bring the bass back

Mohabbot x bleachers 'Self Respect'

i see a lot of people argue that frank’s apology for snapping at mel is an apology for shutting her down when he says “i should have caught it”. now i love this idea obviously because it means he is so unbelievably tender when it comes to only her considering how much asshole banter (if not genuine conflict) he has with basically everyone else in the ER.

but i also kinda like to think that he’s apologizing for his general loss of composure throughout the last half of the day. he’s apologizing that he couldn’t do everything by himself, that he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t upset about how people were interacting with him and what was happening around him. and she is there, to tell him that with her, he doesn’t have to maintain his composure. it’s ok for him to admit vulnerability with her, to have even the emotional responses he might have previously viewed as weakness.

and of course it’s ok! because he is the only one that does the same for her. while everyone ignored her distress and tried to assure her everything was fine, frank was the only one who let mel feel the stress and negative emotions of the day. he was also the only one who let her come to her own conclusion about what she was feeling instead of telling her what to think or how to respond.

@kingdonmicrofic day 16: glitter 350/227. cw: internalized homophobia

Frank’s heart felt like it was attempting to pound out of his chest as he faced Mel with her three small pots of colored glitter.

His girlfriend looked at him patiently, her own tri-colored shimmer on her face in pink, purple and blue on each cheek, carefully painted on her by Becca before she’d left the house.

She looked beautiful.

He, on the other hand, still couldn’t compute what was happening to him. How his body reacted to Mel’s offer, how he’d said yes before he could even think about it and all he wanted to do was say no and run home, away from colorful crowds and songs that he wasn’t ready to sing along to yet.

Shame was strange, but he wasn’t sure he felt ashamed. He could feel shame for betraying people’s trust, for stealing medication from patients when he was at his worst. But he wasn’t ashamed about being attracted to other men, but something was triggered within him at the idea of other people just… knowing.

Knowing and being able to judge him for it, describe his whole character and reduce him to something. See him as other when he’s done everything everyone else had done to fit in, the wife, white picket fence and two-and-a-half kids. Frank was a part of it all, he’d almost lost it before, and he’d clawed his way back into being seen as a person for that to happen again.

“Baby, it’s okay.” Mel’s voice brings him back into the moment, to the crowd of people walking and chanting around them. The flag they share, the colors adorning her face as she looks back at him with a love he struggles to convince himself he deserves. “Just walk with me.” Mel says, holding out her hand and putting the glitter away