Work Text:
Frankie can admit: he was never great at being 'domestic'.
Sure, he could cobble together an IKEA shelf faster than most, and he could probably tidy up a house with a minimal amount of grumbling.
But whenever Frankie came back from missions, he always came back to an empty house. He had never really had a home since he left his ma's place when he was 17.
He always blamed the fact that he couldn't stay in one place long enough to set down roots. His job was unpredictable, and could take him to far corners of the Earth for unspecified amounts of time. It wasn't conducive to building a relationship; it wasn't conducive to building a home.
His friends seem to manage just fine when they’re home. Ironhead has had a steady girlfriend for years and Benny enjoys falling head over heels in love as often as the seasons change. Pope is – well, he doesn’t have much of a home either. He doesn’t seem to want one; he’s too busy burying himself in work.
Frankie tries to convince himself that he wants to be like Pope. Tries to convince himself that he is like Pope.
He knows it's a lie, whether he admits it out loud or not.
He knows that he wants somewhere, someone, to call home. He wants to feel anxious to return when he’s away, he wants to feel like he’s fighting for something more than a paycheck. He wants someone to be waiting for him when he comes home after a long flight; whose eyes light up when he steps through the door. His back would be killing him and he’d probably be grumpy and jetlagged as hell, but they would look at him like he’s the only person they wanted to see.
They would rush to him, help shrug his heavy bag from his shoulder (he’d let out a groan as the weight was lifted and they’d simply huff in amusement) and guide him to the couch, careful but firm hands kneading into his aching muscles.
They would sit with him while he grumbled about how annoying Benny had been on the flight home: if he wasn’t teasing incessantly, he was snoring loud enough to rattle the plane’s interior. They would hum sympathetically at his plight before offering a cold beer to him, or ask if he wants to jump into the shower before getting an early night. He would say “you’re a godsend, sweetheart, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” and they would press their forehead against his, inhaling deeply as they murmur that they’re the lucky one.
The vision plays in his head often enough that the music that softly croons in the background of his imagination changes depending on his mood, the food cooking from the kitchen assaults his senses in different ways depending on the dish he most craves that night. Sometimes his person is dressed in pajamas, hair ruffled by sleep. Sometimes they’ve come back from work not long before he arrived, so they’re in a state of half-presentability.
Okay… Frankie knows it’s probably farfetched. He often has to forcibly pull himself from his daydreaming, and attempt to banish any heat rising up his neck when one of the boys catches him gazing into space with a dopey smile on his face.
He knows that his fantasies are never going to be a modicum of the eventual truth, if he ever does find someone.
For now, when he walks into his empty apartment after a mission, there’s no ice cold beer waiting for him (he didn’t pick any up), and nobody to soothe his aching muscles (he needs to call the physio tomorrow). It’s just – quiet.
When he meets you, he can confidently say it is not what he dreamed.
You bring with you the chaos of being a human being into his apartment. Frankie perhaps didn’t previously appreciate that the fantasies he played out in his head had the inherent benefit of being played out to a silent audience. The words were imagined, the music played only in his head, and it was always his favorite food and his favorite music.
Now, when he gets home from a long mission, he walks through the door and is assaulted with the smell of cooking; something with tomatoes and earthy spices that tickle his senses. Music will be playing through tinny speakers on your phone, and you’ll be singing along absentmindedly while scowling into the pot. You’re never actually articulating the lyrics, just making mouth sounds that might resemble the words. But my god, you belt those nonsensical words out like you’re singing to Radio City Music Hall.
The kitchen is usually not dissimilar from the bloodshed he’d just left. You have used multiple tools to maim (chicken thighs spread-eagled by the skillet) and torture (some poor unfortunate herbs wilting on the chopping board) scattered across any flat surface. The echoing voice of Billy Joel is at constant loggerheads with the sounds of clattering and clanging of your weapons against the countertop.
You don’t notice him until the thump of his bag onto the floor startles you out of your staring contest with the sauce.
Your eyes light up at his figure filling the doorway.
“Frankie, oh my god I’m so glad you’re here.” You rush to him, and bring your hands to cup his face before pulling him to your lips for a chaste kiss. He barely has time to lean into your softness and slide his hands to your waist before you pull away, fixing him with a serious look.
