Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first day is the easiest.

He wakes up in what must be an abandoned warehouse or basement. A sack is yanked roughly off his head, launching droplets of blood into the air. A cut on his temple weeps and blood slowly threads its way down his eyebrow towards his eye. His hands are shackled behind the chair he sits on, ankles are chained to the legs. He can’t raise his shoulder enough to swipe at the cut.

The blood’s going to get in his eye.

Frenchie quickly scans the cavernous room and allows himself momentary relief when he sees it’s just him. No other clowns from Butcher's clown car. Just him.

Well, him and her, of course.

Little Nina looks down at him with a radiant smile, cigarette in one hand, gun in the other.

“My little rabbit,” She takes a long pull from her cigarette and runs the mouth of the gun over Frenchie’s buzzed scalp. “I was worried my men had concussed you.”

Frenchie knows he should be fucking terrified of whatever’s to come, but he’s so happy that it’s only him, that no one else he knows has gotten involved in his bullshit. He smiles pleasantly. Maybe he is concussed.

“Only a cut, eh?”

Nina clicks her tongue, probably surprised at his relaxed attitude. “I missed you, you know. My little plaything.”

Frenchie’s mood sours slightly. “Is that why I’m here?”

“Mm, yes. And no.” Nina moves to sit on his lap, cigarette uncomfortably close to his face. “Sure, I was bored. Killing people can be so repetitive, as you know.”

She takes another long inhale then stubs the cigarette out on Frenchie’s shoulder until it burns through the thin cotton of his shirt. It’s a pain so familiar it borders on comforting.

He bites his lip hard enough to bleed but makes no noise.

“It’s simple, really, my rabbit.”

Nina stands up and throws the stub on the ground, crushing it under a shiny heel.

“If I can’t have you, no one can.”

The first week he mostly thinks of Kimiko.

As Nina’s guards move him from place to place, blindfolding him and throwing him in trunks and vans, he wonders if she made it back from the hospital okay. She must have called one of them at least. He worries less about that and more about what’ll happen once she’s back with them after the Russian shit show. She’s not a Supe anymore, and Butcher doesn’t keep what he doesn’t use. This, he knows from personal experience.

He thinks of her hands held together, pushing into his chest.

Marseille.

They should have left when they had the chance.

Frenchie gets bored, but not as bored as Nina's lackeys. They pull him out of the tiny, windowless room he’s kept in and drag him out into a makeshift kitchen. As far as he can tell, this newest prison is an abandoned apartment turned storage room The place is a fucking dump.

Despite the less-than-favorable conditions and semi-regular beatings, he’s not lost hope yet. Frenchie knows pitying himself will only make the situation more unbearable, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t counting on at least someone looking for him. He’s lost track of how long it’s been since Nina took him, but he figures it’s best to bide his time. He still has no idea what the fuck she wants from him. 

He blinks against the harsh light from the windows and smiles when he recognizes Nina’s men. “Ivan. Anatoly. I haven’t seen you fucks since I had to clean up your shit in Jersey!" 

The comment gets him socked on the side of the head, the blow hard enough to leave a low whine in his ears. He blinks back involuntary tears, shocked by the immediate onset of pain. 

Ivan hauls him by his shirt collar, the ratty fabric tearing under Frenchie’s weight.

He pretends not to notice Anatoly turn the sink tap on and shove a rag down into the drain. He smiles nervously.

“I never question Little Nina,” Ivan says. “But I never understood what she saw in you. You’re just another filthy street rat.”

Anatoly saunters up to Ivan’s side. 

“What, Ivan? You’ve never seen an insect you just want to crush under your boot?” 

Behind them, the water in the sink has started overflowing.

Frenchie stares at it out of the corner of his eye and tries to quell his rising panic, his breaths starting to come in quick pants.

Anatoly starts rolling up his sleeves. “Back in Rybinsk, when I was little boy, my mother would kick me out of the house while she cooked. I could only wander around for so long. So I’d go down to the river and find all sorts of little critters.”

He swaps with Ivan and drags Frenchie until he’s facing the sink, one hand gripping the back of his neck roughly.

“Something about holding the animals underwater. It felt so…good.”

Frenchie shoots out his hands to hold onto the counter, but the linoleum is wet and slippery, and the Russians are simply bigger.

It doesn’t take much for them to shove his head underwater.

Even though he takes a deep breath before going under, the water is so cold it shocks him enough to let it out, bubbles rising through the water. He thrashes, but the Russians hold him down, and when he gives one of them a quick kick in the shin with his heel, he’s rewarded with a punch in the ribs.

Just when it feels like he’s about to start swallowing water, they yank his head up. He takes in air through desperate gasps, but it’s not long at all before they shove him right back under.

And so it goes.

Again and again, long enough for it to be agonizing, but not long enough to kill him.

It’s no reason to push his luck, but he knows they can’t kill him without Nina’s say-so, so when they drag him up again, he twists towards Anatoly.

“Were you this much of a pussy with those animals too?” He asks between sharp inhales. “Or have you always been this shit at killing?”

In the blink of an eye, he’s flung onto the dirty concrete floor.

Then, they beat the ever-loving shit out of him.

He thinks he must black out because one minute they’re wailing on him and the next there’s the sound of a ringtone and receding footsteps. He curls in on himself as much as he can, but the fiery pain in his body doesn’t give him much room to move. He thinks some bones must be broken, and can feel them grinding together when he shifts on the floor.

He can barely hear it through the ringing in his ears but murmured Russian floats in from the room next door. Eventually, they come back in. Anatoly chains him to the rusted pipes on the wall, while Ivan grabs a water bottle from the busted fridge. He throws it up in the air, catches it, then lobs it violently at Frenchie. It makes contact with his throbbing ribs and he sees stars. One of them squats down next to him, but he’s hurting too much to be able to tell who it is.

“Nina wants to see you."

They leave and take the keys to his cuffs with them.

For three days, no one comes for him.

Nina smiles down at him, carding her hands through his hair.

It’s long now and crawls down the back of his neck in usually filthy curls. Sometimes she plays with it after he’s been granted a shower, but usually, she’s grabbing it by fistfuls, yanking hard enough to leave his scalp smarting.

He’s not sure what’s worse. The time he spends being abused in her bed, or the escalating cruelty of her men’s beatings. A quick glance at her phone on the nightstand tells him he’s been missing for almost two months. The mildly good morale he had felt at the beginning of the whole ordeal has quickly vanished. Now he spends most of his time locked away in his mind, trying as hard as he can to feel nothing at all.

Today Nina’s being considerably gentle, but he’s only been with her for an hour or two.

Hoping for mercy is most definitely a waste.

His head rests in her lap, manicured fingers roaming down his bruised skin. He’d hiss in pain, but even that seems too exhausting now.

“Nina,” He whispers.

Something’s been on his mind for a while, and now that she’s in one of her good moods, he figures it’s as good a time as any to ask.

“Why didn’t you kill Kimiko? You knew she was still at the hospital with me.”

She scoffs. “I thought you’d be happy, my little dog.”

He hears the sound of a cigarette being lit before it’s pushed between his lips. He takes as deep of an inhale as he can, then coughs harshly. Since the whole sink debacle, he hasn’t quite been able to breathe right. It was fine for the most part, but lately, it seems like it just takes too long to catch his breath.

Either way, he relishes the warm rush of nicotine in his system.

Nina takes her own sharp inhale, her other hand traveling down to Frenchie’s exposed chest.

“Well, she’s a Supe, is she not?”

He says nothing.

“Butcher wouldn’t give up such a handy weapon so easily. A chemist on the other hand,”

She shrugs and tilts her head.

“You’re not so special, my Sergei.”

When the cigarette is nothing but ash, Nina sits up, turns around, and presses cherry-flavored lips against his own. Her hands wander down to his boxers, and that’s when he takes his cue.

He floats above his body and thinks of the seagulls in Marseille.

While his father would go buy cigarettes he would sit on a bench by the shore, watching as they circled above.

Just like the seagulls, he floats up, up and away.

He thinks he might be sick.

For days now he’s been locked in some moldy, damp cellar. He’s not cuffed or restrained in any way, but he’s been too tired and too sore to move much.

He shivers on the freezing concrete, bones knocking against the floor. It does nothing to help both the old and new aches and pains he has, and even being left alone to rest isn’t providing him with much comfort.

They don’t feed him much at all. There’s a plate in the corner of the cellar with a miserable-looking sandwich on it, probably the most decadent meal he’s seen in weeks. He knows he should be hungry, but his body doesn’t seem to get the memo. Looking at the thing makes him want to gag. He wishes instead of food they’d give him clothes. Even the boxers he’s wearing are torn and ratty, barely staying up on his hips.

His skin is hot to the touch, but it provides him no warmth.

Something must be wrong with him. Really, really wrong.

Nina squats down in front of him, the sound of expensive bracelets clinking together pulling him from his sleep.

It’s always been him who’s dragged to where she is. She’s never come to visit him at whichever shithole he’s being kept.

A hand reaches for his jaw, lifting it up until they’re meeting each other’s eyes.

Two sharp clicks of her tongue.

“I’ve heard you’ve been misbehaving in my absence, Sergei,”

He looks up at her through thick eyelashes, and feels the way his skin burns. He’s had a fever for days now. He wonders if this is what decomposing bodies feel like, the rot slowly setting in.

Nina’s wearing a feral grin, but it’s quickly replaced by something Frenchie thinks is meant to resemble concern. She looks at the again abandoned plate in the corner, then back at his face.

“Something is wrong with you, my little rabbit.”

Frenchie inhales laboriously in lieu of speaking. He’s tired. He just wants to sleep again.

“Who’s been keeping guard?” She snaps at the man standing behind her, quickly getting up.

Nina looks pissed, and for once her anger isn’t directed at him. She turns and storms out of Frenchie’s cellar, her absence followed by loud arguing in Russian. He can only pick up bits and pieces, but it’s enough to get the gist of what’s going on. Gunshots start ringing out, then there’s the sickening thud of bodies hitting the ground.

From the corner of his eye, he can see blood pooling on the concrete outside his door.

Tentatively, Frenchie allows himself a moment of joy.

He feels his lips being stretched by a delirious smile and then he’s laughing. Even once all the noise from the outside stops, and Nina comes back in, he cannot stop laughing. The sound echoes in the empty room, but Frenchie can’t stop the horrible cackles that rip from his throat.

When they jam the needle into his neck, that’s when he finally stops.

Reality has begun to slip away from him.

He spends more time awake than asleep, and whenever he does wake up, someone’s in the room sticking a needle into his skin. He doesn’t know if it’s medicine or drugs, but as soon as he feels the sharp poke of a needle, he’s out again.

His dreams consist mostly of his father.

They’re weird and non-sensical, reminiscent of his drug-addled hallucinations. Sometimes his father is a ten-foot-tall monster who chases him through the streets of Algiers. Other times, he's drinking a warm glass of milk while his father reads him a bedtime story. Sometimes, he dreams of nothing at all.

Only inky blackness through bouts of restless sleep.

One night he dreams he's in one of the countless hotel rooms he and his father stayed in. He's a little boy again, crouching behind a bed to hide from his father's manic rage. His father's throwing things at him; shoes, a vase, books, a bottle of cognac. Then the sound of shattering glass transforms into that of rapid gunfire and loud, pained screams. 

He cowers in on himself and covers his ears, willing everything to just stop. 

The noise doesn't stop, but the dream changes.

Kimiko. 

She's holding onto either side of his face, hands warm and familiar. 

Frenchie blinks rapidly and wills himself out of the haze he's in.

He's not in the hotel room anymore. He's in the cellar, and he's shaking, and Kimiko is holding him, arms wrapped tight around him. 

He thinks her mouth is moving. But it can't be. 

She's speaking. 

...go...we have to go...please

Kimiko's eyes are wet, tears mixing with the blood on her cheeks. 

"Mon coeur," He whispers, a trembling hand reaching for her face. He's smiling, but he feels the hot sting of tears in his eyes. "Why do you cry?" 

Her brow furrows and she glances towards the open cellar door. 

Gunshots again.

Suddenly he's very tired. He feels his eyelids drooping, but he doesn't want to sleep. If Kimiko is here, he doesn't want to wake up from this dream. 

He looks past her towards the door and wonders what Nina gave him.

Nothing makes sense.

For a second, he sees Butcher standing in the hallway. Then, he's gone. 

Kimiko snaps her fingers, but his head is pounding, there's too much noise, his body hurts, but he doesn't want her to go, he doesn't want-

Frenchie wakes up with his head in someone's lap.

Distantly, he feels the soft fabric of a blanket on top of him and he notices a change in the air. Wherever he is, it's not the cellar anymore. It's warm, and even though he's still freezing, his body feels like it's giving out just a little bit less.

He looks up into familiar brown eyes.

“Hey, French. Hey, man, it’s me. Just me. You know Kimiko’s eviscerating them all right now? They’re going to die a painful fuckin’ death. We're going to get you home and it's all going to be ok, all right? We're here now. She ain't gonna fuckin' touch you again.”

Frenchie wants to nod, smile, laugh, cry, do anything. His body won’t let him. All he can manage is slow blinks, a minute twitch at the corner of his lips. Tremors wrack his entire body, and it hurts his head when his teeth clatter together. Secretly he’s thankful for whatever Nina gave him, doesn’t want to imagine the pain he’ll be in when it wears off.

He thinks this might be the closest he’s ever been to dying.

“Hey,” MM laughs weakly, his fingers brushing back the sweat-slicked hair from his forehead. It’s just like Kimiko had done earlier, and nothing like how Nina had pulled on his hair. The gentle touch is almost too much to bear.

MM smiles down at him, but it’s a sad, pathetic thing. “Your hair hasn’t been this long since Morocco, remember?”

Frenchie takes a rattling breath, and feels his vision begin to fade in and out. Fucking hell. It feels like he can't stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time.

He wants to reassure MM that it’ll be fine, that it’s him, he’s always fine, but he can barely draw enough air into his lungs as is. After two failed attempts at speaking, he just stops trying, instead focusing on the familiar lull of MM’s voice.

He’s not sure how long passes, but eventually he feels a soft, familiar hand in his, thumb rubbing back and forth on the abused skin of his wrist. He feels someone press their forehead gently against his, hears hushed whispers coming from somewhere nearby, and then the rumble of an engine.

Kimiko’s thumb continues to glide on his skin and suddenly all the human contact is too much. He wants to sleep, wants desperately to get away from his own body.

If death comes for him, he thinks he’d consider it a kindness.

Chapter Text

morocco, 2012

After a long, grueling day of reconnaissance under the blazing Moroccan sun, they cram themselves onto their comically small apartment balcony. Waves lap distantly onto the beach, and the beer in their hands is ice-cold but still not cold enough to fight the heat.

Is this their fifth assignment? Sixth? Not remembering such a simple detail should be a clear signal to Serge that he might be too fucked up. He’s pushed past his limits before, but even this… Cherie would give him a light slap on the cheek, and Jay would shake his head with his bottom lip caught between his teeth, a mischievous look in his eyes despite the gravity of the situation

Silly, silly Serge.

They’re only on their third or fourth beer each, but he already feels himself nodding away, his body involuntarily jerking itself awake. He’s out of cocaine and doesn’t have anything besides a couple of Adderalls to tide him over until the assignment’s done. A palpable tension follows him around, and Serge thinks that no matter how much he snorts or smokes it won’t leave without a fight.

Across from him, sitting on two rickety outdoor chairs is the rest of Grace Mallory’s merry troop. Mother’s Milk and Billy Butcher, both older and burlier than Serge himself. What he lacks in age though, he more than makes up for in experience and skill. So far, he thinks he’s proved himself worthy to be part of their little band, and can even sense that they’ve started warming up to him.

MM has been the easier nut to crack, by far. Butcher's proven to be more of a challenge, but it doesn't take long for Serge to realize that competency's the best way to get in his good graces. First there was a couple of drunk nights cooped up in a safehouse playing poker, then of course all the adrenaline-fueled missions, and now they've even taken to calling him Frenchie. 

This mission might just ruin whatever tentative camaraderie they were starting to have, and he has no one to blame but himself.

On the balcony, Butcher takes a long swig of his beer, eyes never leaving Serge's. He's been eyeing him for a while, and as much as Serge's pretended not to notice, today's been hard enough that he feels the need to say something. 

The alcohol and the drugs in his system lower his inhibition, not to mention the mild case of heatstroke they all probably have. He’s never gotten mouthy with either of them, MM because he’s generally an agreeable person, and Butcher, because well… That’s not a question Serge wants answered.

This time though…

Serge cocks his head, lights his last spliff. A snarl crawls onto his lips.

"Something the matter, Monsieur Charcutier?" 

Butcher lets out a long whistle, eyes veering off towards the horizon. "Dunno, Frenchie. Here I was kinda hoping you'd tell us."  

Mother’s Milk looks at him from above his beer can, eyebrows raised.

“Is something the matter with you?”

Serge feels his eye twitch.

“Non. Non, absolument pas.” 

It's a lie, obviously. By omission, or on purpose, he's not sure. 

MM rolls his eyes, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees in that fatherly way of his. 

"Listen kid, we know you like to, uh, indulge your hedonistic side, but... It's gone a little far, don't you think? You've looked like a fucking wreck lately." 

Serge suddenly feels his guard crawl back up, fingers tightening on his beer can. Right now he's high enough to prove MM right, but really, what the hell does he know? 

"Come on," he says, trying his hardest not to slur his words. His accented English doesn't seem to help matters much. "We're having a good time, no? No need to talk about that stuff," 

MM frowns. "You've been high since we landed here, and the mission's not even halfway done. I'm not the fucking DEA, alright, but you're not usually this fucked. I know we're not really pals or whatever, but something's clearly up-"

Butcher, who's been eerily silent this whole time, finally speaks up. 

“What does it matter if there is or isn’t?” He snorts, shaking his head as if Serge isn’t sitting right in front of him. “You know you’re grounded for this right? We take you with us and we’re asking for an ass-fucking.”

Serge lifts his head up even though it feels like gravity is palming his forehead back, half-lidded eyes matching his nervous smile. A laugh drifts out between his lips, but Milk is frowning now and Butcher’s eyes are vicious with…something.

“What?”

The weak breeze rolling in from the sea does nothing to ease the rising tension.

Butcher laughs. “Funny, right?”

Serge feels his stomach drop to his feet, as much as it can be felt. Vaguely, he begins to feel a horrible sense of deja-vu, even though the man sitting in front of him is nothing like-

"Serge, tu me vois en train de rire? Trouvez-vous cela drôle?”

Suddenly the thing in his hand isn’t enough and he needs more, more, more. He only has five Adderall pills left and there’s still a second leg to the assignment, a long transfer into Monaco, which is one step closer to Marseille, and once he’s done with the Adderall he’ll only have downers left and-

It would take an idiot not to notice Serge's been taking enough shit to give an elephant an overdose, and MM's one of the smartest people he's ever met. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have blown through his eight ball so fast, or maybe they shouldn’t have been assigned somewhere so close to home. He still has contacts from his past, and he knows it would take him longer to fall asleep at night than it would to score in Marseille. He hasn’t been to Europe since he left for New York, and he's had absolutely no desire or reason to go back. 

As soon as Mallory gave them all the mission debriefing and left them each a dossier, he went home and drank an entire fifth of vodka, followed by a quick trip to visit whichever dealer he knew that wasn't locked up.

And he'd been doing so well too. 

Really, it's not like he wants to be this way. He would love to be someone he's not, someone unburdened by years of poor decisions and violent encounters. Being on a different continent at least gave him the chance to put distance between himself and his past. 

It was foolish of him to think his brain would forget the scars of his past his body so easily carried.

Serge feels ash fall on his bare thigh, at the same time he realizes he still hasn’t said anything. He snaps out of it and looks up at Butcher and MM who’ve gotten to their feet without him even noticing.

“You’re...benching me?”

Butcher shrugs, downing the last of his beer in one quick pull. “Sorry, son. We need a chemist on the job, not the whole bloody pharmacy.”

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder. “It’s nothing personal, man. Just pull it together, and it’ll be water under the bridge for the next one.” M.M.’s lips twitch and he pushes out a half-smile.

It doesn’t reach his eyes.

Butcher seems to have relaxed from the beer, maybe lightened up from the pre-mission adrenaline. He's smiling, but a smile from him has never meant the same as one coming from anyone else. His eyes say something else entirely.

Don't let this shit happen again.

When they leave, he follows them to the door, locking it behind them, turning every bolt until it clicks.

For a minute he just stands there, feeling entirely unsteady on his feet. Once he feels like he can walk without running into a wall or faceplanting into the ground, he turns, eyes catching in the hallway mirror.

He stares at himself and cringes at what he sees. Despite the deep tan and his sun-freckled cheeks, there are purple bags under his eyes. His hair is the longest it’s ever been, a tangled mess that rests an inch or two above his shoulders. His cheeks are hollow, and he knows it’s because of the stupid amount of drugs he’s been doing.

Looking in the mirror, he can admit that he's not in good shape.

After buying a pack of cigarettes in broken Arabic, Serge decides to conduct an experiment. 

Their rented apartment isn't far from the beach, and Butcher and MM won't be back for at least another six hours. He has time to kill. 

He could get burned, wandering out like this. To say Serge’s risking it all is a wild understatement. He knows the potential consequences and still wants to play with fire. If he can't risk his life on the mission tonight, he might as well try something else equally as dangerous. 

Halfway through his escapade to the shore, he has to turn into an alley and throw up. He doesn’t know if it’s the drugs or the sun or the incessant buzzing in his head. Lately, it's been harder to ignore when his brain feels all wrong, scrambled like after a good punch to the head. There's something empty in him, hollow and yawning, begging to be filled, and no matter how much he takes, or how many people he fucks, or how close to death he gets, the song remains the same.

Years later, when he looks back, he can’t quite remember what he took that made him stumble into the water. Maybe he smoked a joint, dropped a tab, did a line or four, popped too many downers and not enough uppers, adding to whatever ridiculous cocktail was already swimming through his veins.

What he does remember is walking into the Atlantic Ocean. There was a red flag planted in the sand, but absolutely no one on the beach to stop him from wading in. He remembers his papa telling him once that a red flag means the waves will drag you under in as much time as it takes you to get into the water. Clearly, the ocean didn't get the memo, because the water's warm and still.

Serge floats face up but can’t quite seem to catch his breath, and it feels like the air is what wants to drown him, not the waves. 

A creeping realization.

He belongs to no one.

Not even the sea wants him.

Chapter Text

Kimiko is discharged from the hospital, and Frenchie isn’t there.

MM is gracious enough to offer to pick her up, despite the ongoing Soldier Boy situation. He doesn’t ask, doesn’t complain, just tells Kimiko to send him the hospital address.

“You’re looking better.”

He stands outside the building, tall and formidable as he leans against his car. He crosses his arms and lowers his glasses.

Kimiko says nothing, only moves past him to open the passenger door. She throws herself down onto the seat and sinks down as far as she can. Her cheeks burn with shame at the thought of kissing Frenchie, then with mildly repressed rage. She doesn’t know what she’ll say to him when she sees him again, but a hard slap feels appropriate.

In the end, it’s not that the kiss mattered at all. What matters is the fact that he left her.

He left her.

There’s the sound of the front door slamming, then the engine roaring to life. MM taps rapidly on the steering wheel with his thumb. One, twice, three times. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye.

“So. Frog up and left, huh?”

Kimiko’s hands clench in her lap, fingernails digging into the palms of her hands.

MM sighs, his tapping picking up the pace.

“Fucking Frenchie. Always last to follow the plan, if at all. You know, we have shit that needs done. One man down and-”

She blinks and turns to face MM. He still doesn’t understand her sign language, so she pulls out her phone and types it out.

He’s not with you?

 Suddenly MM looks just as confused as she feels.

“What? Nah, last I saw him was during the whole Soldier Boy shit show, with you.”

Kimiko frowns, slowly growing more uneasy.

“He’s the most erratic, unpredictable fuck I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting.” MM shakes his head. “But that motherfucker is loyal. He’d never just leave during a mission.”

He bites his lip and reconsiders.

“He’d never leave you.”

Kimiko does not give a single fuck about Soldier Boy.

To her, he’s just another thing that’s in the way of finding Frenchie.

In their spare time, she and MM have looked in all the obvious places, spoken to all his known acquaintances, but no one’s seen him. Not even Cherie, who seems equally as shocked to hear about his disappearance. She promises she’ll keep an eye out, but there’s not much she can do from wherever she’s hiding in Europe.

Kimiko desperately wants to leave it all behind and dedicate one hundred percent of her time to searching for him, but not helping with Soldier Boy doesn’t seem to be in Frenchie’s best interest. The sooner they deal with the Supe, the sooner she can get more people to help her look.

Back at the flatiron, she seems to spend all her time arguing with the fucking wall.

People are either busy with Soldier Boy shit or just don’t have the patience to communicate with her.

Just another reason she misses Frenchie like a lung.

Today Hughie’s her unfortunate victim.

“Kimiko, I know, I know. Come on, it’s Frenchie,” Hughie says, with that stupid, pitying expression of his. “We all want to get him back. There’s just so much shit on our plate-”

Kimiko stands up so quickly her chair topples back onto the ground. “Maybe if you weren’t so far up Butcher’s ass, you would find it in you to give a fuck! What if it was Annie?”

Hughie stares at her, taken aback. Then his expression softens.

“I don’t…I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

She sighs, picking up her chair and sitting back down on it.

She knows Hughie cares. She’d be hard-pressed to find something in this world he didn’t care about, but right now it’s just not enough. She can tell that even he, who seems to have the most patience out of all of them, is reaching the end of his rope. They’re all stressed, and it feels like they get one thing out of the way just for another more awful thing to take its place. Not to mention they’re missing a whole team member. At least, just a team member to the rest of them.

Kimiko stares across her desk at Frenchie’s, looking at all his belongings scattered across the battered wooden surface. It's a disorganized and chaotic. a mess that only he could find his way around.

Her chest aches.

It feels like half of her has been ripped away.

Less than a week after Soldier Boy explodes in the sky, Butcher’s already got a new twisted idea to exact revenge on whoever the fuck.

Kimiko’s right outside the office when she hears part new insane plan to infiltrate Vought. Her hand tightens on the doorknob, face twitching involuntarily with rage. If it weren’t because he’s of use in the search for Frenchie, she’d rip his fucking head off right now. She’s two seconds away from committing murder when MM’s voice stops her in her tracks.

“No. No new bullshit plan of yours till we find Frenchie. I don’t care what new stupid vendetta you got going on, this is priority number one. He’s one of us, man.”

“I never said that I didn’t want to find the cheeky little shit, but this is a great fuckin’ lead. Probably as good as we’re gonna get.”

“You cannot be serious right now. Some really bad stuff could be happening to him right now. The fucker could be dead for all we know, and we’re here doing jack shit.”

“Come off it, MM. If there’s one thing Frenchie’s always been able to do it's handle himself. It’s only been a month since we last saw him, and we both know he’s been on fucking benders longer than that.”

“Yeah, but this? Disappearing while we’re trying to deal with Soldier Boy? It smells bad. Even Kimiko has no idea where he is, and you’re telling me that don’t sound suspicious to you?”

“MM, I promise ya, we’ll sort it out after we get in on this-”

“No. Hell fucking no. I’m going out and looking for his ass whether you fuckin’ like it or not.”

Then, MM’s voice lowers in volume and Kimiko has to press herself against the door to hear.

“Sometimes, I think you don’t wanna find him just so you have another excuse to go apeshit on someone.”

For at least a minute, no one speaks.

“All right, listen, I’ll talk to some cunts, see what I can do.”

“Good. And I ain’t even gonna say thank you, 'cause it’s what he deserves. He’d do the same for us, and you know I’m right.”

“He’ll be fine. You’ll see. It’s fuckin’ Frenchie mate.”

The sound of footsteps makes Kimiko scramble back into a dark corner of the hallway where she can’t be seen. Butcher leaves without seeing her, muttering something under his breath. MM follows close behind, moving to lock the office doors, but he stops short, slowly turning until he spots Kimiko in the dark.

He frowns, looking a little embarrassed. “You heard all that?”

Kimiko steps out into the light and nods.

MM takes a deep inhale. “Well. I meant what I said. What’s a team without a junkie chemist? Something has to give. Sooner or later, we’ll find something.”

She points at the elevator. “What about him?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Don’t listen to that asshole. To be honest, I think he’s just afraid of what he’ll find if he starts looking.”

Kimiko looks down at the old wooden panels, and then at her boots. They’re scuffed and worn from use, but they’re the first pair of shoes she ever owned after escaping from Shining Light. Frenchie bought them with his own money and then made her spend the whole day buying new clothes at some thrift market in Flushing. It was the first time in a long time, that she knew, not just felt, that someone maybe actually gave a shit.

She says nothing to MM, but Butcher’s not the only one who’s afraid.

Her sleep is restless, filled with dreams of all the horrible shit that could be happening to him. In them, she hears his voice, soft and sweet, before it turns into screams. Then, silence.

She’s not sure what’s worse.

Almost always she wakes up drenched in sweat, panting until she feels she can take a breath without crying. Before it mostly worked, but now nothing stops the hot tears from running down her face.

Every day, she texts him. There’s obviously no chance of him having his phone, but stupidly she keeps doing it anyway.

Hi.

Butcher’s being a dick. Again.

Hey!

If you’re hiding away somewhere, you’re doing a great job.

I miss you.

Fuck you. Fuck you for leaving!!

WHERE ARE YOU?

If you come back, we can go to Marseille. Fuck everyone else.

Annie told me that they used to put missing kids on milk cartons. Should I put you on one?

I’m practicing my cooking for when you come back.

T hat was a lie. I’m looking for you.

Come back. I promise I’ll never kiss you again. Please just come back.

I hope you’re okay. Wherever you are.

Every day she sends a new message.

Every day she waits silently for a reply that never comes.

A month passes.

Then two.

Then three.

Everywhere they look is somewhere Frenchie is not.

Not in the flatiron, not in the city streets, not in any of their ramshackle apartments, not in any drug den.

No sign of him anywhere.

Chapter Text

On a cold, snowy December morning, something finally gives.

Everyone except for Hughie is in the office, working away at any possible lead they have that might point them in Frenchie’s direction.

No matter how long it takes Kimiko will keep looking, she knows that. But lately, the exhaustion clinging to her has made it hard to search productively. Morale has been low for a while now.

She’s tired, and she’s not the only one.

She watches the steam rise from her coffee mug while she waits on some stupid loading screen for some stupid software for a stupid lead that isn’t getting them anywhere.

The sound of the door slamming shakes her out of her stupor.

“Guys!”

Hughie bursts into the office, laptop in one hand, piece of paper in the other.

MM jumps in his chair. “Jesus, Hughie, that door’s like a hundred years old, you’re gonna fucking break it,”

Annie stands at the coffee maker, mug shattered on the ground. “Hughie, what the hell-”

“A lead.” Hughie rushes for the nearest desk, slamming his computer down before opening it. “I think I found a lead.”

They all beeline to the desk and crowd around him.

Kimiko kneels on the ground and stares at Hughie’s screen. She has no idea what she’s looking at.  She glances at Hughie and sees there are dark bags under his eyes and a slightly manic look to him.

Butcher crosses his arms from the other side of the desk. “Alright, what the fuck?”

