Chapter Text
SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2025
The morning felt pale.
That seemed like underselling it. It wasn't just pale, it felt like an intrusion. Like light wasn't supposed to be here, the sun wasn't meant to rise, color shouldn't even exist. That the very world having blood to pump and flood cheeks with pink was a mistake.
Frank was sitting at the dining table in his kitchen. He had his phone turned face up next to him, dead eyes staring at the swirls of shitty wood grain and coffee he could barely taste. He wasn't sure he'd ever felt so vacant before, viewing himself from a bird's eye. Sure, he was sitting there awaiting Abby to come back from dropping the kids off with her mom, but he didn't think if you begged he could tell you what day it was.
To call what he did last night sleeping was laughable, the adrenaline crash he experienced was so bad he shook for hours on the couch. He threw up twice. Once in the parking garage after Robby left him, or maybe he shoved Robby away, and once sometime around two AM when his brain violently reminded him what he'd just had to tell Abby.
The look of sheer devastation he put on her face wasn't something he thought he'd ever be able to forget. Not unless he carved it out of his mind with a knife.
His stomach gave a threatening roll, but there was nothing for it to try and toss away. It was the most he'd felt since his systems overheated enough in the morgue of their living room, sat there next to Abby's forgotten cardigan and the crayons Tanner always put back wrong and Penny's little monkey toy, to shut down entirely.
A failsafe, blue screen of death, loadscreen spinny wheel. An error message filling his vision over and over and over again with
You let me down. You let everyone down, especially yourself.
The front door opened, and Abby came back.
Nausea seemed to be a theme of the last twenty-four hours. He wasn't the only one to lose whatever meager lunch they'd managed, the sheer number of bodies last night was enough to make even the most seasoned of doctors sick. Blood still stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he tasted it every time he felt the urge to talk.
Abby went through the expected motions. That's all they were now, expected. She took her time making her own coffee, letting the silence barb quills in deep enough to kill them both.
They had never been a quiet pair. Yet here they were, not knowing how to talk to each other.
Her mug thunked when she set it down across from him, and he wondered when she even walked over. Their rings clicked when it made contact with the ceramic, and if he had any capacity for feelings other than what he was now recognizing as anxiety deep enough to drown in, he would've sobbed.
"Fuck, Frank." She sighed, already exhausted, putting one elbow up on the tabletop to rub lightly at her eye and lifting her glasses in the process. "I don't even know what to say. I spent the whole drive back here trying to find something, and.. I got nothing."
Abby used to be president of a debate club in college. The two of them used to flirt by fighting, tossing intellectual jabs at each other over drinks at a party. It annoyed the hell out of their friends. How twistedly humorous for both of them to be found speechless here.
How evident of how far they'd drifted, for neither of them to think of anything they wanted to say.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's.. That's fair." It was a lame response. He couldn't think of anything better. His tongue was being controlled via joystick.
"What the hell were you thinking? Were you high around our children?" Anger melted a little into her voice. Not just upset, genuine anger. It was fair, it was understandable, it wasn't even the first time she'd been angry with him. Not by a long shot.
He stuck to his guns, shaking his head a little. "I wasn't. That's not really how benzodiazepines work-"
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Oh, don't bullshit me, Frank-"
"No, genuinely. I'm not trying to- Benzos are, they're downers. They're sedatives, basically. Prescribed for anxiety and muscle spasms, it's not a high feeling." He'd already dug his grave. Might as well double down. "Not how I took them."
Frank tried to watch, he really did. Tried to keep his eyes on the way Abby's face morphed from disbelief into distrust into confusion.
Her jaw was clenched, voice tight as she spoke. "So, why did you take them?"
He should've expected the question. God, he didn't want to answer it.
"You um, you remember when I fucked up my back?" She nodded, so he continued. "One of the things I was prescribed, it was a benzo. It helped a lot with the pain."
When all of that had gone down, they had a long conversation one night about how he needed to get better. It wasn't malicious, it wasn't mean, it wasn't angry. It was just sad, and it was true. Going a week without work fucked with their already very tight budget, his schedule with his residency, and they physically couldn't afford him losing more hours. Even with his online tutoring, their finances were constantly being watched and measured.
