just another stupid decision in such a long line he can no longer remember where he started.
“Did you really?”
“No.”
“And you’re not high?”
“I’m not high.”
Like Robby would believe him anyway.
Robby sighs. He gets up again. Disappears for a while. Comes back and cleans up the mess Frank left on the rug with a wet paper towel while Frank wobbles there on his knees, useless and shivering.
“I’m so fucking tired,” Frank tells him. At least that’s a truth Robby will believe.
When Frank used to come over, they would sometimes watch sports together on the television. They’d sit shoulder to shoulder on the small couch. Frank could lean in then, and it was so easy, so simple. Sometimes he’d fall asleep like that, Robby a long line of heat next to him. He wishes he could have that, now. Maybe, if he did, he could sleep through the night. If he had it just one night, maybe he’d be okay. Maybe he’d be able to close his eyes and not feel haunted, hunted.
Robby sighs again, walks away, and when he comes back, his hands are empty again. All evidence of Frank’s weakness removed from the rug in front of him. Like it never even happened at all. Like if Frank left, Robby could go about his night like this never happened.
Frank wishes his stomach wasn’t still churning. He wishes he could push himself up and leave here, right now. Instead, his heavy body wants to crumple into the rug and never leave. He wants to dissolve here, to die. Instead, he sort of laughs. A stupid, horrible, wet sound that goes on forever, self-perpetuating. Because it’s funny, almost.
Robby lets Frank laugh until he stops, until he chokes into a pathetic sob, face buried in the crook of his arm.
“Do you need somewhere to sleep?” Robby asks finally.
It sounds an awful lot like Are you safe to be alone? Which sounds even more like, Are you safe for me to kick you out?
That’s an easy one, at least. Frank’s not safe with himself. He knows that much. His head swims. He wants to cry until his eyes are finally dry. He wants to take enough pills that he stops hurting, that he stops feeling, that everything just -- stops. But that’s probably not what Robby’s worried about. He’s worried about a liability. A relapse. Not about the problem taking care of itself for good.
He takes a small sip of the water Robby gave him. Tap, luke warm. Still, as palatable and innocuous as it is, his stomach churns at its introduction and he has to close his eyes for a second and swallow again just to keep his gut from revolting.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” Frank tells him once he’s gathered himself again. “I’m sure you had a long shift.”
The last thing Robby needs is to come home to… this. Whatever the fuck this is.
Frank doesn’t look at Robby’s face. He can’t. He doesn’t want to see whatever disappointment is painted there, stark and plain.
It would be easy, probably, to tell Robby that Frank needs help. That he shouldn’t be alone. That he doesn’t trust himself. Even as much as he hates Frank now, Robby would make sure he got help. He’s a good guy.
Strangely, thinking about it in an abstract sense, Frank realizes that it would be harder to tell Robby that he was hurt by a stranger because of his own bad decisions. It’s more complicated. More intimate than fucking himself up on drugs and thinking he had everything under control. He thought he had this under control, too. Just a fun time out at a bar he’s been to a hundred times before. No drinking, just fun. A stranger with a charming smile, broad shoulders, and big, nice hands. He had a beard and crow’s feet. When they first kissed, Frank felt butterflies.
There’s a layer of shame there that Frank didn’t expect. A layer of helplessness.
And guilt.
Robby already knows that Frank’s a fuck up, that he makes bad decisions. He doesn’t need to know the extent of it. Doesn’t need to have his own assumptions about Frank proven even more right. He’s already got enough ammunition -- Frank isn’t about to hand him more.
“Get up,” Robby says. He doesn’t reach for Frank. Maybe he’s learned better. Maybe he just doesn’t want to touch Frank again. “You’re staying on the couch.”
Frank should leave. He wants to. But more desperately, more stupidly, he wants to stay. He wants to curl up in Robby’s side like it’s the good old days and never leave. He wants to be able to catch his breath again.
Maybe Frank can have this. This fraction of remembered warmth. A fragment of comfort. For just one night.
One last time.
Finally, Frank pushes himself off the carpet and staggers over to the couch and sets himself down less gently than he should. His clothes are still damp, but at this point, he’s not sure if he cares. If Robby does, he doesn’t say anything.
His limbs feel like jelly. His throat feels raw. His body aches.
“Thank you,” Frank tells him. Tries to say it from the bottom of his heart, but the best that he can manage is from the back of his throat.
He doesn’t know how to actually thank Robby. He thinks, maybe, if Robby wanted him in the way the man wanted him today, in the way that Frank—. Well. Maybe he wouldn’t mind so much if—
Robby tosses a blanket at him. Frank doesn’t catch it, and it just falls over his lap, partially unfolded. Frank breathes heavily and touches the corners of it.
“Get some sleep, Frank,” Robby tells him. “We can talk about it in the morning.”
The shape of whatever conversation they could have in the morning is amorphous, vast. Bigger than the solar system and fully unfathomable. So unknowable that it’s funny, but Frank’s all out of energy to laugh.
It doesn’t matter, anyway. Because in the morning, Robby will wake up and Frank won’t be there. His couch will be empty and the borrowed blanket will be folded over the back with careful hands. Frank promises himself that he’ll take his bruises and leave before Robby gets to see him in the daylight. Before he can see what a stupid fucking mess Frank let himself become.
But for now, Frank will let himself sleep with a warm body in the next room. Just for a little bit. Then, he’ll leave before Robby wakes up. It’ll be easy, he tells himself. Whatever he has to keep telling himself.
Robby leaves him there with no further words, just a deep, tired breath that's not even a sigh.