Work Text:
Kimiko finds him on the balcony.
With her index finger, she moves the curtains to one side. He's sitting at the crappy, garage-sale wooden table that Butcher keeps outside. He's wearing a long-sleeve with no jacket even though the temperature outside just keeps dropping.
She can't see his face from where she stands. He sits with his arm sprawled across the table, stubby black hair rasping against his shirt. Smoke trails up over his arm. Must have gone outside for a smoke then.
She grabs his jacket from the couch and slides open the glass door to the balcony.
Frenchie turns to watch her with half-lidded eyes. "Hi," He whispers.
Kimiko takes the seat across from him and plops down into it. She drapes her jacket over the table and rests her head on it, meeting his eyes.
After a while of sitting like that, he pulls himself up to sit on the table. He tucks his legs up to his chest, the balcony railing digging into the small of his back. If he leans back even a little bit, he'll fall over the edge. Butcher's apartment isn't very far up. Either way. He'll break something if he falls. A leg. A clavicle. His skull.
She imagines him, boneless and apart on the oil-spill pavement below.
In front of her, the real Frenchie sucks up the last of his cigarette and then holds the butt out to her. He turns his wrist over, exposing pale skin and blue veins.
"Do it," He says.
She shakes her head.
"I'm cold," He reasons. "It'll warm me up."
Another shake of her head.
He shrugs.
She only watches him until the cigarette comes in contact with the sharp end of his radial bone. As soon as the smell of burning flesh hits her nostrils, she turns away to look over the railing. Snow cascades down from a gravel-colored sky. The sun is nowhere to be found and it isn't even five o'clock yet. Definitely December.
From Butcher's balcony, she can perfectly see the blue mountains that form the valley. It locks them in this town. Frenchie says they're prisoners of some cruel, earthly nature. Kimiko says they're prisoners of a corrupt education system.
Neither of them seem to have any desire to escape.
Their Winter Break is shit.
Butcher's on a New York City escapade with an old girlfriend. Marvin's at home with his huge, loving family. Hughie and Annie are in the Bahamas with his dad.
Kimiko and Frenchie are left to rot in their college town.
In an attempt to cure their boredom, they share a joint and wander around the derelict mall. Frenchie buys them an Auntie Anne's pretzel with the chump change he earns working at a bakery. They sit next to each other on the edge of a fountain and share the pretzel. Christmas music plays dimly through the empty mall. Only one or two middle-aged women wander around doing last-minute Christmas shopping.
Frenchie's brow furrows upon the first bite. "This is disgusting." He complains before shoving another piece in his mouth.
Kimiko tears off a chunk of the pretzel and takes a nibble.
"You know," Frenchie says through a mouthful of food. "My mom's cooking is to die for. She makes Buche de Noel at Christmas."
She feels her eyebrows raise, tension gripping onto her shoulders.
In the almost two years she's known him, he's only spoken about his family once. That was a month ago, when he decided that it was better to open the door and jump out of his father's moving car than go home for Thanksgiving.
Frenchie stares at the miserable-looking baked good. He blinks, then turns to Kimiko.
"Hey. Let's go visit my mom."
The metal seats of the bus stop are freezing.
Kimiko stays standing, rocking back and forth on her heels to try and get warm. Frenchie, who seems to be immune to the cold, sits anyway. He takes a long drag of his cigarette.
"Marvin's family loves him. He probably gets presents and kisses and has a grandma who smells like lavender and clean laundry." He blows out a fat plume of smoke. "I think I'd throw up."
Kimiko turns around with a blank expression. "You'd love it." She signs.
He drops the cigarette onto the snow-covered concrete and grounds it out with a boot. "I know."
She tilts her head backward. Snow catches on her eyelashes.
The bus is thirty minutes late, and she feels like she's going to get frostbite.
She turns to face him. "I'm cold." She signs.
"C'mere." He jerks his head towards the seats and pats his thigh.
Kimiko ambles forward, chin tucked into her coat before dropping down into his lap.
He lets out an oof followed by a laugh. He wraps his arms around her waist and she grabs his hands, squeezing tight.
"Better?" He mumbles into her neck.
She twists around so he can see her and nods.
