🏳️‍🌈🤍 Head In The Clouds

yes i know there are three for on call. no i'm not sorry.

y'all gotta do this PLEASE @evolnoomym @sixhours @almostfoxglove @whocaresstillthelouvre @polaroidpascal

You and Fish, fucking.  You and Fish, the two members of the team who squabble and irritate each other the most, who sometimes outright fight and sometimes require someone else—Will, usually—to referee.

You and Fish.  You thought you were quiet, but by morning, everyone knows.

And worse, you and Fish know they know.  After you finished, quiet as you could be, both of your cell phones pinged with a string of incoming messages.  From Pope.

Pope:  👏👏👏👏

Pope:  excellent work you two

Pope:  🍆 💦💦💦💦

Pope:  seriously tho ur both gross

Pope:  but congrats happy for u

You read the messages and felt a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, but when you glanced over at Frankie, he only raked his hand through his hair and muttered, “fuck.”

-----

Breakfast is a surreal affair.  No one says anything at first, so the only sounds are forks and spoons clinking against dishes.  Chewing.  Benny, doing his usual gross early morning phlegm-clearing cough.

Your face burns in embarrassment.  Frankie keeps his eyes fixed on his scrambled eggs, which he only pushes around with the tines of his fork.  You can feel Pope’s eyes on you, Will’s eyes, and the cabin is full of anticipation.

Pope’s the one who breaks it.  He clears his throat, asks in a tone that’s phony-casual, “everyone sleep okay?”

“I didn’t,” Will replies.  “Thought I heard something last night.”

“Outside?”  Again, Pope’s voice is fake, an edge of chipper teasing in it. 

“Sounded like something got into the cabin.”

Pope pulls a thoughtful face.  “Y’know, I think I heard something too.  Kinda like a wounded animal?  Two wounded animals, grunting and moaning—”

Frankie huffs out a heavy sigh, and you slouch lower in your chair.  Benny grins around his mug of coffee and adds, “it is mating season, I think.”

Pope snaps his finger, a eureka sort of gesture.  “That must be it!  We must have come here during mating season and just didn’t realize it.  Wild.  Who knew?”

You chafe at the word mating, which makes it sound like you and Frankie are…well, mates, so you mutter, “it’s just hooking up,” which makes Frankie sigh again, because that launches Pope into a blistering lecture about responsibility and poor choices and Jesus Christ, you two, are you even using protection?  Are you at least being safe, because you sure as shit aren’t being smart?

You mumble a defensive comment that it isn’t his business (though you’re on birth control, you sure as hell aren’t admitting it to the guys—Frankie knows, and that’s all that matters), and then you find the strength to stand up, announce that you’re going for a walk down to the lake, and if they care to speculate further on your reproductive health, they can do so without your presence.

*****

Frankie can’t remember the last time he has been so mortified.

No, scratch that.  He can remember.  It was when he was in the throes of his addiction, and you ambushed him with an intervention.  Now, a full year after that, he sees the love and care that went into it, but at the time, he felt a furious blend of anger and frustration and mortification.

This is like that, albeit less strong…but incredibly fresh.

After you march off—abandoning him, naturally—he lets the guys get their shots in.  He clenches his jaw and fixes his gaze somewhere over Pope’s head, at a pattern of knots in the wood paneling on the wall.  He tries to let their ribbing wash over him, but he takes each comment personally.

And he’s embarrassed.  It would be one thing to be caught with a random woman from, say, a bar or a party.  You, though?  It feels like a weakness, a failure of character, to be caught fucking someone he barely gets along with.  Pathetic, like he can’t do better.  Like he couldn’t find a woman who simpers for him, who is eager to impress him, who is impressed by him.  Like he’s had to settle for someone who rolls her eyes at him, who snarks at him, who doesn't think that highly of him. 

Someone who saw him at his weakest, when he was addicted to coke.  Someone who rolled her eyes and marched in to save the day.

Weak.  Pathetic.

Frankie stews.  The guys wear themselves out, split up.  Benny goes to find you on your march down to the lake.  He says he’ll calm you down, soothe your chagrined soul and smooth you out.  Pope disappears into his room to take a work call, since he has a new contract coming up in a few days.