MM bends down and squints, trying to get a closer look at whatever Hughie’s showing them. “What is this? Drug trafficking?”

Annie frowns. “Hughie, did you stay up all night?”

“Yes,” Hughie smiles but then frowns. “I mean no. Wait. No to the first question, yes to the second. Technically, it's smuggling, not trafficking, but I’m not really sure the terminology-”

MM’s face goes slack. “Hughie. Get to the point.”

Hughie cringes. “Sorry. I guess I should start by saying I’ve been keeping an eye on the Russian mob. Specifically, um, Little Nina.”

MM and Butcher exchange glances. Kimiko looks at Hughie, stomach tightening.

Wherever Little Nina is, trouble isn’t far behind.

Hughie holds his hands up. “I know, I know that lead ran cold and there was nothing there. But I kept up with their stuff, just to you know, make sure we were covering all our bases. Last night, I saw this on one of the phones we chipped.”

He pulls something up on the screen and points to a log of text messages in Russian.

“I ran this through a translator, and saw that apparently Nina’s been buying medication from someone off the black market.”

Butcher groans. “Bloody fantastic son. You figured out a criminal’s been committing crimes. Would you like a fucking medal?”

“Wait,” Hughie says. “This is where it gets interesting. It’s only been for a week or two that she’s been buying this, and she’s only been getting it in small quantities, not her regular larger shipments.”

Annie scrubs a hand down her face. “Small as in?”

“Small as in only enough for one person.”

“Does it say what kind of medication?”

“I was getting to that. Here,” Hughie hands MM the piece of paper. “I just looked it up and printed it out, but it looks like it’s some kind of antibiotic usually used to treat lung infections.”

“So, pneumonia or some shit.”

“Exactly. Who gets pneumonia nowadays though? Old people? Babies? Someone who’s been out in the cold? Or maybe being kept somewhere cold? Damp?”

With every new piece of information she hears, Kimiko starts feeling just a little more lightheaded.

MM sighs, handing the paper back. “Alright, it’s an interesting lead, Hughie, I’ll give you that, but it’s not enough to-”

“No,” Hughie grins. “It’s not. Which is why I went fucking Sherlock on this shit. I looked back through all the communications on all the phones and looked at all the addresses being mentioned for shipments. Most of them are apartments somewhere in the boroughs, or warehouses in Jersey, but there was one that stuck out. An abandoned restaurant in the Bronx, kind of like where we, uh, killed Translucent.”

“Lemme guess,” Butcher says. “Has a basement?”

“Bingo.”

“Ok. Ok.” MM’s nodding now, pacing around the desk. “So you’re thinking this all has to do with Frenchie?”

“Yeah, I mean someone being locked in an abandoned basement during a New York December? A lung infection doesn’t sound too far off. But that’s not even everything. There’s only been one shipment at that address for the past month. I backtracked every move it had, and it started moving a week after Frenchie went missing. It’s a shipment, but it doesn’t have to mean its contraband. Who’s to say they’re not shipping a person around?”

MM stops pacing. Annie looks at Kimiko, then back at Hughie. Butcher just stares at the ground, seemingly lost in thought. Kimiko feels like she might faint.

“I mean, I gotta hand it to you Hughie. If you say it all adds up,” MM holds up his hands. “I say we go for it.”

Hughie shuts the computer and stands up, one hand going to the back of his neck in that nervous way Kimiko’s learned to recognize.

Annie nods. “I agree with MM. If it is him, we have to move before he does. Kimiko?”

Over the last two months, they’ve all started picking up more and more of her sign language, but there’s no need to sign anything. Kimiko stands up and grabs Hughie by the waist, hugging him so tightly that she accidentally lifts him off his feet. She stops when she hears a wheeze. He inhales then gives Kimiko a pat on the back.

“Thanks for that. Obviously, I could be fucking wrong. But listen, if it's anything worth trying…”

Butcher moves from behind the desk and grabs MM and Kimiko by the shoulders.

“A lead’s a lead, eh lads? Time to nab ourselves a Frenchman. And,”

He cocks his head, a dangerous smile forming on his face.

“Let’s kill that Russian cunt.”

Butcher makes the whole rescue plan relatively simple.

Hughie will stay in the van with the engine running, prepped for a quick escape if need be. Annie will stay with him as muscle. They’ll both keep an eye out if anyone else tries to get into the building.

The rest of them go in, guns blazing.

As soon as they get to the address, Kimiko’s mounting sense of dread escalates.

The building looks truly abandoned, as if no one’s been there in years. The awning above the door looks like one heavy storm away from collapse, and through the graffitied windows they can see that the inside of the place is in equal states of abandoned disarray.

The day itself is disgusting, with ugly gray clouds blanketing the sky, and new reports of an incoming snowstorm. If it’s freezing outside, she doesn’t even want to know how being trapped inside a concrete basement might feel.

They don’t want to make noise in case there are people inside, so Butcher picks the lock as best as he can, fumbling a few times due to the cold. He gets it with a quiet click, and MM has to shoot his hand out to grab the door before the wind can bang it open.

Somehow, the whole thing is ten times worse than Kimiko imagined.

It’s all overturned, partially burnt furniture and she sees at least two rats scurrying through the trash scattered across the floor. They pick their way across the restaurant, MM and Butcher leading with flashlights and semi-automatics. Kimiko follows behind, needing no weapon.

Days after Frenchie went missing, when she begged Annie to get her more compound V, she wasn’t so sure she was making the right decision. Now she’s positive she did. Even if no one is here, Kimiko thinks she might just kill Little Nina anyway.

Everything is eerily quiet as if no one’s ever been here at all. Further into the restaurant, they find a few doors, all unlocked, but empty. In the very back there’s one final door. Butcher motions MM to cover him with a tilt of his neck. When he kneels to pick the lock, he finds there’s no need. The door isn’t locked either, so Butcher slowly turns the knob. There’s a set of stained and cracked concrete stairs.

Noise floats up from below.

There’s the tinny sound of Christmas music playing on a radio, the clinking of glass, and then laughter, followed by at least two or three men speaking in Russian.

Earlier they’d decided if they encountered any resistance, they’d at least keep one of them alive for questioning. Everyone else though, that’s fair game.

Kimiko shoves past Butcher and thunders down the stairs.

“Kimiko, goddamnit wait-”
She doesn’t even know who calls after her, she just sees the four men sitting on the basement ground and time seems to slow to a stop.

They’re sitting around a portable heater and wearing thick parkas and blankets, all while they pass around a bottle of clear liquor. They’re drunk, and they’re laughing.

Chances are, Frenchie isn’t even in this place. Chances, are Frenchie is already long dead, and these people had nothing to do with it.

But he’s been gone for four months, and Kimiko has found nothing, and these men are drunk and they’re laughing, and now all she really sees is red.

Killing, she remembers Butcher saying, is just like riding a bike. Learning is hard, but getting back on is easy.

Before the men even have time to react, she grabs the one nearest to her by the head and slams his body back onto the concrete, right before smashing his skull under her boot.

The sound of gunshots starts ringing out, and then someone’s calling her name.

“Kimiko, wait! Remember the plan,” MM voice through the chaos. “Go look for him. Go!”

Butcher and MM rush in behind her and she turns her head wildly, noticing she hasn’t even taken stock of the whole basement. Off to the left, there’s a hallway and she quickly runs for it, ignoring the absolute shitshow going on behind her. Doors. Always more fucking doors. These are made of steel and heavy, but she kicks each one in easily, all of them leading to empty rooms. Her heart is starting to hammer inside her rib cage, panic working its way to a crescendo in her head.

There’s only one door left.

She doesn’t know why, but this one she doesn’t kick in. She walks up to it, grabs the handle, and pushes.

The room is dimly lit by a singular lightbulb that hangs from the ceiling, but even in the dark, she can tell it’s not much of a room. It’s more of a cellar, really, tiny and dank. She shivers as she walks in, then stops in her tracks.

Something’s curled up in the corner facing away from the door.

Or someone.

Blood pounds in her ears as she takes tentative steps forward, hands shaking uncontrollably at her sides. It can’t be. It fucking can’t be, but already, her heart knows what her mind refuses to comprehend.

Slowly, she makes her way forward and kneels down.

Despite the grime and blood, despite the cuts and bruises, despite the fact that he’s skin and bone, she’d recognize those scars anywhere.

She places a hand on his bare shoulder and almost snatches it away at how hot his skin feels. With the tenderness of a mother holding a newborn, she grabs him by both shoulders and turns him so that his back’s against the ground, head resting in her lap.

Frenchie.

He looks like a corpse.

She holds one hand over his mouth, almost throwing up with relief when she feels the faintest whisper of breath. With as little force as she can manage, she pats his cheek. It does nothing, so she uses a little trick MM taught her and rubs his sternum.

She holds his face in her hands and waits.

For a second, nothing happens.

Then, his eyelashes flutter open.

Kimiko feels wet, hot tears flow down her face, and watches as they splatter down onto Frenchie’s dirty cheeks. She doesn’t know if she’s crying or laughing, but what she does know is that he’s alive and he’s here and he’s in her arms.

She stares down at his cloudy brown eyes. He looks so different, so unlike himself, but his eyes remain the same ones she saw looking at her months and months ago.

It looks like it takes much more effort than it should to open his mouth, and his voice is so raspy that the words are almost incomprehensible, but as soon as he tries to speak she knows what he’s going to say.

“Mon coeur,” One hand reaches weakly for her face, and she grabs at his wrist, lacing her fingers with his. “Why do you cry?”

She opens her mouth, feels like the words are about to rip themselves from her throat-

“Kimiko? Kimiko!”

Butcher skids to a stop at the cellar entrance, blood splattered all over his face and coat.

“Fucking hell…”

For the first and only time, Kimiko sees Billy Butcher look scared.

It’s only for a few seconds, but she sees the color drain from his face as soon he sees Frenchie, gun going slack in his grip. Then, it’s right back to fucking business, and he’s gone again.

She looks down again to see Frenchie’s passed out, hand loose in hers.

“Here,”

She looks up again to see Butcher’s back and handing her a blanket. It’s wet with blood and maybe a little vodka, but it’s dry enough that it’ll do the job.

“I’m gonna finish dealing with these Russian slags. Get Frenchie to the van with MM, then come back down. I wanna ask a few more questions and I could use your delicate touch.”

She nods. Now that she’s found him, she doesn’t want to leave his side for a second, but if it means getting back at Nina and the fucks who did this to him, she figures five minutes won’t hurt.

Besides, MM, Hughie, and Annie will take care of him.

Gently, she sits Frenchie up and wraps the blanket around his almost naked body. Then she picks him up and carries him out of the cellar, down the hallway, up the stairs, and out into the day.

Outside, MM stands by the open doors of the back of the van. She sees how his face crumples when she sets Frenchie down on the makeshift bed of stolen blankets, but she doesn’t stick around for long, quickly turning and heading back into the building.

When she gets downstairs, she’s mildly shocked at what she sees. There’s the pureed head of the man she killed, then two more pumped full of holes. On the ground, blood mixes with the goose feathers from their torn-up parkas. The radio that was playing earlier is riddled with bullet holes, but somehow it still barely works, the glitching sound of some Christmas carol playing over and over.

Butcher stands behind the last surviving man, who’s on his knees but looks like he’s two seconds away from passing out. Blood drips steadily from a deep cut on his forehead and a bullet’s taken most of his right ear clean off.

“Alright. I was thinking we could find Nina through our little Russian friend here,” Butcher grabs a fistful of his hair. “What’s your name?”

“Ana-anatoly,”

Kimiko raises an eyebrow.

“Please,” The man moans. “I tell you anything,”

“Where is Nina?”

“I-I can’t-”

“Well, come on now, Anatoly” Butcher smiles, yanking the man’s head back. “I thought you said anything!”

“Nina, of course Nina, please, please-”

“Kimiko.” Butcher holds up one hand and wiggles his fingers. “How about we do a little slice and dice?”

She walks up to the man and grabs his arm, pulling back the sleeve of his parka.
“No, please, please,”

“When our friend begged like that, did you stop?”

Anatoly breathes raggedly.

“Nah. Didn’t think so, mate.”

Kimiko doesn’t wait. She grabs his wrist with one hand and his middle finger with the other. It doesn’t take much force to rip it off.

The Russian screams until Butcher knocks him on the side of the head.

“Listen, we don’t got time for your bloody whining. Where the fuck is Little Nina?”

Anatoly moans, eyes rolling back.

“Another one.”

Kimiko rips off his pointer finger and throws it behind her.

It takes three more minutes and the rest of the fingers on his right hand for him to give them a location.

As soon as he does, Butcher shoves him to the ground, and then puts a bullet in his head.

“Alright, chop, chop. Hughie, let’s get a fuckin move on.”

Kimiko closes the back doors of the van with a resounding slam. She wipes the blood from her forehead with a sleeve and squats down next to MM and Frenchie. He looks up at Kimiko, and she hates the panicked look he’s wearing.

“Listen I’m not saying he’s going to die right this moment, but we need to get him to a hospital, like yesterday. Motherfucker’s sick as a dog.”

“Where am I going?” Hughie asks from the front.

“Just start driving back to Manhattan,” Annie says.

Butcher sits down on the other side of the van, looking anywhere but at Frenchie. “MM, call Mallory. Explain the whole shitshow. She’ll tell you where we can go.”

“Done. Kimiko, switch? Keep him sitting up, it’ll help his breathing.”

Kimiko nods and takes MM’s spot as he sits Frenchie up. He helps lay him back down between her legs, his back against her chest. He looks like he’s asleep, but even asleep he looks like he’s in pain, his brow furrowed and glistening with sweat. Thankfully the blanket’s covering most of his body because she doesn’t know if she has the stomach to look at all the damage right now.

She takes one of his hands and rubs her thumb back and forth on his bruised skin, then lowers her head and softly presses her forehead against his. She feels his breath hitch, but when she looks back down at his face, his eyes are still closed.

As Hughie pulls out of the alleyway, the van bounces on the road, eliciting a moan from Frenchie.

“Hey easy man, easy!” MM covers his phone with one hand. “Frenchie’s fucking hurt back here,”

“Sorry, I’m sorry! I’ll drive really carefully, promise,”

“Put on some music,” Butcher says.

Kimiko looks up at him in surprise.

Hughie looks through the rearview. “What, what’d he say?”

“Frenchie likes fucking music, alright? Turn on the goddamn radio,”

Annie reaches out and turns the knob on the radio until something that isn’t static or speaking comes on. She lowers the volume until it’s quiet enough not to be bothersome, but loud enough to hear.

It’s Christmas music.

Kimiko stays looking at Butcher, who technically is to blame for getting Frenchie involved with Little Nina again. He looks back at her with some sort of silent understanding.

Nina, she’ll enjoy ripping apart.

Butcher, she’ll just have to mutilate later.

As soon as MM hangs up the phone, the van is silent except for the low lull of Christmas jazz. No one feels much like speaking.

She didn’t notice until now, but Frenchie’s hair is long. Matted and filthy, but the longest she’s seen it. His face is clean-shaven though. She pushes back his hair with one hand, the other rubbing slow, gentle circles on his chest.

Through the window of the van Kimiko can see snowflakes falling. She looks back down at him and keeps a loose grip on his hand.

The song on the radio plays softly, and along with the rumble of the van, she feels herself falling asleep.

Chapter Text

A sharp inhale of air.

Her eyes snap open and she turns to her side slowly, trying her best not to make any noise.

Not that it quite matters if she does or doesn’t. It always takes him a long time to come to.

She stares.

His chapped lips are barely parted, gaze focused on the ceiling. Beneath the moonlight, his eyes look like milk and honey. Tiny rivulets run out and down their corners, cutting tracks down his bruised skin. There hasn't been a single time that he’s woken up with his eyes dry.

Under the scratchy sheets, she feels his hands twitch under hers. A collection of wires and tubes rustle against the thin fabric.

Every time he wakes up, it takes him a few minutes to orient himself. He has to blink foggily and drag himself to consciousness and out of some half-remembered dream.

Every time, she waits patiently.

She watches him swallow and lick his lips. Finally, the grip on her hand tightens.

“What time is it?”

Kimiko steals a glance at the glowing clock on the wall and pulls a hand out from under the blankets, singing a quick ‘3 am’.

Frenchie swallows again, then turns towards her so that their faces are inches apart.

Kimiko takes one hand and thumbs the bruises under his eyes. She gives him a rueful smile.

He does his best to smile back, but he looks too tired for it to be anything of consequence.

She wipes the damp from his cheeks with the back of her hand.

“Go back to sleep,”

The first few days he wakes up at completely random times and for short bursts, but his reaction is always the same. He’s confused and agitated, eyes wildly unfocused, hands ready to rip at the wires poking out of his skin. He whines, low and animal-like as if he doesn’t remember he can speak.

Eventually, they decide it best to just keep him relaxed.

She watches from her spot on the nearest recliner as they inject something into his IV, marveling at the way the lines on his forehead smooth out, the slowing rise and fall of his chest.

Once the nurse is done with rotations, he reaches out a skinny arm, and she scrambles onto the bed, careful not to tug on anything or bump into him too hard.

Kimiko always does her best to make sure her touch is gentle, grip always loose enough for him to get out of if he wants to. When his back is facing her, she traces the sharp slope of his shoulder, the scraped knobs of his spine. At first, she was afraid to be so close in case it upset him more, but now she sees how he calms down when she’s near.

Still, she worries.

He sleeps a lot.

She just watches, vowing to memorize every line of his face, injuries and all.

“Green.”

“Man, fuck you. This is the fourth time you’ve picked green.”

“Fine, then blue.”

MM groans and reaches for the pile of cards on the bedside table.

Frenchie scratches at the growing stubble on his jaw. “Fortune favors the bold, non?”

“Are guys just starting?”

MM looks up. “Kimiko called Uno, so game's about to end.”

Frenchie glances up at the door, smiling widely. “Petite Hughie!”

Kimiko waves with her single card.

Hughie comes in with a tray of coffee, wearing one of his goofy smiles. He passes a cup to Kimiko and another to MM, keeping one for himself. He pulls up a chair on the other side of Frenchie’s bed.

“What, nothing for me?” Frenchie presses one hand against his chest in mock offense.

Hughie grimaces. “Didn’t you just throw up orange juice yesterday? I doubt caffeine is much gentler on the stomach.”

Frenchie just huffs, muttering something under his breath.

The game ends and MM starts reshuffling the cards. Hughie turns from the snowstorm outside to the movie playing on TV.

“Home Alone, huh? Good pick.”

“It never gets old to see Kevin kick some ass.” Frenchie shrugs.

Kimiko scoffs, bumping Frenchie’s shoulder. “He made us channel surf for half an hour till we found it.”

“How was taking Annie to the airport?” MM asks.

“Good!” Hughie grins. “Though hopefully her flight doesn’t get delayed ‘cause of the storm.”

“Any sign of Butcher?” Frenchie asks.

Hughie’s smile fades.

Butcher’s only shown up twice.

The first time was the day after they’d found him. Kimiko remembers leaving the room for a second to get coffee and coming back to see Butcher at Frenchie’s bedside, heavy hand resting on his forearm, voice low and words unintelligible. She’d stayed outside the room until he left.

The second time, he said “Merry fucking Christmas, you bloody wanker.”, gave Frenchie his own stained and warped deck of cards, then left so quickly it was like he’d never been there in the first place.

MM slaps the cards down the cards on the table.

“Alright, motherfuckers. I ain’t letting any of you win this time.”

“Frenchie,”

“Wait, wait, this is the best part. Keep the change, you filthy-”

“Asshole, it’s your turn.”

“Okay, okay,” Frenchie finally peels his eyes away from the TV and puts a card down. “Mon Dieu, all of you, so impatient.”

They play until the movie ends, Kimiko winning once again by a laughably wide margin. MM claims that he can’t think straight from a lack of sustenance and drags Hughie with him to the cafeteria.

Once they’re gone, Frenchie leans back against the pillows, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. They’ve taken out the nasal cannula and the nasogastric tube, but still, he looks worse for wear. In the five minutes they’ve been gone, he’s deflated like a balloon.

Kimiko frowns and then leans back next to him. She nudges him with her thigh, then tugs on the sleeve of his hospital gown until he looks at her.

He drops the hand from his face.

“Stop doing that.” She signs.

Frenchie laughs tiredly. “Quoi?”

“I can tell you’re exhausted.”

“Mon coeur, please,”

She sits up, pushing away the table with the cards. “You don’t need to put on a show. If you’re tired, you should just say so.”

He scoffs and looks out the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Play dumb all you want, but you know.” Kimiko scowls, but it’s always been hard to stay mad at him for long. Seeing him like this makes it ten times harder.

Frenchie pushes waves of his recently washed hair back and out of his forehead. He finally meets her eyes.

“I slept so long,” He whispers.

She ignores him and grabs the remote. “You want a Christmas movie, or something else?”

He stares at her with half-lidded eyes, then sighs in defeat. “Christmas.”

She smiles, scrolling through the TV guide until she lands on The Polar Express.

By the time MM and Hughie return, Frenchie’s curled under the blankets, sleeping deeply.

Hughie hands Kimiko a wrapped sandwich and a bag of chips. “He’s looking good, right?”

MM looks up from his phone.

“He looks like shit.”

Kimiko shrugs in half-agreement from where she sits curled up on the recliner closest to Frenchie’s bed.

Hughie’s face drops.

“But,” MM tilts his head. “No fever. Lungs are clearing up. He’s starting to eat on his own. Improvement’s improvement.”

Hughie raises his eyebrows. “You think he’ll be out in time for Christmas?”

“I fucking hope so. If he’s not, we’re never gonna hear the end of it.”

Hughie sighs, plopping down on a chair. “Is this the longest he’s been awake?”

Kimiko nods.

“All things considered, the guy’s doing pretty fucking great though,” Hughie says. “Right?”

Kimiko purses her lips. She wants to agree, but she knows it’s just not that simple. “He pretends he’s not tired. He wants us to think it’s all okay.”

MM sits back in his chair and sighs. “Fuckin Frenchie.”

Kimiko leans forward and takes a peek through the little window in the door. When she doesn’t see any oncoming hospital staff, she quickly rips off his plastic hospital bracelet, shoving it into the couch.

“For the love of god,” MM rolls his eyes. “How many times do I gotta tell you? You take it off, they’re just gonna put another one on him.”

Kimiko makes a face, pointing at Frenchie’s limp arm. “But his wrists! The plastic’s just going to irritate them more.”

MM grabs one of Frenchie’s hands and pulls down the gauze enough to give her a peek at the skin underneath. It’s red and slightly raised, but the skin is closed.

“That’s what this shit is for, alright? Look, they’re healed. Just scarring now.”

“Is there, uh,” Hughie clears his throat, then bites at his bottom lip. “Why are those so old? Compared to, you know. The rest.”

Kimiko blinks.

Of the mess that’s his skin, there are a few cuts and scrapes that are well on their way to healing, but many of them are still open, covered up to promote healing and prevent infection.

“He wasn’t chained up. At least not where we found him. The room was completely empty. The door wasn’t even locked. ” She signs.

“They knew he would have died if he tried to run.”

She feels the sharp sting of oncoming tears in her eyes, but quickly wipes them away. She refuses to let herself cry in front of him, even if he’s asleep. Every time she thinks about what Little Nina did, part of her is confused. Once she’s done failing to understand, her confusion turns into outright rage.

MM puts a hand on her knee, and Hughie gives her a small smile.

“Hey, come on. Butcher’s been on Nina for days now. As soon as he finds her, it’ll be okay.”

Kimiko lets go of Frenchie's wrist and settles for running her finger up and down the curve of his face.

She can’t wait to tear Nina limb from limb, but deep down she knows.

Damage that’s been done cannot be undone.

“Frenchie? Frenchie!”

MM’s loud voice carries through the door, and when Frenchie ambles out of the bathroom he comes face to face with a panicked-looking Marvin.

“Christ! What the fuck is wrong with you?” MM almost shouts.

Frenchie has to stifle a laugh and a shit-eating grin. “What? Can’t a man piss?”

“Very funny.” MM turns over the bag he’s carrying, dumping its contents onto the bed. There’s a hoodie, some T-shirts, and a pair of worn pajama pants. “Brought you clothes, like you asked. Kimiko picked them out before she went to sleep.”

“Merci, lait de maman.”

Frenchie roots through the pile and grabs some stuff before stripping down. Putting clothes on is a slow and awkward process. He’s still sore from physical therapy and unaccustomed to moving so much, even if it’s something so simple as tugging on a hoodie. His right shoulder doesn’t quite move as it should, the pain in his ribs flares up if he sleeps weird, his fingers are still stiff from being broken, his hip seems to be permanently bruised-

“Do you need help with that?”

MM’s voice startles him out of his thoughts.

“Huh?” Frenchie looks up, halfway through having his arms raised.

“Come on,” MM moves forward, frowning as he helps pull his hoodie up.

Frenchie looks down at his exposed body and then immediately regrets it. He feels himself grimacing, then forces himself to relax. MM must notice because he finishes helping Frenchie yank the hoodie over his head, and then stops to look at him.

“Spit it out,”

Frenchie feels a strange emotion in his chest and forces himself to turn it into a laugh before he starts crying. “I look young now, non? The hair? All gangly again?”

MM sinks into the chair next to the bed, body heavy with exhaustion. “C’mon, man. This shit ain’t funny.”

“What? This doesn’t bring back memories?” He rasps out before sitting down on the bed. “You don’t remember Morocco? You’re the one who brought it up.”

MM lets out a dry laugh and scrubs a hand down his face. “You were conscious for that?”

Frenchie rolls his head around, blinking owlishly. “Un peu. You know, I dreamt about Morocco a lot, after I heard you say it.”

He puffs out his cheeks and lets out a long exhale, opening his mouth, closing it, then opening it again.

“Why did you hate me back then?”

MM’s face contorts.

“I never…I never hated you, man. You really thought that?”

Frenchie’s lips twist, and he gives a tiny nod.

Marvin shakes his head slowly. “’Course I didn’t. I just worried, is all. You were younger than Hughie is now. Just a fuckin kid.”

Frenchie looks down, distant gaze focused on the threadbare hospital blanket. He digs a crooked finger into his chest.

“Not here though,”

MM reaches out and pats him on the shoulder.

“No. Never there.”

For a moment they sit in silence, MM in the chair and Frenchie cross-legged in the bed. Eventually, Frenchie opens his mouth, ready to say what he’s been planning to for days now.

“MM.” He says softly. “I’d like to go home now.”

The other man looks nervous, thumb tapping rhythmically on the bed railing. “Serge, man…You were close to dead when we found you. Doctor hasn’t said you’re good to go yet. I just think-”

Frenchie hopes it doesn’t show on his face, but he feels a rising panic, blood beginning to pound in his ears.

No one ever calls him Serge.

He plasters on a lopsided grin, even though the stitches on his lip make him wince. He’s not chained to anything but not having the option to up and leave makes his skin crawl.

“Come on, I’ve come back from worse. I've been here for weeks,”

MM shakes his head slowly and puts a hand on the bed railing.

It’s a blatant lie, and they both know it. His life’s been mostly shit, and still, he can’t think of something worse than the last few months.

“Frenchie,”

“What, you want me, a Catholic, to spend Christmas in this shithole?

“Shithole? Motherfucker this place is nicer than anywhere you’ve lived in your life.”

Frenchie waves a hand around. “S’il vous plait, it’s just another soulless prison. Besides, look,”

He rolls up the sleeves of his hoodie and then points to his face. “Less bandages. No tubes. The IV’s not even connected anymore! I had armed guards outside my door for months. Do I need to be babysat any longer?”

That seems to give MM pause.

Frenchie purses his lips and raises his eyebrows. “Mon ami?”

“Fuck,” MM scowls, then presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fuck. Ok.”

Frenchie grins maniacally, feeling relief wash over him.

“You will not regret it. Truly, I owe you-”

“Shut the hell up, man. And honestly, fuck you. I don’t agree with any of this bullshit, and I can promise you Kimiko ain’t gonna be happy either.”

Frenchie shrugs. “I’ll make sure her Christmas present makes up for it.”

“You ain’t leaving like this though.” MM points at him. “You’re wearing real goddamn clothes.”

Frenchie smiles, raising his hands up in the air. “I’ll do whatever.”

He picks at the hem of his pants, ripping away loose threads. He stops and looks up when he feels MM’s stare on him.

“You’ll be happy?” He asks, expression so sincere it makes Frenchie’s heart hurt. “To be home?”

Frenchie nods slowly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

Chapter Text

As soon as Frenchie steps into their shared apartment, he feels actual, true liberation.

Kimiko drops his bag on the floor next to the couch, then sits down, alternating between watching a video on her phone and glancing at him. Not in that concerned, guarded way she’s seemed to realize he hates, but more so in casual observance.

Despite the consistent fog of exhaustion that’s wormed its way into his body, he feels a low thrum of energy in his veins. Since MM and Kimiko signed him out AMA and stuck him in the car's back seat, the feeling’s only been ratcheting up. He had to sit on his hands in the car to contain his excitement at being back out in the world, lips chewed to shit from something close to nerves.

Now that he’s back home, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

There are always the obvious choices.

Drugs, liquor, sex, same old, same old.

Instead, he wanders around the shitty apartment for thirty minutes, going from room to room, walking around with his fingers hovering over every piece of furniture. The apartment itself is cramped and ugly, filled with old, broken fixtures and the occasional leak. It’s similar to every other place he’s ever lived in, but also to the places Nina had ferried around to. There are only two real differences.

Kimiko, and all of their shared shit.

Chemist equipment and dirty dishes are strewn across the kitchen island.

A line-up of calico critters behind the bathroom sink, one of them with toothpaste behind its fuzzy ear.

Beside the TV, a stack of completed writing workbooks. Next to it, an even bigger stack of stolen library DVDs.

Two pairs of his boots by the door, and his favorite army jacket resting on the back of a chair.

With a pang, he realizes everything looks the same as it did five months ago.

It’s like he never even left.

Frenchie steals a quick glance at Kimiko when she’s looking down at her phone, the quiet sound of a nature documentary rolling out from the speakers.

For someone who can’t speak, she makes an incredibly valiant effort to make sure there’s constantly some source of noise in Frenchie’s vicinity.

Whenever he called her and told her he was trying to get out of the hospital early, he was expecting anger. Instead, she showed up in his room with a thick winter jacket and a cup of cafeteria hot chocolate, an excited smile on her face.

He stares down at his hands, and bites down hard on his bottom lip. He could save a billion lives and still never deserve her.

The back of his neck is starting to feel hot and his palms are getting a little sweaty, and he can’t tell if he’s excited to be out or if this is a symptom of something else entirely.

Frenchie makes for a tiny cupboard by the kitchen and opens the half-broken door, hoping he’ll find what he’s looking for. He digs around noisily until he pulls something out.

Slowly, he turns the bong in his hands.

It’s chipped here and there, with dust coating the outside. Not the nicest one he’s owned, but certainly not the worst. It’ll do the job.

He goes to the couch and plops down next to Kimiko. She puts her phone away and slouches down into the couch. She frowns but it’s half-assed, like she doesn’t really mean it.

He puts on his nicest smile, even though nothing about him has looked nice in a long, long time.

“Listen. I was thinking we could go to the Rockefeller Center. Get some roasted nuts, a cup of hot chocolate, skate around?”

“It’s cold out.”

“Oui, but it’s not snowing anymore. I thought it would be nice.”