"I didn't.." Frank swallowed, sitting back in his seat and feeling guilt stir like a scared butterfly. "I knew better, I thought I could manage everything on my own and that I'd be fine. I didn't mean for it to get to this poin-"
"Frank, stop it." Abby shook her head, hands tight around her coffee. "Stop running ahead. Tell me what the fuck led to- led to this."
She couldn't say it, foot getting caught on those words. Stealing, addiction, pills. He could barely swallow them himself, and he was the one that fucking did it.
"Benzos are really, really addictive. In hindsight.. I was, my doctor didn't handle things well." He felt clumsy, stumbling his way through this, piloting what was going on from a secondary location. It was kind of like trying to reconstruct a story with degraded film and hoping that when you ran it through the projector it was coherent. "There was a lot I should've done differently."
"But you didn't."
"But I didn't."
His coffee was cold by now. If he tried to drink it, he was pretty sure just the smell alone would make him gag.
Abby took a long sip of hers, steam still curling from it. Her hands were probably warmed by the mug, she always liked the feeling. Claimed it made her feel cozy, he was pretty sure it was just because her hands were always frigid.
Absently, he wondered if he'd ever be able to feel them again. Her hands, or his own.
She closed her eyes for a moment, eyes and brows sewn together, and took a deep breath before looking at him again. "Okay. Okay, so now what? Where do we go from here?"
Frank felt himself catch on that word, dragging himself up a little to look at her. "We."
It was meant to be a question, it came out a statement. She tilted her head at him in response, confusion evident. "Yes, we. What else would it be?"
Oh, now he felt shitty. There it was, an emotion finally breaking through the surface tension. "I, fuck, I-I guessed this would be more of a me issue to solve."
Abby's confusion did a weird, if not expected, thing. Something he'd been waiting for since last night. It went up in flames, offense and aggravation smouldering in place. "The hell does that mean? You want to do this alone?"
"What? No, I-"
Then it clicked. Her eyes went wide, face drawn up into some kind of saddened disgust that made him want to claw his tongue out with his own hands. "Frank, do you think I'm going to leave you?"
Cards on the table. Face stripped clean. Be honest and let the wound be washed or infection will fester, and you'll lose the entire arm instead of just your dignity.
"A.. A little bit, yeah." His voice sounded tired even to him, he couldn't imagine what it must actually come across as.
"Oh, my God." Abby held her hands up, pushing herself away from the table and standing. She didn't take her cup, she didn't even look at him, just pacing a small line in the limited space they had. "Oh my God, Frank!"
It was distressed when she said it. How many times in a single day could he disappoint her? It felt like he was winning gold in a competition he never signed up for.
He scrambled a bit, trying to find purchase to keep them both from falling. "It's- I'm not saying anything about you and it's not-"
"Yes it is! Yes you are! Is this why you didn't tell me? You were scared I'd leave?" If he didn't know her better, he'd think she was going to cry, the way her voice was pitching up and down. "Actually don't answer that. Don't tell me."
He pinned his spiralling thoughts where they stood, the want to try to find the answer out himself. He could examine that later. Not now, not with her right in front of him. Not when he was the reason she was so scared.
Sluggishly, he tried to grab hold of something, tried to find a place to stand on. Clarification. "So.. You don't want a divorce?"
Abby exhaled, turning burning eyes on him. "I don't- I don't know. But we're not having this conversation now. Not with.."
She gestured a hand to him. To his still full cup of coffee, to the dark circles he knew were under his eyes and the oil he knew was weighing down his hair. He hadn't changed out of his scrubs properly last night, still in his undershirt and pants. He didn't know how to leave any of it behind.
He hated it. Frank nodded his understanding. "Okay. Okay, I'm sorry."
Abby looked like she wanted to laugh, sitting back down in her chair. "You're gonna be saying that a lot more, and a lot better. But not right now."
She pulled her cup closer to her, and pushed up her glasses where they slipped in her pacing. It was wrangling herself down again, that much was obvious.
A little voice in his head said compartmentalizing. She was compartmentalizing, to deal with him. To handle him.
He wished he'd somehow died last night, just so he wouldn't have to see that look on her face.
"So." Abby cleared her throat, eyes shining in the late morning light. "Where do we go from here?"
OCTOBER 12TH, 2025
Frank didn't like rehab. It was pretty easy not to enjoy, honestly.