It leaves Frankie and Will.  Frankie stands up from the table and makes his way out to the front porch, and Will follows.  Frankie heaves himself onto the porch swing, and he sets a rhythm of fast, jerky swinging.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  He swings in time to his pounding heart, the headache forming at the base of his skull.

Will settles on the step and stretches his leg out.  He turns his face to the rising sun, and he’s silent for a long moment.

“You okay?” he finally asks.  There’s no teasing in his voice.  He sounds genuine.

“Great.”  Frankie spits it out, sarcastic.

Will jerks his chin in the direction of the cabin door.  “You know we’re just teasing.”

“Yeah.”

Will hesitates before he asks, “is it really just hooking up?”

Frankie sighs.  “Obviously.”

Another beat of hesitation.  “You don’t have feelings for her?”

That pulls a bitter laugh from Frankie.  “Obviously not.”

“Thing is, it’s not so obvious.”  Will turns his head and fixes Frankie with an appraising look that Frankie doesn’t like.  He meets his eye for a beat, then slides his own gaze away, looks past Will to the clearing where the fire pit is.  That first evening here seems a million years ago, though it was only a couple of days. 

“It’s just that you two make a weird sort of sense,” Will continues.  “You’re so similar—”

“We’re nothing alike.”  Frankie cuts him off tersely.  “We don’t have a damned thing in common other than a shared history.”

“You’re both stubborn.  You’re both strong-willed people, and you both obviously care about each other—”

“No.  Nope.”  He cuts him off again, and all of those bad feelings—mortification being the strongest—bubble up in him.

“I don’t care about her.  Are you kidding?  It was just hooking up.  She was available, and it was convenient, and that’s it.” 

There’s venom behind his words, a force fed by his deep embarrassment to have been caught with you.  It makes his voice carry just enough that you and Ben both hear it as you walk back from the lake.  Will sees you first, makes a noise in the back of his throat as he catches your expression—the hurt there, the pain that Frankie’s words cause—and then Frankie sees you too.

“Hey,” he starts to say, but you wave him off, tell him it’s fine, you’re fine…and in all the years that Frankie has known you, this is the first time you lie to him.

-----

The weekend ends on a sour note.

There’s no fight between you and Frankie, and that hurts the most.  For as much as you bicker, you go silent now.  When you talk to him, you’re flat.  Polite.  Distant.

Pope needs to head back early to get back to Colombia, and you catch a ride with him.

“Got things I need to do,” you say, and everyone knows it’s a lie, but no one knows how to call you out on it.  You’re hurt, Frankie has hurt you and the guys fed into the bad feelings that led to that hurt, and everyone parts in a low mood.

A hundred times Frankie’s finger hovers over your name on his phone.  A hundred times he starts to craft a message in his head, only to toss the phone aside.

A hundred times he struggles to fall asleep because he cannot get your face out of his head.  That look of surprise and hurt, and all his fault because he was an asshole who was embarrassed to be caught hooking up with you.

No, not was an asshole.  Is an asshole.  Because a hundred times he thinks he’ll summon the courage to reach out, but a hundred times, he fails.

-----

He doesn’t see you for six months.  He don’t talk to you directly, and the best he gets is your short, clipped responses in the gang’s group chat.  Even there, you tend to go silent.

He dare not ask one of the guys how you’re doing.  He sees the Miller brothers the most, talks to Pope only sometimes, and maybe there’s a separate group chat because it seems as though the three of them have reached some agreement to never mention you around Frankie.

Six months.  Half a year after the cabin by the lake.  How does Frankie spend his time?  Lonely, mostly.  He goes to work, then goes home.  He goes to meetings once a week, but he rarely has cravings and has less pressure to use.  He started using before because he just had too much going on—work and married life, Pope’s scheming to make them all millionaires, Tom’s death.  Now Frankie has very little.  Just a job.  Just a small apartment where he sits alone on his secondhand couch and eats microwaved leftovers while the TV plays at a low volume.

