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Sean's first girlfriend died on a Wednesday.
It had been a perfectly boring, typical high school Wednesday. He'd been thinking over whether or not his fake I.D. was good enough to get him a keg for the party that weekend (and whether he should try to test it out somewhere else first). He'd just gotten home from fooling around with some chick whose name he doubted he even knew then, admired the perfect goddamn blue sky, and the phone was ringing when he walked through the door.
Four o'clock on a perfect Wednesday afternoon, and with no warning his girlfriend was dead.
And all of the girls that followed her tended to die the same fucking way.
~
He didn't love the second girl who died while he was dating her. She was just a fuck buddy, there to hook up with whenever one of them was in the mood. They had fun when they were together, but both of them knew it was never going to turn into anything more serious.
She'd had some kind of brain thing -- Sean still doesn't understand any of the explanations from the doctors. Phrases like 'intracerebral aneurysm' and 'subarachnoid hemorrhage', and they may as well have started making up words as the went along for all the sense any of it made.
He didn't love her. He thinks he feels guiltier about that than he does about her dying.
~
When Franco calls him, he's just finished drinking a shot to the memory of each of his dead girlfriends, and the fact that there were now five of those shots is so fucking depressing he orders a sixth just for the hell of it. He likes to think maybe if he does enough shots, he'll forget how many he started with, and maybe when he passes out, he won't dream about all the girls he's lost.
Somehow, he doubts that's going to be what happens, though.
He does the sixth shot the instant he hears Franco say brokenly over a shitty cell phone connection, "Sean, man, it's Keela... she's..." and he orders the seventh in the same breath as he tells Franco that he's on his way.
Two more shots, and he's just drunk enough to think that 'Keela won't die because she's not my girlfriend' sounds like logical reasoning on his part.
~
The third girl was named Christina, but she went by Chris and got along with the guys better than any other girl Sean had ever been serious enough about to introduce to his friends. She was fun and sexy and gorgeous as hell, and she was the first cop Sean ever dated.
When she died in the line of duty, Sean told himself she'd be the last cop he ever dated, too.
She was the first one Franco had been around for. Sean doesn't really remember getting the call, but he does remember Franco driving him to the hospital, Franco staying with him while he watched the heart monitors flatline and the doctors pulling the sheet up over her head, and Franco wrapping an arm around his shoulders and letting him sob like a fucking baby because he was actually thinking about asking Chris to marry him.
Mostly, though, he remembers Franco standing next to him at the funeral, putting a hand on his shoulder every time he honestly thought he was going to lose it if he had to stand there staring at the fucking casket for another second.
He thinks Franco was the only thing that got him past Chris dying.
~
He and Franco have been sitting in silence in the hospital waiting room for over a half hour before Franco actually acknowledges that Sean's even there. Franco's head is in his hands (has been since Sean got there), and he finally whispers, almost more to himself than to Sean, "It's my fault."
"Come on, man, don't do this to yourself," Sean tells him firmly, pressing a hand against the back of Franco's neck and squeezing in a comforting gesture. "Nobody can watch their kid twenty-four hours a day."
"I yelled at her, Sean," Franco's voice is raw like he's been crying. "I scared her..."
"Shit happens."
Franco finally looks up at him, eyes red-rimmed and filled with a kind of terror Sean only sees in parents begging for help because their kids are trapped in burning buildings, and Sean's starting to wonder what exactly it was that Keela took to make Franco that fucking scared. "What?"
"So, you yelled at her." Christ knew his father yelled at him all the time. It's what parents did, right? "Move the fuck on and don't do it again."
The doctor comes out before either of them can say anything else, and for a second that feels like eternity, Sean thinks he might be as fucking terrified of what he's going to hear as Franco is. Then the doctor tells them, "She'll be fine, Mr. Rivera," and Sean doesn't think anything they were going to say was that important, anyway.
~
Nez was the fourth girl. He doesn't think of her as a girlfriend, but he still remembers her when he thinks about the girls he's lost.
He thinks the only reason he gives her that much respect is her tie to Franco and Keela.
~
They're sitting in Keela's hospital room, watching her sleep, when Franco says quietly, his voice oddly detached, "I think I've got a problem."
Feeling the beginnings of a decent hangover, Sean rubs his eyes to block out the light for a few seconds, drags his palms down his face, and asks, "With what?"
"Vicodin." Franco leans over the bed and gently brushes his fingers through Keela's hair. "I yelled at her. She flinched away from me like she thought I was going to hit her, Sean, and I let her go to bed thinking I was mad at her because I couldn't find the fucking pills. That's the kind of shit Nez would pull."
Sean takes a minute to digest that, mostly because his head is starting to pound, and thinks about what he could possibly say that would be of any fucking use at the moment. He thinks there's probably just enough alcohol left in his bloodstream to think Franco scaring his kid because of drugs is comparable to him causing his girlfriend's death. ("Which girlfriend, Sean? There've been so many...")
"You know where I was when my first girlfriend died, Frank?" he asks, wishing he had another shot because having to qualify that sentence with the words 'my first girlfriend' makes him start thinking about Heather laying there dead, and this should be about Franco and not him. "I was fucking another girl. I was supposed to pick her up from cheerleading practice, but I was too busy cheating on her, so she got in a car with a football player who'd had one too many beers and drove head-on into a tree."
"Jesus," Franco says after a long moment. "I'm sorry, man."
"Birdie's dead. She's been dead ten years and no amount of 'sorry' is going to..." Sean stops before he finishes the sentence, mostly because he thinks saying it aloud could be the straw that breaks him down. "Keela? She's gonna be fine, and you can find ways to make it up to her. You've got a problem with Vicodin, you're one step ahead of all the assholes who won't admit they've got problems."
Franco finally looks him in the eye, nodding, and Sean squashes down the urge to act like woman and say he'll be there to help.
He figures Franco probably already knows that, anyway.
~
Sean goes with Franco to his first NA meeting. Franco balked at the idea at first, but Sean had simply said, "Heather's funeral is tomorrow," and Franco didn't need the words to know that Sean was asking him to go.
It's not the same as Chris's funeral. He doesn't think he's going to lose it and start crying in the middle of the service or anything, and he doesn't go to the gravesite to watch the actual burial. They're on their way back to the firehouse when Seans says, "She's the fifth girl. I think that's gotta be a fucking sign."
"What are you talking about?" Franco glances between him and the road. "Fifth girl?"
"Fifth girl I've dated who's died," Sean tells him, dragging a hand through his hair before loosening the tie that's been choking him all damn afternoon. "Five girls, Franco. It's like a curse."
"Come on, Sean," Franco looks at him like he's gone completely insane. "That's not a curse. That's just... really bad fucking luck."
"How many of your girlfriends have died?"
Franco just looks at him. "One. Ex-girlfriend. She included in that five?"
Sean looks out the window in uncomfortable silence until Franco sighs. "Don't be such a pussy, Sean. You've just got bad luck. And bad taste in women a lot of the time. This girl, she's started three fires -- sooner or later, it was gonna catch up with her."
"So what?" Sean asked angrily. "She deserved to die?"
"Did I say that?" Franco looked at him, annoyed. "No. I said you can't beat yourself up over her starting a fire that killed her. You sure as shit can't beat yourself up over Nez, and if you're blaming yourself for Chris, I'll have to beat some fucking sense into you."
And Sean's a little disturbed that that actually made him feel better.
Disturbed, but not entirely surprised. It is Franco, after all. No matter what shit is going down, Franco's always been able to pull him through it.
He just hopes there's never a sixth that Franco has to pull him through.