He was separated from his wife and kids, forced to an out of state inpatient facility via his new contract with the Physicians Health Program. He was in some kind of counselling every day, and surrounded by people that both made him feel way better about what he was finally being able to call an addiction and then instantly guilty for thinking that way.
He had to talk with a one on one therapist. Go to group meetings. Do physical therapy for his back, which also made him realize how shitty his first go around was. He met a psychiatrist for the first time outside of a work setting, and had the mortifying ordeal of hearing people explain shit he knew to him because they assumed he didn't. Couldn't.
At least the ever present sick feeling that coated his entire body was starting to lessen, just a little. He didn't look like death anymore.
It was a smoking facility, but not a phone facility, which meant the only pleasure he got was from activities given to them to do, calls with Abby and no one else, and the rapidly increasing amount of cigarettes he tried to find dopamine in.
He had medication to take now. There was an antidepressant they had been trying out, pretty standard, but after his third panic attack once he was allowed into general population, he got switched to an SNRI to see if it helped.
It did, kind of. Mostly. Tonal variety was starting to leak into the world again. He'd forgotten that the sky was supposed to be blue.
He still felt jittery. They were prioritizing getting his mood stabilized before treating his ADHD symptoms, which made sense. It made complete and total sense, and he hated it something ugly and inpatient.
Frank, childishly, despite knowing that's not how this works, wanted to be okay already. He wanted to be done with this, leave it in the window view of a plane, a bad memory he'd never have to revisit. He wanted to literally never have to look at the oak tree he identified the first time he was out here ever again, and never feel this specific breeze on his cheeks.
He was going to be stuck here for about another month.
It was good for him. This was good for him. Being away from the stress of his job, being forced to look at himself and confront shit he never wanted to think about, he knew it was mentally healthy. He knew this.
God, Frank wanted to go home.
NOVEMBER 4TH, 2025
Frank was lucky, all things considered. Abby refused to talk about the concept of divorce until he was back, until he was settled again, and while that still made him want to squirm uncomfortably, it was the best he would get and he'd take it.
They called when they could. When he was able to think comprehensibly again. When he didn't feel like his entire body was dragged through and dropped into hellfire, and when she wasn't pissed enough she was willing to listen to him stumble through his day before giving updates on their kids.
That was something that had squeezed at his heart this entire time. Tanner and Penny, not able to understand why dad went away other than he was sick and needed help. That he wanted to be healthy for them, and he wasn't right now, but he'd be back before they knew he was gone.
Penny wasn't quite old enough to really remember it down the line, but Tanner was. He'd remember the two months dad disappeared. He'd remember Frank missing Halloween, he'd remember that mom was stressed in a way she hadn't been before. He'd hold on to that like glass.
To be quite honest, he barely remembered the Uber ride from the facility to his motel. Abby had planned the whole thing for him like the saint she was, knowing his phone would be dead.
She'd been nothing short of a damn savior this entire time. He wasn't sure he'd ever, ever be able to truly repay her for what he did to them.
Tossing his phone on the nightstand, he rummaged around his pocket to get out the charger he had to stop and buy. Something he'd managed to forget and not think about until now. He hadn't needed it.
The thing that tethered him to the world around, severed without a sting. Now here it was, taunting him again, and he wasn't sure if the feeling he had was better translated and excitement or dread.
He decided on a shower first, plugging in his phone to let it charge while he took care of himself. Spent some time decompressing from the last sixty days, alone in a room with no one around. For the very first time in what felt like forever, he didn't feel at risk of being watched.
The shower was heavenly. There wasn't another word for it, standing there under the warm spray and trying to scrub off the residue of rehab felt like he'd been allowed to grow new skin. He had scars he hadn't before, and while nothing would get rid of them, at least the surrounding area didn't know the taste of blood.
What wasn't anticipated was the sudden hit of anxiety when he left the bathroom, towelling dry his hair and dressed in what might as well been the softest clothes he'd ever felt.
Looking again to the phone on his nightstand, Frank suddenly realized he didn't know what was waiting for him.
There'd be flight information for tomorrow from Abby, but other than that, he had no clue what kinds of texts or calls he'd missed. What emails sat coiled in his inbox, what height the red bubbles had reached. He'd muted all work related group chats the night of PittFest, irrationally terrified somehow everyone knew exactly what went down and if he opened one, he'd find nothing more than vitriol from the people he worked with. From his friends.
