Can we just pretend that this is Frankie whispering I love you to you?
I hope you are feeling better. I miss harrassing you with asks 🧡
@deadmantis my LOVE, I always feel good when you’re in my notifs. This one has kept me awake and drove me crazy, but anything for you. They’re so stubborn, and when they don't want to cooperate... Anyway. I'm not entirely satisfied, but I don't want to keep you waiting any longer. I did my very best for you, I always do, I love you so, so much 🧡 Happy Frankie Friday to you 🧡
Summary: Three words. It's not that complicated.
Pairing: Frankie Morales x Gabrielle Tourneur (OFC)/French fem!Reader.
Rating: explicit but no filth, just my gothic heart 🔞
Word count: 1.5k
[series masterlist]
Drabble: To Bring You My Love
He enjoys driving home to you nearly as much as he loves staying home with you.
Tonight’s no different, and when Mick Fleetwood’s voice comes up on the truck’s stereo, Francisco Morales smiles to himself in the bright city night.
He kept his promise. He fixed it. Fixed everything. Or close enough, anyway.
Friday evenings are spent at the bar again, the same dim yellow lights, the same moist, yeasty cheap beer smell. The same table.
And Tom’s chair, loudly empty.
Most likely thanks to Will, if he had to guess, and probably on your account more than his. But even Ironhead’s unwavering loyalty can only abide that many faults before his hard, cold rationalism takes over and prompts him to take action.
If Tom’s absence is a consequence Frankie hadn’t anticipated, it’s one he doesn’t regret. He’s heard the man has moved down to Florida, but he doesn’t really care. The further away from you, the better.
Pope doesn’t seem entirely dissatisfied with this new order of things, either.
As for Benny, well Benny just follows suit, like he always does.
The air is still a bit chill between him and Frankie, but they’re getting there, step by step. Frankie’s resentment receding along with his friend’s heartbreak, one drink at a time.
It’s been only two years, and overall, there’s a refreshing, easy balance to their group.
And yet, however meaningful, Tom’s departure is not the most important change.
On Friday nights, like tonight, he’s driving back to you. Whether he’ll find you already sleeping or parking your small Ford after an evening out, you’re here. For real. For good.
He’s nearly home when his phone lights up on the empty passenger seat. His gaze rapidly flickers between the road and the screen, that glares in celadon green in the cabin’s relative darkness. It’s weather alert, forecasting heavy rainfall tomorrow, he’ll have to fight the urge to drive you to the bookstore himself. Maybe he can get away with picking you up at the end of your day? Maybe you’ll let him. You can be stubborn.
He should change that impersonal default lock screen. Put a picture of you, like Santi suggested. Santi, who proudly exhibits Yovanna’s gorgeous smile and luminous beauty to just about anyone who might look at his phone’s screen.
Well, Frankie tried. Turns out he can’t. Not that he doesn’t have any pictures of you in his camera roll. At this point, he has hundreds. And you’re dressed in most of them.
But putting you on display simply feels inappropriate. For years, you’d been his secret. A ghost, a memory. A feeling akin to a curse. He had kept your name silent, protecting the possibility of your existence and the reality of what had happened in the orange bedroom.
Distracted, he re-emerges from his recurring thoughts to find himself at the front door. He considers retracing his steps to check if he locked the tuck before getting into the house, but he can’t bring himself to care. He needs to see you. The living-room’s dark but the bedroom lights are on; he takes off his jacket and gets rid of his boots before walking briskly down the carpeted corridor.
He finds you sitting in bed, the warm glow from the bedside table casting soft orange hues on your soft face. You’re leaning over a thick book, wearing your favourite t-shirt of his, a shapeless grey cotton tee with red letters that spell “Buenos Aires” across the chest. A gift from Izzy, when he was still in the military.
He pauses briefly on the threshold; a broad smile dimples his cheeks.
Your eyes are still lowered on the page when you greet him in a light, happy tone.
“Hey, gorgeous!”
“Hey, querida.”
Your head shoots up at the unusual term of endearment. He steps quickly into the room and turns his back to you to hide his embarrassment, wincing as he undoes his watch and places it on the dresser across from the bed.
