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Saturday afternoons are laundry days.
Saturday afternoons are also usually when your parents want to call you.
You’re taking longer than usual to come back to the laundry room, Frank thinks idly to himself as he busies himself with sorting the colours and filing away your delicates into clothes nets. It would make sense for you to, he remembers, because you’d just gotten good news for your career recently. He figured you were sharing it.
“Frank?” You return, standing by the doorway of the laundry room, voice unusually muted. Frank can immediately tell that your mood has shifted. The aforementioned turns from the laundry he was loading into the washing machine, brows raised.
“Sweetheart?” He checks you over, eyes looking for any of your tells. “What’s wrong?”
“Was just… on the phone with family, the usual. Nothing too major.”
He knows you were. You’re not telling him everything. Usually you’d return ranting about how shitty the whole ordeal was and how glad you were to be away, and he’d listen, enthusiastically, and then your day would continue as normal.
That was the usual Saturday.
This time, you’re quiet. It’s out of the routine. Frank is immediately on high alert.
Your earlier conversation really was nothing too major—just resentment rearing its ugly head at you the moment you heard your parents’ voices saying some line that they loved to use but haven’t in a while—you thought they wouldn’t have an excuse to say it after all the effort you’ve done in spite of their missteps and continued misgivings as you aged.
You barely even remember what started the argument because goddamnit you had good news, and you told them. You foolishly expected they’d be happy for you.
Time away does that, blurs memories into less painful versions of what they truly were. The disappointment that you shouldn’t have ever hoped in the first place hurts the same every time.
All you can recall from the conversation earlier is the ever familiar feeling of disrespect, the usual lack of honor for your boundaries, and the condescending belittling of your agency that leaves you feeling like you’re 16 at home and and trapped all over again under the crushing weight of control while having to wrestle with the overbearing expectation for your future placed upon you by a family that does everything but encourage your growth.
Your chest hurts when you try to explain to Frank. Your attempts at prefacing your asking for him in this moment halted because where the hell do you even start? Your chest hurts too much. It’s all too much. Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. Your knuckles dig into the space above your sternum, subconsciously self-soothing. Your eyes are wide, glassy, lower lip twitching.
Frank surges forward, large, rough hands at your upper arms, thumbs circling under the sleeves of your shirt. “Hey, hey… c’mere.”
You stop short of one deep inhale before the tears start to fall.
“I’m sorry—I don’t know, I can’t—” You sniffle. “I can’t explain it—”
“S’okay… shh, sh…” Frank remains steady, gently guiding your face to his chest, brows furrowed as he glares at the wall. He urges you to walk with him to the couch, guides you to sit on his lap as you ugly sob into his shoulder.
“I should—I should be okay. I’m not there anymore, so why am I—” You cough, snotty and eyes puffy. “I’m sorry, I’m so bad at this-”
You’ve shrunken into yourself. Frank has to urge you to hug him instead of just watching you alternate between hugging yourself and tightly holding your own hands. He’s moving slowly as he tugs your arms over his shoulders, sliding his own arms under yours. “You’re not, sweetheart. S’okay to cry. Jus’ let it out.”
“I hate it. I hate this. I hate being like this—” You’re spiralling. “I hate that—that you have to deal with this even though it’snotyourfault.” Your head is on his shoulder. Your lover can feel how warm your tears are as they pool on his shirt.
Frank isn’t the one that ruined your mood, yet he’s the one on the receiving end of alleviating it.
He doesn’t mind. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t, countless times.
You mind. Every time.
It’s unfair. Your emotions compound on top of each other, the resentment from the earlier conversation, the reopened developmental wounds, the anger directed at yourself for feeling like you lack emotional regulation despite all your efforts, the sheer pain of the intensity of your feelings, the way you’re now ruining Frank’s day too when you could’ve just been more of an adult and not minded—
But you couldn’t. You wish you weren’t so fragile, wish you were the kind of hurt that made you stronger instead of more irrational, emotional, intense, wish that you meeting your goal of finally having a new home also meant having a new nervous system.
It hurts that it isn’t so simple.
Frank’s words are muffled, his image in your vision blurry with how many tears you’re shedding. You vaguely feel his hand at the back of your head, his other hand pressed against your chest, palms warm.
“Breathe, honey. Shh, shh… need you to breathe, yeah? Slow. Breathe with me.” Frank presses his forehead to yours. “Y’r breathin’ too fast, gonna pass out like this.”
So that’s where your lightheadedness is coming from.
Frank keeps repeating his words, knows that it takes a bit more than just once to get you to listen when you get like this. He keeps eye contact with you in between pressing soft, lingering kisses to your forehead, grounding you to him.
He’s breathing deep, and you focus on trying to follow, your own breaths broken and shaky. You feel him start to rock you back and forth, both of his hands now running over your spine.
“That’s it… okay.” He murmurs encouragingly. You’re breathing less frantically now compared to earlier, but the tears persist.