In all honesty, he didn't know if he deserved the punishment of alienation from them. He probably did. He should be in prison. But he wasn't. Instead, he was standing in the middle of a shitty motel room, trying to work up the courage to look at his damn phone.
How the mighty have fallen, or whatever that fucking saying he used to hear in church was.
It took too long, but he did flop down on to his bed. Kick his feet up, lean back against the pillows, try to make himself as comfortable as possible, and not think about how he had to take a breath before following through.
The feel of his phone in hand was an old comfort. He unlocked it quickly, and swiped over one to the page holding his fate.
Enough unread emails he'd have to look at that his laptop at home, and next to the messages app, a little white nine.
Darling (Abby)
> [(1) deleted message(s)]
> [(1) link attached]
> Hey, call me when ur settled
Lacey
> Abby just texted that you're going to rehab? Are you serious??
> Call me, Frank
Test Subject #3
> Lace just rung, said ur in rehab? Wtf?
Momma
> Call me when you get out.
> What the hell were you thinking?
Nine notifications. Eight messages. Four people. His wife and his immediate family, minus his dad, but that was probably for the better. He didn't want to hear whatever the old man had to say about this.
He didn't want to hear what any of them had to say about this, honestly, but that was a different problem altogether.
Frank didn't think shame was the right word for what he was feeling. Maybe closer on the scale to embarrassment, or self-consciousness. Something that made his cheeks and eyes burn a little, flare hot in his chest, this all too aware feeling that he thought himself important enough for anyone to want to contact.
It was just those related to him. Wife, sister, brother, mom. He didn't even have to swipe to look at them all, they were cleanly in line at the top of the page. Just underneath was the reminder of his last desperate attempts of connection with Robby. He couldn't even get himself to try and open that, not interested in playing at Pandora right now.
Scrolling down a little, he hovered his finger over a contact before clicking, and his last conversation with Heather flooded his screen.
It was trivial, honestly. A plan to get lunch together in a couple weeks, or at this point in time nearly a month and a half ago. She sounded like there was something she wanted to tell him, and his only guess was that she'd decided where to go after residency.
He clicked on the message bar at the bottom, and started typing.
Hey, do you still want to
Backspace.
What is it you
Backspace.
How are
Backspace.
Frank closed out the app entirely and buried his head in his hands, groaning loudly.
This was childish. Absolutely ridiculous. It was a misunderstanding, a misplacement of who he was. That's all. Thought he was better friends with them than he actually was, it happens. Better to find out this way than never, right?
He wished he could make himself believe that. Instead, he just felt like he was twelve years old again, trying to show off how many times he could skip a stone so the others boys would like him.
DECEMBER 1ST
It was cold enough he probably should be wearing a thicker jacket, but Abby disliked plenty that he was smoking again, he didn't need to make it any worse. He'd rather just have a hoodie to pull off and wash instantly then need to change.
He checked his phone again, a little anxious and trying not to seem like it. Standing on the curb outside their house (don't even think about smoking on the front porch), he was waiting as patiently as he could for a call from his sister. They were supposed to yesterday, but Lacey got caught up with her older son's baseball game as a team mom and had to drive an hour into town to get snacks. It was a whole thing he was sure he'd hear about.
Reception was already spotty where they grew up, base of the mountains in West Virginia and all, and had only gotten slightly better since he left.
Frank was in the middle of a draw when his phone lit up with Lacey's caller ID, a truly awful picture of her on her wedding day filling the screen.
"Hey, Lacey." He put the phone up to his ear, tilting his head slightly into it. "How're you?"
"Hi, Frank." His sister never wanted to get rid of her accent, not like he did. If anything, she's just gotten worse as she got older, sounding more and more like the ladies from church. "I'm doing good, everyone's good. Ben's at work but he says hi."
That made him smile, just a little. "Tell him and the kids I say hello for me, would you?"
"Always."
"Thanks."
He still wasn't used to long pauses with his sister. They were close when they were kids, only two years apart and working together to survive against their parents. Their brother was four years younger than him, and got a whole different side of their folks than the two of them remember.
