#10022

10022? I have no idea what it could be

yes! 10022 is a fic i have that is just...tons of little sections that i have no idea how to make into a "plot." i almost think it...won't have a plot? just a series of vignettes in chronological order. it's a fic about someone finally risking it all, or trying to, in order to discover themselves a little, and that's an ongoing process so it kind of doesn't naturally have plot?

that someone is of course frank, and this fic is about his season living in new york and playing with NYCFC. this is my favorite player era of his for a lot of reasons. i actually don't know where you're from so i'll assume you're not from the US just for this purpose (i'm really sorry if i assumed wrong!!) 10022 is the zip code (postal code) for the neighborhood where frank lived in manhattan--midtown east. it's weirdly a neighborhood that i like a lot, and i'm generally no longer a fan of manhattan and now that i don't work there i try to Avoid it--it's just very very noisy and crowded and too many of the worthwhile stores and restaurants that i loved have shut down post-covid or bc of stupid high rents. but this neigborhood is an interesting mix of Huge Buildings, some touristy places, and then as you walk east toward the river it becomes sort of...insular? like just residential buildings with stores geared toward the local population. most of the neighborhood doesn't have very convenient public transit access, so if you walk a couple blocks in you feel kind of cut off from everything else. it suits frank well i think.

wow, i still haven't said what this fuckin fic is about lol. my theory is that in new york he was alone for the first time in his life--no dad to harass him, and while i think christine visited plenty (i mean, london-new york is one of the easiest international flights around, and she certainly could afford it), she does live tv so it wasn't like she could work from home. so frank had all this time to 1) be the Elder Good Example (37 years old) to a team just starting out with a bunch of Young Lads, and 2) to try to be brave enough to explore the sexuality he's known he's had for decades. as part of the fic, he nervously looks up gay bars and ventures off to pick up men, and they're certainly very interested, but he always chickens out at the last minute. i think he's afraid in general, and also the guys aren't...cousin jamie.

something else that makes me want to write this is the way frank talks about living in NYC--he truly loved it here, and a lot of his favorite places/restaurants were not rich people/tourist traps (also one of them is literally down the block from me, lol) and i find that very touching. i appreciate his appreciation for this pain in the ass hometown of mine. i also really think he enjoyed the relative anonymity and the attitude toward things, as part of his Gay Explorations:

If home is the place where you can relax and take the pressure off, then New York City is already home.  The only expectations of him here are professional ones. He can do those things, or try his best to. He can move the ball down the pitch, intimidate the opponent, smash the ball into the net the way it was drilled into him decades ago, score some confident penalties, and mentor the young lads (in football, anyway--regardless of what José has said, he's the last person who should be teaching anyone how to be a Man.) and if he can't do all that, at 36, then he'll know he gave it a good try, and the fans in royal blue will still love him all over the world.  But personally? He's alone as long as nobody is visiting, and being alone in New York will be different from London. He's looked it up. London is the slightly bigger city, in terms of the population, but New York has a firm culture of mind your own damn business and you better not be staring at me and if you saw something no you didn't.  Anything could happen.  If no one saw something you could do anything, really.

getting to write something in a place i'm very familiar with is really fun--i can load it up with authentic details, including stuff that was going on in the social backdrop of the city, weird weather, etc. (though, MLS seasons work differently than a lot of the big european league seasons because of the very cold winters we (used to) have in a lot of the country, so i got confused by dates/timing as usual and kinda gave winter 2016 some of our weird winter 2015's attributes...oh well literally no one will know)

sorry this was a lot to say very little. this fic is really fun to write but i just kind of work on it at random bc there's no plot, haha. i have a scene i kinda recently started working on where frank takes young english lad jack harrison to this diner down the block from his house, but it's not a date! not a date at all! look frank's got his wedding ring on!

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