He smiles and presses a kiss to the back of her neck, then pushes his forehead against her back.
Eventually the bus rolls into the stop, slow and lethargic.
The bus is shitty, and it rattles with every bump in the road. It makes her teeth clack together. Inside it smells like expired fruit and body odor. They can't afford much else, so she doesn't complain. At least it's warm.
As they drive through barren, upstate New York, Frenchie seems to get increasingly more agitated. First, he bounces his leg, then starts tapping his fingers. By the two-hour mark, he's digging his fingernails into a scab on his elbow.
Kimiko stops him by grabbing his hand. She kisses his knuckles and shakes her head.
She used to get mad he wouldn't let his wounds heal, would give himself new ones whether accidental or not. Once she exchanged her anger for love, she found it made them both feel better. At night she ran her lips, feather-light, over all the raised, silvery scars on his skin. She always figured it would be hypocritical to say anything. Her whole life up until she met him had been a large, gaping wound.
He had scars by the dozens. Her only scar was ghost-like. It couldn't be seen or heard.
There were two notches on her heart. The first was carved deep, a crevice that only time and chronic sorrow had managed to smooth out. The second, Frenchie-shaped notch, was made of gnarled oak. Roughly hewn and hastily made. Where no one else has come close, he managed to worm his way into her heart and now she refused to let him go. Not that he seemed to want to.
She doesn't bother asking what's wrong. With her, Frenchie's an open book.
He's still too keyed up to even look embarrassed about the whole thing. "Sorry. I'm just thinking." He bites his lip. "We're gonna see my mom. Shouldn't we see my dad? It's shitty, right? If we don't see him?"
Kimiko feels her face blanch. She looks out the window, lips pressed into a thin line. His empathy was going to be the death of him.
She doesn't know when they started being whatever they are. There were never any questions asked, never any formal declarations. They shifted from being friends to being something else entirely, and no one ever batted an eye. She'd never met his parents, and he'd never offered to introduce her. He never spoke about them, and she never asked. Until Thanksgiving.
In the emergency room, after Frenchie's Thanksgiving escapist act, Butcher had cussed him out for being so stupid. Then, he'd cussed out his dad. "Fuck that piece of shit. You don't owe him anything."
That told Kimiko all she needed to know about Frenchie's father. The scars on his body spoke their own language anyway.
She slips her hand out of his so she can sign. "I don't want you to jump out of any cars."
He lightens up at that and flashes her a grin. "Don't worry. We'll make it quick." He quirks his lips. "I'm fucking starving. You hungry?"
Kimiko grabs his hand again and pretends to bite a chunk out of his forearm.
Frenchie's childhood home is a tiny, dilapidated, single-story. The exterior is covered in dirty white paneling, the driveway is cracked and full of holes. The front yard is covered in snow, but she can imagine the lawn underneath is equally as unkept as everything else.
They stand at the front door, hand in hand.
As they walked from the stop to his dad's, she'd asked if he was sure he wanted to do this. He'd nodded resolutely, and now here they were.
Frenchie hesitates only for a moment before raising his hand and knocking. After a beat or two, the door swings open. Both Frenchie and Kimiko almost jump back at the force of it. A tall, bedraggled man stands at the threshold. His glasses are askew on his face, and he's holding a metal ruler in one hand. He blinks, then adjusts his glasses.
"Serge?"
Frenchie smiles sheepishly. "Hi, dad."
She knew his real name wasn't Frenchie, but it was another don't ask, don't tell type of thing. Even when they started getting closer, she never thought to ask what his real name was.
Serge.
She tries the name out on her tongue and wonders what it would sound like coming out of her mouth.
His dad waves the ruler at Kimiko. "Who's this?" He asks in heavily accented English.
Frenchie tightens his grip on her hand. "This is Kimiko. She's uh...C'est ma copine."
She already knew he spoke French, but she'd never actually heard him speak it. She finds it slightly embarrassing that hearing it makes her blush.
"Mm." He looks behind them as if there might be someone else waiting with them. When he's satisfied with his inspection, he looks at them again. "Entrez. Entrez."
Kimiko and Frenchie exchange a glance before following him inside.