A hundred times he thinks to call you.  A hundred times he thinks to drive to where you live—one town over, but only a fifteen minute drive.  He could apologize; he could try to understand why you looked so hurt.  Of course he cares for you, deep down, but it isn’t love…or was it?

A hundred times that question floats to the front of his mind, and a hundred times he shoves it down, ignores it, waits for it to recede from his thoughts.

-----

Six months after the cabin by the lake, Frankie sees you again.  Pope is in town for his birthday.  His latest contract has ended, the next one hasn’t begun, and he has a stretch of time to visit and gorge himself on all the things he can’t get overseas.

His birthday is held at Will and Benny’s place.  When Frankie rolls up a solid half hour late, though, Will is outside waiting for him.

“How’s it going?” he asks, and the two exchange their usual handshake into a half-hug.

“Good.  You?”

“Good.”  Will jams his hands in his pockets and fixes Frankie with a curious look.  “She’s in there, you know.”

It says a lot that the she in this case is you and not his ex-wife, who arguably would put the guys more on alert.  How have you managed to reach such a dubious place of honor?

Frankie tries to sound casual.  “Yeah, I figured.”  A beat, and he adds, “don’t worry.  I don’t plan on fighting with her.  It’s Pope’s night.”

Will furrows his brow at that, shakes his head faintly.  “Yeah, I know.  But Frankie, she’s in there with someone else.  Pope’s buddy, remember?”

-----

Fucking Paolo.

Fucking recently-divorced, recently-cheated on, sad piece of shit Paolo.  Pope’s buddy that he tried—and apparently succeeded at—setting you up with at the cabin.

Thing is, the guy isn’t a sad piece of shit.  Or a troll, as Frankie had teased you at the cabin.  The man is handsome; an easy smile and warm eyes.  Hair that looks great but like he didn’t try to make it look great.  Clothing well-fitted and well-made, but not obnoxiously designer.  Good handshake, when Frankie is introduced.  A genuine ‘nice to meet you’ in accented English.

Frankie’s jealousy, as it turns out, is wide and deep and never-ending.

Because for fuck’s sake, you look happy.  Relaxed.  Paolo puts his hand on your lower back and leads you to get fresh drinks.  He slings an arm around your waist as you stand and chat with Pope.  He turns and whispers something in your ear that makes you giggle, and how is Frankie just now learning that you fucking giggle, and that it sounds cute on you, a musical little laugh that makes his stomach turn because he’s never drawn such a sound from you?

And Paolo must smooth out your rough edges because you gift Frankie a little smile and ask how he’s been, and there’s no venom behind the question.  No lingering bad will. 

You’ve moved on, it seems, and it hits Frankie harder than he thought it would.  He ends up leaving after only a few hours, lies and says he’s coming down with something, but he takes one backwards glance at you before he goes. 

You aren’t looking at him at all.  You’re looking—gazing—at fucking Paolo’s handsome fucking face, and Frankie’s first thought is she never looked at me like that.

His second thought is maybe I never gave her a reason to look at me like that.

-----

Frankie sees you once a few months after Pope’s birthday, by accident at the grocery store.  You’re alone and frowning slightly in the produce section, looking at the selection of apples on display.  Paolo is nowhere in sight, but that doesn’t mean anything.

You don’t see Frankie.  He stands by the cut flowers and studies you from under the brim of his hat, and he half-hopes you turn and see him.  He half-hopes you don’t.  He stands by a bucket of cheerful daisies and wonders if Paolo brings you flowers.

He half-hopes the man does, because you deserve flowers.  He half-hopes he doesn’t, because Frankie is jealous and hates the thought that Paolo has only known you for a fraction of time—far less than Frankie has known you—and is still probably that much better for you than Frankie would have been.

Frankie doesn’t know what to do with himself.  His thumb still hovers over your contact information in the still, quiet hours of the night. 

He thinks of the intervention you staged for him.  He had stormed out, furious to be so embarrassed and exposed, and you had followed.

He remembers you stopping him, your hands turning him to face you.  Your hands gripping either side of his face as you stared deep into his eyes and pleaded with him to get his shit together.