“You don’t know how to ice skate.”

“And you do?”

She points at the bong. “Are you going to bring that onto the rink?”

Frenchie clicks his tongue. “Glad you kept your sense of humor while I was gone, mon coeur. But no, this is just a little aperitif. You know, for the nuts?”

Kimiko’s face lightens up at the stupid joke, and soon they’re both giggling.

“What about what MM said? I think he’s right.”

“Kimiko, it’s just weed. Maybe a little tobacco if I still have any.” He pulls a face, hoping to appeal to the novelty of Christmas activities in the city. “Please. Christmas is in two days. Be my Père Noël, and give me the gift of not making me stay in this stuffy apartment.”

She chews on her lip and considers.

He nudges her with his shoulder.

“I saw you watching Vought on Ice last week. I know you want to try it.”

That seems to get her. With an exaggerated sigh, she stands up and starts wandering towards the bathroom, stopping at the threshold. It looks like she’s about to sign something, but instead, she just turns back around.

Frenchie thinks back to an hour ago when MM had dropped them off. He’d leaned over the middle console of his car and yelled out the window to be heard over the noise of the city.

“Don’t do anything stupid. And don’t start with all the fuckin’ drugs again, alright? Your body’s been fucked enough,”

“True, but drugs are a different type of fucking, no?”

Frenchie had snickered, then full-on laughed when he saw the color drain from MM’s face, had felt how Kimiko stiffened next to him on the sidewalk. They still hadn’t talked about what exactly had happened to him during all those months, but it didn’t take a creative savant to imagine the worst.

“You’re sick in the head, man. Would it kill you to listen to me for once? ‘Sides, if it weren’t for me you’d be spending Christmas eating chocolate pudding out of a cup.”

Frenchie waved a dismissing hand. “Ok, ok. I will “lay off”, as you put it.”

MM grunted. “Alright, scram. It’s cold and I want to close the window.”

Kimiko signed something and Frenchie nodded in agreement before leaning into the window.

“Say hi to Janine and Monique. Oh, and joyeux Noël.”

MM grunted, but Frenchie could see a tiny trace of a smile.

“Merry Christmas, assholes.”

He thinks maybe he should feel guilty for violating his promise to MM so quickly, but he also thinks weed isn’t even really a drug.

Kimiko is quiet as she searches, and suddenly Frenchie realizes how silent the apartment’s become. Her phone isn’t playing anything anymore. There’s not enough wind outside to rattle the rusted metal of the windows.

Instead, all he hears is the sound of his mounting disquiet.

The in and out of his breath. The skin of his lip sliding against his teeth. The crackling of his knuckles as he tightens a fist around the hem of his shirt. The slow, constant swallowing of his own saliva.

There’s a loud bang.

Is it Kimiko slamming a cabinet door?

Clicking against grimy linoleum floors.

Footsteps.

No- Fuck, no, no they usually don’t show up after he’s been with her, he can barely even sit up, oh fuck-

A tap on his shoulder.

Frenchie moves his head up slowly, inch by inch until he sees Kimiko in front of him.

He is still in a grimy apartment. If you sniff too hard it smells, and there’s probably mold in the walls, and it’s like the dozens of other shitty places he’s lived in, the dozens of other shitty places Nina kept him in-

Another tap.

He doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath, grip so tight on the bong it feels like he might shatter it.

She sits down next to him on the couch, holding a dented metal box in her hand.

He can’t look her in the eyes, but he sees her other hand come up to sign something. Quickly he snatches the TV remote from the coffee table and swaps it with the box.

“Actually, let’s just stay in today. You were right.” He starts popping open the box, trying to be as loud as possible. “It’s late, and we’ll be cold. We can watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Have you seen that? It’s a little sad, but a Christmas classic. Old timey, like you like them-”

She takes one of his hands and squeezes, so he has to look her in the eye, and her hand is moving again and he doesn’t want to see what she has to say, he just wants noise in his ears and he wants to get fucking high-

Kimiko turns the TV on with one hand and places the other hand on Frenchie’s wrist.

As soon as the light and sound of the TV flood the room, he feels himself sag into the couch, hands stilling.

His eyes dart back and forth between his stash box and the TV, but he can feel her gaze glued onto him. Somehow, it’s not stifling. Grounding, more like.

He trusts her. If there’s one fucking person on this whole godforsaken planet he trusts, it’s her.

Finally, he looks up at her and smiles.

“I’m sorry. I just was thinking about what we were going to have for Christmas dinner. Is there anything in the fridge, or have you just been eating mac and cheese?”

Kimiko squeezes his wrist and leans back into the couch, starting up whatever DVD was left in the player last.

“I like the Kraft shells.” She signs. “The spirals sometimes, too.”

He exhales shakily and laughs, going back to the contents of the box.

“We will have to go shopping then, huh?”

She nods, letting go of his wrist but pressing her knee into his thigh. She turns up the volume.

Frenchie packs the bowl with practiced ease, thankful that he didn’t get the muscle memory beat out of him. He knows it’s probably not the best idea to smoke after being so sick, and Kimiko reaffirms this by taking away the dented box as soon as he starts trying to add tobacco.

He runs his tongue over crooked teeth and puts his lips around the mouthpiece, taking a deep, laborious inhale.

He pulls until smoke fills up the neck of the thing, then he pulls out the bowl, sucking in the thick white cloud.

Frenchie leans back into the moth-eaten couch and exhales.

Next to him, Kimiko raises an eyebrow and tilts her head.

“Good?”

After months of abstinence, killing one bowl will be enough to get him beyond cooked.

He smiles at her, eyelids drooping tiredly.

“Fucking incredible, mon coeur.”

The panic from earlier runs off him like blood in the shower, and he relaxes back against the couch, eyes turning to whatever’s playing on the TV. It was weird, he thinks. Whatever happened earlier, it was weird.

Luckily, before he can put too much thought into it, his body is sinking deep, deep, deeper, and when his head lolls onto Kimiko’s shoulder, he's already slipped into a dreamless sleep.

Frenchie swings open the bathroom door.

Hot steam floods out and the blare of Christmas music floods in.

He dries off his hair, letting the towel hang around his neck, then leans against the wall, watching Kimiko work.

She’s balancing on a rickety stool, trying to hang up the flimsy Merry Christmas banner they made with cheap crayons, construction paper, and duct tape during his hospital stay. He cringes, stifling a laugh.

“We may need to buy more of those spelling workbooks, mon coeur.”

She turns around with a scowl. “What about you? We made it together,”

Frenchie presses a hand to his chest. “Moi? I was high! Shockingly against my will,” He adds as an afterthought.

Kimiko flips him off and then continues fidgeting with the banner. Nothing she does seems to help it straighten out, and he can’t help but laugh.

“We should just give up. It’s only Hughie coming. He won’t care about all these decorations.” She signs.

“Exactly! It’s Hughie, he’ll love it.”

Kimiko’s phone starts ringing and she checks the screen, then chucks the phone at Frenchie.

He barely manages to catch it, glancing down at the caller ID.

It’s Cherie.

“I’m going to start on the eggnog, mon coeur.”

He slips off to the kitchen and picks up the phone, tucking it into the crook of his neck as he starts pulling out ingredients from the fridge.

A saccharine voice greets him from the other end of the line.

“Joyeux Noël, pumpkin.”

Frenchie smiles fondly.

“Joyeux Noël à toi aussi, ma chérie. You still in Amsterdam?”

“Until the New Year’s. How are you?”

They talk while Frenchie whips up the egg nog.

She called often when he was still in the hospital, mostly crying, mostly apologizing. One time he cried too, then she cried harder, then he decided that wasn’t going to happen again. More often than not he would just sit and listen, fingers twisting around the phone cord, just happy to hear a familiar voice in his ear. Even if it was always a long string of I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

It was Cherie, meaning in his book, none of what had happened was her fault.

A knock interrupts him from his conversation and he peeks around the corner in time to see Kimiko opening the door.

A red-cheeked Hughie stands at the entrance, grocery bags in both hands. He barely has time to react before Kimiko sweeps him up into a hug.

Frenchie grins, promises Cherie that they’ll see each other as soon as she gets back in the States, then hangs up.

“Petit Hughie! Or is it Petit Noël now?”

Kimiko takes the groceries from Hughie, and his face contorts in confusion.

“Uh, what?”

Frenchie waves a dismissive hand. “Laisse tomber. Don’t just fucking stand there, come in, come in,”

Hughie follows Kimiko inside and shimmies out of his winter coat, dropping it on the back of a chair. Frenchie can see his eyes darting around the decorations around the room. From the lit candles on the table to the strung-up Christmas lights, to the ailing miniature pine tree in the corner. Finally he zeros in on the homemade banner.

Inevitably, it’s still crooked.

“Uh, guys,” Hughie mumbles. “Does that say Merry Chistmas?”

Thankfully, Kimiko’s popped into the shower, and only Frenchie hears the comment.

“Shh, shh,” Frenchie pushes him over to sit at the table and brings him a chopping board with carrots. “Start cutting this up, s’il vous plait,”

“So what’s on the menu?”

“Glazed carrots, egg nog, mashed potatoes, rotisserie chicken, and regrettably…Store-bought pumpkin pie.” Frenchie winces.

“The horror!” Hughie gasps. “Oh, I brought what you asked, by the way.”

He stops chopping and stands up to dig through one of the grocery bags, fishing out a brown paper bag. He slides it across the table.

Frenchie dumps out the contents and sighs contentedly.

“Merci beaucoup,”

“You trying to quit smoking, or…”

Frenchie scoffs.

He rips open a baggie and pops a gummy into his mouth, followed by a nicotine pouch that he slides under his upper lip.

“Different verse, same song.”

“Probably for the best.” Hughie nods, his lips going up at the corner. “Wanna share?”

Frenchie grins maniacally.

By the time the edible hits, the food is ready and they’re digging in. Both Hughie and Frenchie are more than a little high, and Kimiko’s already on her sixth beer in the span of an hour.

They forgo eating on the table and instead sit on the couch, determined to watch all three iterations of The Grinch.

“Fuck man, this is delicious,” Hughie says through a mouthful of food.

Frenchie slaps him on the shoulder, his own plate sitting on the coffee table. “Merci, merci. Although, this is nothing compared to my true capabilities. Maybe next year, huh?”

“Eat more,” Kimiko nudges him on the shoulder before shoveling a spoonful of mashed potatoes into her mouth.

“Unlike you animals, I plan on savoring my meal,”

He takes a peek at his plate and sees that it’s been mostly just picked at.

Even with the munchies, it’s still hard to pack away food like he used to.

He picks up the plate anyway and brings a small amount of chicken to his mouth, chewing it slowly.

Kimiko clinks a fork against her beer can, getting their attention.

“Any Butcher updates?”

Hughie shakes his head and swallows. “He called a week or two back. Something about going to England? I don’t really know, to be honest.”

Kimiko rolls her eyes. Frenchie just keeps chewing.

Deep in his gut, buried beneath the buzz of the egg nog, the edible, and the nicotine, he thinks Butcher being AWOL might be a good thing. He knows he’s been looking for Nina, but he can’t say he’s looking forward to him finding her, which kind of makes Frenchie feel like a piece of shit.

To see the person who kidnapped and tortured him for months (beyond that even, if he thinks about all the shit she used to do) be hunted down by one of the meanest sons of bitches he knows, should make him feel great.

At least, any rational person would be excited.

Instead, it just makes him feel ill.

Kimiko kicks at his ankle with her heel, and he snaps his eyes up. Both she and Hughie are staring at him.

Frenchie cringes. He hates all the extra attention. As if being practically bed-bound and under almost constant observation wasn’t enough for them to see him as breakable.

Being seen as erratic, explosive, and mildly insane, that he’s okay with. But being seen as fragile? That’s where he draws the line.

The constant noise helps. Not being alone helps. Being close to physically recovered helps. Still.

He needs to pull it together, and quickly.

He’s been ok. It’s been fine. Nothing’s really the matter anymore, now that he's back with people he trusts. Now that he’s safe.

“Hey, Frenchie?”

He lets his eyes snap up. “Huh?”

“Who would win in a fight? Butcher, or the Grinch?”

Frenchie and Hughie exchange glances, then both burst into laughter.

Eventually, Hughie cracks into the egg nog, but by the time Frenchie makes it clear that it's alcoholic, he’s already three glasses down and too crossed to move from the couch.

“You guys mind, if I-uh,” Hughie blinks with glassy eyes. “I don’t think I know how to get to the subway.”

“The more the merrier,” Frenchie says, ignoring the slur in his own voice. He throws him a pillow and a few blankets, then turns down the lights and blows out the candles.

Hughie’s snoring by the time he stumbles into Kimiko’s room. She’s lying under a pile of blankets and unfolded clothes.

Frenchie’s been trying to get used to sleeping by himself, sometimes passing out on the couch with the TV on full blast, but more often than not he ends up crawling into bed with Kimiko.

As he slips under the blankets, he finds she’s already reaching a hand out for his. He takes it like a lifeline, squeezing on tight.

Despite not being sober, he finds it hard to fall asleep, mind running circles over Butcher and Nina and Hughie and Kimiko and MM and Cherie and the ridiculous circus that’s always been his life. He tries to relax his breathing, focusing on Kimiko’s still form in front of him, then on the dim sound of the TV wafting in through the open door. He’s thankful for the physical contact, but he finds his crooked fingers seem to ache in hers.

As quiet as he’s able to, he slips out of bed and roots through the bathroom cabinet for a stashed pack of cigarettes.

Frenchie climbs onto the fire escape with a moth-eaten blanket and chain-smokes until the sun starts coming up.

It doesn't stop the shaking of his hands.

Chapter Text

The music coming from the basement is pounding so loud that Kimiko has to shoulder up close to Frenchie to hear him.

He puts his hands on her shoulders and shakes gently, the grin on his face stretching from ear to ear.

“Why are you worried? We look fucking fantastic,”

Kimiko looks down from his outfit to her own. They’re wearing what seems like the most ridiculous clothes they could find at the thrift store, and she says as much.

“We look like we just crawled out of a dumpster.”

Frenchie tilts his head and scrubs his hand over a cheek, considering. “That is, uh, kind of the point.” The corner of his lips rises, cigarette dangling between them.  He shakes his head. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fun. If you hate it, we leave. If you love it, we stay forever. Or until Butcher drags us into another suicide mission, whichever happens first.”

Kimiko sighs, staring down at the sidewalk. There's no sign from him yet, but it won’t be long before he’s pulling them back into another crazy scheme. It’s an open secret, that neither of them really feel like throwing themselves back into needless danger.

Kimiko looks back up at Frenchie, who stares at her earnestly.

She takes in what she knows like a lungful of air. His crooked bottom teeth, his brown eyes still bloodshot and half-lidded from the weed.

The most ‘Frenchie’ thing about him right now is his ripped sweater, baggy camo pants, and the rhinestone belt that holds them up. She’s more than used to his silly outfits.

Still…

Frenchie squeezes her shoulders, grin dropping a little bit.

He lowers his voice. “Is something wrong? We don’t have to go. It’s just a New Year’s party. We can go every year for the rest of our lives.”

She shakes her head again and puts her hand over his.

It feels warm. It feels real. Nothing like the waxy, colorless skin she saw in that awful fucking cellar. It feels real and it is, so then why does she feel like something got left behind?

“No, I want to go.” Kimiko signs.

Really, she doesn’t, but at this point, she’ll take going to a shitty drug-den basement party over letting Frenchie stay holed up in their apartment another day longer.

She doesn’t understand him. He wanted so badly to get out of the hospital, and now it seems like a miracle if he leaves their place, even if just for an hour. Maybe it’s fine, she thinks. He was held captive for months and now he wants to feel safe in their apartment.

It has to be fine because she can’t bear to think of the alternative.

Frenchie raises an eyebrow.

A neon from a nearby sign catches him in the eyes, turning them almost fluorescent.

It scares her, just a little bit.

“Are you sure?” He signs.

She nods and looks away.

If one of Frenchie’s drug dens got railed by Burning Man, the contents of this basement are their bastard child.

The party is straight pandemonium.

Kimiko and Frenchie stand in the middle of the dance floor, less dancing and more jerking around, trying to avoid getting elbowed in the rib or getting their drinks knocked from their hands.

“I DJ’d here once!” Frenchie screams at her to be heard over the music, but she gives him a light shove, indicating to him that they can just sign to each other.

She nods, pushing her sweaty hair out of her forehead with one hand and taking a long pull from her cup. It stinks in here. It’s loud as fuck. It’s not fun, and she kind of hates it, but Frenchie wanted her to come so here she is. Even he doesn’t seem that excited.

He’s moving around, trying to be nonchalant, but his eyes keep flitting around.

Looking for someone, or looking out for something, she’s not entirely sure.

He points at his cup, then at a hallway past the DJ.

Bathroom.

She gives him a thumbs-up and keeps dancing. This whole thing sucks but at least she's well on her way to hammered.

She looks from her empty cup up to where he stands by the DJ, talking to random people. Someone grabs him by the back of the head, playing with his hair. She doesn’t know if it’s the liquor or the music or her imagination but she thinks she sees him flinch.

One of the guys next to him points to his pocket and Frenchie nods, scratching at the back of his head with a lopsided smile.

Then, he’s weaving through the crowd and she loses sight of him. 

Kimiko frowns.

Whatever.

He probably knows everyone in this shithole.

They've been spending a lot of time together anyway.

Maybe after so long, he finally wants to let loose.

Maybe, she should too. 

She turns to the bar and sees a group of people taking shots, then back to the spot where he used to be. 

Whatever. 

Fuck it.

These types of parties are not for sober people.

Frenchie’s smiling at some random person he used to know, laughing at jokes that used to be funny.

An Albanian maybe? Or one of Cherie’s friends? He doesn't think he's all that drunk, but all the faces surrounding him seem to blend together.

The drinks are made with cheap liquor, and usually, he’s so fucked it doesn’t matter what he’s sipping. Only thing is, his already weak high’s been dead for a while, and there are a lot more people than he remembered crowded in this moldy basement. People bump into him and touch his exposed skin, and it takes everything in him not to react.

Realization dawns on him.

A skill that took years to master has disappeared in the span of four months.

With a quick swig, he downs the contents of his cup and crushes it, throwing it back somewhere behind the DJ. He glances around, looking for Kimiko, but then someone grabs his arm, pointing at their pocket, mouthing something he can’t hear.

Fucking finally.

He nods, anxiety deflating inside him like a balloon, and follows the stranger. He knows this routine. They walk past people fucking against the walls, people smoking out of a crack pipe, people who are just like him. Frenchie and the guy enter a single-stalled bathroom and stand facing each other in front of the sink.

The stranger’s been saying things, making idle chatter, but he hasn’t heard any of it. They’ve yet to take any hard drugs but Frenchie already feels slightly untethered. This was a bad idea. He wants Kimiko.

Fuck.

Before he can open his mouth to change his mind, the fellow party-goer cuts out four lines, two each. He holds out a rolled-up bill to Frenchie, motioning for him to go first.

Despite the hammering in his chest, it’s like his body is on automatic, telling him to oblige.

With two quick motions, his lines are gone. He doesn’t even know what he just snorted. The other guy follows suit and then pulls out a pack of cigarettes handing one to Frenchie and sticking one between his lips.

He’s still on autopilot when he pulls out his lighter and lights them both.

After a few sharp inhales, the stranger claps Frenchie on the back and heads out, closing the door behind him.

For a second, he just stands at the sink, completely frozen. Ash floats into the stagnant water and he watches it with unreasonable fascination. His head’s starting to pound. The room feels like it’s heating up, so he rips off his sweater and throws it on the ground, hands gripping the sides of the sink.

He’s smoking a cigarette and he just took something and he has no idea what it is and the image in the mirror isn’t him hasn’t been him and his chest is tight and his hair is resting against his bare shoulders and somehow everything still fucking aches-

Pounding at the door.

The cigarette falls between his fingers and lands on his hand, burning his skin before rolling off into the sink and fizzling out.

Fuck.

The pounding comes back except this time it’s the door and it’s his head, a deep throb originating at the base of his skull, his skin burning. Bile starts crawling up his throat.

He can’t breathe.

As the door breaks open, he starts throwing up into the sink, head dropping down between his shoulders.

Someone’s hand is on his exposed back, rubbing circles at first then gripping one of his shoulders firmly. It stays there until he’s done puking. A hand with chipped nail polish and a plastic gumball machine ring floats into his vision. The tap is turned on and a finger points at it.

With a shaking hand, he cups up water and takes gratuitous swigs, gargling and spitting out the rotten taste in his mouth. He takes a deep breath and raises his head, turning around slowly.

Kimiko is staring at him.

Her eyes are half-lidded and slow to focus, her cheeks flushed. She smiles languidly. 

Frenchie blinks a few times then spits into the sink again. Another wave of nausea rolls through him but he swallows roughly and squeezes his eyes shut, hands gripping tightly onto the edge of the sink. It takes a bit, but it passes. He opens his eyes slowly and turns around.

Kimiko points to the ground and he nods, letting her grab him by the elbow and guide him to the floor. Together they slide down to the ground, backs against the wall, and shoulders pressed together.

After taking a few breaths, he stares at her out of the corner of her eye. She’s looking at the graffitied wall opposite to them, eyes roaming over the drawings. He sighs, mildly relieved that she might not remember this tomorrow.

Frenchie snorts. 

“You liked the Jaeger bombs?”

Kimiko tugs at the back of his hair with barely any force, not even trying to fight her own grin. She pushes his head with a light shove but keeps her fingers tangled in his hair.

“Prove me wrong, mon coeur.” He laughs and throws a hand out at the space in front of them. “Come on, get up and walk in a straight line. Stand on one foot.”

His hair is long enough now that tiny braids trail down the nape of his neck. At night she twists it clumsily when he lays with his back to her, trying to lull him to sleep when he can’t shake his restlessness. He refuses to cut it, and she can’t for the life of her understand why.

She’s not stupid.

She might know why.

She really doesn’t want to fucking know why.

Frenchie coughs then leans forward, pressing his head into the crook of his elbow. He still feels sick, but Kimiko sitting next to him is comfort enough. The effects of whatever he took are mellowing out, and now he just feels like he’s in a deep haze. Not the right drug, not the right dose. It’s not great, but it doesn’t quite suck.

Just ok enough.

“Should have just gone to see the ball drop, non?” He inhales and puffs out his cheeks, then pulls a rusted Altoid tin out from a pocket. He pops it open and sticks a joint between his lips, running his thumb along the lighter until the end is burning. They sit in companionable silence until it’s burnt through, and then he lights a cigarette.

Kimiko bumps into his shoulder lightly.

“Are you ok?”

He feels a ghost of a smile on his lips and opens his mouth to answer, but then the music stops blaring and dozens of people are screaming, counting down to midnight.

Frenchie clicks his tongue, then cranes his neck. Kimiko turns her head at the same time, and then their noses happen to be an inch apart.

He sucks in a deep breath and peers into her eyes. They seem to come into focus a bit more, widening at the sudden closeness.

Kimiko says nothing, mouth hanging open slightly.

He stares down at her lips. They’re peach pink.

He’s in a shitty bathroom at a shitty party in a shitty city, smoking shitty old weed and all Frenchie wants to do right then and there is press his lips to hers and see what they taste like.

He tilts his head by a fraction, and the sudden movement makes her tug a little more on his hair and then it's like a flashbang. He’s not seeing her, he’s thinking of her and how she used to do the same, and it’s not in the same spot or nearly as hard, but the feeling is the exact same-

People are screaming but it doesn’t silence the growing whine in his ears.

Frenchie barely has time to pull himself away from Kimiko before puke splatters against the tile.

Outside, the clock still counts down to midnight.

The sun is rising as they trudge home.

They don’t have coats, or decent clothes for that matter, so they press against each other and rely on the alcohol still coursing through their veins for warmth. Cars honk and people shout and sirens roar as they go from the sidewalk to the subway, to the elevator, to the entrance of their apartment.

Just any other fucking Monday.

Frenchie stands outside their door, slightly frozen hands struggling to shove the key into the lock. Eventually, Kimiko just shoves a shoulder into the door, ripping it off its hinges. 

He stares at her with eyes as wide as he can muster.

She just shrugs.

In a zombie-like trance, they crawl onto the couch and burrow under a pile of blankets. Kimiko falls asleep instantly but it takes Frenchie three cigarettes, a hit of the bong, and a Looney Toons rerun for his eyes to start getting droopy.

They fall asleep, the broken door resting against its frame. 

Outside, the world goes on.

Chapter Text

The text from MM comes when Frenchie’s holed up in the bathroom, one hand gripping tight onto a pair of scissors.

How are you guys? Y’all need anything?

It’s vaguely sweet, reminiscent of their younger days, when there was no one to look out for them but each other.

Frenchie doesn’t answer, only because he doesn’t want to have to lie.

He pockets his phone and stares at the mirror.

It’s weird. He’s being fucking weird. He just needs to stop being a pussy and make the cut already. He always told MM he wanted a mullet, but never felt like going through the pain of looking ugly while letting his buzzcut grow out. Now he has the perfect opportunity, if not for the mullet then to do anything else, but still, he finds himself hesitating.

Maybe if someone else does it for him it’ll be easier. He angles his head towards the cracked bathroom door.

“Kimiko!”

He pulls open the bathroom cabinet and goes to place the scissors down on a shelf. Eighties dance music is playing from the kitchen and it must drown out the sound of his voice because she doesn’t come.

“Kimi-”

Something on the shelf catches Frenchie’s eye.

It’s tucked behind a bottle of mouthwash and a stick of deodorant, small and so nondescript it’s no wonder he hadn’t noticed it.

Oh.

Slowly, he sets the scissors down and reaches for the little pill bottle.

A mathematician knows his numbers, a poet knows how to rhyme, an athlete knows the technique. He’s no different. It’s all about dosing and combinations.

Take a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and maybe, just maybe, that thumb-tack-sized hole in his heart will disappear.

2mg. Long-lasting. Doesn’t make him drowsy. Pressed into a perfectly round white oval.

He’d been making a conscious effort to stick to weed, shrooms and alcohol, trying to avoid the heavier shit, but ever since New Year’s Eve he’d felt a renewed itch for something harder. No matter how hard he tries, it always seems to come back to this.

The years go on, and the hole in his chest grows deeper and deeper and deeper.

He parts his lips experimentally.

Dosing and combinations. They’re called controlled substances for a reason.

The pill sits nice and light on the pad of his shaking index finger.

Frenchie finds it sits even nicer on his tongue.

The days begin bleeding into each other.

Deep, desperate breaths inhaled in private. Afternoons spent chain-smoking on the fire escape. Staring at the TV with Kimiko, the images in front of his eyes blurring together. Ignoring job requests from old contacts. Taking shit again, first in small doses then in slowly increasing quantities. Trying to understand, something, anything, about what happened to him. Pretending to sleep because his body refuses to, eyes never fully closed. Watching. Waiting.

For god knows what.

More than once Kimiko shoves her phone under his nose, Google Flights pulled up on the internet.

Marseille, she signs. Let’s go to Marseille.

Each time he refuses, citing exhaustion and unfinished business. The excuses are starting to get old, Kimiko’s starting to go stir-crazy, and sometimes all he wants is to be left fucking alone. All she’s done is be there for him, be helpful and watchful and attentive, and he’s being an ungrateful dick. Even she starts distancing herself, noticing his increasingly aloof behavior. She leaves and doesn’t come back for hours, while he stays inside the same four walls.

Every time Kimiko leaves, he feels a thundering panic rise in his chest. He takes one pill to combat this, but then two turns to three and three to four and eventually by the time she comes back he’s not even there at all. He hates himself, yet can’t find it in himself to change.

He’s out of the cellar.

Frenchie knows he’s out, but his body doesn’t seem to get the message.

In the middle of January, there’s a pounding on their half-fixed door.

Their door has no peephole. Frenchie answers tentatively, with a rifle slung on one shoulder.

Marvin Milk stares at him, then at the rifle. He looks unamused.

“Long time no see. Your phone broken or something?”

Frenchie shrugs. “Something like that.”

“What happened to your mouth?”

For a second, Frenchie blanks, one hand rising to touch his lips. There’s a wide scar on his bottom lip, and while it healed he couldn’t help but pick at it every time a new scab formed. Now he just rips the dead skin off his lips out of habit, pretending to himself that he doesn’t like it when it burns.

“Oh, you know,” Frenchie smiles lazily. “My lips are a very hot commodity.”

“You're fucking disgusting. Call me when you get syphilis so I can say I told you so. Where’s Kimiko?”

He motions towards inside the apartment. MM just nods.

“Listen. No easy way to say this, but Butcher needs us back.”

“Straight to fucking business, huh?” Frenchie laughs dryly. “Not even a hello for an old friend?”

MM shrugs, but as always, his nonchalance is unbelievable. His eyes say something else.

“I texted you, man. Not my fault you were busy whoring your way through New York,”

Frenchie laughs and finds that it hurts.

If only that’s what he was doing.

In MM’s car, on the way to the Flatiron, Frenchie sits in silence. Marvin talks, and Kimiko stares out the window, and music plays quietly on the radio but he feels like he’s not even in the same vehicle as them. He touches his lips experimentally, wondering if they really look that bad. For the most part, he does his best to avoid looking in the mirror, and he feels relief when he can’t see his face in the reflection on the window.

New York City rolls by.

Worry churns in his gut, and the poorly stitched, caulked hole in his heart yawns open.

Butcher, alive and in the flesh spreads his hands open wide.

“If it ain’t a ghost come back to life,”

Frenchie smiles uneasily, then nods in greeting. “Monsieur Charcuter,”

He cocks his head in that familiar way of his.

“Nice to see you again, mate,”

“Oui. Nice to see you too,”

It’s not. Not really. The last thing Frenchie wants to do is be at the Flatiron, talking about Supes, and who deserves to die, and who doesn’t, who they have to blackmail, or how they’re going to avoid getting killed this time.

All it does is remind him of the cruelty of life, which again makes him think about Nina. Lately, he’s been forming a clear idea in his head of everything. There are so many possible reasons for why she did the things she did to him. The only one that makes sense in his head also happens to be the simplest.

Butcher drones on about his new plans, and never does end up apologizing for the part he played in the whole Nina fiasco. Not that Frenchie expected much at all.

It seems like one way or another, everyone always fucks him over.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s because he deserves it.

Their first job back is simple recon. Break in, gather information, break out. Nothing they haven’t done a million times before.

Outside the van, MM eyes Frenchie with bewilderment. “Motherfucker, what are you wearing?”

Frenchie stops lighting his reefer and lets it dangle between his lips, half-lidded eyes looking MM up and down. “And you are about to walk down the runway with that outfit?”

It’s only then that MM notices the size of his pupils. He sighs with disappointment, but he can’t say he’s at all surprised.

“You won’t be cold?” Hughie asks.

It’s a dumb question, what with the visible goosebumps on his skin. Not to mention he’s wearing only a tank top in the middle of Winter.

He shakes his head, blowing out smoke into the windy air. “Non.”

Butcher’s head pops around the corner of the van. “Oi, Frenchie. Need you over here,”

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Hughie grimaces. “He doesn’t…He doesn’t really look okay, does he? Is he high?”

MM drags in a long breath of air before releasing it in a bone-weary sigh.