He hears you sniffling into his shoulder. “Hurts so bad…”
“Where? What hurts?”
You pull back slightly to press a hand to your chest over your shirt, face wet with tears and snot. Frank nods, replacing your own hand with his. “Here?”
You nod, and Frank presses his palm along your chest in soothing motions, right over your heart.
His other hand moves to cup your cheek, thumbing at your tears as they continue to fall. “C’mere… I’ve got you.” He guides you to press your forehead against his. “M’so sorry you’re hurtin’ baby.”
A wrangled sob leaves you when he says that. “No—I’m sorry for… for being so… useless. Can’t even handle a simple conversation without breaking down—”
“Hey, hey… shh.” He tsks. “Don’t talk t’my girl like that, sweetheart. You’re hurt. Y’r not useless.”
He hates that you’re so quick to discount years of strain, that you punish yourself for not being some sort of benevolent saint and just letting yourself take disrespect as if it’s somehow your fault that it hurts.
You move your head to rest on his shoulder again, and he has to move his hand away from your chest at the way the awkwardness of the angle strains his wrist. He’s quick to soothe your back instead, always making sure that the two of you are in contact.
“It’s okay to cry.” Frank calls your name, presses kisses along the top of your head, free hand combing through your hair. “Jus’ let it out. M’not goin’ anywhere.”
You don’t know how much time has passed. All you can register is how full your head feels and how wet your face is. You pull back from Frank’s shoulder and wipe your snot away with the back of your hand.
Frank takes off his shirt, takes your hands and uses the garment to wipe your hands before pressing a clean spot to your nose. “C’mon, blow y’r nose.”
You oblige, clearing your sinuses and using the same shirt to wipe away your tears. Frank stays, watches calmly as you fold up the shirt and place the clean sides on the armrest of the couch.
You feel his hand on your chest again as he looks up at you. “Does it still hurt here?”
“Yeah.” You whisper, voice having given out. “I’m sorry. I’m so—”
“None o’that.” He cups your face, thumbing under your eye. “S’okay. How many times I gotta tell you that, huh?” He grins despite his own glassy eyes. Your emotions are intense, there’s no questioning that. For Frank, seeing you cry hurts, especially because he knows you don’t let yourself do it often because of your own reservations, because of your own wounds as to how you were raised, of what you had to go through.
He knows it's truly, truly bad when you’re crying instead of angrily venting.
Your sobs turn into quiet sniffles after a while.
“I already did the work…” You blink, tears sliding down your cheeks. You’re finally less frantic now that Frank can wipe your tears as they fall. “I already did the work, Frank… I—I have this job, we have this house, a car… two cars—”
Your voice is shaky. Frank knows where this is going, but he lets you speak. Now is not the time to finish each other’s sentences.
“But all it takes it just… one, one conversation and it’s like nothing’s changed. It’s like I’m still trapped even though—” You sniffle and shake your head. Frank uses his shirt to dry your cheeks every once in a while. “Even though I’m here and not there.”
“I already did the work but it still hurts… so, so why do I even bother?” You break into another sobbing mess, and Frank pulls you into his bare shoulder, uncaring of the tears landing on his skin. You’d already explained this to him before, during a different mood, more apathetically, more detached, near dissociative.
Your driving ambition for your career and hunger for securing assets to call your own had always been the desire to leave your old house. To make your life your own, to finally have someplace to feel safe in with company you enjoyed.
Frank has always been keenly aware that he was more of a last minute addition to your plans (or rather, a lovely bonus, as you’d so lovingly phrased it). You were an insistent advocate of the life you wanted for yourself, and it really is a damn good life if he could give his own two cents on the matter.
You yearned for peace, stability, respect, respite from the multitudes of familial wounds that you’d had to endure and grow out of despite not being in a conducive environment to do so. And now, because of your own efforts (and only later his own added to the mix), you have it.
“Y’bothered because y’deserve t’have all this, sweetheart.” Frank murmurs. There’s silence as you continue to sniffle.
He waits for your answer, whatever it may be.
You blink. “I just… wish that having all this now means I’d… y’know, actually be emotionally stable.”
“You’re tryin’.” He replies in return, combing through your hair. “It’s already happenin’. Just takes a while. Everyone needs a break.”
Frank always puts it so plainly. He was right though. There really was no way forward but to let yourself adjust, acclimate to the now more favorable conditions you’d made for yourself.
You take a deep, shaky breath. The core of the issue showing itself.
“I’m tired of having to try.” You sigh, unable to mute the downer thoughts at each of Frank’s attempts to comfort you.
He remains steady.
“F’you’re tired, y’come t’me. S’what I’m here for.” That was what he wanted to be, after all. Your respite. In whatever form was available.
He feels you hug him tight, your head buried in the junction of his neck as he speaks. “M’not goin’ anywhere. Y’can come t’me when it’s too much, and I’ll sit with you with it, yeah?”
You nod.
