Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

At some point during his second attempt at rehab, Frank realizes that his life can be measured by a series of small, idiotic choices compounded by genuinely bad decisions—most of which were made with either good intentions or a complete lack of forethought—that ultimately snowballed into huge fucking messes.

Sometimes, when he’s failing to fall asleep in a too-empty apartment or sitting in traffic in a too-quiet car or zoning out during a too-boring staff meeting, he likes to picture different flow charts spelling out each step of his dumbassery:

Small, idiotic choice: When he overheard Robby invite Heather out for drinks at the end of the day a month into his first year teaching, Frank made inadvertent but lingering eye contact with both Robby and Heather

Genuinely bad decision #1: Despite hearing the awkwardness in his voice when Robby added, “and you’re welcome to join too, Langdon,” Frank still jumped at the chance to get to know his new department chair and hopefully impress him by being cool and charming (two things Frank had, of course, never been accused of being)

Genuinely bad decision #2: Staying at the bar after Heather left and getting Robby to confide in him about that whole situation, even though he had a wife and baby waiting for him at home, because he was still trying to be respected or liked or understood

Genuinely bad decision #7: Telling Robby about his dad and his substance use issues and how desperately he wanted his approval, even though Robby was a coworker and “new teacher mentor” and had never given any indication he actually liked Frank as a person, not just a teacher or sounding board for his issues.

HUGE FUCKING MESS: Robby blowing the fuck up when he found out about Frank’s little benzo issue, even though he was handling it, dammit, and making him self-report and then submit for leave and enter a rehab program without stopping to talk to Frank or anyone else who had been through similar programs or self-reported as a teacher; Frank isn’t obtuse enough to blame Robby for ending his marriage, because Frank had been doing that well enough on his own, but he definitely sped along its demise by bursting into Frank’s house with the key Frank had given him in some mistaken bid for friendship (bad decision #15) and telling Abby everything without giving Frank a goddamn second to breathe

That’s the flowchart he returns to the most, but he has a few other he likes (hates) to run through: Exhibit B (Back) - Moving His Parents ➡️ Drug Addiction; Exhibit C (Bunny) - Making Abby Think He Hates Talking About His Feelings ➡️ Being Stuck with a Goldendoodle; Exhibit D (Charlie) - Watching South Park ➡️ Outing His Sister in High School.

His therapist Leanne is fucking fascinated by this thought pattern, of course, when he mentions it on one of the days he feels only 30% present, so tired he can barely keep his eyes open but unable to sleep for anything. She asks him to draw one, so he goes with Exhibit D; it’s more of a dull ache by now instead of the overwhelming guilt that threatens to drown him when he revisits Exhibits A, B, or C. She listens attentively as he recounts the absolutely cringeworthy series of events that led him to 1. not understand that homophobia was a real thing when he 2. told his class that he thought his sister liked girls so that 3. Charlie got shit the rest of her time in Erie.

(Charlie has banned him from apologizing for it. She says it’s mostly a funny story and that it’s actually kind of sweet that he couldn’t understand why anyone would be homophobic. She would not be impressed to hear that he’s still thinking about it enough that his therapist now knows the story.)

Leanne studies his flow chart for long enough that he would be anxious if his body was capable of feeling anything other than exhausted.

“Usually flow charts have at least one point where the arrows branch,” she says, setting the paper down. “This is more of a timeline than a flow chart. Do you ever include the other choices you could have made on these?”

It makes Frank feel like a fucking idiot, which is surely not her intention, because duh. Flow charts show how something flows.

“I guess I’m not really used to thinking about options,” he admits, which feels like an unbelievably dumb thing for an adult—a father, a teacher, an ex-husband, an addict—to say out loud. “I just do the thing that seems like what you’re supposed to do.”

Leanne hums in the way that Frank has come to learn, two stints in rehab later, is therapist non-verbal speak for “you’ve said something very troubling and therefore fascinating. Prepare to learn about yourself.”

So he sits in Leanne’s office, a space that feels genuinely calming, not like it’s forcing you to notice how muted and reserved and therefore serene it is (he’s qualified to judge, at this point), and makes his stupid little timelines, except he’s supposed to make them into actual flow charts.

Leanne has to prompt him at first (what could you have done instead of going to the bar? Who else could you have confided in about your father? How else could you have built a professional relationship with Robby?), but he gets the hang of it. When their time is almost up, he feels like Leanne has taken the checkers game of mental torture he created for himself and turned it into chess, which makes it even less likely he’ll ever be able to turn his brain off enough for him to sleep.