“Listen, I know this is going to sound fucked, but hear me out. It’s Frenchie. He drinks and he smokes and he fucks himself into oblivion. Honestly, I’m shocked he hasn’t taken V yet.”

Hughie scoffs. “Come on, he wouldn’t-”

MM holds up a hand. “Not the point. What I’m saying is, he’s the most functional dysfunctional person I’ve ever met. You know it, and I know it. I ain’t saying it’s some sort of accomplishment. I’m just saying that’s how it is. In the grand scheme of things, this Frenchie is a normal Frenchie.”

“Well,” Hughie says indignantly. “He’s a person too. Just because that’s how it’s been, doesn't mean that’s how it should be. Shouldn’t he be entitled to some happiness too?”

MM sits down on the back of the van, fiddling with a gun. He clicks the magazine into place once, twice, three times. In contrast to their current topic of conversation, the sound is calming. He would never admit it out loud, much less to Butcher and Frenchie, but there came a time when he started considering those idiots something past co-workers and closer to family. Inebriated, violent, and volatile, but family nonetheless.

He thinks of a happy Frenchie but finds that nothing comes to mind. His smiles, his boisterous laughter, the enjoyment he gets from playing childish jokes. The signs are all there, but when you put them together with everything else, the complete picture does not spell out happiness. It spells out survival.

Doubt creeps into Hughie’s voice. “MM?”

“Come on, Hughie. Of course, he deserves to be happy.”

MM can’t bring himself to voice aloud what he really thinks.

After Morocco, after a pesky incident in Philadelphia, after three sleepless nights in London, after learning about his god-awful upbringing, after all the heinous shit Frenchie’s been through, after all the crap they’ve gone through together…

In an ideal world, MM wants nothing less than peaceful bliss for Frenchie.

In a realistic one, he’s just grateful for what he has.

Recon goes poorly, to say the least.

There are more guards than expected, there’s less information than what they need, and the team is less well-oiled than they should be. When Butcher tells MM and Frenchie to give up on lookout and haul ass to a rendezvous point, they listen.

In the van, Frenchie fiddles with the heating, doing his best to hide how much his hands are shaking. MM’s doing his best to hide his staring.

Neither do a very good job.

It’s the first time they’ve been alone in weeks, but it feels like much longer. MM recognizes this slightly strung-out Frenchie much easier than he does the man who was lying injured in the hospital, but still, he feels a divide.

After another few seconds of trying the knobs on the console, Frenchie pounds a fist into it, startling MM.

“Merde!”

MM shakes his head. “I told you it’s fuckin’ cold out here-”

“Putain, I just felt like wearing it, ok?” Frenchie shouts. “I’m not asking you to give me the clothes off your back, so just leave me alone.”

MM’s eyes widen.

Frenchie lowers his head to rest on the steering wheel, eyes closed. His breath is coming in slow, barely controlled inhales.

“I’m not trying to be an asshole, alright?” MM says, breaking the silence. “It’s cold as chopped-off ballsack out there. Just trying to look out for you.”

Frenchie lifts his head, stare unnervingly blank.

“She didn’t give me any clothes.”

MM blinks nervously. Ever since leaving the hospital, Frenchie hasn’t made any attempts at talking about what happened. Marvin’s never pushed either, and now that it’s coming up he feels starkly uncomfortable.

“All I had was what I was wearing when she took me, and when those got fucked, she didn’t give me anything else.”

He laughs, pale fingers tracing over a new scar on his forearm.

His voice lowers to a whisper.

“So much fabric on my skin. It feels weird.”

MM’s face falls. “Frenchie,”

Frenchie sniffs, wiping at his nose, then shakes his head. He starts rummaging around his pants for a cigarette, or a joint, anything smokable.

“Today’s just no good. I didn’t sleep well last night, didn’t have time for coffee,” He shrugs. “Trying to stay off the uppers.” He laughs weakly. “That doesn’t help either.”

He lights a cigarette and then turns the keys in the ignition, letting the engine rumble to life.

MM shrugs. “Jeanine gets all cranky when she doesn’t sleep. Getting some more hours in would probably help.”

He wants to say more, and probably should come up with something of value, but with Frenchie, pointing out something’s wrong is like pulling the pin off a grenade. The outburst’s uncalled for, the admission about the clothes even more so, but if MM wants the right information, he needs to go at this with surgical precision. If anything is actually wrong, bringing it up will only raise the guy’s defenses. MM can already imagine the excuses.

Frenchie scoffs, eyes hardening suddenly. His mouth opens and closes like he wants to say something, but he eventually decides to say nothing.

Cigarette smoke fills up the van, and MM holds back a cough.

He holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying.”

Then, as if it’s an afterthought. “You can talk to us,”

It seems like the right thing to say, but it doesn’t quite stick.

Frenchie moves the stick shift, cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips. He turns his head to back the van out, eyes steely.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

He meets MM’s eyes with a wry smile.

“Just saying,”

He’s sitting next to Jeanine in his apartment while she plays with her polly pockets.

On the coffee table in front of him, he lines up the rubbery clothes. Shirts, then jackets, then pants, then shoes. Every time Jeanine takes something from the organization he feels his heartbeat spike a little bit. Whenever she discards a clothing item, he has to lean forward and pick it off the carpet, placing it back on the table in its designated location.

“Daddy,” She whines.

“Come on, J. It’s like a store. Someone’s gotta clean up after the customers.”

“Daddy.” Jeanine holds up her doll. “She’s rich. She doesn’t need to go to the store.”

MM shakes his head fondly. “Tell her to give us some of her money, then. Rent ain’t free-”

In his pocket, his phone starts buzzing. He pulls it out to see a string of text messages on the display, all from Kimiko.

I need help.

Shining Light cell in Hoboken.

I got my daughter today, he shoots back. What about Frenchie?

Busy.

Which means probably high. Motherfucker.

Hughie?

Really?

Yeah, fair enough. He looks at the clock, weighing his options. Jeanine gets picked up in two hours. And really, who does Kimiko have in her corner besides Frenchie? Everyone’s usually too wrapped up in their own bullshit. He rubs his eyes and stares back at the screen.

How long can you wait?

When Frenchie’s van rolls to a stop in front of MM’s apartment, he’s surprised to see the man himself sitting at the wheel, Kimiko waving from the passenger seat. Frenchie looks less like he’s high, and more just exhausted.

He gapes at them.

“The fuck happened to being busy?”

Frenchie stares back at him with tired eyes. “I’m no Supe, but I’m not letting her do this alone.”

The statement’s comforting at the very least. If Frenchie doesn’t have Kimiko’s back, that’s a clear sign everything’s gone to shit.

“Alright.” MM yanks the door of the van open and clambers in. “Let’s get this shit over with then.”

Kimiko tells him she and Hughie found signs of prisoners. MM’s no pussy, but he wishes she’d shared that little piece of information prior to agreeing to come on what is basically a suicide mission. They’re captives and deserve to be freed, but there is also the very real chance that they’ve been turned into Supes.

He and Frenchie arm themselves with the best guns they have, grabbing grenades and homemade explosives to keep on hand just in case. They park the car a few blocks from docks on the Hudson then make their way on foot. The sun’s begging to set, and the whole place seems eerily quiet.

“Hughie said that the place should be empty. Just the captives.” Frenchie says as they crouch by a stack of shipping containers. “Police are cracking down on the whole operation. Or something.”

Kimiko nods, pointing towards a hole in the wall. “We should go in through there. Do a quick search?”

MM sighs, regret clawing its way up his throat. “Then what? We just let them fuckin go?”

Frenchie stares forward at the hole in the wall, eyes shadowed. “These people have been locked up for who knows how long. Letting them go is the least we can do.”

The plan is simple, its execution made easier by lack of security and the sinking sun. They carve their way through the abandoned warehouse with ease, only coming across five armed guards who they take out quickly and quietly.

The real trouble only comes when they get close to a locked door. The whole thing is rigged, but no one notices until it’s too late. Kimiko makes to pull for the door and then there’s no door to speak of, an explosion rocking the warehouse.

Frenchie and MM are far enough away that they avoid the brunt of the detonation, but it doesn’t take much for the old building to begin collapsing, taking part of the dock and them with it. They slide down along with tons of concrete until they hit dirt, piles of debris collapsing on top of them.

After the dust settles, MM coughs, then stands up tentatively, glad to find that somehow there’s just enough room to stand. He’s not hurt, aside from a few scrapes. Frenchie seems to be okay too. Slivers of light crawl into the dank space through cracks in the debris, so at least they’re not left in complete darkness.

At first Frenchie’s in a clear state of panic, shouting Kimiko’s name and trying but failing to move any of the debris trapping them. The sixth time he starts screaming her name, MM gives him a calculated shove.

“Frenchie!”

“Quois?” He asks breathlessly.

“Chill out, and shut the fuck up! You want them to find her or what?”

“Non. Non, I’m sorry.”

“If she took any damage, she’s probably healed by now. Just relax, ok? Freaking out ain’t helpin’ anyone.”

Frenchie moves back against the wall, and MM stands on an outcropping of rock, trying to see out of the small holes in the broken rock.

After peeking around for a few minutes, he drops down from the ledge.

“Fuck. Alright, I can’t see shit, but I’m sure Kimiko’s close by. She’ll bust us outta here.”

There’s no reply except the sound of river water flowing into the cavity.

MM turns around then, blinking in surprise.

“Frenchie?”

There’s more than enough room to stand, but Frenchie’s still sitting on the ground amid the rising water, balled up like he’s trying to make himself disappear.

His head is titled down, unfocused gaze on the water. His arms are crossed, and he picks at the skin of his lip with one hand, the other gripping onto his bicep so tight that his fingernails are white.

MM blinks. Slowly, he lowers himself down so he’s squatting across from Frenchie.

The sound of gunshots echoes throughout the structure, and MM scoffs.

“At least we ain’t getting shot at no more.”

Silence.

MM tries to stifle his concern, because Frenchie being this silent is unsettling at best, if not just downright scary.

He tries a different approach.

“You’ll just get wet faster, sitting like that.”

Again, no response.

“Hey,” MM elbows him lightly on the knee. “Chill. We’re gonna get out of here soon.”

Now Marvin’s starting to panic.

“Serge,” He says, quieter this time. “What are you thinking about?”

Finally, Frenchie tilts his head, the hand at his mouth stilling. He doesn’t seem to be looking at anything.

“So many tiny spaces.” He hums. “Must still be locked away.”

“What the fuck? What are you talking about?”

Frenchie keeps going. “Behind a door, somewhere. Or in a hole, just like this.”

He feels the urge to ask him what the hell he’s on, but he’s afraid that the words coming out of his mouth aren’t the effect of any substance. Panic attacks, disassociation, he’s seen his fair share. Hughie in the whale. Other guys he served with in the army.

Never Frenchie though.

Water keeps rushing in, soaking Frenchie’s clothes, but he doesn’t even seem to notice.

His voice remains a low murmur. “What a fucking joke,”

“Frenchie,” MM whispers. “You’re scaring me, man.”

That seems to jolt him if even a little bit.

He looks up at Marvin. His thumb is stained with blood from his torn-up lips, a dark red droplet sliding down his wrist and collecting at the wet hem of his raggedy sweater.

“I’m sorry.”

He squeezes his eyes shut tight and then opens them, looking at MM.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t, uh, sleep well.”

“Frenchie.” MM says. “You said the same thing last time. ”

Even if it’s only a half-truth, Frenchie’s appearance backs up his words.

There’s a new, sharp angularity to his face that he didn’t notice before. His eyes are red-rimmed, the surrounding skin smudged a deep purple. His hair is a tangled mess, sticking up every which way. They’re under poor lighting, but MM can’t imagine being outside will improve matters much.

Suddenly, he feels guilty.

Frenchie’s never looked put together in all the time MM’s known him, but right now he looks like something bordering on sick. His body isn’t broken and bleeding anymore, but somehow this seems worse. At least then there were bones to set, wounds to sew closed. Now, he just looks like a shadow. Present, but untouchable. He’s starting to get the feeling that throwing Frenchie back into action was a bad, bad idea.

The water rushing in is cold as shit, but he feels a chill coming from somewhere else.

Marvin’s good at weapons, good at tactics, good at a lot of fucking things, really. Still, that’s not where his strengths lie. What he’s best at is people. Motivations, desires, and fears. They’re not hard to figure out if you just read between the lines. Butcher and Frenchie are well-worn books in his mental library, things with lengthy chapters filled with repeated patterns of behavior. For someone so frantic and unpredictable, Frenchie’s a relatively simple guy.

MM stares, looking for something recognizable in the other man’s eyes.

His frown deepens.

There is no book for the person he sees in front of him.

Kimiko’s timing is impeccable. When she finally gets to them, the water is really flowing in. The sound of concrete slabs moving alerts them that she’s there, followed by more and more light floating in. It takes her a while, but eventually, she moves enough that they have an opening. She reaches one hand out to MM first, then yanks Frenchie up and out, looking over him with wild eyes.

MM notices that he seems a lot more there than before, now that they’re free.

Frenchie puts two hands on either side of her neck. “You’re ok?”

She’s bloody and out of breath, with bullet holes in her clothes, but she nods, pointing at them.

“Good,” Frenchie smiles tiredly, as if being trapped drained him more than the fight with Shining Light. “We’re okay.”

“There was more of them.” She signs. “The sound must have brought them out of hiding.”

“No shit,” MM says after looking around. At least six or seven more bodies are strewn around them, all mangled and leaking blood. It drains down the collapsed floor, sliding down into the ground like something out of a horror movie. MM feels an impending sense of dread.

He grabs a rifle from a nearby body and throws it at Frenchie, grabbing a Glock for himself.

“Let’s find the captives and get the fuck out of here.”

They trek through the debris into the non-destroyed part of the warehouse, finally making it to where the door must have stood before the explosion. When they round the corner of a half-destroyed wall, Kimiko slaps a hand over her mouth.

MM deflates, the gun going slack at his side. “Ah, shit.”

There are eight cages lined against a far wall. Congealed blood covers the floor and the stench is almost too much to bear. Every captive seems to be long dead.

Slowly, Kimiko sinks against the wall sliding down until she’s sitting on the ground. A trembling hand covers her mouth. MM doesn’t let himself feel anything, simply moves forward to do what has to be done. He motions at Frenchie to help, and together they check each cage, making sure no one’s alive still.

They’re too late.

MM stays squatting on the ground next to a cage, fingers interlaced on the rusted metal to keep him upright. Whoever was in the cage in front of him looked like they were young. Their eyes are still open, but lifeless and dull like scratched glass.

From across the room, Frenchie makes a sound at the back of his throat. MM glances at him.

“This one wasn’t shot.” He says, pointing at the corpse’s head. It’s dented, like the prisoner was pounding his skull into the side of the cage. Suicide, then.

MM swallows convulsively.

Must be locked away still. Behind a door, somewhere. Or in a hole, just like this.

Frenchie stares at the body in front of him with half-lidded eyes and blue lips, his smile bordering on something vicious.

“This one got it.”

Back at MM’s apartment, when Frenchie’s in the bathroom changing out of his soggy clothes and presumably taking whatever pill will numb him best, MM pulls Kimiko aside. He motions towards the bathroom with a shake of his head.

“The fuck’s going on with him?”

Guilt seems to flash across her face, but only for a second before it’s replaced by something close to resentment.

“He won’t talk to me.”

MM frowns. “Fucker’s icing you out too, huh?”

Kimiko turns her back so that Frenchie won’t be able to see her hands in case he comes back out. “I didn’t say anything before because he used to get in these moods sometimes, you know? He gets teary and mopey, and sad, but now he’s just-”

“Somewhere else.” MM supplies.

“He’s not acting like himself.” Her expression melts into desperation. “He shouldn’t have seen that. Bringing him with me was a bad idea. ”

MM wants to comfort her in some way, say that he knows what to do or how to help, but he doesn’t want to lie to her. Instead, he puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

“We’ll help him. I don’t know how, but we’ll figure it out. We owe him that much.”

On the first day of February, one and a half months after his rescue, Frenchie gets ambushed again, except this time, there’s no blood involved.

He’s late to work. When he gets to the office, everyone in their merry little circus mills about, doing busy work or just wasting time while Butcher plots their next move against Vought and the Supes. As soon as Kimiko sees him walk in, she hops up from her chair.

He blinks in surprise. They haven’t been on the best terms lately. He swipes a hand at his nose, hoping there’s no evidence of his latest drug binge.

“Good news!” She signs, expression enthusiastic. She looks happy like he hasn’t seen her in weeks.

“Oui?” Frenchie feels the traces of a genuine smile on his lips. “What is it?”

“Nina,” She grins, pointing at Butcher. “He found Nina!”

An apology from Butcher would have been awkward but probably deserved. This?

Oh, this is so much worse.

Frenchie feels the blood drain from his face.

“Non. No, no, no, no no.”

MM lingers in the back, arms crossed. Hughie and Annie are talking in the back, but he can tell they’re eavesdropping by the way their volume’s gone down.

Kimiko’s face is drawn together. Butcher leans on Frenchie’s desk, looking vaguely amused, but mostly annoyed.

“Mate, you’re not being serious? You’re telling me you don’t want that Russian bitch dead?”

Frenchie’s breaths are starting to come faster, eyes burning. There’s something stuck at the back of his throat.

“Butcher, I am begging you, just leave it, alright?”

The older man scoffs, looking away and then back at him as if he can’t believe this shit.

“Do I need to fuckin’ remind you of how we found you?”

“No!” Frenchie shouts. “Trust me, I remember what she did to me. I wish I didn’t, but I fucking do, and I am telling you, I don’t want you to do anything.”

Butcher rolls his eyes, walking towards the window and muttering something under his breath.

Frenchie moves forward, placing his hands on Kimiko’s shoulders. Butcher, he might not be able to convince, but he knows Kimiko will listen to him. He lowers his voice to something above a whisper.

“You can’t do this. Mon coeur, please don’t do this. I am begging you,”

She just stares, expression molting into concern.

“If she does something to you,” He whispers. “I will not be able to live with myself.”

He looks back to where Butcher stands.

Frenchie’s seen him like this before. Barely concealed rage simmering beneath his calm demeanor.

The older man leans against a pillar, eyes like daggers. “I think the cunt deserves to die, and I think you’re being a pussy.”

“Hey-” MM interrupts.

“Got a little Stockholm syndrome do we, French?”

“Butcher,” MM warns. “Fuckin’ stop. He made himself clear.”

Maybe the accusations are supposed to hurt more, but Frenchie just feels relief. They can’t go after her. He won’t let them. It’ll just be another body on his conscience, another ghost come to haunt his already restless sleep. He shouldn’t get the privilege to exact revenge, not after all the shit he’s done.

Kimiko places a hand on top of his.

This is the longest they’ve looked at each other in days.

“Ok.” She signs. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

He lets out a breath of air, then tugs Kimiko into a hug, gripping onto her as much as he can. It feels like if he doesn’t hold on tight enough, she might evaporate. He tucks his head into the crook of her shoulder. He’s scared if he looks up, everyone will be gone, already on their way to hunt down Little Nina.

Kimiko’s hand slides up on his back, rubbing slow circles. It’s as much a promise as any.

“Merci.” He whispers. “Merci.”

Chapter Text

He used to love Valentine’s Day.

Always a romantic at heart, but now Frenchie can’t tolerate the implied sentiment of the Holiday. Seeing all the hearts and stuffed animals and corny messages makes him feel ill. The only indulgence he’s allowing himself is a box of stale candy hearts that he steals from a CVS and a little heart patch that he sewed onto one of Kimiko's jackets.

She's gone in the morning before he can ask her if she likes it.

He sits on the couch, enjoying the tail end of a shroom trip and popping the candy into his mouth. Before he eats each heart, he reads the saying in his best American accent.

LOVE YOU

YOU ROCK

ADORE ME

BFF

When he's halfway through the box, Kimiko comes back. She shoves the broken door aside and steps into the apartment. She's splattered in blood, but it looks like she's been able to wipe a good amount of it off. Definitely MM's doing. She's wearing all black, except for a gray jacket with a little heart on the collar. Whatever Butcher had her doing, it must have been nasty.

"Well, aren't you dressed for the occasion," Frenchie says through a mouthful of candy. 

Kimiko flips him off but it's half-hearted. She slumps onto the couch next to him, looking bonelessly tired. She points at the heart. 

"Cute." 

"Yeah?" Frenchie throws another candy into his mouth. "I thought your wardrobe needed some color." 

She rolls her eyes and scoots closer, reaching out for a candy heart and popping it into her mouth. 

"Wait! You have to see what it says first. They all say something. Look," 

There are only a few candies left rattling at the bottom of the box and he pours one out onto his palm. 

He reaches a hand out to the back of his neck and laughs awkwardly. 

"Uh, this one says KISS ME."

Kimiko seems mildly unfazed, only reaches into the box for her own. As soon as she reads the message on the candy, her cheeks turns scarlet. 

"What?" Frenchie has to stifle a laugh. "What does it say?" 

She holds the heart between her fingers and turns it to face him. 

SAY YES

Frenchie feels his own face flush, heart pumping hard in his chest. "Usually, they don't-"

It's the drugs, he tells himself. 

It's Valentine's Day, he tells himself. 

It's clear Frenchie's never heard of an inhibition. 

He can't do anything to stop himself before he's cupping her head in one hand and turning her head to meet his. 

First, they kiss slow and steady, Kimiko relaxing into his touch like he sometimes lets himself imagine she would. Their lips meet like a lock and key, and the action of kissing seems to require no effort at all on either of their parts. 

She grabs his shoulder, pulling herself closer until she's practically sitting on top of him. 

For the first time in months, he stops thinking and starts feeling.

He grabs her by the hips and pulls her up to sit on his lap, hands resting on her ass as they go from just kissing to something more intense. 

She bites on his bottom lip and he has to bite back a moan.

This is the most vanilla shit he's done in a long time, but somehow it feels better than anything else.

Even though he thinks he’d rather drown, they pull away for a second to breathe.

She’s smiling at him, because of him maybe, he’s not sure.

Oh, fuck.

Back at the party, when he wanted to kiss her but he was too fucked up, and wanting to kiss her in of itself is fucked up, and god.

What is he doing. What is happening. She kissed him first, but it must have been a mistake, because he doesn’t know what on earth would possess her to kiss him of all fucking people. Now he's kissing her and she's kissing him back and this is all his fucking fault. He shouldn’t be letting Kimiko do this to herself, but he can’t bring himself to stop. He can’t even erase the stupid smile he knows is on his face.

Gently, he moves a strand of her hair back, fingers grazing over the back of her neck. He stares at her eyes, big round pools filled with an infinite, inky black. It’s a comforting dark, he thinks. So much of their communication is through the eyes. He knows those things like the back of his hand, yet he cannot bring himself to look away.

Frenchie loves her, that much he’s always known.

Waves of some uncomfortable feeling start to wash up on him, growing in height until they’re mavericks, threatening to crush him.

Frenchie also loved Nina. He loved his papa.

His throat feels parched, and he doesn’t think it’s water that he needs. His skin burns where it touches her neck and he has to hold very still to avoid ripping his hand away. He’s almost surprised there’s no rot to be seen, no flakes of dried blood falling onto her sweater, no pus running down torn skin. No infection or disease that he can transmit. Nothing to indicate that the things he keeps inside of him are spilling out.

The smile slowly slides off Kimiko’s face, lips parting slightly. She purses her lips, eyebrows drawing together.

Frenchie puts on a smile, and laughs, pulling his hand away to rub a hand down his face. He shakes his head and tries another laugh, but it comes out rough and half-formed, the sound tripping into a sob. He swallows and leans his head back against the couch, face tilted to the ceiling.

Dirty splotches mark the already yellowed plaster.
Kimiko grabs his chin, pulling it down so he’s forced to look at her. After a second of prolonged eye contact, she slides off his lap and moves back to sit on the coffee table.

“Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry-” She signs.

“No! No, come on, don’t say that.” His mind whirls for an excuse that won’t hurt her feelings, won’t make it seem like any of this is her fault, because it’s just not. “It’s just. Uh. Just,”

How does he even begin to explain.

Her lips are pale from being pressed together, hands held close to her chest before she starts signing again.

“You’re crying.”

That catches him by surprise.

Goddamn, if he hasn’t always been a crier.

His maman would wipe the tears from his face, his papa would kick him around, Nina would laugh, Butcher would click his tongue, MM would place a heavy hand on his back.

He’s never cried in front of Kimiko. At least, not consciously.

The things he remembers from his early days in the hospital are vague. At first, it was mostly pain, a vicious, twisting thing that went hand in hand with unwanted numbness. Following that, there was the sense that he was maybe dead and still stuck in the hazy landscape of his dreams. Then, there was her.

For a few seconds or minutes, his body would kick awake, and without fail, she’d be there. Holding his hand and gently brushing the tears from his skin, concerned eyes always the last thing he’d see before passing out again. Then he started staying awake for longer, and shame began to feel like a real, warranted emotion again, so somehow through it all he forced himself to pull it together.

Someone’s cut the power.

All the energy in his body is suddenly gone. Frenchie half leans half slumps forward, hands gripping onto her knees, head hanging down. The physical contact should be to reassure her, but mostly he does it so he can stop feeling like he’s about to sink into the floor.

It’s only now that it’s been brought up that he can tell. There’s wetness on his cheeks. He sees it dripping down onto the fabric of his jeans. The corners of his eyes burn. The proof is all there, yet he can’t feel it.

These aren’t the rocking back and forth, cry yourself to sleep type of tears. No unhinged, breathless sobs like he’s so used to.

This, he can’t even control.

Salty droplets trickle down his face. They drop like bombs onto the filthy carpet, shattering into billions of atoms.

His fingers dig into the sides of her knees, and he feels reality slip a bit loose, like a poorly tied knot.

Kimiko isn’t moving. She doesn’t reach out to touch him, her body statuesque.

If he could, he would bring himself to laugh. He’s probably scaring her. He’s scaring himself.

The apartment is quiet, save for the sounds that float in through an open window. It’s a weekday afternoon, yet it feels like the city has nothing but silence to offer. He wishes there was noise coming from somewhere. For the first time, he wishes she could speak, so that he could hear something other than the blood pounding in his ears.

He wishes she could speak, so he could close his eyes and hear her voice and not have to raise his face and look her in the eye.

But she can’t.

She can’t, so he has to lift his head anyway. Shame rips through him as he faces her with tears still on his face, spilling out of his eyes. He smiles and clears his throat, hoping it doesn’t look half as fake as it feels.

Kimiko’s cheeks are red under the blood, her stare blank and unreadable.

Frenchie knows a chasm’s opened up between them again.

It’s just-

How does he even begin to explain.

Silence becomes Frenchie’s new and seemingly only friend.

Doesn’t matter the temperature, the windows are always open. Still, it’s like the noise from the street refuses to reach the apartment. He works on whatever Butcher asks of him with headphones on, music blasting so loud that he’s sure his hearing’s permanently damaged. The TV is never off, always playing a monotonous string of reruns, the sound of a laugh track roaring through the small space. Sometimes, he takes too much of something and gets stuck in a bad trip. He doesn’t take anything to counteract the effects and secretly hopes he’ll hear something in his head, even if it isn’t real.

He and Kimiko don’t really talk. She begins wandering off again, sometimes coming back bloody, other times coming back so late that Frenchie doesn’t see her until the following day. Even when they do manage to exchange words, it feels like talking through a smoke screen. He stares at her hands and he looks into her eyes, but he never quite remembers what she tells him.

His phone lies somewhere in the apartment, or in the office, or down on the street. He doesn’t know how long ago he lost it, only knows he doesn’t care. There are dozens of messages and missed calls he’ll never see.

Everything is always so loud, but somehow Frenchie hears nothing at all.

Being halfway on a comedown while having nothing with which to come up, all while sitting in an office chair is Frenchie’s own personal hell.

Last night he ran out of benzos, and couldn’t find any opioids in his stash. He settled for one too many edibles combined with a line while he hit his usual spots around town, trying to find anyone who owed him something or who’d sell. It was a bad night, and the closest thing he could find to relief was heroin, which he wasn’t feeling stupid enough to try again. Tempting, but he’d been there, done that. A long time ago when there were no other options.

Now he had money and connections, and if the latter wasn’t pulling through, at least the money he could do something with. He hit a liquor store at five am, went home at six, hopped the turnstiles at seven, and made it to the Flatiron at eight sharp.

He’s exhausted.

The coffee is doing nothing for him, and neither is the generously poured whiskey. He stares at the papers in front of him without reading and promises himself that if he feels equally as shitty in another half hour, he’ll do the coke that’s sitting in his front pocket. He’s been trying to avoid stimulants lately, mostly so he doesn’t do something he ends up regretting. Lately, though, all his arbitrary rules have started meaning less and less.

He takes a long swig and grimaces, not at the whiskey but at how burnt the coffee is. His stomach rumbles loudly. He tries to think back to his last meal, but it takes too long, and he’s too tired, Butcher’s arguing loudly with Hughie, MM is noisily organizing, Annie is doing something with the electricity and Kimiko is coming in and slamming the door-

Frenchie knocks over his cup of coffee and blinks in quickly dampened shock as it soaks up the pages on his desk. He almost musters what it takes to care. Almost.

“Hey, you know how many trees you just killed?” MM calls from somewhere in the room.

Kimiko ignores the whole thing, just like she's been ignoring him for days, and just plops into her seat across from Frenchie.

The office is quiet until Frenchie stands up, chair scraping against the floor.

He looks around and loudly announces that he’s going to go smoke a cigarette outside. Not part of the original plan which included going home and not coming back, but he figures he can smoke on the way. Then, he remembers the shit in his front pocket.

Not all hope is lost then.

He ambles into the bathroom and makes quick work of the baggie. Maybe too quick, because he has to sit down to avoid passing out from the head rush. Fuck. It’s either shit coke or really good coke, but only time will tell. Once he feels it’s safe to stand, he slinks out of the bathroom and heads back to his chair.

Butcher stands next to Kimiko, staring down at something on her desk.

Now that he’s in a more amicable mood, he figures he should try and involve himself in the office happenings. As inane of a job as it is, it’s still a job. He wanders over to the pair, eyebrows raising in surprise when he sees what they’re looking at.

He leans over, repulsed yet mildly intrigued.

“Mm.” Frenchie nods at the photographs. “Qu'est-ce que c’est?”

“Something for Mallory,” Butcher says slowly.

Taking pictures of mutilated corpses isn’t typically in their line of work, but he’s slightly drunk and very high and sleep-deprived enough that his mind’s already wandering and he feels an oncoming wave of vertigo. He puts his hands on Kimiko’s desk, eyes trained directly over the pictures. The smell of bourbon wafts over from his desk. It's making his nostrils burn even more.

Shit coke. Definitely shit coke.

He blinks sluggishly and looks at the photographs again.

They’re of a few different bodies if Frenchie’s guessing correctly, but it’s hard to tell through the sheer amount of gore. Bodies torn limb from limb. Blood pooling on concrete floors. The pictures aren’t detailing a hit. They’re detailing carnage.

The scene feels vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. The way the bodies are splayed out? The damage done? All the fucking blood. His brain is working overtime trying to keep awake and upright, but he keeps staring anyway.

“You good, mate?”

Frenchie nods and makes a noncommittal noise. He puts his first three fingers on the picture at the top of the stack and slides it closer.

“Well, you look bloody awful.”