It’s as good of advice now as it was then.

-----

A year after the cabin by the lake, and everyone returns to the cabin by the lake. 

Frankie hesitates when Will calls for his confirmation.  Will must guess why, because Will not-so-casually mentions that it’s just the core folks, you and Frankie and Pope and the Millers.  No plus-ones.

“Just us,” Will reminds him.  “To remember Tom.”

So fucking Paolo won’t be there with his nice smile and nice hair and his hand resting lightly on your back, and Frankie agrees to come.

When he arrives, it is just like the year before.  Pope pulls rank and calls dibs on the lone single bedroom.  The Miller brothers scamper up to the loft like children, poking at each other and laughing the whole way.

Which leaves you and Frankie exactly where you were a year ago.  Awkwardly sharing the living room with the lumpy couch and a mattress on the floor.  Frankie glances at you, opens his mouth to say something, but Pope—who tosses his bag into the bedroom, then strides back out—comes up to you and pulls you into a hug that kind of looks like a headlock.

“Sorry to hear about it,” he says, and Frankie is bewildered for a beat before Pope adds, “for the record, I told him he was being fucking stupid.”

His mind guesses that this is about Paolo, but his mouth, which often operates independently of his mind, blurts out, “did you break up?”

You peer out at him from where Pope has you tucked against him, and grumble, “how’d you say it last year?  I’d only disappoint him.”

Frankie sucks in a breath, remembers the shot he took at you.  He shakes his head, ashamed at the memory, but doesn’t say anything.

“No.  No, no, no.”  Pope adjusts his hold, puts you in an actual headlock.  He glances over at Frankie and clarifies, “he got back together with his ex-wife.”

“She was better than me,” you chime in, and it sounds muffled.

“Nope again.  She’s a cheater, and she’ll cheat again, and you’ll be off with someone far better.”  Pope adjusts his hold as you struggle against him, and he adds, “now say something nice about yourself.  No feeling sorry, so say something nice.”

“I’m a good cook.”  It’s muffled again; your face is pressed against Pope’s side where he holds you fast.

“No good.  I mean, you’re a good cook, yes, but you learned that.  It’s not essential to who you are.”

“Pope, c’mon,” you whine.  “Lemme go.”

“Not until you say it.”

Frankie smiles at the exchange, but he puzzles over it too.  He wonders at the relationship you have with Pope, separate from him and the other guys.  He supposes he’s never considered it—he always thought you and he had a separate thing, but never considered how you got on with Pope or Will or Ben independent of him, separate from the broader group. 

But Paolo was Pope’s friend too, and Frankie wonders how much Pope hyped you up to Paolo and vice versa.  And how much Pope has been there for you now that it’s ended, perhaps feeling guilty to have it go sideways on you.

Hence this little game that seems well-established:  Pope holding you in a headlock, forcing you to speak well of yourself.

“I’m…loyal,” you finally concede.

Pope shoots Frankie a grin and replies, “yes, you are.  You’re good as gold.”

But he doesn’t release you quick enough, and you get enough of an arm free to lightly sucker punch him low in the stomach, and Frankie smiles wider because that’s the you he recognizes best—the one who puts up with shit to a certain level, then comes out swinging.

-----

The first night this time is much the same as the last time.  There’s a bonfire, a cooler of beers, laughter.  Loons call across the water to each other, and sparks from the fire drift on the updraft to merge with the stars glimmering above them.

Frankie feels restless.  He fiddles with his bottle of beer, rolls it between his palms, peels the label.  He hasn’t seen you in so long, hasn’t talked to you for even longer, and now you’re sitting across the fire ring from him.  Your face is gilded orange and gold in the flames, and while you laugh with them, you seem a touch sad.  Quieter than usual.

When everyone finally turns in, he offers you the mattress on the floor.  For the first time since you’ve arrived, you pause and look at him.  Actually look at him:  meet his eyes, study his face. 

“The couch is lumpy,” you remind him.  “Your back.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Nah, I’m okay.”  You turn away and shake out the folded blanket, and Frankie despairs at how polite and distant you are now.  His own fault, but he loathes it.  He wishes you’d squabble with him again, pick a fight, tease him until he huffs in frustration.