“This burner is driving me nuts.” You mutter, hands slipping from his face to turn around and glare at your mortal enemy “It keeps cutting out and I’m scared I’m about to cause a gas explosion. I’m not even sure we should still have gas burners anymore, it’s terrible for the planet and I don’t want to keep making the 1% rich by buying their gas. Then again cooking on those electric burners is just not the same. I feel like I’m using one of those kiddie kitchen sets. Having said that, using electricity is also just making the 1% rich. Wow, capitalism is such a bitch –”
By this time, you are standing back at the stove, hands on your hips. Your words wash over him as he stares at you, heart thumping slowly but strong, steady against his chest as he looks around at the ingredients for his favorite dinner strewn across the room.
You’re still talking, now about how your boss is still foisting all of their work on you, but your body is moving on autopilot, hand reaching into the fridge and pulling a bottle of beer from the shelf. You don’t even look at what you’re doing as you tip the glass into the bottle opener fixed to the side of the fridge, popping the cap off easily before moving across the space and placing the bottle into his hand.
In the same breath as discussing what bizarre noises the downstairs neighbors have been making (he’ll get shit about this later if he misses an important detail), you bend down to swipe his travel bag off the floor, and lug it past him to basically attempt to hammer throw it onto your shared bed (laundry is a tomorrow problem, you say each time he comes home, no matter what time of day he actually gets back).
When you return, he hasn’t moved from his space in the doorframe. You pinch his ass as you move past him, and he jolts through the threshold into the room. Shaking his head out of his reverie, his free hand shoots out to catch your wrist before you begin your next State of the Union Address, pulling you back into him.
Your words are cut off by his mouth softly, insistently pushing against yours.
It takes a couple of seconds of him coaxing, his hand grazing up your sides, before he feels your body relax, and your arms wind around his neck, pulling him further into you.
“Missed you,” he murmurs, voice rasping so as not to disrupt the peace that has descended into the kitchen “missed you every day.”
“Missed you too, Frank,” your fingers stretch up the nape of his neck, tangling into his hair “I always miss you.”
“You only miss my handyman skills.”
“That, and your flat little ass.”
His hand moves to swat at your ass so quickly that you barely have time to react, but he’s already smiling dopily when you exclaim and pulling you back into him with a firm grip on your behind.
Your hand reaches up to gently pull his cap off his head, prising it off his head like you’re lifting the veil of a bride on her wedding day. Your smile is soft as you run your hands through his hair to loosen it from its former prison.
There he is, you say, your eyes gently sparkling with mirth.
“I’ve been waiting for so long to watch the new The Last of Us episodes” your words become muffled as you lean into his shoulder “it was very rude of you to leave for work halfway through the season.”
His hand comes up to cup the back of your head, keeping you curled around him for a few more seconds.
“I’m sorry, honey” he says, lips brushing against the side of your head “did you manage to avoid spoilers?”
You scoff and pull back to look at him incredulously.
“Spoilers? Frankie, the game came out ten years ago.” You smirk conspiratorially and begin to speak quickly “I can’t get more spoiled than knowing Joel –”
His palm presses over your mouth as he gapes at you.
“Don’t you dare.”
You step back with a grin, which graduates into a cackle as you leap around the kitchen island, sputtering out half-sentences close to spoilers, Frankie chasing you around the small space, hands outstretched to grab you. You plead ‘mercy, mercy’ with a delighted cry when he finally catches you, banding his arms around your waist and digging his fingers into your most-sensitive muscles. You manage to breathlessly convince him you need to check on dinner. He doesn’t let go of you as you move back to the burner.
When he’s in your presence, Frankie becomes something akin to a rescue cat. Once homeless, suspicious of everyone and grouchy, he wants to do nothing more than wrap himself around you: completely enveloping you in his arms as he noses into your warmth. He practically purrs as he sways you in his embrace.
You hum contentedly in return and let yourself be moved, beginning to chat again as you stir the sauce, and swipe his practically untouched beer, now sweating on the side, for a sip. You raise the bottle over your shoulder and tip it for him to take a drink as you continue telling him about the fight you saw between two pigeons earlier today.
Sometimes Frankie tries to recall what he used to imagine domesticity looked like. He tries to recall the colors of his person’s eyes, the tone of their voice, the places where their body would dip and swell, the color of their hair.
And he always felt that person, his person, was such a faraway thing. Something, someone unattainable. His silly little daydream.
But now, when he recalls the imagined slope of his person’s nose, the shape of their eyes, the way their smile would spread across their face at the sight of him as they would pull him into their arms and into their home...
Well, he always thinks they look a lot like you.
“Frankie, baby, seriously, are you listening? When will you be able to look at this freakin’ burner –”