Frenchie turns his head towards Butcher and then glares. It’s weird, being so physically close to the man. Butcher’s made of flesh and blood, as real as the ground Frenchie stands on, but still he feels like a ghost. In fact, everyone in the office feels like a ghost. He barely talks to any of them anymore unless it’s work or Supe related.

He glances quickly at Kimiko. Her face looks flushed, lips pressed into a frown. Almost like she’s nervous. He gives her a look, hoping it communicates what he’s thinking.

What the fuck is wrong?

Hindsight is 20/20.

Frenchie picks up the picture and scrubs at his eyes. “Oui. I’m tired. Aren’t we all fucking tired? We work for you.”

“Now, mate,” Butcher frowns mockingly. “That just hurts.”

Frenchie stares at the picture some more. He doesn’t know why he can’t peel his eyes away. It feels like the body is yelling at him to look!

Oh. Oh.

“I’d cut that shit out if I were you-”

MM? Where did MM come from?

In the corner, there’s a singular leg, stiletto and all. It’s mostly covered in red, but he sees little peeks of blue. He drops the photo and grabs another. The remains in this picture are still of a woman. Maybe the same one. Outside of the blood and gore, her skin looks smooth and pale. There’s an expensive-looking jacket in one of the photos, obviously bloodied. What’s left of a wrist heaped over once golden bracelets. Long, silky-looking hair, lying in chunks like it’s been ripped out.

Kimiko’s hand is on his forearm even though she hasn’t touched him since-

He already knows.

He knows, and his heart is beating out of his chest, and he wants to scream, but all he can do is look down at the last photo in the stack, and wait with bloodshot eyes for his brain to process what he’s seeing.

There’s someone in the right half of the picture who’s clearly not supposed to be in the frame. Black jeans. Black shirt. Black boots. Gray denim jacket, with a heart sewn on the collar. Gun in one hand. Bathed in blood.

Frenchie knows that person, knows that gun.

If he concentrates hard enough he can almost remember what the cool metal felt like in his hand. The way she would wave it around like a toy. How she ran it up and down his scalp back when his hair was buzzed, which it was most of the time he worked for her.

She hated his hair short, but hated his facial hair long. She hated it when he would initiate things, she hated it even more when he wouldn’t fight back. She hated when he left her but loved it when he begged her to let him go. She hated his name in its original French but loved calling him its Russian equivalent. She hated any stretch of his unmarked skin but hated open wounds even more.

Always so happy to see his flesh re-knit, skin closed again where she had once chosen to open it. Always so excited to see how much he could take.

She hated him and treated him like an animal, and made him do horrible, horrible things, but there was a time no one in the world loved him except for her.

Now, Nina is dead, no, mauled, and he feels like he’s coming undone.

“What,” Frenchie straightens up slowly, photo crushed in his fist. “The fuck is this?”

“Just photos, Frenchie. Sure you’re alright?” Butcher cocks his head innocently as if his response doesn’t already imply guilt. “Couldn’t find another fix? Withdrawal’s a bitch, y’know?”

“Fuck you,” Frenchie whispers. Then, louder still. “Fuck you!”

“And you,” He whips around to face Kimiko. “I told you, no, begged you not to do anything.”

She stares at him in shock, eyes wide as saucers.

It physically hurts him when his voice comes out a sharp whine.

“You promised.”

Oh, he knows damn well. She’s a Supe. She can do whatever the fuck she wants, clearly has already done so.

He’s just a fucking nobody.

He turns again and comes face to face with Butcher’s impassive expression.

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you?” Frenchie spits. “Years I have done your dirty work, and never have I asked for anything in return. The one time I ask you a favor, you don’t even care. Is your life that fucking pathetic that you need to kill people just to feel something? Fuck you.”

His chest heaves with the effort of yelling, hands trembling violently at his sides. He feels sick. He feels alone. He feels like he could die right then and there.

The room is silent, except for the ticking of a clock.

“Mate,” Butcher scoffs, voice eerily quiet. “Pot calling the kettle black, ain’t it? Look at you. Killing yourself just because you can’t stand to live. How’s that any fuckin’ different?”

He feels wetness sliding down his cheeks.

Frenchie doesn’t move. He just stares at Butcher, willing the other man to throw a punch, pull a knife, shoot him in the face, anything to convince him he’s capable of human fucking emotion.

Nothing.

He’s dizzy. He needs to sit down or vomit or walk into traffic.

Numbness grabs him by the shoulders and shakes.

“At least,” Frenchie hisses, “I’m only hurting myself, you sick fuck.”

He sniffs, wipes at his nose. His skin itches. He doesn’t have time for this shit. He doesn’t have time for any of these fucking people and their agendas and their egos and their violence.

He backs away from them, not even bothering to grab anything from his desk. He bumps into someone and whips around, coming face-to-face with MM.

Frenchie cringes away from him. “Did you know about this?”

The look on Marvin’s face is apologetic, but stoically firm.

“She hurt you. Bad.”

He feels like his brain is short-circuiting. He doesn’t understand. Weren’t they all there when he asked Butcher to stay put? To leave Nina be?

Maybe, he is the real ghost. Just passing through with no purpose, no voice to be heard and no mark to be left.

It feels like he can’t get enough air.

“D’accord. I’m leaving.” He says calmly. “Kick me off the team, see if I give a fuck.”

“No. No. Fuck that, man. That’s just crazy talk.” MM moves to get in his way, sticking an arm out to try and stop him. “C’mon Frenchie, don’t do this man,”

Frenchie moves past him, not meeting much resistance, before turning around for a split second.

Butcher looks tired, but unapologetic.

Like everything she does, Kimiko is silent when she cries. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears, her hand gripping onto the chair’s armrest so tightly it’s starting to splinter.

As he stares at her, he feels something heavy reach down and wrap around his chest. He doesn’t care about these people, just as much as they don’t care about him.

Drops of water lick his chin, run down his jaw.

By the time he’s turned around and reached the door, the lie has cemented itself into his heart.

It is easier than he remembers, to return to nothing.

No one follows him out of the Flatiron, no one calls the phone he doesn’t have, no one yells his name in the busy New York streets.

He spends the first twenty minutes wandering around without a destination, simply trying anything to slow the jackhammering of his heart. He can’t breathe properly, and it feels like every breath he does take burns his throat, cuts it up, and makes blood slide down to his lungs.

By the time he feels slightly more tethered to reality, the sun is waning in the sky and his head is pounding brutally. The feeling doesn’t last. He wanders into familiar, dangerous neighborhoods and grasps tightly onto the twisted comfort they give him. When he bumps into a burly man on the street, it happens subconsciously.

“Hey,” The man growls, hand reaching out to grab Frenchie by the collar.

Normally he would apologize, maybe charm his way out of this. Right now, he doesn’t care what happens. He lets his head list to the side and eyes up the man. There’s a tattoo on his forearm that he recognizes, a symbol of a gang he worked with once. He smiles lazily.

After all, this stranger can do nothing that hasn’t already been done to him.

He must see something in Frenchie’s face or his eyes, some hollow desperation, because he lets go of his shirt.

“What?” The man laughs gruffly, maliciously. “You feenin’, huh?”

Frenchie feels his eyes light up.

That’s how he spends the next two weeks of his life.

In and out of drug dens uglier and more disgusting than any operation he ever ran.

Most of the time he’s too obliterated to notice, let alone care.

Sometimes he fucks people, though mostly they fuck him. Half the time he doesn’t know what he’s taking, or what he’s been given. He sees a few familiar faces but mostly hangs with people he doesn’t know or care about, all hollow-eyed and half-dead, just like him.

One night he stays with a Vietnamese crew that’s smuggling in some new form of opium from the East. He helps them connect with a smuggler who knows better routes and can help them, all in exchange for a little taste of their product.

He knows someone through Cherie who meets up with them at a dock on the Hudson, talking ardently with the Vietnamese. There’s a lot of hand gesturing, a lot of pointing, and an eventual exchange of papers.

Frenchie rocks back on his heels and watches the exchange in boredom. He’s starting to feel sober again.

He’s vaguely lucid, at least the most he’s been in days. He hates it. Usually, it’s like his body is on auto-pilot, moving him and doing with him whatever he wants. Like a fucking meat puppet. It’s scary but pleasant, having no control. He wakes up with a stranger who he doesn’t know in what can barely be called a bed in an unfamiliar place.

Every time he goes to sleep and actually wakes up, it’s an unpleasant surprise.

The man shoulders him lightly, breaking him out of his stupor.

He does nothing to hide his full-body flinch.

The Vietnamese have retreated toward a group of shipping containers, and now it’s just Frenchie and the smuggler.

“Serge,” The guy lights a cigarette, then hands one to Frenchie. “That’s your name, no?”

He speaks with a heavy accent. Albanian, maybe. Definitely not Russian.

He blinks in surprise, taking the offering with only slight hesitation. “Have we met?”

It’s likely. Frenchie slumps down to the ground and sits on the curb. He stares at the face above him and takes a deep inhale of the cigarette.

“New Year’s. I shared some of my ket with you.”

Ah. Cherie’s Albanian friend.

He squints up at him and then looks back to the water. “Terrible ketamine, by the way.”

The Albanian sits next to him and snorts. “What is it they say here in America? Never look a horse gifted in the mouth?”

It’s wrong, but Frenchie just nods. “Uh-huh. Why give me freebies then? People like us don’t do that type of shit.”

The Albanian shrugs, arms wrapping around his knees. He must be younger than Frenchie, probably new to the city. Cherie always loved taking in strays. “Thought I could maybe get something in return.”

Frenchie leans his head back and tries to laugh, but it morphs into a hacking cough. Unintentionally edging into sobriety is really working to pronounce the downsides of his current lifestyle.

He doesn’t feel great.

He’s starting to feel fidgety. He needs the Vietnamese to hurry the fuck up.

Frenchie bites his bottom lip. “Is that offer still up?”

The Albanian cackles. “Fuck no. Maybe back at the party. You kind of look like homeless shit now.”

He sighs in defeat. It’s definitely true. He kind of is homeless shit. He can’t remember the last time he did something that could be classified as taking care of himself.

The Albanian coughs next to him.

“How about this? I get my money, you get your drugs, and we can go back to mine. It’s not much, but probably better than wherever you’re staying.”

“I thought-”

“I already said I don’t want to fuck you. It would just be for the night.” The Albanian scowls. “Cherie says you're not bad people. Besides, I owe her.”

Of course, there’s some debt involved. Nowadays no one does anything out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s always about how can I get this and who can get me that.

In the time Frenchie spends mulling the offer over, one of the Vietnamese walks back over. He has a thick stack of bills in one hand and a tiny, wrapped package in the other.

Frenchie stares up at him.

He’s baby-faced, with a wide, raised scar on his forehead. It looks like the result of getting his face slammed into a metal bar.

Frenchie almost throws up.

Decision made. The Albanian could kill him for all he knows, but right now he just needs to sit down and cut into this new supply.

If he dies trying to get high, at least he’ll be doing something he loves.

The boy in the cage had no face.

What used to be his body had turned into a swollen mass, and what used to be his head was bashed in. Self-inflected wounds. Suicide. A quick way to go. An alternative Frenchie should have considered more during his four-month vacation with Little Nina. Nina, who was now also a swollen mass. Or maybe not, seeing as she was viciously ripped apart.

The Albanian leaves for the night and Frenchie sits in his dark bathroom, tucked between the toilet and the shower.

He stares at the bubbling substance on the tinfoil, uncapped needle sitting between his teeth.

The bodies must still be there, decomposing. Probably not Nina’s though. Whatever's left of her.

Frenchie jams the needle between his toes and wonders how long it takes for maggots to dig into rotting flesh.

Chapter Text

Noise and colors float in and out.

From somewhere nearby comes the sound of children playing, the gentle slap of waves crashing against a distant shore. Shoe soles slap against the concrete. A woman with long hair laughs, her head thrown back. The sun is so bright in the sky he has to squint against it. Birds chirp and the wind rustles the dying leaves on the ground. A swing creaks on its chains.

Frenchie peels his eyes open with the force of the continents tearing themselves apart. He inhales loudly and then immediately pukes into the bathtub next to him. When he’s done he sucks in air like a drowning man, one hand pressed to his chest. Knuckles to sternum, fingers digging into his thigh.

A playground.

He needs to go to a playground.

There’s nothing fueling his movements but pure adrenaline. Even so, standing up sends sparks into his vision and he has to lean against the wall and the toilet tank to get to his feet.

As he hauls himself to the door he catches a burst of his reflection in the mirror, and sees that his lips are a bruised purple, skin bordering on gray.

He might have just been on the precipice of an overdose.

The thought is gone almost as quickly as it arrived. Deliriously, he stumbles out of the bathroom and down the tiny hall. His hands scrabble at the walls for purchase, ragged fingernails catching on the busted concrete. The apartment door is unlocked but still, he shoves a shoulder against the door to open it. The hallways are dead silent and an inky black. Bile crawls up his throat but he swallows it back down.

A playground, a playground, Frenchie needs to find a fucking playground.

He almost sobs with relief when he sees the stairs at the end of the hall, when he remembers the Albanian only lives on the first floor. He reaches the foot of the stairs and starts to hear the sound of traffic.

A way out. A playground.

A hysterical laugh bubbles up past his lips and makes him dizzy. Home free! He’s almost free. He chokes down another laugh and starts seeing less and less of his surroundings, vision fading in an out like static on the radio. Just a second. He’ll give himself just a second before he keeps going. Frenchie stretches out an arm to reach the end of the wall.

He miscalculates the distance.

Instead of his palm meeting concrete, it just keeps going until he’s in complete free-fall. It happens so fast he doesn’t even have the chance to let out a scream. He’s falling until he’s not, his body connecting with the concrete stairs with a sharp crack that seems to echo down the empty hall.

His nervous system snaps away from his brain.

Inertia makes him roll to a stop on the landing. He smells the sharp tang of blood like dirty pennies.

Underneath him, his fingers twitch for a second.

Then, nothing.

The taste of blood wakes him. Coppery but strangely sweet, like the smell of the dollar bills he snorts his coke with. It’s in his mouth, wetting his lips and the side of his face that lays flat against the floor. The tacky liquid saturates his hair, leaching into his shirt. He presses the heel of his hand against the floor but finds he has no strength with which to get up.

God, he aches.

Weakly, he reaches a hand towards his face pawing at the blood congealing on his eyelashes. He stops short when he hears the building door yawning open, a wave of cold air rushing into the small foyer.

Someone is coming.

Heavy shoes stomp against the ground as someone approaches. The sound makes pain explode behind his eyelids and he cringes away, curling into himself.

“Putain. Oh my god. What-”

The stomping stops and he sees through barely cracked eyes as someone kneels in front of him. Cold hand grabs at either side of his head and turn him. He moans, then hisses in pain, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Serge, what the fuck?”

Slowly he peels his eyes open. A little blood crawls into his eye. It stings.

Cherie is kneeling at his side, icy blue eyes on fire.

“What?” Frenchie manages to garble out despite the complete lack of moisture in his mouth. He croaks out a laugh. “Are you real?”

Cherie pales and her face turns to stone.

“Get up,” She demands. “Serge, get the fuck up right now or I will fucking-”

Frenchie comes to with a gasp, cold air hitting the back of his throat and making him cough. He’s leaning against the wall, head lolled to his side. A person is next to him, fingers are moving his hair. It hurts, and he lets out a small whine. The person stops.

Cherie.

She comes into his field of view, sitting back on her calves and staring at him. Her face is a blank slate. She only stays sitting for a second before beginning to move again. Through a haze, Frenchie watches as she pulls off her coat, takes off her hoodie, then puts the coat back on. She wrestles him forward until his forehead rests against her chest, movements frantic but solid somehow, and pulls his shirt off. It’s more of a rag than anything, and she uses it to wipe the blood from his skin as best as she can. Then, she wrestles him into the hoodie. She pulls the hood up to cover his wound, but he knows it’s mostly to cover the leftover smears of blood.

Through it all, he says nothing, only making the occasional pained sound. Every once in a while his eyes stray to the big smear of blood on the floor.

He coughs. “Playground. Can you-”

“Shut the fuck up.” Cherie snaps. Then, she tugs him forward into a bone-crushing hug. She smells like vanilla and blood and an impatient kind of love.

This whole thing feels oddly familiar. A sticky sense of Deja Vu.

He doesn’t remember Jay being treated this roughly when he was lying dying on their apartment floor. He does however, remember Cherie’s vicious stare when he announced he had to leave.

One of your best friends suffocating on his own vomit, or two little kids screaming as they’re burned alive.

Which one, his mind screams at him. Take your pick.

It’s another battle entirely to get him to his feet. Once that’s done, they trudge out of the building and into the bitter cold, the sun long gone from the sky. Not even the moon hangs in its place. Just dense clouds. It’s drizzling. Cherie gives him a second to breathe once they hit the street. He has no idea where they’re going, but as soon as she starts dragging him down the street he digs his nails into her skin. His brain is fighting his body, and it takes everything in him not to let his knees buckle.

“Stop.” He gasps. “I can’t,”

“Come on,” She says. “The subway is at the end of the block.”

“Subway?” He rasps. There’s absolutely no way. “Just fucking leave me here.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Cherie looks like she is resisting the urge to slap him, but then her face does something funny. “Can you just cooperate? Please?”

The last word is a plea, her voice taking on the quality of paper being torn.

His head throbs mercilessly and the drying blood on his skin makes it tight and uncomfortable. Frenchie doesn’t mention that truly, if he wanted to he could die right then and there. Just like the story of the little match girl, he could curl into himself in the darkness of an alley, and simply close his eyes.

But no.

Jay died, and he never asked for the details, but he’s sure that she was there. He won’t make her go through that again. He’ll cooperate, and figure shit out when he can actually think straight.

If he wants to be dead so badly, he can do it on his own time.

“Fine.” He croaks. “Fine.”

Getting down to the subway and onto the car is agony. They barely make one of the last, if not the last trains leaving the station. The car they choose is almost empty and when they slide down onto the grimy plastic seats, Frenchie has to fight to not pass out. Cherie would undoubtedly slap him back to consciousness.

“Hey.” She taps him on the cheek. “We’re not too far from mine ok?”

Frenchie gives her the fakest of smiles then lets it slide off his face as he resists the urge to spew bile all over his own lap.

She seems to soften at that, pressing closer to him and grabbing one of his hands. She massages the inside of his wrist, trying to quell his rising nausea. Jay taught them both to do that, he thinks, back when the drugs were just recreational, before the hilariously real threat of getting thrown into a supermax.

Jay, Jay, Jay.

He stopped talking to Frenchie after everything. He never even saw him again after the OD. Part of Frenchie feels anger buried deep beneath his gut. It’s not fair. Not fucking fair at all. If he died in the streets he wouldn’t be mad at anyone for leaving him there. It’s his own damn fault he’s letting himself circle the drain pipe. Not Kimiko’s, or Cherie’s, or any of the other sad fucks who have the unfortunate pleasure of knowing him.

He grits his teeth.

It’s not even Nina’s fault, and somehow she paid for it anyway.

He watches as Cherie’s thumb digs into his skin, the pace never changing. The subway car rattles against the tracks. Across from them, someone sleeps deeply enough that they look dead.

Frenchie lets his head drop against her shoulder. The sound of something unwrapping meets his ears. He glances over to see Cherie holding a caramel before she pushes it between his parted lips and lets it sit on his tongue.

“Your blood sugar must be in the toilet.” She murmurs.

He lets the candy melt in his mouth, not even having the energy to crunch down. It’s sickly sweet, the taste familiar in a dizzying way. Jay would buy or steal the bags by the pound. Even in the middle of the night, from a different room, Frenchie swore he could hear the crinkling of wrappers.

Blue lips. Charred skin.

“Cherie?”

“Mm?”

Frenchie swallows what’s left of the candy and licks his lips. “Multiple choice always have at least one answer, no?”

There’s no reply to his question. Just an arm swung around his shoulders and a thumb running up and down his bicep.

The train rolls on.

No one seems to be getting on or off.

Cherie stares at him like he’s insane.

“Absolutely not.”

“Quoi? Pourquoi?”

Her eyebrows knit together angrily. “Don’t be fucking dumb.”

“You don’t want to fuck me because I just came off the street? That hasn’t stopped us before.”

“You’re injured. And sad. And filthy.”

“Ah, so you think I’m ugly now?” He slurs. “Could have just started with that. You know, you’re the second person to tell me that.”

A chunk of dead skin comes free from his lips as he pulls, blood rolling down his chin. It drops off into the steaming, dirty bathtub water.

“Stop it.” Cherie grabs his arm firmly, pulling it away from his face. Her voice is a hushed whisper as if she’s afraid someone else might hear, even though they’re alone in her apartment. “You know why.”

Frenchie giggles, feeling drunk with pain and fatigue. All of this shit is so stupid. He just wants someone to hurt him. He wishes that instead of running him a bath and stitching the gash on his scalp, she’d just dug her fingers into the open wound, sharp nails scraping along his perfectly white skull. The smile falls off his face. He turns to look at Cherie through wet eyelashes.

“You’re a bitch.” He hisses.

Cherie is unfazed. She looks as tired as he feels. For a moment she turns away from the tub and rests her cheek on her bicep, arm hanging over the lip of the tub. When she turns back to him, her eyes are steely. She sighs.

“Say what you want, Serge. This whole thing is my fault anyway.”

He’s had resolve, but never as strong as hers.

His mouth twitches, and he feels himself lose steam. His body loses the battle to exhaustion in the hot bath water, and when he rests his forehead on his bruised knee he sees the water is still disgusting after a second run-through. He should be embarrassed, but the worst part of it all is that he doesn’t care. He’s just fucking tired. There’s not a part of his body that doesn’t hurt. Frenchie watches as blood, dirt, and soap suds float by.

“I think,” He whispers. “That sometimes I want to die.”

A hand moves to his back, fingers gently skimming up and down the protruding knobs of his spine.

“I know,” Cherie says. “I know.”

And so it goes.

The first full day at Cherie’s, Frenchie alternates through a rolodex of night terrors. He thrashes in her expensive bed, tangled in her beautiful silk sheets. She doesn’t even have to wake up him to check for a worsening concussion, because he can’t stay asleep longer than an hour without screaming himself awake. Sometimes she’ll try to get him to sip on water, or chew on some saltines. She gives him a controlled assortment of Percs, oxy, and weed to keep him from going into withdrawal, but he’s taken too many drugs for too long, and it does nothing to calm him down.

At the forty-fourth hour mark of his stay, as day trips into the night, he fully loses it.

Frenchie lays in Cherie’s bed, stuck somewhere between sleep paralysis and a night terror. His eyes are open but for an eternity he cannot scream, cannot move. Once he’s finally able to he scrambles off of the bed and out of the bedroom, beelining for the front door. He trips over a rug and slams down hard onto his forearms. It’s reclaimed wood instead of concrete this time, and it makes for a softer landing. Still, the impact is not enough to jolt him out of the horror he’s reliving, and he half-drags himself half-army crawls toward the door.

It’s an escape attempt without any real destination.

He makes it to the door but can’t stand up, so he scratches at the door with blunt, damaged fingernails.

“Let me out,” He whines in garbled French. He can’t help it when the tears start coming. “Let me out,”

At some point Cherie comes padding down the hallway, grabbing him and pulling him back without much resistance. He recognizes the feel of Cherie’s body through his delirium and doesn’t fight back. She holds him close, his back flush to her chest.

“This is a new door, pumpkin. Can’t be scratching it.” She hums.

Frenchie just sobs, body taut as a sailor’s knot. Cherie rocks him, a hand rubbing up and down his bare chest. There are goosebumps on his mottled skin, and her hand is warm against his cold body. Eventually, he tires himself out completely and slumps back in her arms. They stay on the floor for a few minutes, until Cherie shifts him around and moves to her feet. She holds out both her hands to help Frenchie up.

“Viens, ma puce. Viens.”

Silently, she pulls him up onto his feet and leads him back to the bedroom. He sways a bit before she sits him on the edge of the bed.

“Wait here.”

When she returns she hands him a glass and then sits down next to him.

“Drink.”

He sips at it without tasting, and after only a few minutes, he feels his body relaxing. A warm sort of high trails through his body. His middle finger drifts over his bottom lip, the skin raw and swollen. He brushes his hand against a large scrape on his jaw, courtesy of the stairs. He feels wrung out, like an old rag.

“What was in that?” He mumbles. A hummingbird of worry flits inside his ribcage, but whatever she gave him is squeezing its neck and suffocating it.

“Just something to help you sleep. You’ve been wired for too long. Your body needs the sleep.”

“I don’t want to.” He mutters, fingers tangling in the blanket beneath. The words feel like a thick vapor escaping from his mouth, dissipating and losing meaning. “I don’t want to see it again.”

Cherie’s fingers trail lightly over the stitches on his scalp. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Please. Don’t make me.”

He wants to beg but his mind is detaching itself from his body. Exhaustion doesn’t even begin to describe the heaviness in his bones.

Cherie tucks a strand of hair behind his ear and tucks herself close to him. “They told me you had the same reaction in the hospital, after everything. It’s ok.”

Frenchie’s eyelids are starting to droop, fists relaxing at his sides.

“Pumpkin.” She speaks like she’s trying to tame a wild animal. “It’s ok. There won’t be any dreams. I promise.”

He allows her to help him lay back down. She runs a hand over his forehead and pulls the quilt and blankets up and over his exposed torso, leaving his shoulders and arms out. She starts whispering something to him, about scars and France and an old coat they used to share.

Frenchie’s eyes slide closed.

He’s standing on the edge of a cliff and a wild sea roars below. There are weights tied to his ankles, and as he jumps off the cliff air rushes past his ears. The fall isn’t very long. He plunges into the lukewarm water.

Ever so slowly, he sinks down, and down and down.

And so it goes.

After, sleeps for eighteen hours straight, and doesn’t even get up to piss. When he wakes up he feels incredibly worse for wear, but less emotionally volatile. He goes to the bathroom, nibbles on a banana, takes a few Klonopin, and falls back asleep. The routine continues like that for another three days, until he feels well enough to start moving around. Even then, there’s not much movement. Mostly, he runs boiling hot baths in Cherie’s now clean claw foot tub. He smokes cigarettes and stares at the ceiling for hours, riding the moderate high of whatever Cherie’s chosen to give him.

One day he gets out and she stands leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, as he towels himself off.

He slips into boxers and sweatpants that may or may not be his, foregoing a shirt. This new apartment of hers is nice and luxurious, with a heating unit that keeps the whole place warm. Kimiko and MM had been able to goad him into wearing more layers, but still he prefers the least amount of clothes touching his skin.

He tries not to think about them. Cherie talked to one of them, lied, and said he was with her doing a job for the Albanians. No one’s tried hunting him down, anyway. Since his escape from the Flatiron, he’s done everything in his power to pretend that they don’t exist. The drugs, concussion, and near overdose have almost made it easy.

Cherie stares at the tub behind him, then back at Frenchie.

He scrubs a hand down his face, feeling at the peeling scab. “I can wire you the money.”

“What?” She laughs.

“For the water bill.”

Cherie scoffs. “You know I don’t give a fuck about that. I just don’t want you to do something stupid.” She looks him up and down, and he has no idea how to decipher her expression. “Let’s watch a movie. I bought Merlot.”

Frenchie throws his towel in a laundry basket and follows her out the door.

They settle on her bed and put on some depressing movie about a man who accidentally kills his kids, which makes it easy to work their way through two wine bottles of wine and some dabs.

Once Frenchie’s sufficiently drunk, he crawls in between Cherie’s legs and lays with his head on her chest.

“Would I have died?” He asks nonchalantly.

Cherie only shifts, turning off the TV as the credits roll by. “At Niko’s?”

“Niko, huh? Tell him sorry about the blood stain. And the used needle.” He smirks, realizing he never even got the guy’s name. “Do you like him?”

He feels Cherie tense for a quick second. “He’s nice. Nice enough to call me when he realized it was you with the Vietnamese.”

Frenchie smiles hazily. Of course, she likes him. Maybe, in another life, it would have been Niko instead of Jay, or Niko after Jay. Probably not. That’s always how it seems to go. Someone always has to die, get lost, disappear. Things do not work out for people like Frenchie and Cherie.

An intense feeling of pressure builds in his chest, and suddenly the wine and the weed are not enough. He sits up and turns to face her.

He stares at her blue eyes and tries hard not to think of someone else.

When smashes his bruised lips against hers, teeth clicking together, he knows he’ll regret it. Which is exactly why he does it.

They end up fucking, but it's more of a blacked-out pity fuck than anything. They’re both high and past tipsy, and in the morning when he sits on the side of the bed, with tears dripping down his face, Cherie hands him a cup of coffee and gives him a kiss on the cheek.

“Let’s not do that again.”

He nods absentmindedly, waits for her to go work, and drags her bong into the bathtub with him.

Just like when he lived with his Papa, he stays in the bathtub long after his fingers have pruned.

Cherie is called away on a job to Europe.

“Go.” Frenchie tells her. “I’m doing better.”

Cherie shakes her head, lips pursed. “If by better you mean no longer suicidal, I’d say that’s marginal at best.”

He picks at the Thai food in front of him, noodles swirling around his fork. “Was gonna get out of your hair soon anyway. Don’t worry about me. I’m okay.”

He doesn’t mean it, obviously, but he was meaning to leave soon. He can’t linger around her forever, leaching off of her drugs and alcohol all the while contributing nothing. The worst part is he knows she wouldn’t care. As long as he wasn’t hurting himself, she’d be fine with it. It’s their routine, always has been. One of them’s fucked up and the other picks up the slack. On and on.

He smiles at her sadly.

“Pumpkin. I'm fine.”

She dumps her takeout container in the trash then moves in front of him, grabbing him by the chin. “Jay was enough, don’t you think?”

“Serge.”

He lights a cigarette and curls into the couch, all the while pretending not to hear.

“I have to go. My flight leaves soon and you know the Albanians hate when I’m late.”

He rolls his eyes, turns to face away from her and back to the same Pink Panther rerun he has already seen a million times. “Ok.”

A minute passes in such silence, that he thinks she’s left without saying goodbye. He’s about to allow himself a second of heartache, but then the wooden floors are creaking and she’s standing directly in front of him.

He doesn’t even bother looking up, simply points at the screen with the cigarette in his hand.

“Pumpkin,” He whispers. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to watch le petite panthère blow shit up.”

Cherie kneels down directly in front of him, and he can’t help but notice how disappointed she looks. Gently, she grabs his face in her hands, runs her thumbs slowly down his jaw.

“Where do you go?” She whispers.

Frenchie grabs her knee, gives it a squeeze. He shakes his head and watches the ash from his cigarette fall to the plate on the floor.

“Nulle parte. I’m right here,”

His tone is light, but his eyes burn and he has to blink furiously to keep them from watering.

“Serge…”

Cherie’s grip remains gentle, but there’s a firmer quality to it, as if he might just vanish.

Frenchie recoils, but it feels half-assed, as if his body refuses to follow through on orders from his brain. Good.

Means the oxy must be kicking in.

It takes more than it should to resist flinching away from her touch. It feels so familiar, so much like something she would do. Did? Lately he finds he’s been losing time, forgetting the past few weeks and months. Sometimes he can’t tell what really happened and what’s left over from some half-remembered nightmare. Things Nina did to him mix with things his father did to him, mix with things he himself did to others.