“I understand why it might seem that way to you,” Leanne says, when he tells her some probably-incoherent version of that, and it does seem like she’s genuinely trying to understand his perspective, which is one of the things he likes about her. “The reason I wanted to spend time on this is because decision making and cognitive flexibility are skills, and we need to practice skills in order to master or apply them. I mean, I know I don’t need to tell you that.”

Another thing about Leanne: she used to be a teacher. He feels like he spends 70% less time explaining context when he tells her stories about work than he did with any other therapist he had. It’s awesome.

“Clearly, this isn’t a skill you’re used to applying in your personal life,” she continues. “And these examples are top-of-mind and vivid to you. My hope is that you’ll start seeing yourself as more of an active participant in your personal life, rather than going along the path of least resistance or the path marked by others as right for you, and an important part of that is being able to hold multiple possibilities in your mind at once.”

(He can see her background as a teacher in moments like this, when she automatically clarifies that this is all about his personal life because she understands how many decisions he has to make at school. It’s something they return to frequently, the disconnect between his ability to accomplish things and follow through and show up and succeed in the classroom and his complete dysfunction outside of it. He thinks it frustrates her a little, how he can’t transfer skills, but maybe she views it as a fun challenge. At least, that’s what he chooses to believe.)

“This is some of that owl shit again, isn’t it?” he asks suspiciously. He’s onto her.

Leanne chuckles. “If by ‘owl shit’ you mean the wise mind, then yes, but I would be curious to learn how it’s been coded like that in your brain.”

Frank squints, trying to recreate the ladder of word association he might have fallen down before. It clicks.

“Wise, wise girl, Annabeth from Percy Jackson, Athena, Athena’s symbol was an owl, owl,” he rattles off, bouncing his leg. Watching the new Percy Jackson show had been a nice distraction for, like, two days of his forced leave. He’s not usually a fantasy guy or whatever (besides Lord of the Rings, which is more like a religion), but he can’t wait for Tanner to be old enough for it.

“Of course,” Leanne agrees. He thinks that Leanne is stopping herself from looking too visibly amused. He loves making therapists crack. “Anyway, I don’t want you to stay up all night playing—” She glances down at her notes. “—'chess games of mental torture,’ but I do want you to try to notice the times in your personal life when you make decisions. I’m not asking you to make different decisions that you normally or otherwise would, just to notice when they come up.”

“I’ll try,” he says, since he’s doing this crazy new thing called not making promises you don’t intend to keep and he has a shockingly low success rate at completing his therapy homework. He knows he’d be able to do them if Leanne set up a gradebook and entered Missings in for the assignments he fails to complete, but she thought he was joking when he asked about it. He loves getting good grades. It’s what makes him so good at teaching AP Chem: all those little nerds’ brains work the exact same way his does.

(Before rehab, he chose not to have that thought while reading through their 504 plans for ADHD and Anxiety and Depression, but he’s had time now to acclimate to it all. He’s a little worried about that when he goes back to work, the idea that he’ll start to see substance disorders in students in a way that he used to be able to ignore.)

As predicted, he forgets about his homework the second he walks out the door, and he has some new and urgent concerns the next time he sees Leanne, so it falls by the wayside. He also figures out a new method to calm his brain and fall asleep (jerking off in the shower right before bed, weirdly, and it makes him feel fifteen again), so he has less time to chart out his failures. He forgets about it altogether for a while.

It’s a surprise, then, that he finds himself flashing back to Leanne’s office and her chess torture practice on his first day back at PTMHS when he mentions the science department group chat (small, idiotic choice) and watches Mel King’s face crumple and carefully smooth itself out, like she can erase her emotions by pretending they don’t exist. Or maybe that she just shouldn’t let anybody else see them? He’s not sure what to make of how much he wants to know which it is, actually.

That’s the moment that he makes a decision that will inevitably snowball into a huge fucking mess, even though he doesn’t think it’s a bad one. He can’t ever bring himself to regret doing anything that helps her.

“Hey, let’s go back to the room so you can check out what we’ll be working with and we can figure this out,” he says, and he’s watching closely enough to see the flash of excitement on her face before she tamps it down. He wonders what it would take to make her smile big enough that she can’t hide it, and then how far he would go to find out.

I have the power to make my own decisions, he reminds himself. I don’t have to take the path of least resistance.

It turns out to be a good mantra to have, since the decision to care about Mel King is certainly not the path of least resistance.