“How was the evening? How’re the guys?” you ask, and he can feel your eyes boring into his back.
“Good. All good. Will asked me to tell you Sunday works for him. Apparently you’re supposed to know what that means,” he adds, pulling his plaid shirt above his head.
“Oh, neat!” you exclaim, lying your book face down on the table, wiggling your feet excitedly under the sheet. “The Guggenheim has an exhibition about early 19th century Parisian painters,” you explain.
He smiles to himself again, and proceeds to take off his belt. The heavy buckle produces a metallic thud when it hits the wooden top of the dresser.
Behind his back, your voice comes in suddenly very thin.
“You don’t mind, do you? I never asked.”
He turns, frowning, “Mind what?”
“Me. Being friends with Will. You’re not… jealous or anything, right?”
He’s about to laugh it off, a quip on the tip of his tongue, but something stops him. Something striking, unsettling in its past familiarity and its recent scarcity. It’s in the earnestness of your tone, the sudden solemnity of your gaze.
“What if I am?” he asks instead, pivoting to face you. “What would you do? Would you stop hanging with him?”
“If you asked me, yes, I would.”
“Jesus, Gabrielle, no,” he sighs, and the sting in his chest is equal part anger and regret. The consistent stab that tears at him whenever you unwillingly reveal what you put yourself through.
He crosses the bedroom in two strides to come sit by your side on the edge of the bed.
“I’d never even consider asking you something like that, baby. Why would I–”
He trails off at your hardening face.
You’ve straightened up in his t-shirt, and his eyes dart to your legs; with two fingers, he pinches the white sheet covering them to pull it down, revealing your underwear, and a purple mark in the shape of a pear that his mouth drew on your inner thigh this morning.
He looks at it when he says, “You’re a free woman. And I know you’re mine.”
The contradiction settles like placid water in the amber light between your two bodies, inexplicably logical, perfectly natural.
And the words come up in his chest, from his gut, an ancient rising tide.
“I love you, Gabrielle.”
They ring out around you in the quiet bedroom, incongruous, not unpleasant. Warm, intimate, orange.
He loves you. Of course, he does. You know he does, you’ve always known. You’ve always loved him too.
You’ve loved him young and carefree when it was easy and it was just the two of you. You’ve loved him to safety through countless godless nights. You’ve loved him back to you, you’ve loved him sinful and hurt, you’ve loved him without shame.
Yet, your breathing stops, your eyes widen. You remain silent.
He lets out a disheartened chuckle, before the crease in his brow deepens and his whiskered jaw gives that telling tick that you dread. You follow his dark gaze, it’s strained on the mark on your thigh, and he swallows thickly, licking his lips and you can’t feel your legs.
“Please,” he murmurs, so low, nearly silent, and it’s right there, bright and burning against your ribcage, but it won’t come out, your mouth is too dry and your lips won’t open.
He doesn’t lift up his eyes, instead his hand goes to your hip. He gives it a little squeeze, and you register the sensation, it travels up your body in slow ripples.
He pulls you in, sits you in his lap in a straddle, his hands roaming over your sides under his t-shirt. You let him seek the contact of your skin, how many times have the two of you sat like that? On the bed, on the floor, on the couch. In the truck or under a tent...
His denim feels too rough under your soft flesh. You recoil from the heat of his palms when he cups your face, but he catches you, firm and strong and he will never let go.
His eyes are alight with unshed tears, or perhaps it is yours, because your vision blurs when they finally meet.
“I need to hear you say it back. Please.”
In that tiled bathroom with the yellow light, all those years ago, you had nearly said it. To tame the wild look in his dark eyes when he had realised and briefly got scared. So early but not too soon, and the words had felt far too small in comparison to the feeling itself. You had chosen to soothe him with your touch.
You’d been the hopeful one, then, trustful and fearless.
Today, he is guiding you. With a light pressure of his thumb on your lower lip, the sharp edge of his nose brushing along your temple, his hand at the base of your neck grounding you, so you won’t go missing again.
“It’s ok, baby,” he says, and you feel his words more than you hear them with the white noise filling your brain, “I know you do. Just say it. I got you.”
You close your eyes, inhale his scent. You take his hand.
“Je t’aime.”
****
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