“Hey, can we talk?” he asks.  He watches you lie down.  You punch at the pillow, turn on your side, then settle and sigh.

“I’d rather not, Fish.”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry—”

You arch an eyebrow at him.  “For Paolo?  You kinda said it would go down the exact way it went down.”

He shakes his head.  “No, but I should have never said that—”

“It’s fine.”

“I meant, I wanted to say I’m sorry for before.”

“Oh.”

“Here, last year.”  He swallows and studies your expression, which gives nothing away.  “I shouldn’t have said what I did.  It was cruel, and—”

“I get it.  I remember.  It’s fine, Fish.  Everything’s fine.”

He wants to add more, but you roll over to face the back of the couch, your back to him.  It occurs a moment later that you’re still lying to him, because you’ve just said everything was fine at least four times in the past five minutes, and he gets the distinct impression that nothing is fine.

-----

The next day, you hike again.  It’s a different route this time, and the summit is different but the view is the same, just a different angle:  placid lake below, brilliant blue sky above, and a picnic lunch spread out on the rock. 

Frankie has done a lot of work on himself.  In the past months, he’s learned to stop thinking of himself as a fixed point.  Life is not a ladder, as he always imagined.  He can change and adapt and not think himself weak for backing up and taking a different route when the first route proves to be a dead end.

Case in point:  you and your occasional balking as you hike down a mountain.  There’s a stretch that is dicey, loose graveled and steep, and sure enough, you falter, then freeze.

Frankie from last year got impatient with you, and left you behind for Benny to rescue.

Frankie from this year recognizes that your fear isn’t a personal failing.  It’s a quirk.  It makes you you, and how he reacts now is what makes him him.  The new and improved Frankie.  Less of an asshole.  Back up, try a new way. 

“Take your time,” he tells you now.  “There’s no rush.”

You don’t seem to hear him.  You’re so used to him being frustrated that you say, plaintive, “just go around, Fish.”

A breath.  New and improved Frankie.  “No, I’ll wait for you.  I’m here.”

You glance at him, and he sees the whites of your eyes:  the fear there.  He regrets that he wasn’t patient with you before.  Another breath, like his therapist taught him.  He feels the regret, then lets it go.  He reminds himself that he can be better now.

Frankie reaches out a hand to you.  “C’mon,” he says.  “I’ve got you.”

Of course you stare at him a long moment like he’s grown two heads.  Like he’s been replaced by some alien double who is kind instead of snappish.

You end up taking his hand, though, and he grips you firmly, takes you step by step out of the perilous stretch of the trail.

-----

Dinner is Pope on steaks, you on pasta and vegetables again.  Benny, who took an internet wine course to impress a girl, pops the corks on a few bottles of middle shelf vintage.  He explains about how it has to breathe, how it has to release the bouquet until Pope steps away from the steaks to smack him upside his head.

New and improved Frankie.  When the dinner conversation touches on your breakup, he murmurs his consolations.  When Pope gives the entire history of Paolo and his volatile ex-wife, he clicks his tongue and shakes his head in disgust.

New and improved Frankie.  He tells you your contributions to the meal are delicious, and he misses the sly look that Will gives to Pope because Frankie is too focused on you.  Your face twists in confusion at his praise, and you reply a beat later with a lilt of questioning, “thank you?”

-----

New and improved Frankie.  He manages to beat you to the living room before bed, and he snags the couch while you’re brushing your teeth.  You stop in your tracks when you see him, and you narrow your eyes.

“Take the mattress tonight,” he says.  He ignores the spring in the couch digging into the left side of his ass.  “Seriously.”

The guys are all already tucked into their own beds, so when you put your hands on your hips and demand to know what the hell is wrong with him, you keep your voice low.

“Nothing wrong with me.”

You don’t buy it, but your scowl softens.  “Frankie, are you using again?”

He laughs.  Of course you’d associate his attempts at niceness with drugs. 

“Not at all.  I’m at about eighteen months clean.”