He wishes he could take away the pain, wishes it was as simple as a night out alone and a pulled trigger. But Frank knows from your gracious sharing of stories of your experience alone that family is a complicated matter.
There’s a sense of gratefulness in him though; to have the privilege of his most pressing problems now just being the faulty right headlight of his van that he still hasn’t gotten around to replacing, what to cook for dinner later, and comforting you when you’re brought to tears.
“I wish… I just wish you didn’t have to sit with me through it.” You confess. “I wish I could handle it on my own.” You take the opportunity to blow your nose into Frank’s discarded shirt, feeling stuffy.
“Sweetheart…” Frank’s brows furrow. You had a tendency to deny even the idea of help, taking so many conversations and coaxing to even get to the point of asking him so directly for comfort like this.
The unrelenting expectation of self-regulation you harbored for yourself had always bugged him. Even him and Curtis, hell, him and Billy before everything went to shit, were better at being vulnerable about their issues than you were, which is a horrible metric to be compared to.
“Y'remember back when I had those nightmares? You’d sit with me, wouldn’t you? All th’ time.” He reminds you, brushing your hair away from your face.
“That’s different…”
“It’s not a whole lot o’different.” He shakes his head, looks away for the briefest of moments before he’s looking back at you. “I was hurtin’. You’re hurtin’ too.”
You sigh, head pounding. You’re too exhausted to argue, and Frank is so, so warm. You hug him instead, the tiredness erasing any thought from your mind, instead you let yourself cling to his solid form.
“…Thank you. I’m sorry, still.”
Despite the guilt plaguing your psyche, Frank doesn’t mind. Why would he, when being a caring figure for the love of his life had always been something he wished he could be for longer, wished he’d decided upon sooner?
“M’not acceptin’ that unless you say it without th’sorry.” You feel him grin, and you chuckle.
“Frank—” You relent with a deep breath. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Y’r welcome.”
“And I’m s—” Before you could finish, Frank’s pulling back so you can see his incredulous glare.
You laugh, throat scratchy. “Okay! Okay…”
—
Frank carries you to the laundry room and places you on the washing machine, pressing a kiss to your lips before he continues with putting in the clothes through the front load, adding his earlier shirt to the mix and putting on a new one.
The silence stretches, but there’s little discomfort. Over the course of you and Frank’s relationship, you’ve both found that just continuing to be in each others’ presences and allowing life to continue helped more than leaving each other alone to stew in thoughts after breakdowns.
It’s nice. You were surprised to find that Frank learned it from you, though, citing how you’d drag him into the kitchen so he can watch you prepare snacks to bring to the living room after he wakes up from nightmares. From there, the two of you would spend the night on the couch watching trashy reality TV, eventually falling asleep at sunrise.
You had a knack for making Frank feel… human. Like he lived here, in the present, not just physically, but emotionally as well.
So he does the same for you, setting the washer’s run cycle to start before bringing you to the kitchen with him so he can cross off the next thing on his mental list, dinner.
The routine helps. You know Frank’s acknowledging your feelings because he very plainly just sat with you throughout your entire crying episode instead of leaving you behind to handle it on your own. You find that it’s nice, really, to be able to express your sentiments, good or bad, without it affecting everyone else’s mood. Back then, being in a bad mood meant everyone else being mad at you for somehow having the audacity to process human emotion.
Nowadays, it’s different.
It’s so, so different, and you love that it is.
You set the table and make drinks while Frank makes spaghetti and meatballs. The two of you eat on the couch while watching TV because it’s more fun like that, and you’re in a space that the two of you share—no one else to make the rules but the two of you.
—
All that leaves is the headlight of his van, Frank thinks to himself as the two of you shower together after cleaning up from dinner.
The thought is tucked away for tomorrow, though, because he’s massaging your shampoo into your scalp and all his mind is making space for right now is cuddling you to sleep afterwards.
“Thank you, Frankie.” You whisper later that night, tucked under the sheets. “I ruined a perfectly good Saturday.”
“We did the laundry, had spaghetti n’ meatballs, had a nice shower. What was there to ruin, huh?” He grumbles in reply, tiredness evident in his voice while still showing immense patience for you.
You smile at his logic, he had a point.
“You’re right.” You tuck yourself into his chest and feel Frank place a kiss to the top of your head. “Thank you again…”
“Y’r welcome,” he says your name as the quiet hum of the AC fills the room.
Frank considers thanking you too; for this, for the privilege of having such manageable things to deal with, for being allowed to deal with all of this, all of you, with you.
“Sweetheart?” He looks down to speak to you.
You’re already fast asleep.
His gaze softens. He presses another kiss to the crown of your head, whispers a quiet ‘thank you’ to you before resting his chin over your head and closing his eyes.
He’ll tell you some other time. Maybe tomorrow. Either before or after he fixes his van’s faulty headlight because if he doesn’t get that done before Monday he’ll probably get a ticket on the way to work and he does not want to start the week like that.