darker_london | Frankie's Room (Flynn, Pauline, Angus)

When Flynn awoke he had a slight panic because he didn't know where he was. Upon looking around, he realised he was in his childhood home and then he nearly panicked more because he was in his childhood home, but then everything came flooding back to him.

The panic faded away. The melancholy remained.

He hadn't woken up in this bed since he was sixteen years old. So much had changed since then, but it seemed he apparently hadn't, even after thinking he was absolutely different than he had been.

Flynn pulled himself out of the little single bed, had it always been so uncomfortable? He made his way into the hall bathroom to clean up and by the time he ventured downstairs to the kitchen, he looked at least slightly civilised, even if he didn't feel it. Flynn didn't do mornings. Especially not mornings in his childhood home, far away from everyone he loved.

Angus looked up from his breakfast, folding down his newspaper in order to see his son. "Morning," he half-grunted, and Flynn half-grunted right back. He needed coffee and a quick search turned up only the fake kind. Without a word, Flynn turned on the kettle and he stared at it while it slowly boiled, just to have something to look at. Every last cell in his body felt wrong being here. He didn't trust his parents not to kick him out again and if they did, he truly had nowhere to go. Again.

After he had mixed up his instant coffee and downed half of it, he moved over to sit with his father who continued to look at his paper. Flynn sat, his hands around his coffee mug, and both of them pretended they were alone because it was easier. Until Pauline scuttled in.

"There you are! Good morning, Malachy."

"Morning, P...m-" Flynn sighed. "Morning, Mam."

If Pauline noticed his hesitation, and she probably had, she didn't make it obvious. "Have you eaten yet?"

Flynn shook his head and held up his coffee mug. Angus finally put down his coffee. "Looks like a strong wind could have you over, Boy. Make him something hearty, Pauline."

"I'm fine," Flynn insisted, though his mother was clearly already doing just that. Having parental figures looking out for him was nice and he had gotten used to it thanks to Maree and Bob Wakefield. Having his parents look out for him, however, was very strange. He didn't know how to react. They had thrown him out and since then they hadn't really done much parenting. Now they were fussing. He didn't comprehend it.

"Oh hush now," Pauline said as she pulled a package of sausages out of the fridge. "You didn't come over vegetarian in England, did you?"

"No," Flynn said, sounding slightly harassed. "I'll eat anything."

That comment caused Pauline to turn and look at him, her hand over her heart. She knew Flynn would eat anything because he had told her just exactly what his enforced homelessness had meant. To keep alive, Flynn had eaten some very questionable things. But it had worked and he had survived and now Pauline felt remorse Flynn didn't even have the energy to quell. "Sorry," Flynn said, trying to sound at least a little lamentable.

Pauline turned back to her cooking, sniffling audibly. Angus leaned over to his son and he whispered, "she'll be right, Boy. Give her a minute," as if he was offering Flynn top-secret advice. Flynn was fairly sure he would have done that, even if his father hadn't thought to tell him so.

"Do you want eggs?" Pauline asked, her back to him.

"Er-"

"Oh, I could make omelettes!"

"I don-"

"And fried potatoes!"

"Mam!" Flynn said loudly, and finally Pauline turned to look at him, her eyes wide with shock. Flynn wasn't loud. At least not any more. More quietly he said, "anything is fine. Nothing is fine. You don't have to go to any trouble."

"My son is home," Pauline said, and Flynn managed to bite his tongue and keep anything nasty he might have said locked well inside. He understood the meaning of his mother's words, perhaps even better than she did. Her only son. Flynn was all she had left. Her favourite son was gone, and Flynn was the consolation prize. She couldn't afford to cast him out now that Frankie was dead.

"Excuse me," Flynn said, leaving his parents and his mug of coffee in the kitchen for now. He would come back down soon, but he had clearly left the safety of his room too soon. If his room was even safe any more.

As he charged up the stairs, he caught sight of his brother's bedroom door. It was closed and Flynn frowned as he looked at it. He changed course and slowly approached the room where his brother had slept, not twenty feet from him, for the first sixteen years of Flynn's life.

Flynn opened the door slowly, revealing the inside of Frankie's room like the opening of a dramatic movie. It was like it had been all those years ago. The token pictures of busty women on the wall, the closet door where several of his clothes still hung, open. Knick-knacks dotted the chest of drawers by the wall. For most of those sixteen years, Frankie had been Flynn's best friend. Flynn couldn't count the nights he had crept into this room to talk to his brother instead of sleeping. He had slept in the bed in front of his eyes more often than his own until he hit puberty and that became 'gay'. Oh the irony.

Frankie's room was a grim reminder of the man Flynn had murdered. Frankie had been slain in order to protect Flynn's now estranged husband, but there was a part of Flynn that hated that he had to do it. Hated that he had had to choose. Maybe a small part of him that was angry at Quinn for putting him in that position. He couldn't be angry at Frankie any more. Frankie was gone.

"Fuck you, Francis," Flynn said under his breath. Instead of leaving, however, he moved over to sit on Frankie's bed. It was getting harder to breathe in the room, but Flynn didn't want to leave yet. He leaned back against Frankie's mattress until his head was on the pillows and there he stayed, curled up into a ball. He didn't cry. Not yet. He was silent in the crypt of his brother's life, grieving for a friend he had lost nearly a decade ago.