That replaces your scowl with a smile.  A genuine one.  “Oh, Fish.  Congratulations.”

“It’s thanks to you.”

“Nah.  You’re the one who did the hard work.”

“You’re the one who saw I had a problem.”

“The guys noticed it too.”

“Yeah, but.”  He takes a breath.  “You’re the one who took action.  You probably saved my life.”

You wave him off, and you kneel down on the mattress, then sit cross-legged and look at him.  “You give me too much credit, Fish.”

That makes him shake his head.  “No, I never gave you enough credit.  I was married, remember.  Sophie never noticed, and if she did, she didn’t set up an intervention.  It was all you.”

Something about being so open makes you uncomfortable.  You fold your hands in your lap and look down at them.  “Where is all this coming from?”  Your voice is quiet, and Frankie has to strain to hear you.

“What do you mean?”

A sigh.  “I mean, I don’t want you to be nice because I got dumped.  I hate pity.”

He sits up a bit, props himself on his elbow and watches you.  “It’s not pity.”

“Then why are you being so nice?  We haven’t argued once and it’s been over a day.”  You glance over at him, your hands twisting in your lap restlessly.

He sits up completely and leans forward, his elbows on his knees.  “I hated the way I left things with you before.”  A pause.  “Remember what you told me at my intervention?  You said I had to get my shit together.  I thought, ‘okay, I’m clean now, I have some clean months behind me.  So why am I still so fucking miserable to be with?’”

“Fish, you aren’t miserable to be—”

“I am.”  He cuts you off.  “And I don’t want to be.  I don’t want to be the man who makes you feel like shit because I’m embarrassed we got caught hooking up.  You’re not something to be ashamed of, and I acted like a complete asshole.”

The corner of your mouth twitches in a sardonic smile.  “The guys were being obnoxious.”

“And I should have been obnoxious back.  I could have talked you up.  Talked us up.  Instead of being a dick, I could have said, ‘yeah, we’re hooking up, and it’s amazing, so be jealous about it because you’re all single with no prospects.’”

“We were technically single too.”

He nods, serious.  “Yeah, we were, but maybe we shouldn’t have been.”

That makes you laugh; an honest-to-god belly laugh that has you wrapping your arms around your stomach.  Frankie winces, glances up at the loft where the Miller brothers are theoretically sleeping, then he pushes the worry aside.  Who gives a shit if they hear you laughing with him?

When he doesn’t laugh too, your laughter dies down.  “Wait, you’re not joking?”

“No.”

A long pause with the two of you watching each other.  “…and you’re sure you’re not using?”

“I’m sure.  I had a piss test last week for work.”

“…okay.”

He sighs and holds his hands out to you, palms up.  Entreating.  “I’ve been seeing a therapist.  Yes, it feels like bullshit, but it’s something, you know?  Having a third party to bounce my bad memories against.  My bad feelings.  He’s helped me figure out some stuff.”

You blink at him in sincere surprise.  “I’m proud of you, Fish.”

That makes a warm flush course through him, you being proud of him.  “It’s a cliché, but there’s shit from childhood that really can fuck a person up as an adult, you know?”

“Oh, I know it.  Eldest daughter, right here.  Child of functional alcoholics.”

“I guess I always had this set idea in my head of how life was gonna be, and when it was not that, when it turned out to be something that I constantly had to work out, I didn’t know how to handle that,” he admits.

“I get that too.”  You nod along, and you stop fiddling with your hands.

Frankie takes a deep breath and plunges ahead.  He has to get it out, and he has your attention.

“And, you know, I had set ideas about relationships.  Women.  Marriage.”

The sardonic smile returns.  “Here we go.”

“I was trying to recreate a perfect version of my parents’ marriage,” he admits.  It took some deep work to realize it.  Talking in therapy, dredging up memories he thought he had buried nice and deep.  “I thought if I could do it like them, but better, I would have won.”

“Won what, exactly?” you ask softly.

“Life?  I don’t even know.  It sounds stupid to say it out loud, but I thought it would mean that I had succeeded as an adult.  As a man.  Like people would look at me and be impressed.”