Tommy didn't have much memory of dad being home a lot, but he did with mom, and that always made for some interesting storytelling whenever they all convened back home for holidays.
Lacey inhaled audibly on her side, like she was tired of anticipation. "How's Abby and the kids?"
Right. Updates. Life. This wasn't the first time they'd called since he got back home but it was the first time she said she wanted to hear about what caused all of this. How it happened. Why the hell he let himself go down that road. It made his skin itch knowing what questions she really wanted to ask.
"Good, they're good. The kids miss you. Um, Abby's gone back to work now that- now that I'm home more." It stung like bile at the back of his throat. "I'm on a job hunt for the interim, still tutoring. We're.. managing."
He didn't like to think about the sheer amount of debt he was in. He had to, because they had practically zero savings, but still. Despite it all, Abby wanted him to take a little time before getting back into working, said he needed it, but it wasn't really feasable. Not the way they wanted it to be.
Not the way his therapist before he left said it had to be. He hadn't been able to find another one yet, more focused on affording the water bill and his new medications.
"You two let us know if there's anything we can do for you, Frank. I mean it."
"I know you do, thanks." He gave himself pause to take another pull, shifting his weight. He should probably stub out his smoke and put his hand in his pocket, it really was cold. "How's mom and dad?"
There was a small gap, and he could see the tilt to her head Lacey got when she was confused. "You haven't talked to them?"
"I talked to mom and got an earful with enough Bible verses to make a new one-"
"Frank-"
"So I'm not really eager to have a chat with dad about going to rehab."
Lacey sighed long and hard, and all it did was make him close his eyes. This wasn't comfortable for either of them, how could it be? But hey, she wanted him to be more honest, this is what she got. Not his fault she wasn't being truthful, even if he knew better.
She had a habit of trying to dance around topics until the other person got what she wanted and just told her. He always preferred to be direct, either you say it or you don't. It made conversations like these feel as if you were trying to sort rocks by type while blindfolded.
When she spoke next, Lacey's voice was softer. Tired, he noted. When they were kids she would get hard when she was angry, but over the years it's melted into something that could only read as done. "Dad could be helpful."
Frank nearly laughed, settling on a disbelieving sort of chuckle. "Really? He finally stopped drinking? What would this be, fifth time's the charm?"
That same pause. Sand through an hourglass. Maybe it was filtering into his throat, and that was causing this slight choking feeling in his chest.
He took another drag of his cigarette. Let it out a bit too harsh.
"Are you smoking again?"
Frank dropped the filter to the curb and crushed it under the toe of his shoe. "Nope."
He got an easy taste of his own medicine, Lacey's annoyed exhale audible over the phone line. "You wanna talk or are you trying to pick a fight?"
"You're the one that wanted to talk, Lace." He shrugged his shoulders, hiding his frozen hand in his pocket. "Ask whatever questions you got, I'm an open book now."
Lacey snorted, even if her tone didn't carry that same humor. "Day you start offering up how you're feeling is the day I become the next Virgin Mary."
That got him to smile, a little ragged. Honestly, even if they've butted heads plenty of times since he moved, he always missed talking with her. They got busy, they had lives, they had kids and partners and homes to take care of, and it meant any time they could've spent together became another checkbox they ignored instead of a want to connect.
"How would you break the news to Ben?"
"Eh, he goes to church. He'd figure it out."
Already, Frank wished he didn't put out his cigarette. He already missed having something to do.
He wondered where in her house Lacey was standing. She like to pace when she was having hard conversations, so he wondered if she was wearing a hole into the carpet of her living room or maybe hardwood of her kitchen. It hah been so long since he'd seen her she could've changed her habits completely, and there was some new coping strategy happening on the other end of the phone.
Lacey cleared her throat. "What happened, Frank?"
Now wasn't that the million dollar question? What happened to Frank Landon. There were a million answers and none of them felt adequate. None of them felt valid explaining why he did what he did. Why he let this happen to himself.
"Do you remember when mom and dad were moving and I came down and helped pack everything up?"
"'course I do, you had to stop halfway through the day."
He almost forgotten that he hadn't actually told anyone what happened, or more accurately they hadn't actually checked. "Yeah. I slipped a disc pretty good, had to take time off work and everything. I got prescribed some painkillers and muscle relaxants to help."