Cherie’s eyes are darker in the harsh apartment lighting, emotion blunt on her face.

“I don’t want you to be alone. You… really, really shouldn’t be alone.”

All he can do is scoff.

It must be an inappropriate response, because Cherie’s frown only deepens, eyes starting to get glassy.

He takes a long drag from his cigarette and lets the plume of smoke out and away from Cherie’s face. His hand is shaking. The painkillers are doing something, but not enough. Stupid, he thinks. He should have just snorted it.

“It’ll be fine. I just need some more days off, oui?”

Cherie blinks quickly, wipes her face back into that of an expressionless porcelain doll. She’s known him long enough to know there’s no winning.

“Fine. There’s a phone. How about you use it? Call Kimiko. Or someone. Just don’t…Don’t rot away, alright?”

She shakes her head and looks down for a beat. Quickly, she presses a kiss to his lips, hands giving his face one final squeeze.

Then, she’s gone.

The apartment is dark and musty, and the only thing illuminating the room is Pink Panther’s ridiculous antics.

He feels the dopey opioid smile coming onto his lips, eyelids slowly lowering.

Don’t rot away.

Too late. Much, much too late.

Chapter Text

The elevator takes too fucking long, so instead, Kimiko takes the stairs two at a time.

When she bursts onto the street, sensations overwhelm her.

The morning sun hangs bright in the sky, blinding her. There’s too many goddamn people out. Cars honk and tires skid and the noise of construction rattles in her ears. She whips around frantically, looking for a wild mop of hair, a peeling leather jacket.

Nothing.

Kimiko doesn’t even know where to turn. She yanks her phone out of her pocket and opens an app to check his location before remembering he lost his phone and never bothered to replace it. Frustration pricks at her throat.

She looks up again. New Yorkers and tourists flow past her in a steady stream. Slowly she pushes herself back against the rough brick of Flatiron, her chest rising and falling with effort.

She thinks if she could scream, the noise would tear the Earth in two.

Over the next few days, Kimiko feels herself losing her grip on things.

She oscillates wildly between hating Frenchie and longing for him to come back. There’s a palpable tension in the air every time she enters the office, as if no one quite knows what to do. Still, no one seems as worried as last time Frenchie disappeared. If anything, everyone seems resigned.

MM shrugs sympathetically. “It’s Morocco again. Philly too. Just some bad fuckin’ benders.”

Kimiko curls into herself. “That’s what you said last time.”

Butcher scoffs, aloof as always. “MM’s right. Russian cunt’s dead now.” His voice lowers, and he turns his head to the window so they can’t see his face. “‘Sides. There’s no one out there who cares enough to hurt him like she did.”

Besides himself, Kimiko thinks.

“I’m sorry Kimiko,” MM says. “It’s just what it must be. He’ll be back. Motherfucker’s like a roach.”

Desperately, she wants to ask if he promises, but if he did it’d be a pointless, empty thing. Instead, she leans back in her shitty office chair and squeezes her eyes shut.

Technically speaking, if he is on another life-threatening bender, it’s their fault this time. Part of her wishes they’d been more discreet about Nina’s murder, but part of her also doesn’t give a fuck. It’s not hard to maintain her resolve. No matter how much she tries to wrap her head around it, she doesn’t understand. It doesn’t make sense to her, how he can be so mad about them taking revenge. She breathes in and out. There’s no situation in which she wouldn’t do what she did to Little Nina.

None.

Worry eats at her like a parasite, until it simply doesn’t.

One night, she can no longer bear it.

Kimiko stares at his things in their apartment. The army green jacket. His goggles, slung over the back of a chair. A heavily used instruction manual. His laptop, with the peeling stickers hanging off of it. His bong, sitting on the TV stand.

She stares at it before picking it up, turning it and feeling its weight in her hands.

It takes no effort to lob it at the wall. When it shatters into a million pieces, she feels a quiet thrill. She spins around, looking for anything else she can destroy. She takes his laptop, ripping it in half like it’s made of paper. First, she’s only taking his things, but then she just starts wreaking havoc in the whole place. She grabs a stool and throws it at the TV, knocking it over with a loud thud. A saucepan flies through the room and breaks the window by the fire escape.

“Goddamn it!” A scream comes in from the hall. “Shut the fuck up!”

She stops, breathless with exertion. Slowly, she sinks down to her knees, hands sliding up to grip her hair. Her heart thrums in her ribcage. The apartment around her is destroyed. There are holes in the walls, pieces of broken glass and furniture littering the ground.

Immediately after her outburst, she’s taken over by a colorless lethargy. She goes through the motions.

Work. Eat. Sleep. Every morning she leaves and every night she comes back to a broken, empty apartment.

Days stumble by.

It’s unconscious, but at some point, she stops wondering where he is.

Frenchie’s going to be the death of himself, but Kimiko knows he won’t be the only casualty.

Cherie contacts her exactly three weeks after he goes missing for the second time.

It’s like Kimiko’d taken every thought of Frenchie and shoved it in an impenetrable safe, her heart slowed down to a cold and unfeeling block of ice. She’s suffered enough for him, and she finds she no longer has the capacity for it. But as she reads Cherie’s words, once, twice, ten times, she feels her body stutter back to life.

The text is short and to the point, with no minced words.

He’s with me. I needed help on a job. Might be a while.

Kimiko stares at her phone.

She holds it up for MM to see. He hands her a mug and then takes a seat on the couch, leaning forward to read the text.

The day is verging into the night but they’re both at the Flatiron. It’s not one of the days MM gets to see Jeanine, and Kimiko’s apartment is too cold now that there’s a yawning hole in the window. Neither of them has much to do besides Butcher and Mallory’s busy work.

Marvin frowns and then rolls his eyes. “He’s not working no fucking job.”

Kimiko feels her eye twitch. She sets down the mug. “Why lie then?”

MM shrugs, lips contorting. “If there’s one thing I know about those two, it’s that they enable the hell out of each other.” He sighs. “He’s probably okay though. She wouldn’t let him go too far off the deep end.”

Kimiko nods. She doesn’t understand the point in lying, not after all the shit that’s happened in the past few months, but she says nothing. Frenchie being with Cherie is better than nothing.

“Maybe this shit’s for the best you know?” MM says carefully. “For him to have some time away.”

His tone is light, but his body betrays him. His leg bounces up and down. He stirs the spoon in his coffee twice clockwise, and twice counter-clockwise. He waits ten seconds, then repeats the whole thing over again. He’s never explicitly told her how he really feels about Frenchie, but his actions say enough. Frenchie’s a friend to him, if not something bordering on family.

Kimiko looks back at the words on her screen.

She doesn’t look to see if she’s watching, but she can feel MM’s eyes on her. She hesitates before starting to sign.

“I miss him. But I don’t?” She swallows roughly before continuing. “He’s…He’s exhausting. I’m exhausted.”

God. Even if it’s what she wanted most in the world, she doesn’t think she could stop caring about him.

MM gives her a tired smile. He shakes his head ruefully and then leans back onto the couch. “Like unplugging someone on life support, but they just refuse to die.”

Kimiko feels herself smirk in spite of the morbidity of it all, but they wouldn’t be talking like this if they didn’t know where he was. She sighs, feeling more tired than she has in months.

“But hey…A sign of life is a sign of life, right?” MM stands up and stretches before checking his watch. “I should head home.”

She nods, then points at the couch. “I’m gonna sleep here. Apartment feels…weird.”

“Alright. Turn the heat up if you need to.”

Kimiko gives a thumbs up, then watches him collect his things and leave. She pulls out her phone again and re-reads the text like it’s the only thing of his she has left.

Despite how tired she feels, her brain refuses to relax. She presses on the camera app and scrolls through her photo album. Most, if not all the pictures she has are of the two of them. With every swipe, she relives another memory of him, bright-eyed and manic-looking, always pressed close to her, skin on skin.

She cannot reconcile the person she knows with the person she sees in the pictures.

By the time she allows herself to sink into sleep, the sun is already rising.

Might be a while, her brain supplies. Might be a while.

Just…it might be a while.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” The doctor had asked. She’d tried looking him in the eye but it was almost like he had a paint smudge over his face. She couldn’t see anything.

He’s curled on his side. They’ve taken out the tubes and wires, and now it’s just him and her in the room, no outside noise or movement. People were milling around earlier, but visiting hours are over. She probably shouldn’t be here. She should be here. Where’s everyone else?

“At this point,” The doctor had said softly. “It would be cruel, to keep him alive.”

His buzzcut is growing out, and she runs her palm close to his skull, letting it come to rest at the nape of his neck. His breath is a labored whistle through chapped lips, chest barely rising and falling. With practiced ease, she kicks off her shoes and climbs onto the bed with him, curling opposite him, their knees touching.

She doesn’t remember at what time the doctor came in and left. She doesn’t remember how long he’s been lying in this hospital bed. She doesn’t remember much of anything.

She grips his hand hard enough to shatter bone. Instead of looking at his face, she focuses on their hands interlocked together. There’s a scraggly red line by her thumb, where he’d dragged down a fingernail by accident. Every time she feels rising panic, she quells it by digging her own nail into the skin.

His hand twitches and her eyes snap up. His are still closed. She can’t even see them move behind his eyelids.

“My love,” She whispers, a hand grazing over his cheek. “It’s okay. You can go.”

His breath hitches, and her heart rips itself apart.

“Wait for me,” She says. “Wherever you go.”

Kimiko wakes with a start.

The small of her back is damp with sweat, her mouth cottony. She inhales and almost chokes on it, her hand flying to her throat.

The door of the office slams.

Kimiko almost dies right then and there. Her heart jumps into her throat and she scrambles up. Relief and disappointment fill her in equal measure when she sees it’s only Butcher standing at the threshold.

“Oi,” He saunters over to her. “Got evicted, did we?”

“Asshole.” She signs.

Kimiko scowls, but it’s half-hearted. She would never admit it out loud, but as much of an asshole as Butcher is, he’s solid. He’s real, and there, and predictable enough that she knows what to expect every time. And he means something to Frenchie, which means he means something to her. She lets out a breath and sits up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

The dream won’t leave her. It plays on a loop behind her eyes, she hears his last gasping breath almost as if it were real. Her skin feels raw, and she places a hand on her cheek to make sure it's whole. Her gaze wanders down to her feet. She’s still got on those boots he gave her. Scuffed and dirty and worn but all hers. Panic gnaws at her, raw and angry like it hasn’t in weeks.

It felt so real. Why did it feel so real?

Her heart skips a beat and she snaps her eyes up at Butcher before digging into the couch cushions for her phone. She pulls it out and instantly starts typing. When she’s done she stands up and shoves the phone in Butcher’s face.

He’s with Cherie. We need to go get him.

Butcher laughs, leaning back against a pillar and crossing his arms. “So goddamn insistent. How many times I gotta tell you, he’ll be back when he wants to be back, that’s just how he operates.” His voice raises in volume before lowering again. “You’re mute and now you’re deaf, just fucking peachy.”

Kimiko feels her blood boil.

Her punch is loose and fast. She can’t deny the instant gratification she feels when her fist connects with his face.

The recoil is immediate, and Butcher bends over, holding his nose. “Fucking cunt! Not even seven in the fucking morning,” He hisses

Kimiko stands her ground, heart racing. It’s almost funny. There’s no scenario in which he wins against her, no scenario in which he has the upper hand. Still, he manages to intimidate her. It’s unnerving.

She’s pretty sure she’s gotten the message across, but when he straightens up she’s holding the phone in his face again.

Why are you such a dick?

Butcher wipes at blood coming from his nose. “Bloody hell.” He groans. He stares at her out of the corner of his eye. There’s anger there, but there’s almost something bordering on respect. He lowers his hand. “I’d fire you if we weren’t so short-staffed. Don’t think I’d give you fuckin’ severance neither.”

Kimiko’s face falls. She doesn’t know if the headache is real or imagined, but either way her head pounds. The last thing she wants to do right now is waste her time on Billy Butcher, but she raps out another message anyway.

Why do you keep him around? If you care so fucking little?

Butcher looks down at the phone then up at her, lips drawn into a tight line. “Course I care about Frenchie. It’s fucking Frenchie,” He laughs wryly. “How could you not?”

Kimiko blinks in surprise.

Do you? She types. Really?

“Listen,” Butcher sighs. “MM, French, and I have gone through more shit than a Supe with a scat kink. The three of us are fucked up. What makes you think I know how to help him? Darling, I did what I know how to do, and look how that ended up.”

Kimiko stands still for a second, taken aback. Billy Butcher, admitting he doesn’t know everything. She almost smiles.

I’ve tried, but I’m not enough. Help me help him.

Butcher sighs with exasperation. “I already bloody told you-”

She types and passes the phone to him, pointing at the glass screen with a sharp nail.

You’re his boss. Just do what you always do. Give him orders.

Butcher’s eyebrow raises at that. He wipes at his upper lip again, scratching at the drying blood. “D’you even know where he is?”

She nods then shoots a quick text off to Cherie, hoping for a fast response.

He seems to consider for a minute, eyes fixed on the rising sun.

“Fuck it. Alright then.” Butcher peels himself off the pillar and claps his hands. “Let’s go get the cunt.” He gives her a sharp glance. “Don’t ever say I didn’t do nothing for you.”

Kimiko sighs with relief, bending to grab her jacket from the couch.

She’s lucky she and Butcher both speak the fluid language of violence. He seems to be thinking the same thing because he turns to look at her.

“You an’ me.” Butcher rumbles. “We ain’t so different y’know.”

Kimiko glares at him, feeling something like shame well up in her throat. It’s true enough that it makes her feel slightly sick. Not sick enough though. If violence is what helps her get through to him, then violence is what it’ll take.

In the service of helping Frenchie, she’ll draw blood if she has to.

Cherie is quick with it, sending Kimiko an address and a pin to get into her building. She tells her she’s not there, but that if she’s lucky Frenchie still should be.

All the more reason to hurry.

Butcher drives while Kimiko texts MM, telling him what’s going on.

Thankfully, Cherie’s newest place is in Manhattan and not another borough. The morning traffic is already bad enough, and Kimiko is itching in her seat. Despite the lack of sleep, adrenaline pumps through her and she feels an electric hum in her body. She has no idea what they should be expecting. For all she knows, Frenchie could be overdosing in an alley in the Bronx, or floating face down in the Hudson. She swallows and tries to derail that train of thought before it gets any further.

They get to Cherie’s quickly, thanks to Butcher’s borderline suicidal maneuvers through the Manhattan traffic. He parks the car off in some alley and they both climb out, making their way to the building and into the elevator. The place is nice, Kimiko notes. Really nice. Maybe the change of scenery’s helped to improve Frenchie’s mood, like MM suggested. Again, Kimiko tries to kill any and all of her expectations.

They make it to the door. Butcher stares at her expectantly, and she slowly inputs the code Cherie gave her into a keypad. The lock buzzes and then clicks. The door slowly swings open.

The first thing that Kimiko registers is how fucking dark it is. She squints and sees that the blinds are drawn. No lights are on. The second thing she notices is the smell. The stench of weed is almost overpowering, but underneath it, she catches a whiff of something else. It’s thick and acidic, and she has no idea what it is.

Butcher grumbles next to her.

Down the hallway, there’s a door that’s slightly ajar. Butcher motions for her to follow. Through the cracked door, she can see a bathtub. An arm hangs limply over the edge. Kimiko’s stomach drags itself into her throat, and she has to remind herself to inhale. She steals a panicked glance at Butcher.

Slowly, he presses the toe of a boot against the door and pushes it open. With his index finger, he flicks on the bathroom lights.

In the tub, splayed out and dead to the world, lies Frenchie.

He’s fully clothed, wet hair plastered to his forehead. His eyes are closed. Somehow, he’s gotten lucky enough that the water reaches right below his chin. His skin is pruned and pale.

The water is very, very still.

Kimiko feels her body move on its own accord. She steps back, hand raised to her chest defensively. Something crunches underneath her boot. She steps away and looks down to see a shattered needle.

To his credit, Butcher seems to jump into action.

He stalks forward and places two fingers on Frenchie’s neck, feeling for a pulse. It’s slow and threadier than it should be, but it’s there. He motions for Kimiko to come closer and she does, slow footsteps making no sound.

Butcher’s eyes look past Kimiko and at the vanity behind her.

“What’s over there?” He hisses. “What’d the bloody idiot take?”

Kimiko whips around to follow his eyeline and instantly feels the blood drain from her face. There are empty bottles, tinfoil, remnants of powder, little morsels of weed, and crushed pills strewn on the surface. There are two lines cut on a worn instruction manual of some sort, and Kimiko immediately swats the book to the floor with one hand, powder floating into the air. Sure, where there’s Frenchie, there’s drugs, so the whole array is no surprise. The sheer quantity and diversity of the stuff though, that’s what scares her. She’s seen Frenchie fucked up, she’s seen him on good days and bad ones.

She’s never seen him like this.

“Fucking Christ,” Butcher mumbles. He looks at Kimiko and then snaps his attention back to Frenchie. “French. Mate.” He pats him on the cheek roughly, but there’s no response. Water sloshes over the rim of the tub.

Butcher’s face is all hard lines. He tries again, with more force this time. “Serge! Wake the fuck up!”.

Nothing.

Kimiko feels faint.

“Alright, you prick,” Butcher says. “Don’t wanna wake up? Fucking fine by me.” He presses a palm to Frenchie’s chest and pushes.

Frenchie plunges down into the water.

A second passes. Then another. Then a third, and Frenchie isn’t moving and Kimiko is grabbing at Butcher’s arm, and then he’s hauling him up by the collar of his shirt.

Frenchie’s eyes fly open with a laborious inhale as he bursts through the water. He leans forward with a gag before loud, staccato coughs start echoing through the tiled bathroom.

Kimiko gasps with relief, dropping down to her knees next to the tub. She ignores the dozens of cigarette butts scattered around her knees.

“That’s it, mate.” Butcher slaps him on the back. “Fuckin’ get it out.”

She reaches into the water past Frenchie and rips the plug out of the tub, letting it drain. The water is freezing. She stares at the porcelain and wonders how long he’s been in there.

A hand suddenly tightens on her wrist, fingernails digging into her skin. Her gaze skitters over to Frenchie.

His eyes are half-open, red-rimmed with his pupils blown to hell. There are dark, bruise-like smudges under his eyes.

He doesn’t look like he’s even there.

“Mon coeur?” He croaks, a drug-addled smile on his lips. “C’est toi?”

Before she can even move, Butcher grabs his chin and tilts it up, moving his face from side to side. “What’d you take, huh? What’d you take Frenchie?”

When there's no response, Butcher lets go. Frenchie turns his head slowly, looking around the room. His eyes are glassy and distant. He blinks owlishly.

“Pourquoi…” He licks chapped lips and swallows, before letting out a cough that seems to rattle in his chest. “Pourquoi tu m’as réveillé? Je dormais.” 

Kimiko looks at Butcher and he nods. She stands up and puts her hands under his armpits, hauling him up like he’s made of nothing but air.

He starts protesting, mostly slurred French and unintelligible English, but she pulls until she’s dragging him out of the tub. Once he’s fully out, she grabs him by the arm and slings him up over her shoulder. The V makes it so that she can pick people up with no problem, but even so. It’s like picking up a rag doll.

Butcher skirts past her and out the door, stepping ahead of her and opening doors until he finds the bedroom. He motions towards the bed with his chin.

Kimiko pushes past him and gently lowers Frenchie onto the bed, grabbing pillows and tucking them behind him so he’s sitting up. Still, Butcher has to keep a hand on his shoulder to keep him from face-planting into his knees or tilting over the side of the bed.

She doesn’t know the details and has never asked, but based on Butcher’s expression she can surmise that this is considerably worse than Morocco.

Frenchie’s head droops down, chin tucked against his chest. His breath rattles in his chest. From where she’s kneeling on the bed she can see a new scar on his head, long and pink.

She puts a palm on his jaw and turns his head to face her, worried at how awfully vacant his eyes seem. He’s obviously on something, but this seems worse than anything brought on by drugs. He seems hollowed out.

It’s like watching a ghost.

Butcher scowls. “Fucking hell, Frenchie…Thought you were sorting your shit out. Done a good fuckin’ job of that, huh?”

“Have you been here by yourself this whole time?” She signs.

Nothing but a shrug from bony shoulders.

Kimiko stares at him and has to fight the urge to cry. His face is gaunt, eyes sinking deep into their sockets. Somehow, he seems even thinner than when they got him back from Nina.

She tries again. “When did you last eat?”

“Manger? I had, ah,-” He gestures weakly at their general surroundings, hand finally pointing at the empty bottle of Stoli on the floor. “Assez, bon, non?” He tries a sharp laugh before coughing again.

Fuck.

“Kimiko,” Butcher grins wolfishly. “Be a doll and get this twat a glass of water.” 

Frenchie gives her a blank stare, but at least with every passing minute, he seems more lucid. “Water would be nice, mon coeur.” He mumbles.

She presses her mouth into a thin line, and turns to him, rubbing her thumb up and down his stubble. She hurries out of the room and scrambles to find the kitchen, quickly grabbing an empty bottle of soda and filling it up with tap water. When she comes back, Frenchie is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, head held in his hands.

Kimiko approaches slowly, re-taking her spot on the bed and handing him the bottle.

Frenchie takes a slow sip. He sniffs and looks down at the bed. “How did you find me?”

Butcher cackles. “Come on, mate. I’m Billy fuckin’ Butcher. ‘Sides, I still run this op. If you’re calling it quits, I at least ought to know.”

“I thought Cherie said…” He rasps. “I told her to tell you I’d be back.”

“Yeah,” Billy tilts his head. “You just didn’t clarify it’d be in a body bag.” 

Frenchie’s head snaps up, mouth drawn back in a snarl. Kimiko almost jumps back.

“Who ever asked you to give a shit, huh? You’ve never fucking cared before, and it’s been fine by me.”

She clenches her hands in her lap and looks up at him. Drops of water slide down his forehead and drip onto the sheets. His soaked clothes stick to him and he shivers, despite the apartment’s warmth.

Frenchie stares at the older man, breathing in sharply through his nose.

Butcher looks away, but then back at him. He sighs wearily. “I’m sorry French. This whole thing…” He gestures vaguely and shakes his head. His voice is low when he speaks again. “None of this bullshit went how I thought it would.”

“Non, monsieur charcuter.” Frenchie smiles crookedly, eyes empty empty empty. He coughs roughly into his elbow then turns and hacks out a glob of spit into an empty tissue box by his side. “It so rarely does.”

Butcher stares at Frenchie. Kimiko can’t tell if he looks furious or disappointed. Likely a mix of both.

Frenchie’s eyelids are sliding low again, and Kimiko gives him a shake.

“What’d you fucking take?” Butcher asks again.

“Just…I was tired.” He slurs. “I needed to sleep.” His brow furrows and he tilts his head oddly. “I was asleep,” He mumbles. “Why did you wake me up?”

Kimiko frowns. Whatever minuscule adrenaline rush he was riding before is clearly starting to fade. She stares at him, but he won’t look at her.

“You can sleep when you’re dead. We’re taking you back with us you junkie fuck. This shit's gone on long enough, eh?”

His lack of protest worries Kimiko, but she does nothing. If this is what it takes, this is what it takes. 

“Let me…” He holds a pointer finger up and spins his hand in a lazy circle. “I take a piss, then we can go, ça va?”

Butcher steps back with a twitch of his eye, arms crossed over his chest. In the dark of the apartment, he looks as imposing as Kimiko’s ever seen him. “Change out of those clothes while you’re at it.”

He clambers past Kimiko and off the bed. She grabs his arm and turns him toward her. “Do you need help?” She signs.

He stills, his back facing her. Then, he turns and gives her a weak smile, as if this is all some silly game.

“I’m fine, mon coeur.”

Kimiko watches him stumble out of the room.

Next to her, Butcher mutters some curse under his breath.

With his forehead pressed against the door, Frenchie clicks the lock. Slowly, he turns around, wet hair digging into the wood. He closes his eyes and inhales as deeply as his body allows.

“Merde,” He whispers.

This all feels like a fever dream that’s begging to take a sharp turn into a nightmare. Butcher apologizing. Kimiko’s tired eyes. It all has to be fake. He doesn’t understand why they’re here. Blood roars in his ears, and underneath his pleasant but fading heroin haze, he feels mortified. This cannot be happening to him.

He was sleeping. Why did they wake him up?

Frenchie blinks sluggishly and finds his mind wandering.

Cherie’s gone. Kimiko and Butcher are here. What is he doing in the bathroom again?

He looks around before settling on a pile of clothes on the floor. Slowly, he pulls off his wet clothes and bends down to grab from the pile. He grabs a hoodie and the pair of jeans he walked out of the flatiron with. He can’t remember if they’re clean or not, but he pulls them on anyway.

None of his clothes fit properly. His jeans sag past hipbones that stick out in two sharp points, the sleeves of his hoodie riding down past the palms of his hands. Still, the hoodie feels too tight, too constrictive. He remembers his Papa’s hands on his neck, the way he woke up underwater with Butcher's hand on his chest, how Ivan and Anatoly pushed his head down in the sink, how he couldn’t-can’t breathe-

He yanks the hoodie halfway off and just sucks in desperate breaths, hands tight on the hem. He lowers his head and laces his fingers against the back of his skull, the knob of his spine biting into his palms. Slowly, he paces around the bathroom.

Everything’s wrong and it’s his fault and it’s not his fault and he wants to go to sleep again and he wants to not be here or anywhere else he just wants to go home or maybe hold Kimiko or maybe trip over the edge of a skyscraper-

There’s a quiet knock on the door.

Shit, shit, fucking shit.

“Give me a minute,” He chokes out.

He turns to the vanity and digs around for something, anything he can take. Powder coats his fingers as he sorts through trash and other shit, finally finding a prescription bottle. He huffs with relief before grabbing a nearly empty bottle of liquor and downing the remaining contents. The sharp burn of alcohol wakes him up a little more, and he tries to make his body relax before his tendons snap.

He’ll have to come back and tidy the place before Cherie gets back. Replace her good bottles of alcohol and leave some cash for her water bill. He stares at the drained tub and finds he can’t remember anything besides filling it up and climbing in last night.

Another knock at the door, then the jiggle of the doorknob.

Frenchie looks up. He tucks the pill bottle into his waistband and takes a breath, hand reaching up to paw at his new scar. He has to dig through locks of hair to find it. It's getting far too long.

He should cut it.

He knows he won’t.

Chapter Text

Through the whole thing, pain is what keeps him from going crazy.

It’s an insidious, pulsating thing he knows like the back of his hand. The worse it gets, the easier it is for him to slip away.

There’s the hunger, so he thinks of brass knuckles and a ruby-red eye.

There’s the isolation, so he thinks of his crooked fingers, bones snapped in half like popsicle sticks.

There’s the cold, so he thinks of water in his eyes and ears, fire instead of air.

There’s Nina, so he thinks of loud, desperate screams and a deep, unshakable ache.

By the end, when fluid fills his lungs and his muscles have atrophied, he thinks of nothing at all.

The one thing, thick and sweet.

Pain, like a prayer.

“Frenchie.”

A voice lulls him out of his stupor. It takes a few seconds to reorient himself. He finds he’s exactly where he was minutes ago—still lying bonelessly in the backseat of Butcher’s car.

“Mm?”

“Still alive, are we?”

“Oui,” Frenchie mumbles. “Still…here.”

He feels washed up, confused. He stares at the car’s dirty ceiling and raises an arm to touch a constellation made of stains.

His voice is faint and raspy from disuse. “Where are we going?”

There’s no reply, so he hauls himself up. His vision goes dark around the edges. He grabs at the back of Butcher's headrest to avoid tipping over. Ignoring Kimiko’s furtive glance from the passenger seat, he turns to glance out the window.

Something outside catches his eye.

“Wait!” He slaps a palm against the window. “Wait, stop!”

“What?” Butcher shouts in alarm. “Fucking what?”

“Pull over!” He shouts.

Butcher does. With a violent swerve of the wheel, they skid to the side of the road, barely avoiding oncoming traffic. The car stops and Frenchie flings open the door. Kimiko tries pulling on the hem of his hoodie, but he’s too fast. He ignores the shouting behind him and starts speed-walking away from the car.

They must be in a decent area of the city. The park he’s hauling ass to is small but well-kept. A colorful playground sits in the middle, with a swing set off to the side. The place is empty.

He slows to a stop once his feet hit the grass. Dew works its way through his shoes as he trods over to the swings. He wipes a seat with a sleeve and sits down, the old metal creaking under his weight. Wind whips at his hair. He runs his thumb up and down the cold chain of the swing, the pad of his finger catching on the rust.

Someone’s coming.

Frenchie sighs, and turns to Kimiko.

When she gets close she yanks his hood over his head, rougher than necessary, before taking a seat on the swing next to him.

She tugs on a lock of her hair, then points at him.

“It looks stupid long.”

He barks out a mirthless laugh. “Oui?”

She swings back and forth, and for a moment he thinks he sees genuine glee on her face. Then her heels skitter on the ground, and she stops.

“No. I hate what it reminds me of.”

His heart tears.

“Oh.”

They sit in silence until Butcher saunters up to the swing set. He sighs with eternal disappointment and leans against the metal of the swings. He clears his throat. “A fucking playground? That's what was so bloody important?”

Frenchie bites the inside of his cheek, debating whether he wants to expose himself like this. Fuck it. He's fresh out of dignity. At this point, there's nothing left to lose but his life. He swallows, then laughs again. Strung out, recounting old stories on the swing sets, to Butcher of all people.

“I was five. Maybe four? My maman took me to the park. Waited for me at the bottom of the slide. Pushed me on the swings.” He kicks at the wood chips beneath his feet and glances at Kimiko. There are dark circles under her eyes. She looks so sad it makes him sick.

He chokes back a cough. “I felt so loved, y’know?”

Butcher says nothing.

Kimiko gives him a dejected smile. “And now?”

He looks around. Leaves swirl on cracked concrete. Frenchie supposes the sun is rising, but it's hidden by a thick blanket of clouds. The chains of the swing rattle in the wind. It might rain later. He hopes it does.

“Now?” Frenchie hums. “Now I don’t feel anything.”

No one laughs. No one makes fun of him. Even Butcher keeps his stupid quips to himself.

They all pile back into the car, clothes damp and exhaustion palpable. In the backseat, Frenchie runs his thumb over the pill bottle tucked in his waistband. His bones ache. His head throbs. The radio plays today's greatest hits and it's enough to drown out the cacophony of noise in his head.

He starts to recognize the passing buildings, but he can tell they aren't heading to his and Kimiko's place. He wants to ask, but it seems like a waste of breath. He doesn't actually care.

Butcher rolls to a stop in front of a familiar building. He nods his head toward the entrance.

"Go on. I'll be up in a bit."

Kimiko is quick to step out, but Frenchie makes no attempt to move. She opens the back door and stares at him. He fully expects her to use force to get him up to MM's. Instead she just holds out her hand. Frenchie shifts his gaze away.

He wonders what he’d have to destroy to get her to hate him.

MM has one hand on the frame of his apartment door. His face twists, mouth curved down.

“Shit, Frenchie.”

Frenchie cringes, looking down at his dirty shoes. “Désolé.”

He's not sure why they're at MM's. This whole thing feels like some kind of humiliation ritual. Parading him around so everyone can see him at rock bottom. Maybe they'll take him to Hughie next. Then to Annie. Let everyone see the stupid fuck who's hooked on every bad thing the world has to offer.