He glances at you, and you nod encouragingly.  He takes another deep breath, and he asks you to just listen to the next part, to not interrupt.  To let him get it all out before you stop listening.

“Okay.”  Another nod, and you settle your hands in your lap again and hold them there.

“So I tried to recreate my parents’ marriage, right?  I found a woman a lot like my mom.  Traditional, stay at home.  Sophie wanted to be taken care of, you know.  She didn’t want to work.  She wanted someone to make the decisions for her on all the big adult stuff.  She wanted to keep house and have kids and be a soccer mom.  Make homemade Halloween costumes and throw elaborate birthday parties for our four or five children, and there was nothing wrong with that.  I thought she’d be better than my mom, an actual mom, you know?  Not someone to get bitter about her missed opportunities and tell her kids how she sacrificed everything for them.  Because that’s what my childhood was like.  My mom always couched everything in what she gave up, like me or my brothers asked to be born.”

He pauses, catches his breath.  You’re watching him, expectant, so he continues.

“And meanwhile, I thought I’d be the best husband.  The best dad.  I had a military career, and they trained me to fly helicopters.  I was so much further ahead than my own dad, who drove a tow truck.  He worked hard all day, then came home to a bitter wife.  The best thing in his life was drinking cheap beer in the garage and hiding from her, and here I was, married to Sophie with a good military job and benefits, and I should have been so happy to be winning.”

“But you weren’t,” you say gently.  It isn’t a question.

He shakes his head.  “No, I wasn’t.  And I didn’t know why.  I started to resent Soph for never making a decision.  Mortgage went up because property taxes went up?  Not her problem.  Roof needed replaced?  I had to figure it out.  Car registration expired while I was overseas, and she got a ticket?  Somehow I had to solve it from the middle of goddamned Afghanistan.  We didn’t even have kids yet, and I was feeling all this pressure to be an adult for both of us.  When I got back home on leave, she tells me that she’s stopped her birth control, and I just…cracked.”

“I get it, Fish.  I mean, not being married, but I get how it feels to expect one thing in your life and have the opposite happen.”

He holds up a palm to remind you to let him get it all out, and you whisper “sorry.  Go ‘head.”

“And then there was you.  The complete opposite of Soph, you know?  You were…are this super independent woman, and whenever we were stuck overseas and Soph was struggling with running a house stateside, you were just there, chirping about what she needed to do.  Like it was nothing.  And I got irritated with you because you are just so damned pulled together and even-keeled and…and easy.  It’s so easy with you, and I hated it because I knew I made the wrong choice after all.  I tried so hard to avoid my parents’ marriage’s pitfalls that I just fell into the same pattern even harder, and you were the one who showed me that.”

He watches to see how his words land.  When you blink at him, he sees a film of tears there, so he plunges forward to get the rest out.

“I didn’t even realize that I loved you.  That’s how fucked in the head I was.  I picked fights with you and told the guys how irritating I thought you were, and you stuck to me anyway.  I could never shake you off.  We mustered out and you saw me drowning in my addiction, and I still told myself that I didn’t like you, didn’t care about you.  I got divorced, and we started hooking up, and I swear to god, sweetheart, hand up to god:  the first time we slept together, it felt like I was finally home, and I still couldn’t admit it to myself.  I kept telling you each time that it was the last time but I kept coming back for more because you feel like home and I loved you, but I fucked it all up because I didn’t understand who I was or what I wanted.”

He stops there, spent.  He feels like he’s been emptied out, and he stares down at his own clenched hands and waits for you to say something.  Anything.

There’s a long, long moment of silence.  He hears the loons on the lake and the wind rustling the trees outside, but you don’t say anything for so long.

Then you breathe out his name, an “oh, Frankie,” and when he looks up, he sees the tears streaming down your face.

“I mean it,” he adds softly.  “I’m sorry, but I mean it.  I love you.  I’ve probably always loved you.  Thinking back, I can’t remember a time I didn’t.  I just didn’t realize it.”