It's a hoarder's home. Not bad enough to land his dad on a TV show, but bad enough to be unpleasant. They have to edge their way through random piles of crap and furniture to get to the dining room. French jazz plays somewhere in the house. The whole place smells slightly of despair.
"Sit." He points to the mismatched chairs that surround the dining room table.
They do, while Frenchie's dad moves to the kitchen behind the table. He starts moving things around, ruler abandoned on the counter. "Café?"
Frenchie nudges her. "Coffee?"
She nods, smiling.
His dad starts serving them coffee straight from the pot. He gives Kimiko a glass and Frenchie a measuring cup. She looks down at her glass. It's dirty.
Frenchie glances at her and grimaces while his dad moves to sit in front of them, ruler back in his hand.
"So," His dad asks. "Have you gone to see your maman?"
"No. Not yet."
His dad shrugs. "No matter. I'm sure she wouldn't want to see you."
Kimiko blinks in barely concealed shock.
Frenchie's cheeks turn red. "Papa. That's not fair."
He says something else, and the pink on Frenchie's face deepens to crimson. "Papa." He hisses.
His dad says something back, not bothering to speak in English. Kimiko thinks it might be for the best. His gesticulation is getting more intense, the lines in his face growing harsher.
She stares down at the black coffee in her glass, growing more uncomfortable with each tick of the clock.
Their arguing, if it can't even be called that, grows louder. She has no idea what they're saying to each other, but Frenchie sounds like he's pleading. His dad just sounds pissed. Eventually, the man is shouting at him, slamming a hand down on the table. Frenchie's reply is less of a shout and more of a cry. He must say the wrong thing because suddenly the room is silent, save for the music.
Kimiko looks up just in time to see his dad stand up, chair slamming back into the kitchen counter. The ruler flies by so fast that she doesn't see so much as hear it before it comes into contact with Frenchie's face.
She shoots up.
Frenchie's dad stands opposite of her, arm crossed over his chest. The tip of the ruler is red. No one speaks. Slowly, she turns her head to look at Frenchie.
He stares down at the counter, eyes wide. A long gash arcs across his cheekbone. Blood drips off his face and onto the ugly tablecloth below. She glances from him to his dad. The man looks unperturbed, his eyes disturbingly empty. Frenchie still hasn't moved.
She grabs his bicep and yanks him up, then starts pulling him back the way they came in. His dad starts shouting again, garbled, slurried French. Kimiko doesn't look back as she hauls Frenchie with her out the front door and slams it behind her.
He says nothing as she leads him down the front yard and across the street, into the edge of the woods.
She has no idea where they are or where they're going, but they walk through the woods until she feels a tug on her hand.
"Kimiko. Stop."
She turns to see him digging around his jacket for his pack of cigarettes. He pulls one out and sticks it between his lips. Then he fishes out his lighter and attempts to light the thing, but his hands are shaking too much. The cut on his face has stopped bleeding, and the blood has started to dry in his stubble. It doesn't look like it needs stitches.
She takes the lighter from his hand and lights the cigarette for him. He inhales desperately then blows it out. Life seems to return to his eyes.
With the sleeve of her shirt tugged over her thumb, Kimiko reaches out and wipes at his cheek. He lets her.
"C'mon. My mom isn't far from here. I know a shortcut through these woods."
The cemetery is bitterly cold.
They squat in front of his mother's gravestone, pressed up against each other to conserve body heat.
"That was bad." She signs.
"Yeah? It was wasn't it?" He gives her a half-smile but it doesn't take long to melt into a frown. "He has been like that for as long as I can remember. He's a very sick man."
She grips tightly onto his hand. With the other, she points to herself and then taps her fingers on her forehead.
I know
She glances around the cemetery. Like the rest of the town, it's small and run-down.
"What did you even do for fun around here?" She asks.
"Get drunk. Do drugs." He scratches at his sharp jaw. "Dumb shit."
She nods and looks back at the gravestone. A chill runs across her spine, and she finds that she wants to leave.
Next to her, Frenchie stands up and holds out a hand. She takes it. Instead of pulling her just to stand, he pulls her into his arms, hugging her tightly. He tucks his chin into the crook of her neck.
"I'm cold." He whispers. "Let's go warm up."