He looks up. MM doesn’t look angry, or disappointed. Frenchie doesn’t know if this is pity or something altogether worse. Either way, it worsens his rising nausea.

He starts backing away, but stumbles into Kimiko. From in front, tree-trunk arms wrap around him and pull him back into the apartment. The embrace is so tight that it almost lifts him off his feet.

“Désolé,” Frenchie repeats, this time choking on it.

"Nah," MM rumbles, "Fuck off with that.”

From behind him, Kimiko wraps her arms around his waist and tucks her chin into the crook of his shoulder. His eyes burn, and he blinks roughly. Frenchie's body sags, but he doesn't fall, supported by both their weight. This isn’t right. They shouldn’t be treating him like this. With a sharp sniff, he lets his head fall against MM's chest.

The landing behind them creaks under someone’s footsteps. A heavy hand comes to rest on his head and gives his hair a ruffle. Butcher.

Frenchie feels a drop of water roll down his cheek. He can no longer keep up with the herculean effort of fighting back tears. He can no longer keep fighting everything and everyone.

An ugly sob rips through him.

"I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired."

A dam breaks and the force of it almost splits him apart.

MM gets straight to the point.

“Detox.”

Frenchie shakes his head. “Non.”

“Wee, motherfucker. Detox.”

The idea of giving up drugs makes his insides turn. He glances at Kimiko, sitting beside him on the couch, then to Butcher, sprawled on the coffee table, and finally to MM. He’s standing with his arms crossed, and he looks angry and desperate and more than a little hurt.

Frenchie’s head pounds. From the hour he spent uncontrollably crying, from the lack of care he’s given his body. He popped two ambiens in the bathroom, but he knows from experience that the heroin come down isn’t far out. He opens his mouth to protest, words tasting like ash on his tongue.

“I won’t do that shit, ok? But I have to take something. I can’t just-” 

“Frenchie.” MM laughs. “This isn’t, like, up for debate. This is my house motherfucker. I got rules, alright? We shower everyday. We keep the place fucking clean. We eat regular meals. We don't do fent or whatever the fuck.  You don’t like it, you can get the fuck out.”

He seems to pause, the hard lines of his body softening. He sighs. “Come on. We’ve done this before. We can do it again.”

Frenchie wants to crack some dumb joke but decides against it. Maybe levity is what got him in this situation in the first place. “What about Jeanine?”

“She’s with her mom. Don’t worry about it. We just gonna focus on getting you clean.”

Frenchie twists the plastic ring on Kimiko's finger. Somehow, despite it all, she lets him do it.

"What...if I can't do it?"

Butcher shrugs and tilts his head before breaking his silence. "Rehab, mate. Can't be pissin' about no more."

Rehab. The word is foreign and threatening in his ears. Coming from Butcher, it sounds even more terrifying. One more prison for him to waste away in.

At least they're giving him some semblance of a choice.

MM nods his head at Frenchie. "When's the last time you showered?"

"Bath." Kimiko signs.

MM's face contorts.

“Hell no. Baths are for children and degenerates. Get in the damn shower.”

Frenchie’s dead on his feet before the sun slides behind the horizon.

He stands under burning hot water for far too long, trying but failing to wash his body. His skin burns, veins thrumming painfully. His eyes ache. His throat is dry and there’s an itch in his lungs he can’t seem to shake. Worst of all is his head. For days now he’s felt a relentless, pulsating migraine behind his eyes and around the back of his skull. The drugs were helping, but now the pain has come back with violent force.

Once he clambers out of the shower, he sways miserably on the bath mat and tries his best not to pass out. MM laid out a pair of clothes next to the sink, and he pulls them on slowly, as if the fabric on his skin might burn him.

The bottle of ambien is still tucked into the pocket of his hoodie. He fishes it out and pops out two more pills. They seem like holes in the palm of his pale hand. He throws them back into his mouth like candy and swallows them dry. The bottle goes into the pocket of his borrowed sweatpants.

Frenchie lumbers into the dark hallway and notices the pull out couch has been made, sheets, pillows and all. The door to MM’s room is closed. Kimiko, who’s choosing to stay during the detox, is sleeping in the guest room, and the door remains open.

Before he can even move to the couch he hears a soft knocking. He turns his head toward the source of the noise. It’s coming from the guest room. Slowly, as if his footsteps might wake the entire world up, he pads down the hall and into the room.

Kimiko sits on the bed, tucked into the corner against the wall.

One hand is raised in a loose fist against the wall, the other patting the empty space next to her. Her eyes are wide, almost pleading.

“Really?” He croaks. “After everything?”

She rolls her eyes and gives the bed another firm pat.

Sleep.

Despite it all, a wry smile creeps onto Frenchie’s face. As he moves onto the bed, he realizes the creeping disconnect from his own body. Pain and discomfort are morphing from the charge that’s kept him going, into an all-encompassing numbness.

As if in a trance he climbs under the covers. He doesn’t look at Kimiko as she reaches over him to turn off the light, eyes already half-closed when he curls into himself. His heartbeat slows to a dull thrum, and he allows himself the small comfort of knowing he hasn’t completely laid himself bare.

When he reaches out a hand out to one of hers, it’s a half-conscious effort at best.

She might not care at all.

Frenchie takes the gamble anyway.

Sleep is ripped away from him with such ferocity that he has to wonder if he’s finally dead.

Voices and feelings warble in an out, static whining high in his ears. He’s unmoored. Something is touching him, and the contact is fire on ice. His teeth ricochet against one another before they catch on his tongue. The taste of blood makes him gag, and then his body heaves forward, bile dripping past his lips.

A firm pressure lands on his back, a vice wraps around his arm.

His eyes dart around wildly. A shadow roams at his side, and another, larger one hovers in front of him. He sucks in air by the lungful, shoulders hauling up and down. Pressure doesn’t stop building in his chest, and he struggles to form coherent sentences in his mind, let alone speak them out loud.

He pounds a fist into his open palm, thumb facing up. Someone needs to get the message. Someone needs to help him.

Water trickles down his skin, salty over the rancid taste on his tongue.

“Stop. Stop it. Calm down.”

Talking, talking who is fucking talking to him-

“Serge. You have a fever. You need to fucking relax-”

He hears the words, but they have no meaning.

Whatever breaths he manages to take do nothing. The earth seems to tilt on its axis, and then soft hands slide under his own. They move in repeated fluid motions. The sound of skin on skin reverberates through the room.

Hands, he understands the language that they’re trying to speak.

Safe. Safe. Fever. Safe.

Awareness comes to him like pins and needles.

There’s pressure on his shoulders but this time it’s not so scary. It’s warm, and he’s fucking freezing. His wild gasps taper off into more reasonable inhales. He blinks a few times.

He tastes sweat and blood and fear, and then the analgesic taste of medicine. One pill. Two pills. Three pills. Plastic is pressed to his lips, water touches his dry skin.

“Here. Drink”

He starts swallowing greedily until the taste is gone and the water is pulled away.

“Now. Deep, long breath.”

He hesitates, but the hands are moving under his again.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

Yes, Frenchie thinks.

I am safe.

After maybe the second most traumatic experience of the past six months, a healthy dose of acetaminophen, hydrocodone, and zofran, he lays down for another half hour. Just until it doesn’t feel like he’s in purgatory and crossing over into hell. MM announces they’re woefully unprepared, and leaves for a last-minute supply haul. Then, Kimiko coaxes him awake and back into the bathroom.

There’s puke down his shirt. The sheets are soaked, half of it sweat from the fever, half of it sweat from his nightmares.

Outside the shower, Kimiko stares at him with her doe eyes, signs a two then a zero.

Frenchie nods, and drags the shower curtain shut. The door creaks, but doesn’t click closed. Under the water, lukewarm this time, he actually picks up the bar of soap. If he were more aware of what was going on, he’d remember stripping down to his boxers in the guest bedroom. If he wasn’t so entirely drained, he’d be more worried about the dizzying lack of feeling in his body and brain.

He’s out of the shower and dry when the door smashes open. It leaves an ugly hole in MM’s wall.

Kimiko is shaking. “What the fuck?”

He shrugs, ignoring the orange pill bottle in her hand. It’s almost comical, how much he does not care.

“Nothing. Just some Ambien. You know, for sleep.”

She draws back sharply. “Is that your plan? To sleep through your entire life?”

Frenchie pulls on another set of pants and a shirt that are entirely too big, limbs lost in the fabric. It’s just any other conversation. It’s just any other night. None of this matters to him, and she can tell.

Her expression twists. “Why can’t you just take care of yourself?”

“I do.” He mutters. “I do.”

It may be in his own sick way, but it’s the only way he knows. He can’t comprehend why they won’t let him be.

She moves forward and grabs at both his wrists, turning him to face her.

“I want to help you.” She signs, anger evolving into desperation. “Please let me help you.”

Something mean and ugly is uncurling itself in his chest. He laughs in her face, and feels no remorse. “What? You’d rather I do drugs right in front of you? It’s either this, or what I was doing before. So pick, your fucking, poison.” He spits.

He pushes past her and steps out of the bathroom. She follows him out into the living room and stands in front of him when he goes to sit on the couch. His vitriol doesn’t seem to deter her.

“Don’t be a prick. It doesn’t have to be like that. Let me help you. Like you helped me.”

His nails dig into his palms. He’s neither sober nor high enough to be having this conversation.

“You almost died. Not that I know how many fucking times, because I had no idea where you were!” Kimiko signs furiously.

“So what? I’m not your pet!” He yells. “You don’t own me. I’m my own goddamn person.”

“I never said-”

“Maybe I should have died, huh?” Frenchie hisses.

It feels like the thing rattling around inside his skull hasn’t been his for a long time. He’s untethered in space, hands stilling in his lap. His head is starting to hurt again, blood roaring viciously in his ears.His voice softens, eyes losing focus. It’s forever until he’s able to speak again.

“But even that would be too big a mercy, wouldn’t it mon coeur?”

The nickname comes out more like an insult, an empty gesture of whatever love they used to share.

There are tears in Kimiko’s eyes, her mouth contorted in an ugly frown.

“Don’t say that. Never say that.”

Frenchie seethes. He does not want her pity. He does not want her to look at him like this. Like he’s some broken toy, a marionette with all his strings cut off. He snaps his head towards her.

“You have no fucking idea-”

That seems to do it.

Kimiko does not let him finish. She bends down and grabs him by the ankles, then pulls. He slides off the couch, skull bouncing against the ground. His head throbs in time with his heart beat, and for a second all he sees is stars. Once his vision clears up he drags himself onto his elbows. His heart pumps fast despite the Ambien slogging through his system.

“Qu'est-ce que…What the fuck!” He screams.

Kimiko’s dark eyes have gone cold and empty. Frenchie’s own are hard with rage, but it doesn’t last long. He’s seen the look on her face before. His anger morphs into white-hot fear.

She’s on top of him in seconds, straddling his waist as her knees push his wrists into the carpet. Her position and the burning of his skin reminds him of a different time, a different person.

“Kimiko,” He whimpers. “You’re hurting me.”

She presses down harder, cutting off the circulation to his hands.

“Stop, stop, please stop-“ His screams are cut off by Kimiko squeezing his cheeks with one hand.

She shoves the other into his mouth and pries it open, hard enough that it feels like his jaw is going to rip apart. He watches in paralyzed horror as she takes the pill bottle out of her jacket pocket and breaks the cap off with a thumb.

As she dumps the pills into his mouth, Frenchie goes stupid with panic.

He slams his upper body up and down on the ground, legs flailing in the air. Pills slide down his throat, block his airway. Kimiko slaps her palm over his mouth and presses down hard.

With her free hand she drags a pointer finger down her throat.

Swallow.

He keeps twisting around until his body starts going numb, black pinpricks dancing at the corners of his vision. When he goes limp under her, that’s when she finally hauls off.

The sudden lack of pressure sends spikes of pain and relief along his nerves, and he shoots up, gasping for air before realizing his mouth is still full of Ambien. Something activates his gag reflex and then he’s leaning over and throwing up, horrible animal sounds crawling out of his throat.

The pills come out slimy, coated in saliva and blood.

Once he’s done, he takes in desperate gulps of air, throat and mouth aching. Blood drips from his lips onto MM’s pristine, cream-colored carpet. With tentative fingers, he reaches into his mouth and prods at the inside of his cheek. There’s a gash where he must have bitten himself. The skin of his wrists stings, and his bones ache. Blood runs down his chin.

Silence blankets the room, save for his ragged inhales.

Slowly, he looks up. Kimiko looks at him from a foot away. She’s crouched and wide-eyed like a cornered animal. Frenchie stares at her.

He cannot bring himself to look away from. A long, red scratch on her forearm heals in an instant. Her eyes are flat, the whites dull, the pupil and iris infinitely dark. He thinks of great whites from shark week.

The front door clicks open.

MM stands at the threshold, jaw on the floor. Shopping bags fall to the floor, items clattering out.

“What the fuck? What the actual fuck? What-“

Kimiko bolts, pushing past MM and flying out the door. It slams behind her.

In the bathroom, Frenchie sits on the counter top. MM has a finger hooked in his mouth, pulling back to examine the cut in his cheek.

“Looks ok. Just don’t be eating any spicy shit.” He unhooks his finger and starts running the tap. “You swallow any of the pills?”

“Puked most of them out I think.” Frenchie runs a finger over his lips and laughs heartlessly. “Even if I swallowed them all…I think I’d be fine.”

“Don’t push it, asshole.”

MM grabs his hand and turns it over, examining his wrist. The skin’s raw and red from the carpet. There’s already bruises forming where Kimiko’s knees dug into him. “She fucked you up good, huh?”

“Not her fault.” Frenchie mumbles. “She was just angry.”

“Yeah?” MM grabs Frenchie’s other wrist. “Anger gets people killed.”

“Hasn’t gotten me yet.”

MM shakes his head. “That’s ‘cause you’re a stubborn bastard. Chick is batshit. But she’s dealing with your ass so…”

Frenchie scoffs and flips him off.

“She’ll be back.” Marvin hums. “Y’all are two co-dependent, fucked up peas in a pod.”

After he checks over the rest of his injuries and re-takes his temperature, he walks him out to the couch. They sit on the pull-out in silence. Frenchie takes stock of the apartment. A new hole in the wall. Regurgitated ambien on the floor. Sheets and clothes soaked through. Kimiko gone MIA.

Somehow, Marvin mentions none of it.

“Butcher said you were out. Earlier.”

Frenchie cranes his neck, caught off guard. “Yeah?”

“Mhm. Almost drowned.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Nah. Guess not. Were you sleeping?”

“Oui.”

“Human body’s stronger than a little nap though. Withdrawal came quick, too.” MM fiddles with his hands. “What’d you take?”

”Charcuter is full of shit. I wasn’t going to drown.” Frenchie scowls. Then, after a beat, “I shot up, if that’s what you’re asking.”

MM seems unphased, but Frenchie recognizes the veneer of nonchalance when he sees it. “Philly?”

Frenchie takes a long sip of his coffee. He brushes his knuckles up and down his sternum, remembering the lingering pain of his ribs breaking under Butcher’s hands. Philly, where Frenchie plunged a needle into the crook of his elbow and let his lips turn blue, his skin cold. Not his first overdose, but certainly the worst.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

“No OD this time.“ He supplies. As if it’s some kind of consolation.

“Heroin, Frenchie? Fuck.” MM scrubs a hand over his eyes. “Look, I’m sorry.”

He chuckles mirthlessly. “Why be sorry? I destroyed your apartment in the twelve hours I’ve been here. We’re all fucked up, anyway. You’re not my keeper.”

“No. But I’m your friend, and friends are supposed to look out for each other. Haven’t been doing a very good job of that.”

Frenchie mulls it over. It’s true that they’re friends, and it’s true that friends are supposed to look out for each other. It’s also true that they’re not normal people, and normal standards of behavior don’t apply to them.

His face contorts before he wrangles it back into an expressionless mask.

MM frowns. He looks like he wants to say something, but instead he just checks his watch and stands up. He takes Frenchie’s empty drink out of his hands and clicks his tongue.

“It’s late as hell. I need to sleep. You need to sleep, before this shit gets worse. Couch cool? Not that there’s a lotta options.”

For a second Frenchie feels dazed again. He blinks, then leans back into the cushions wearily. The inside of his cheek throbs. “Ouais. Less nightmares, I think.”

MM nods. “Need anything else?”

Frenchie scoffs. “A lobotomy.”

The older man whistles. “Now you’re makin’ jokes, huh? Milk’s detox program does not provide those services.”

“Didn’t think so.”

MM shakes his head.”Enough clownin around. Go to sleep.”

“Marvin.”

He turns, eyebrows raised. “Mm?”

Frenchie gives him a rueful smile. It feels dangerous. “I don’t need to be looked after.”

MM considers, then shrugs. The nonchalance is real this time.

“Tough fucking shit. I’mma do it anyway.”

The sun that peeks through MM’s curtains rouses Frenchie.

He doesn’t remember getting under the covers, or falling asleep. The sheets are damp, and he feels like whatever lies way beyond hammered shit.  The migraine is back with electrifying force. Nausea bubbles in his gut, and chills make his muscles spasm painfully as he shivers. His entire body feels like a block of ice. 

Not his hand, though.

Frenchie peeks out from under the covers, teeth chattering together.

With whatever remnants of strength he has left, he grips onto her hand.

Warmth passes from skin to skin.

Kimiko squeezes back.

Chapter Text

philadelphia, 2013 

“Marvin,” Frenchie hums, “Marvin.” 

“Don’t fucking Marvin me!” He hisses. “Does Butcher know about this?” 

Frenchie flicks at the syringe with his thumb and forefinger, carefully eyeing its contents. He taps on the plunger and a drop of liquid slides down the needle. 

MM grabs at the wrist that holds the syringe, tearing Frenchie’s eyes away. “Does Butcher know ?” 

“Bien sûr. He’s not stupid.” 

“No, he’s not, but you’re a sneaky motherfucker. How long you been doing this shit?” 

Frenchie bites his bottom lip, thinking hard. “Marseille? Morocco? It all blurs together.” 

MM lets go of his arm and moves back, hands going up behind his head. Frenchie almost feels bad, but it's overshadowed by glee.

After getting taken off the mission in Morocco, he realized he was out of control. 

Not that the way things had gone wasn’t entirely his fault. He missed Cherie. He missed Jay. He missed New York. He felt uneasy around Butcher and Marvin most of the time. He hated being part of something without a choice, hated the thought of returning to France or being close to Algiers. All he’d wanted was to numb himself for a little longer. Tired, on edge, sad, and high, but it hadn’t been his fault. Maybe he had gone a little off the rails, but it wasn’t the addiction.

It was just him. 

He wasn't ready to give up the drugs, but if he paid more attention it meant others would pay less to him. It’s not like they cared about his well-being. They cared about results. The realization made him euphoric in a way drugs never had. As long as it didn’t look like he was about to crash out on the job, what he did with his free time didn’t matter. 

After Marseilles, when they landed back in New York, things changed. Like a star born from dust and ash, he felt alive. Still high, still a mess, but the kind of mess he was intimately familiar with. The new heroin habit had just been an unfortunate side effect of getting things back in order.

On their way to Philly, in a gas station restroom, Butcher found him with a cigarette in one hand, and a needle between his toes. The blood had drained from Frenchie’s face, but Butcher just hacked a glob of spit into the sink and then turned around all casual-like. 

“Know what you’re gonna do with the teleporter?” 

Frenchie nodded slowly, unable to contain his excitement at his lack of anger. “C’est facile. All about the signals in the brain.” 

Butcher grinned, never even looking at the needle. “Good lad.” 

That had been two weeks ago. 

Now, in the poor lighting of the safe house, Frenchie slaps the crook of his elbow with his palm. Finding a vein has been getting hard. His arms look weird, all scabbed and bruised. Nothing new, he supposes. Before Butcher found out, he wore layers, all baggy shirts and long sleeves. It’s stopped mattering since. He sniffs and plunges the needle deep into pale skin and takes off the belt around his bicep. 

MM stares in morbid fascination, aversion drawn plainly on his face. “This is really fuckin' bad. You know that right?” 

“Lait de maman.” Frenchie drawls. “Relax. C’est bien.” 

“How can you say that? This shit will fuckin' kill you.” 

Frenchie scowls. “Kill? What is this, amateur hour? Mon ami, it’s the dosing. That’s all it is.” 

It’s not a lie. He’s meticulous now with what he takes, how much, and when. It's a game of practiced control, where each move is calculated and precise. Unlike every other aspect of his life. 

Marvin paces the tiny living room, eyes far away. “I thought you were good. Happy. Less depressed than last year. How am I supposed to know you're out here doing...this?” 

Frenchie hurls the used needle through the air into a nearby trash can, then settles down into the moth-eaten couch. Sweet molasses runs through his veins, dopamine floods his system, and in no time at all, he feels like a million bucks. He cranes his neck to look up at MM. 

“I have been happy, haven’t I? Useful to the team?” 

“That’s not-” MM genuinely looks distressed. “Man, you’re doing heroin .” 

For a second, Frenchie thinks of Serge. Weak, and sad, and so easy to hurt. It makes his blood boil. He doesn’t want to talk about this. 

“I’ve been great, Marvin.” He smiles, but it’s not a happy expression. “Don’t fuck it up for me.”

- 

“Christ.” Marvin shakes his head. “You’re like a fuckin’ magnet.” 

Frenchie slams the hilt of his knife into the counter, crushing the pills into dust. He digs into the pockets of his raggedy pants. He licks his lips, a maniacal grin on his face. “Damn right.” 

“Oi!” Butcher saunters into the kitchen, swinging a bloody machete up onto his shoulder. “What’s with the bloody racket?” 

MM’s face twists. “You kill the chef?” 

“What can I say? Food was shite.” 

“Mallory ain’t gonna be happy.” 

Butcher tsk’s. “What she don’t know can’t hurt her, eh?” His eyes wander over to the metal prep table. “And what the fuck are you doing?” 

Marvin jumps off the counter and shakes his head. “Anthony Bourdain over here had a stash of shit. Motherfucker sniffed it out like a dog.” 

Frenchie barks out a laugh. “It’s a cuisine. Those assholes get so high they have me beat.” 

“Doubtful.” MM sticks his gun back in the waistband of his jeans and shakes his arms out. “Can’t you get fucked up anywhere else? I wanna get outta here.” 

Frenchie digs through his pockets with his tongue between his teeth, pulling out a handful of stuff and dropping it on the table. An assortment of bills, coins, safety pins, jelly beans, a Subway gift card, and other random crap clinks onto the metal. Frenchie starts going through the pile with scratched-up fingers. 

The older man lifts an eyebrow. When that doesn’t get Frenchie’s attention, he taps him on the forehead with a thick finger. “‘Ey. Princess of Pill-landia. What’d you find?” 

“Huh?” Frenchie startles, then flips his ballistic sunglasses to the back of his head. He grins up at Butcher, all teeth and sharp canines. “Meperidine.” 

“Hm.” Butcher dips a pinky into a line and rubs it between his top lip and gums. “Painkiller?”

“Uh-huh.” The glint in Frenchie’s eyes is dangerous at best. “Want some?” 

“ Butcher ,” MM grumbles, but he just  waves a dismissive hand.

“Untwist your G-string. You ain’t got any uppers?”

“Non. Ah…I think some MDMA from the Haitian with the funny eye, after we-”

“That’ll do.” He leans against one of the ovens and wipes his machete on a soiled rag. 

Frenchie plucks a baggie from the pile and upends its contents into the powder, crushing and mixing it in. He uses the same knife to cut out three lines, then hands Butcher a rolled-up euro bill. 

Marvin looks up at the stained ceiling. “Jesus Christ. I’m getting the gasoline.” 

Butcher takes the bill and leans down, while Frenchie waves around the thick kitchen knife, a dumb smile plastered on his face.

“You know, this reminds me so much of home. My papa used to use this all the time. He got shot in the knee when he was in the army, and the pain just stuck. We have twin scars, but mine’s on my other-” 

“Oi,” Butcher straightens up and hands the bill over. “Save the story for someone who cares. Finish up and let’s burn this shit down. We gotta get movin’ if we wanna catch the teleporting fuck." He sniffs harshly and grins. "Philly traffic is diabolical, I hear.” 

MM wanders back into the room carrying a red gallon jug. He untwists the cap and scoffs. “Can’t be worse than New York.” He motions to Frenchie. “Pick up your shit before I douse it.” 

Frenchie wipes his nose with the heel of his hand and shoves all his belongings back in his pants. He resists the urge to keep the knife. It’s a very beautiful knife. 

Butcher eyes him and clears his throat, making Frenchie drop the knife back on the table. “Say Frenchie. How’d you get the manager to let you in here? He hated me an' MM.” 

Frenchie laughs. ignoring the way his nostrils burn. “Because of my charisme,” 

MM steps back, letting liquid saturate as much of the kitchen as it can. “Charisma, French. It’s charisma.” 

They’ve tried getting him to drop the habit of speaking Frenglish but it’s been as successful as asking Butcher to minimize the bloodshed. 

Frenchie clicks his tongue, lights a cigarette, and blows out a mouthful of smoke. “Ah. Well, whatever the fuck it is.” 

“It is not because of your charisma.” Butcher laughs. “He probably wanted to fuck you. Or it’s because you’re a tweaker,” He runs a finger over the powder on Frenchie’s black t-shirt to prove his point. “And people don’t like tweakers.” 

Frenchie’s lips twist into a smile. “That’s good, non? It means I scare them.” 

MM rolls his eyes. “Whatever it is, I can promise you it ain’t that outfit.” 

Butcher nods. “Gonna get burned, walking around like that.” 

Frenchie looks down at his clothes. Nothing he’s wearing makes any sense put together. His shirt is big and ugly, his pants even uglier. He thinks he looks great, but it might just be the lingering effects of the chef’s hallucinogenic power. Frenchie laments that Butcher killed him. When Mallory had explained the target, it’d been music to his ears, and the actual thing was even better than he imagined. A grilled cheese-induced trip at a Michelin-star restaurant might just be the highlight of his career. 

He watches as the oily-looking gasoline spreads across the dirty tile. With a quick flick, his lit cigarette drops onto the floor. Almost instantly, flames flicker to life in front of them. He crosses his arms and shakes his head, eyes glued to the fire.

“Not gonna get burned." He turns to them and grins wolfishly. "No one fucks with the tweaker.”

- 

The teleporter proves to be elusive and finicky. 

Their initial intel is wrong, and stalking someone who can vanish into thin air is almost impossible. They spend an entire week hunting the Supe down through the streets of Philly. After getting a good lead they stay awake for two straight days, Butcher and Frenchie sustained on coke and uppers, MM by his naturally nervous nature.

Frenchie disappears for two hours to replenish what he's lost from sharing with Butcher. He comes back to the safehouse with pupils the size of the moon, and three inflamed piercings. 

Butcher almost pisses his pants. "The fuck've you done to yourself?" 

MM chokes on his cheesesteak. 

Frenchie sits on a stool, then stands up, twitchy as a motherfucker. "Guy said he'd do it for free." He sucks down on a cigarette.

"Also, I think he gave me meth."

-

At around the 50-hour mark, they’re all beyond delirious, crammed together in an empty dumpster while they wait for the Supe to show up. 

The dumpster reeks, but Frenchie can’t remember the last time he changed clothes or showered. Butcher nudges Frenchie to attention.“Oi, MM,” 

For the past two weeks, MM’s been singing and humming one song only, repeating the chorus over and over again. He stops muttering to himself and drags a hand down his face.  “Yeah?” 

Butcher has an evil grin on his face. “Think we’re gonna contract some disease from being in here?” 

It’s slightly cruel, seeing as sitting watch inside a dumpster is MM’s personal hell, but they’re all too deluded for it to mean anything more than a jab. 

Frenchie smiles stupidly. “Oui. Le plague? I think I heard scuttling.” 

MM’s lips are pressed into a thin line. “Fuck off before I throttle you.” 

Frenchie giggles. “Be honest. Tu m’aimes.” 

“I hate you, and I hate my life.” 

Butcher holds out a fist, and Frenchie bumps it, ecstasy rattling through his skull. If he were a worse person than he already is, he’d get Butcher high and sleepless more often. It makes him at least two hundred percent more personable. 

A beep from inside the trash can. Signal that it’s go-time. 

“Alright boys,” Butcher stands up and peeps out of the dumpster. “Keep to the plan. Not much longer before we get this parasitic Supe fuck. MM, you know what to do. Frenchie... don’t let the singing drive you any crazier than you already are.” 

Frenchie salutes him off as he climbs out of the dumpster. MM swears. 

They shouldn’t have to wait longer than an hour, two tops, but Frenchie itches to get out of the dumpster. His legs are cramping up. Next to him, MM taps a finger on his knee, the tinny sound of music leaking from his earbuds. He’s not singing out loud, but Frenchie can see his lips moving, mouthing lyrics. 

“What is that song you keep singing?” 

MM blinks. “Cypress Hill. Insane in the brain? Black Sunday? You know ‘em?” He shakes his head. “Non.” 

“Bullshit.” MM scoffs, plague talk forgotten. “Here. This shit’ll be your bread and butter, I promise.” He hands Frenchie his other earbud. 

He listens for a while, nodding along with the beat. He doesn’t understand much of the lyrics besides the chorus, but the music is good. Better than doing nothing while they wait for Butcher. 

Suddenly the tracker in his hand buzzes. 

Butcher did it. The teleporter is nearby. 

- 

The fight is fast but dirty. 

The device Frenchie fashioned works perfectly, blocking the Supe from teleporting anywhere besides in and out of his interdimensional space and the alley they’re in. Even with three people on one, the whole thing is brutal. Every time he pops back into the alley, he comes from somewhere different, ambushing them violently. Frenchie banks on his adrenaline high, ignoring the pain of every surprise kick and punch. Every time he glances at the other two, he can tell. 

They haven’t slept. The little energy they do have is waning fast, and if the fight doesn’t end quickly it’ll all be for nothing. 

Frenchie sees an opportunity and he takes it. He catches MM by the arm while he reloads his machine gun. “When I jump, turn the amps all the way up, okay?” 

MM screams to be heard over all the noise, “What?” 

“Just do it!” He yells back, scrambling onto the fire escape. As soon as the teleporter disengages from Butcher, energy crackling around them, Frenchie throws himself onto the Supe’s back and digs his fingers into his skin, grabbing on for dear life.

He feels the zap of teleportation like a shot to the head. The teleporter’s in-between space is a crackling black void, and his body feels completely wrong, like it’s being warped out of existence. It’s one of the most terrifying things he’s ever experienced. He has no control of his limbs, but this is the teleporter’s realm. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Just as the teleporter gets a hand on Frenchie’s face, the energy accumulates ten-fold. Frenchie cackles wildly. 

You are so fucking fucked. 

Something seems to short out, like wires snapping. 

Everything goes dark. 

- 

“Frenchie….Frenchie, come on. Wake up.” 

He comes to with a gasp. Butcher stands at a safe distance, while MM kneels next to him, face floating above him like a mirage. 

“Easy,” MM holds out his hands. 

Frenchie moves his ten-tonne tongue around in his mouth and pats his face numbly. Sensations come to him slowly. “Quoi…" He swallows and spits. "What happened?” 