You’re crying openly now, but you’re trying to be quiet.  Frankie doesn’t even think of the guys nearby; he stands up and makes his way to where you sit on the mattress, and he wraps his arm around your shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters against the side of your head, and he has no idea what you’re thinking—if you’re horrified or embarrassed or something else by his admission.  It’s out now, though.  He can’t take it back, and he doesn’t think he would want to take it back anyway.

It takes another long moment of him holding you awkwardly, you trying not to cry too loudly.  But then you give a weak laugh, and whisper hoarsely, “I really thought you were on drugs again.”

“Therapy is sometimes harder than sobriety.”

You pull away a little and stare at him with eyes brilliant with tears.  “Would you have said anything if I were still with Paolo?”

“Maybe.  I might have changed the messaging.  I wouldn’t have wanted to get in the middle of anything.”

You chuck him weakly on his bicep.  “I’ve missed you, you asshole.  And I wasn’t expecting any of this.”

He grins down at you.  “If you feel too out of sorts, we could argue.”

“Yeah?”

“You pointed out that we haven’t argued once yet.”

“Feels weird.”

“It does. Want a big fight or just a little one?”

“Might as well go big.  It’s been so long.”

Frankie chuckles.  He releases you.  He holds his hands up and makes a ‘gimme’ gesture with them.  A ‘give me your best shot’ gesture. 

“C’mon then.  Let’s hear it,” he says.

You smile and swipe at your wet eyes.  “Okay.  You’re a real fucking piece of work, dropping all this heavy shit on me out of nowhere.”

“Maybe you’re a real fucking piece of work to have never guessed.”

A laugh of surprise erupts out of you.  “How in the hell would I ever have guessed that?”

“You notice everything else.  You noticed I was using before.”

“So you dropping a ton of weight and looking like shit from coke is the same as being in love?”

“With you?” he scoffs.  “Absolutely.  Can’t sleep, no appetite, can’t think straight ‘cos of you—”

“Fuck you, Fish,” you say, and then you’re on him, your mouth sliding over his, and it feels just as he said:  you feel just like home.  It stretches out, long and eager, the two of you obviously missing each other and making up for lost time.  Too much lost time.

He breaks the kiss long enough to get you turned and under him, to get your thin cotton shorts down around your ankles, to get his own pajama pants down enough to free his hardening cock.  He bullies himself between your thighs but you spread yourself wide eagerly.  You grasp the back of his neck with one hand, but you reach down with your other hand, take him in hand, and stroke him to his full length.  He touches you between your legs, feels you growing wet and slick for him, and it’s just like home when he kisses you, and it’s just like home when he notches himself against your entrance and then slides into you.

What’s new, though, is how he drops his head so his mouth is near your ear, and he whispers, “god, I love you so fucking much.”

It’s new, too, how you clench down at those words, then turn his head to make him look at you, so he can see your eyes when you whisper back, “I love you too, Frankie.  Always.”

*****

In the past year, Pope has obtained a prescription for medication to help him sleep, so he misses the texts flying in the shadow group chat that is just him and Miller brothers. He only reads them when he wakes up to birdsong outside his window.

Will:  u hearing this?

Will:  Pope.  POPE.

Benny:  Wkae up, asshole.

Will:  u will never guess what’s happening

Benny:  🍆🍑💦

Will:  Fish told her he loved her.

Benny:  bro, wake the fuck up.  This is wild.

Will:  HE SAID HE LOVES HER

Benny:  disgusting but wild

Will:  I think she said it back

It’s five in the morning when Pope wakes up and reads the texts.  He grins, and he wonders if Benny realizes that the peach emoji usually is a stand-in for an ass, which means Benny was implying that you and Fish had anal sex while they all slept nearby, which seems unlikely. 

Pope climbs out of bed quietly to use the bathroom, and it takes him through the living room where you and Frankie are asleep.  Together, he notes.  You’re both fully clothed—thank Christ for small miracles—but you’re together on the mattress on the floor.  Frankie’s arm is over your waist, and your hand lightly circles his wrist.

Fucking gross. 

But also fucking adorable.

Pope uses the bathroom, then tiptoes back to his bed.  He re-reads the texts, then types out his reply to Will and Benny.

Pope:  🥰