He wasn't going to be that asshole trying to explain medical concepts to his sister. He'd tried it before, and nowadays it was mostly just used when he wanted to annoy her. He even made shit up sometimes just to see what she'd do.
"Oh, Frankie, why didn't you tell us?" Something clattered softly on her side, and he realized she had been doing dishes.
New fidget it was.
"Not like you could've done anything, and it shouldn't have been a big deal." Frank couldn't feel the fingers holding his phone, scuffing his shoe on the sidewalk. "They usually heal pretty well."
"But it didn't."
He cleared his throat, stiff. "It didn't. And my doctor didn't help."
She'd heard stories like this a thousand times over. Addictions formed from a knee that never got right, an accident that took too much, a mind that never moved past what happened. Their father wasn't the only alcoholic in their town, hell, he wasn't the only alcoholic on their street. Not even in a fifty foot radius.
They'd lost friends from school. Neighbors. Family. Their dad was slowly becoming one of them, and he got too damn close to it for comfort. It was like pinwheeling your arms when you got right up to an edge you managed to miss. You didn't fall off, didn't join all those before, but your stomach clenched and your feet stung all the same.
"Okay." There was shifting on her end. He bet she was drying off her hands. "And what about now? How're you feeling?"
Frank scuffed his shoe lightly on the curb. He was slowly starting to populate this spot with ashen remains. "I'm two months out of rehab, Lace. What d'you think?"
"I think you're avoiding the question."
"Wow, gold star. Great observation."
"Francis Langdon, I swear to God, I will come up there and make you tell me if I have to beat it out of you."
He couldn't help but smile something bittersweet. "Then I feel like I should keep dodging."
The tired sigh was well worth it. He was honestly trying to see how many times he could get her to do that in one call, the last time he tracked it — if he remembered correctly — was one sigh/five minutes for sixty minutes. He was so proud of himself that day.
"Can you be honest for ten seconds?"
Frank cringed, just a little, at the exhausted tone. "I'm okay. I'm- I'm managing. Don't worry too much about me, I'm handling it."
At least this time, the chastising was expected. "You're my baby brother, Frank. I've been worried about you since you decided that walking into the house covered in blood and cleaning yourself up was your best course of action instead of just calling for help from the yard."
As the story went, when he was five years old, he'd been outside in the garden his mom used to tend. She'd made the fatal mistake of leaving a too curious child alone for more than five minutes, in desperate need of a piss and his father actually working his shift at the shop, and he managed to climb the post holding up their measly back porch roof. When he, of course, lost his grip and whacked his head into said beam, he toddled right back inside and proceeded to scare the ever loving shit out of his sister when she saw him.
He still had a scar, hidden by his hairline. It really wasn't noticeable but if you ran your finger along it, something Abby liked to do when brushing her hand through his hair, you could feel the thin dash right there.
"I maintain that wasn't my fault."
"If we blamed every stupid choice we made on mom not watching us, there wouldn't be a whole lotta responsibility left for us to take."
"The fuck is up with this whole wise thing you've got going on? When did this happen?" He groaned, tilting his head back and seeing his breath gather in front of him in mimicry of his earlier activity. "I'm better, Lacey, seriously. I have stretches I do, I take OTC painkillers as needed. Abby's been cautious about it, I'm being more open asking for help. You can ask her and confirm. There, happy?"
Lacey hummed, soft and amused at his antics. "A little." There was a bit of shuffling, what sounded maybe like a door opening. "It was nice talking to you, Frank, but I gotta go."
Kids must be back. He just nodded, dropping his head back down. "All good. Nice talking to you too, Lace. Don't be a stranger, alright?"
"I can be worse than that if you want. I'll tell mom and dad you said hi. Love you."
"Sure. Love you. Bye."
"Bye."
There was a moment of hesitance before he heard the line drop off, beep droning in his ear as a cousin of a sound he missed.
Frank rolled his shoulders, his back aching from either being outside of hunching his shoulders or from it being a Monday. She didn't need to know the ins and outs of his injury, how bad it still was. The new pills he was taking to try and cancel out the ones he shouldn't have.
Someday soon, he really fucking hoped he'd be able to just pick Tanner up again. Today, he turned and walked back up their drive, hands warming unevenly in his pockets.