Butcher comes closer and holds out a hand. “You did 'im in, son.” 

Frenchie grabs it and lets himself be hauled up. He’s unsteady on his feet and has to reach a hand out to lean on the brick wall. His breathing picks up the pace. 

“You’re insane." MM breathes. "I thought you were a fuckin' gonner."

"Cunt’s stuck in the in-between.” Butcher adds.

“Stuck?” Frenchie mumbles. 

“Yeah. Fucking forever.” 

It’s good. Logically, Frenchie knows this. Maybe the adrenaline and probable electrocution have fried his brain completely. He can’t seem to work it out. Under his skin, his bones rattle. He can’t catch his breath. “What about…What..” 

“Oi! Stop it,” Butcher snaps, grabbing him roughly by the shoulders. “It worked. You got it done. That’s all that matters, yeah?” 

Frenchie gasps through his nose, eyes burning from the wind chill. It’s cold, but the goosebumps on his skin have nothing to do with the weather. There’s blood and skin under his fingernails. Warm red liquid drips from the ragged tear on his eyebrow. His arm throbs terribly. It’s probably broken. His eyes dart around the alley. 

Butcher shakes him and it almost makes him cry out loud. 

“Say it.” he hisses. “I need to hear you say it.” 

Frenchie meets his eyes and swears they’re the color of blood. 

“Yeah. C’est fait. Done.” 

- 

Before he shoots up for the last time, something in his body already knows. 

Like magnets pushing apart, he can’t find a good vein and struggles to get the needle close, finger twitching over the plunger. He’s still rattled by the fight with the teleporter, adrenaline crash leaving him unsteady, the thought of being stuck in that electric black void scarier than any Supe. 

When they walked into the safe house, MM grabbed him by the bicep of his good arm and looked him dead in the eyes. “Hey. Don’t do any stupid shit.” 

Frenchie had no fucking idea what he was talking about.

In his room, he listens to Cypress Hill through the speakers of his messed-up phone and plays MM’s song on repeat like it’s a lifeline. He slinks off the bed, careful with his injured body, and rests his back against the bed frame. The house is dead quiet except for his music. Butcher and MM are surely sleeping already. 

Frenchie hums, lips tripping over the words to the song. 

His head hurts, brain buzzing.

He needs a fix. 

- 

Two things happen at once. 

Butcher comes into the hospital room, and a piece of clothing hits him in the face.

“Dude,” MM mouths, pulling the phone away from his face. 

Frenchie blinks down at the thick sweatshirt. 

“Well?” Butcher’s sounds irritated, but only half as much as usual. “Go on. It’s a zip-up, so it should be easy to put on.” 

“Why?” Frenchie doesn’t understand. He’s already changed out of the hospital gown and into his own clothes. 

MM hangs up the phone and rubs a hand across his growing stubble. He still looks sleep-deprived, which Frenchie guesses makes sense. They never got the chance to sleep long after the stakeout. 

“Mallory’s coming.” 

“Mallory? Why?” 

“Stop asking questions and just put the damn thing on. She’ll be here soon.” 

Frenchie does as he’s told. Butcher’s right. With the zipper, it’s not hard to put on. It won’t snag on the stitches on his brow where his piercing got ripped out. The twinges of pain around his ribs are bearable, and the hoodie’s big enough that the cast on his arm fits with it on. Seems like the doctors fixed everything but what landed him there in the first place. 

Lips bluer than a blueberry from lack of oxygen, three broken ribs from CPR, a seizure in the ambulance. It was touch and go for a while, he'd heard.

Still, he aches for the stuff. 

- 

Butcher wheels him down the long, fluorescent halls of Jefferson Methodist, MM keeping pace next to them. Frenchie protested the wheelchair but was met with a simultaneous ‘shut up’ by both of them. Butcher’s face is drawn and hard, lines pronounced like never before. Marvin fidgets, humming all the while. Frenchie slumps further down into the wheelchair, cracked sunglasses dulling the brightness of the walls, the floors, the lights. 

“Why is she coming?” He repeats. 

Butcher sighs. Even his sigh sounds exhausted. “Giving us a helicopter ride back to New York, thanks to you. Told her you were in no shape to go on another road trip.” 

Marvin’s eyes flick to him, then away again, lips moving but making no sound. 

They make it to the elevator, empty except for the three of them. Butcher pushes the button to the lobby, then leans against the cold metal wall, staring down at Frenchie. He doesn’t know if it’s whatever the doctors gave him, making him see things, but he’s almost sure there’s guilt in Butcher’s eyes. 

He runs his fingers lightly over his stitches. “What did you tell her?” 

“Said the chef fucked you up. Then the teleporter. On top of the lack of sleep.” MM says in an inflectionless voice. He too looks wound-up, wrung-out, a little unsteady. “I don’t think she believed me, but she didn’t say anything else, so. Just try not to talk to her. We’ll handle it.” 

Frenchie blinks in confusion. He should be on his way to the Supermax, not taking a helicopter back to New York.

“Oui…” 

They lapse into an exhausted silence, the three of them with dark circles under their eyes.

MM breaks the silence, eyes like ice. “I told you not to do anything dumb.” 

Oh. That's what he'd meant. 

Butcher stares at Frenchie, but says nothing. 

Frenchie almost wants to laugh. Maybe it’s the euphoria of still being alive, but he feels good. Great, even. He doesn’t know how many times he’s slipped out of death’s cold grip, but this is the first time he’s actually died, heart still and all. A crooked smile works its way onto his face. The doctors said he could have lingering effects from the lack of oxygen to his brain. Maybe this is it. Or maybe it just is what it is. 

Just another sign that he’s a piece of shit. 

He doesn’t understand why they look so upset. It was an overdose, not the end of the world. Butcher and MM’s contrite faces make no sense. He did what he was told to do. They have no reason to care. They're not supposed to care. 

Frenchie bites his lip until his eyes water.

He's glad he's wearing sunglasses.

Chapter Text

“Darling, not so fast. Mommy can’t keep up.”

The little boy laughs. A loud, high-pitched giggle. “Because mommy’s slow.”

The woman’s eyes widen in mock surprise. “Is that so?”

He nods vigorously, grabbing her hand and pulling. “Swings next. Please!”

“Wait, darling.” She gently pulls him back.“You’re getting sunburned.” She kneels down on the grass and reaches for a tube of sunscreen in her purse, squeezing out a bit onto her palms. “Come here.”

The boy moves forward, eyes locked on his mother’s face. She’s got eyes like the sun and a smile that makes him feel like nothing can hurt him, ever. A gentle wind ruffles her long hair.

She rubs her palms together then grabs one of the boy’s arms. Right before she starts spreading it, she hesitates.

“Sweetheart,” The woman laughs. “What are these?”

He looks down at his arms. They’re covered in marks, some new, some old, all varying degrees of ugly. He doesn’t know what they are, and he’s never seen them before, but they feel familiar all the same. If he peers further down they’re on his legs too. He’s little. They seem to cover his entire body.

His mother looks at him with a type of love that cannot be faked. She reaches out and tugs on his earlobe.

“Those are weird scars. Where’d you get those from?”

-

“Stay awake a little longer, alright? We’re almost done.”

Warm water runs over his skin. Fingernails crawl over his scalp, feel over the divet in his skull.

“Jesus. How’d you get this?”

He shakes his head, feels water droplets disturb the air.  Something like a wet dog. A cloth runs over his skin.

“Did you even go to a doctor? Stitches weren’t done very well.”

The sound of water, gentle like wind chimes.

“It’s gonna scar.”

He can’t find his voice. “I don’t-”

Someone smooths a hand over his hair.

“Don’t worry about it.”

-

He curls his toes, digs them into the warm sand.

Yesterday, parts of his skin started peeling, revealing bright red underneath. He can’t remember the last time he’s worn sunscreen. When he runs his palm over the damaged skin, he can feel the grit of the sand. Every grain.

“Oi! You too pussy to get in, or what?”

The call comes from the water.

He shakes his head, a smile turning the corners of his lips. His head feels clear. The sea doesn’t seem so threatening today.

“C’mon then, before you get heat stroke! Too bloody hot!”

-

He startles awake, the thick taste of the sea heavy in his mouth.

Without turning his head, his eyes glide over to the lawn chair next to him. Silently he watches her. She’s playing on a Nintendo, pink and covered in stickers. Her fingers move quickly and her facial expressions change with every maneuver she makes. A quirking of the lips. The raise of an eyebrow.

He stops looking, focusing instead on the darkening sky above them. It’s cold out. He knows this, but with the parka he has on, and a scarf wrapped tight around his neck, he doesn’t really feel it.

He swallows. Tries to remember if he was having a nightmare or not.

He feels sick, maybe. Can’t quite get his bearings. The sound of her video game is surprisingly relaxing. Time crawls by.

A light tap on his thigh.

Again, he doesn’t turn his head. Only shifts his eyes to look at her.

She sets the console down on her lap.

How are you feeling?

He swallows again. Runs a finger over the scar that cuts through his eyebrow. He doesn’t remember what the dream was about. Why can’t he remember?

-

The apple rolls out from under the knife and the steel slides into his skin instead.

The knife must be dull. Or the skin of the apple made of iron. Maybe he forgot the basics.

“Frenchie!”

Hughie snatches at his wrist, and makes to look at his thumb.

It’s not much of a cut. Barely worthy of a band-aid.

“M fine,” Frenchie mumbles after a beat, eyes glued to the bright red droplet sliding onto the counter.

Hughie stares at the apple with wide eyes. “Maybe you should lay down. I don’t think you’re supposed to be up."

“‘M fine.” He parrots.

“I really don’t think that’s true. Just-” Hughie grabs the knife and chucks it in the sink. His shoulder sag and he can’t seem to meet Frenchie’s eye.

Frenchie hears the words, but can’t process them. He sucks the blood from his thumb, an eye on the apple. How long before it goes bad?

“Are you hungry?” Hughie prods, voice gentle. “I can order some food for us.”

He can’t tell if he is, so he shakes his head.

Skin comes into contact with skin and he feels off-kilter, like the world is spinning too fast on its axis. He looks down to see Hughie grabbing his hand tight, pulling lightly. Leading him somewhere.

“Why don’t you sleep? They’ll be back by the time you wake up.” Crinkled eyebrows, a slight frown, eyes that haven’t seen anything yet. He shouldn’t be here, dealing with this. Him.

Frenchie’s lips part, but he can’t find the words.

Hughie speaks anyway.

Softly: “Come on,”

-

Sometimes he’s there.

He knows Kimiko is brushing his hair. He knows she’s painting his nails a buttery yellow. He knows they’re watching Finding Nemo. He knows there’s a glass of water in his hand.

He knows MM’s giving him Tylenol. He knows he’s sitting on the balcony. He knows it’s about to rain. He knows he’s doing a sudoku.

Frenchie also knows all the rest.

He knows he screams. He knows his wrists are still bruised. He knows he curls into himself. He knows what happened all those months. He knows what his brain will not let him forget.

So sometimes, he just goes away.

-

Outside the window, clouds loom across the sky in a broiling, murderous blue.

He inhales sharply through his nostrils. Gags once before dropping his head between his shoulder blades and throwing up. It splatters onto hard plastic, mop bucket gripped tightly between his hands.

In front of him, MM holds up a water bottle.

Frenchie shakes his head and rests his cheek against the rim of the mop bucket, eyes squeezed shut.

“Remember what I said earlier?” MM says. The bed dips down beside Frenchie as Marvin takes a seat next to him. He gives him a sharp thwack on the back.“Silver lining, man.”

Frenchie squints through one eye, and focuses on the world outside.

The silver linings he sees seem to be made of splintered glass, microscopic shards that worm their way deep into his skin. When he pictures it in his mind, the pain is as good as real.

His thumb rubs over the lip of the bucket. It takes focus on his part, to think of his skin touching the plastic, to ignore the way his body protests the lack of drugs. The red plastic is gnarled and faded, and it bites into his thumb but doesn’t pierce the skin. It’s not painful, but it still feels raw.

Real.

MM stares out at the sky, a twisted kind of longing on his face. He turns to Frenchie when he notices eyes on him. “Not so bad, right?”

Frenchie bites his bottom lip and swallows down another gag. His stomach cramps. “Fuck you.”

“Philly, Frenchie. That was bleak. This is child's play.”

He tries to remember. The memory is in a strange limbo between vivid and faded. The idea of it sits sharp and heavy in his gut. However, the memory itself is old and devoid of emotion.

It had been bad. Frenchie can admit that. How bad, is another story entirely.

-

1st verse.

Observing the tiny pin-pricks of scar tissue on his hands.

Chorus.

Chewing on the skin of his knuckles.

2nd verse.

Ripping the stitches along the hem of his shirt.

Chorus

Counting the seconds between each rise and fall of Kimiko’s chest.

3rd verse.

The bathroom light flicks on. Marvin trudges in, half-asleep. When he sees them, he shrieks, then slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide. No shouted reprimand. No demands. No, why the fuck are you two morons in my bathtub. He just blinks, one hand reaching for the light switch. Then, he turns on one heel and leaves.

A knee knocks against his thigh and makes him look up.

In the half-light of the room, Kimiko’s eyes glint sharply. He doesn’t know if she was really sleeping, or just faking for his sake. Her hands untangle themselves from the quilt they dragged into the empty tub.

Have you slept at all?

Frenchie meets her eyes and doesn’t blink even when his eyes start to water. They’re probably bloodshot. At least it’s natural now.

His fingers ache for a cigarette, his mouth for something else.

Where was he? 3rd verse, chorus, 4th verse- He doesn’t remember, so he just jumps back to the chorus, voice hoarse and low.

He wondered, before. If he scared her.

He’s still not sure of the answer.

-

They play Monopoly at the dining table.

Kimiko’s a quick study, MM’s surprisingly bad, and Frenchie’s pretty sure he doesn’t care. It’s just another way to pass the time and ride out the ferocious itching under his skin.

It’s his turn. He rolls the die and moves his piece down the board. He stops scratching at his neck. “Quois?” When sees he’s landed on Kimiko’s property, he shoots up from his chair, ire creeping up his gullet. “Fils de pute! I’m fucking broke! What am I supposed to give you?”

MM is staring at him with an indiscernible expression on his face. Kimiko is trying to suppress a smile.

He grips his hair tightly, still riled up. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Like they’re proud of his anger.

-

After a week, most of his physical symptoms recede.

It’s easier to eat, and easier to keep food down. He doesn’t shake so much. His cravings are bad still, but that’s inevitable. Sometimes the world is out of focus. Other times, it’s too sharp. He’s still having a hard time determining which he prefers.

The insomnia sticks around. Frenchie doesn’t mind.

After two weeks, detox is a tale as old as time, but clarity is a newer, stranger beast.

-

MM runs a hand through his hair, pulling it straight up. Strands tangle in his fingers and he makes a face.“What d’you wanna do with it? Mohawk?”

Kimiko shakes her head with vigor from where she sits on the bathroom counter, then looks away. “Unless that’s what you want.”

Frenchie barks out a laugh, shoulders sagging. “Too old to pull that off now.”

“Ey.” MM lets go of his hair. “If you’re old what am I? Decrepit?”

“You said it,” Frenchie raises his hands, then runs a hand through his hair. It’s long enough for a ponytail, but he refuses to look in the mirror. Not until it’s gone from his head. Even then he still might be too scared.

There’s a buzz from the counter. Kimiko grabs the phone and lobs it at MM.

“Shit, y’all. I’m sorry. I gotta go pick up Jeanine.” He shoves his phone in his pocket and looks around the bathroom. “Kimiko, you know how to use the razor? Remember what I told you about the guards. Broom and dustpan are in the closet for when you’re done. Don’t make him uglier than he already is.”

“Not possible.” Kimiko signs.

From his seat on the toilet, Frenchie flips both of them off.

Just as MM is about to leave, he hesitates, turning around. He moves so he’s eye level with Frenchie and slaps both his hands on his shoulders. “Listen. The hardest part is done. It’s just hair, man.” He lets go and straightens up. “Cut that shit off clean, aight?”

Frenchie grits his teeth and nods. He knows MM isn’t talking about the hair.

“Ok.” MM claps his hands together. “I better not come home with my baby girl and see any of that rat-tail, mullet bullshit alright? Do somethin’ classy.”

“Oui, lait de maman.”

When he leaves, and it’s just the two of them and a pair of scissors, Frenchie lets himself feel the gravity of the situation. It’s embarrassing how quickly his eyes lose focus, heartbeat slowing till he can’t feel it at all. He tries to remember to breathe, but all his body wants to do is forget forget forget.

Kimiko is standing in front of him, waving a hand in his face.

Frenchie grabs her forearm and stutters his way through a protest. “I- I’m not- I don’t know about this.” He stares down at the scar on his bare knee, traces the point of impact with a finger like that of an exploding star. She used to mock him for his scars. Even the ones that were her fault. He sniffs. When MM is present he feels the aches and pains of their past, the resolve that pushes him to never say no. With Kimiko, there is no pretense. He feels vulnerable like a child. Exposed and raw.

Slowly, he moves his thumb over the edge of her wrist and pulls at his long hair limply.

“She loved it.” He whispers. “She loved me.”

The scissors click as Kimiko sets them down on the lip of the tub.

She kneels down in front of him and puts a warm palm flat against his cheek. Her eyebrows are downturned, framing wide eyes. In their infinite expanse, they hold a melancholy he can taste.

“My heart,” Her thumb reaches up, wipes away a tear. “That wasn’t love.”

-

Butcher calls on a rainy Saturday.

The ringer is hard to hear over the loud din of the deli, but he feels the buzz in his ass anyway. He pulls his new phone out of his back pocket, a handful of fries halfway to his mouth.

Hughie raises his eyebrows from across the table. “Who is it?”

Kimiko peers over Frenchie’s shoulder to peer at the screen. “Butcher,” She signs.

In unison, the three of them turn to stare at MM.

Marvin’s mouth is wide open, ready to bite down on a burger. He closes it and scowls. “Well? The fuck you lookin' at me for? Fuckin’ pick up.”

Frenchie gnaws on his thumb, finger hovering over the screen.

“It might be important,” Hughie says.

Kimiko just grips his elbow reassuringly.

Frenchie nods, then stands up, making his way to the entrance. It’s too noisy indoors, and it’ll be easier to hide his jitters if he’s away from everyone. Outside, he stands under an awning and watches New York roll by. Rain patters onto the ground. He swallows down his fear and picks up the call.

“Fuckin’ finally-“ A cough, then a clearing of the throat. “Oi, Frenchie?”

He stares down at his dirty boots, soggy from the rain. “Monsieur Charcutier.”

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Hey. I just, uh-” Butcher stalls. There’s the sound of a car door slamming on his end, but Frenchie can’t hear any rain. He must be out of the city. “How you holdin’ up mate?”

Frenchie rocks on his heels and runs a hand over his buzzed scalp. The remaining hair is soft to the touch, and he can feel his new scar with ease. “Eh. Getting through it.”

“Yeah? I heard things were goin’ okay. That you’ve been puttin’ in the work.”

Frenchie raises his eyebrows at that. Butcher keeping tabs is new information to him.

“You-” He laughs through his confusion and touches the points on his head where Cherie’s stitches went through. “Detox. You know how it goes.”

An awkward silence fills the air, and it takes all Frenchie’s willpower to stay on the line.

Butcher breaks the silence with a curse, followed by the loud slamming of a door. “So, listen. I don’t got a lot of people. Neither do you.”

Frenchie makes a weird noise at the back of his throat.

“Don’t be a cunt and just listen. We’re family. In some fucked up way? You, me, MM. The broad and the kid too, maybe.”

Frenchie feels like the rugs pulled under him. He doesn’t exactly know what to say, so he squeezes the bridge of his nose and tries to breathe like a normal person “Butcher." He sighs. "Sometimes I really don’t fucking like you.”

Sometimes he thinks if someone asked him to run Butcher over with a semi, he’d do it with glee. The man has hurt him and betrayed him, often without giving much of a damn. The sociopath diagnosis has been pending for years. Still… He hasn’t tried to kill him yet. He's killed half the Russian mafia on his behalf. In a way, Butcher's love language has always been blood. 

“Sometimes I really don’t fucking like you.” Frenchie looks at the sky. “But I guess I love you all the same.”

Silence, then a scoff from the other man. “Don’t get fuckin’ weird. I ain’t got the bandwidth for that.”

The response is gruff and mean, but it isn’t cruel, and Frenchie knows cruelty like the back of his hand.

He thinks he hears something close to a smile at the end of the line.

-

The sun rolls drowsily past the horizon, the last glimpses of it catching Frenchie in the eye.

He rolls his back on the grass, covering his eyes with one hand while he listens to the sounds of the park. The soft hooting of an owl, the gentle turning of pages, the whisper of wind blowing through the grass.

It’s the first truly warm day in months. He didn’t protest when Kimiko dragged him out of MM’s apartment. He didn’t protest when she held his hand into the street, down the subway, and through the park.

It'd been strange.

Not because it was weird, but because it made him feel something. Sharp and yearning, like the chest pain preceding a panic attack. It was in moments like this when any feeling stronger than apathy grabbed him by the throat, that he wanted to use again. The permanent exhaustion that trailed around him seemed to numb him out a little, but even now he was too used to that. He’d borrowed a pair of MM’s sunglasses and hoped they were big enough to cover the flush in his cheeks.

In the park, she reads, and he naps and it’s enough to mellow him out. Until he rolls around, and familiar fingers start tracing the veins on his forearm. He moves his hand to look at her. She’s upside down, frowning in concentration as she reads. With one eye, he looks at the delicate fingers on his arm. Her skin is smooth, nails long and cared for. He knows some of it’s the V, but at the same time, he can’t understand how something so beautiful can be so damaging. 

Damage done in his name.

He’s wondered about that lately, in the sharpest hours of the night. Did she do it in a rage? Was it calculated?

Did it hurt?

The question comes quiet, whispered flat and empty.

“What’d you do to her?”

Kimiko’s head snaps up as he flips over onto his stomach.

She signs a sharp no.

“Kimiko-”

Her eyes draw wearily. “No. I’m not telling you.”

“Listen, it won’t do what you think it’ll do to me, okay? I’m- It’s good now.” He whispers the last part, afraid in case it’s not the truth.

“How will it help? Me telling you?”

Frenchie’s face hardens. “You broke a promise, when you went after Nina. The least you can do is tell me about it.”

Kimiko looks embarrassed for a second. He’s caught her, found a chink in her armor. She tucks a strand of her behind her ear and gnaws on her bottom lip. Resignation finds its way onto her face. “Curiosity killed the cat.”

Frenchie snorts. “Mon coeur, le chat jumped off a cliff a long time ago.”

She stares at him for a while, face painted by the setting sun. Then, she grabs her phone and starts typing. Saliva starts pooling in his mouth, perspiration gathering on his skin.

She keeps going for a while, and he doesn’t interrupt, except to clear his throat, crack a knuckle, rub a hand across his jaw. Finally, she hands him the phone. He reaches out, but before he can grab it she snatches her arm back.

“Serge.” She signs the name letter by letter.

He does a double-take. She’s never, ever, called him that.

“If you can’t handle this-” Kimiko stops, squeezing her hand into a fist. She tries again, and this time her eyes are glossy. “Maybe I’m weak. But I can’t do it. Not again. If I have to see you like that again, it will kill me. So, you need to be sure.”

He swallows harshly. Maybe he’s not ready. Maybe, he’s weak too. He runs a hand over his stubbly scalp, then holds it back out for the phone. It shakes.

Red hair. Narrowed eyes. A slice in the skin. Pleasure removed from love.

He wonders if Nina was the one in his place, how things would have gone. Would she have withstood as much as he did? Could she have taken it all, without it tearing her apart?

Red hair. Narrowed eyes. A slice in the skin. Pleasure removed from love.

The last time he saw her face, fear almost stopped his heart. She’s dead now. He won’t let her hurt him any longer.

Frenchie takes the phone and reads every word, letter by letter, body still as a stone.

Chapter Text

MM never says anything about kicking them out, but when Frenchie broaches the idea of looking for a new place over breakfast, he nods approvingly.

Frenchie squirms across the table, hands wringing together like a wet rag. “Not that I didn’t appreciate my stay at your bootleg rehab facility.”

Marvin swallows a mouthful of eggs. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Kimiko smears a glob of half-melted butter on her toast and wiggles her finger up and down to indicate a staunch yes.

MM drains the rest of his juice. “I could help y’all with that. The house thing, I mean.”

Frenchie picks at his toast, ripping away the crust. “If you want. I mean…you’ve done so much already.” He hopes it comes out contrite. After all, he feels nothing but gratitude for his friend.

“Hey.” MM points at him with a fork. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t wanna, alright.”

Later, while Frenchie loads plates into the dishwasher and Kimiko scrubs at the dirty pans, MM pops his head back into the kitchen. “You’re not planning on living alone, right? This a joint venture?”

Frenchie’s brain hasn’t even started whirring with an answer before Kimko’s holding up two sudsy thumbs-up.

MM turns to look at him as if it’s not enough of an answer.

Frenchies tries an affirming smile on for size, but finds it feels uncanny, slightly awkward. He lets it fall off his face and frowns down at his waterlogged hands. He’s already tired, and it’s only nine in the morning.

-

Kimiko takes him to their old place.

By some miracle, no squatters have taken over the apartment, but Frenchie sees a roach scuttling out the door before laying his eyes on the hurricane of destruction.

He lets out a low whistle and turns to look at her. “Wow. You did all this, mon coeur?”

Kimiko nods, looking mortified.

Frenchie walks through the wreck, glass crunching underfoot, and squats down. He picks up half of what used to be his laptop, then drops it back down. Wind howls in through a shattered window. Most, if not all, of their clothes had been slowly ferried to MM’s, but everything else he owned was in this apartment. He laughs once, short and clipped. It’s an empty, disconcerting sound, and he quickly swallows down another laugh before it can come out.

He’s trying to seem less like a wreck in front of everyone. It’s been easier said than done.

When he turns to her, she’s already singing away, hands moving in a desperate flurry. “I was just mad, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“Kimiko,” He drops a heavy hand on her shoulder, cutting her off. “It’s just stuff.”

She pulls away, still looking down. “Come on. It was your stuff.”

For four months, he lived with nothing but the clothes on his back and the hair on his head. He’d survived. Before that, he started over and over, again and again, with nothing but the cigarette in his mouth and adrenaline sliding through his veins.

This is nothing.

He shakes his head and snakes an arm around her shoulders, careful to meet her eyes. “What kind of Catholic would I be, caring so much about material goods?”

Kimiko rolls her eyes then looks away. “What do I know? I’m going to hell.”

Frenchie snorts. “Good. I wouldn't want to be alone down there.”

-

In the end, it’s Hughie who helps them find a place.

A friend of a friend’s leasing out a place, somewhere in a decent part of Manhattan, and Hughie takes them there on a sunny Thursday. It’s an old building, with rent that’s through the roof, but it’s nice. Better, and more serious than anywhere Frenchie has stayed before.

It’ll keep you accountable, MM had said.

Something more formal. Not just another shithole with sink water that came out brown and crack-selling neighbors. If Frenchie paid real rent and lived among mostly normal people, it would be harder to fall back into old habits.

It’s solid reasoning, and Frenchie can’t poke holes in his argument without sounding like he wants to find ways to get fucked up again.

Hughie jimmies the keys into the lock and pushes the door in, ushering Frenchie and Kimiko in. He gives them a quick tour, then the three of them settle in the empty living room.

“So?” Hughie asks.

Frenchie whistles through his lips. It’s a nice place. Too nice, almost. It makes him nervous.

“Petite Hughie, the New York realtor. Who would’ve imagined it?”

Hughie leans against the kitchen counter and flips him off. “Whatever dude,” He’s mouthing off, but there’s a wide grin on his face.

Kimiko grins eagerly. “It’s nice. Really nice.”

“Yeah? Like I said, you can just pay rent through me. Shouldn’t be a problem.” Hughie turns. “Frenchie?”

Frenchie looks between Hughie and Kimiko, gnawing hard on his bottom lip. He’s stopped picking at his lips so much, but old habits die hard.

He mulls over a no in his mind and tries not to seem too panicked at the prospect of living with Kimiko alone. Again.

Like their last place, there are two separate rooms in the apartment, but the walls are thinner than he’d hoped. Frenchie still doesn’t sleep much, but sobriety has allowed him a renewed sense of embarrassment, and sleeping is a loud and keening thing.

MM had frowned at him one night, with bloodshot eyes and drool drying on his chin. “You sound like a dying animal. Gonna give me nightmares.” There’d been no ill intent behind the words, but Frenchie felt thick shame nonetheless.

It feels wrong to keep subjecting Kimiko to the audible torture.

She seems to catch his train of thought and turns to stare at him intensely, as if she already knows he’s second-guessing things.

Hughie must read the room, because he looks between both of them and pulls out his phone with an awkward chuckle. “I’m gonna call my friend, just make sure the place is move-in ready. I’ll be in the hallway.” He mumbles before creeping out of the apartment like a cartoon character.

As soon as he’s gone, Frenchie lets out an ancient, rattling sigh and turns to face Kimiko.

“Are you sure about this? I mean really sure? You don’t want to find someone…better?”

Kimiko glares at him like he’s on drugs again. “Right. Because that’s such a good idea.”

Frenchie tries to hide the hurt that flashes on his face, but doesn’t do it fast enough.

Kimiko’s face softens. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not just you. It’s me, too. There’s too many factors, too many reasons- it wouldn’t make sense to live apart.”

Her face is warm, and she seems anything but insincere. Still, Frenchie feels irritation crawl up his spine.

“Don’t lie to me.” He snaps. “This is an awful idea. What do you even get out of it, eh? In case it’s taken you this long to notice, I’m a fucking liability.”

The irritation leaves as quickly as it comes, and he has to stumble against a wall to avoid crumpling to the floor. Frenchie digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and tries his best to staunch embarrassed tears. “Sorry, Kimiko. I’m sorry.”

Hands wrap around his wrists and pull. Through the haze of tears, he sees Kimiko staring at him intensely.

“What about love?”

“...Quoi?”

“Love.” She repeats. “If I love you. Is that not enough of a reason?”

Frenchie blinks and fails to understand. He says nothing, and her brows furrow at the lack of a response.

“Or do you not love me? Is that it?”

Her gaze is deep and unblinking, so intense it makes him scared. In that moment, Frenchie feels like her eyes might reach even the most hidden parts of him. It would be a rational fear if only she didn’t already know everything about him. Between the two, there is nothing left to tell.

Frenchie sniffs sharply. His throat feels dry, and words are insufficient, so he turns to signing. “Of course, I love you. I think I love you like I’ve never loved anyone else, and it scares me.”

He doesn’t know exactly, can’t possibly find the words to describe how badly he thinks she deserves better without pushing her away. He means it from the bottom of his heart, but it still feels self-pitying in a disgusting way. The words stuck in his mouth taste acidic, thick, and coagulated like old blood. If only he could cough a clot up, get rid of the strange, eternal heaviness in his body. A knot ties itself in his throat, and he wants to vomit it out, expel it with a wild force.

Instead, Frenchie grabs her hand. He presses her palm flat to his chest, above where his heart should be beating. His voice is hoarse. “Can you feel it?” He presses her hand down harder.

“It’s filled with an old rot,” He whispers. “It’s spreading slowly. Like a disease.”

Being off the drugs, being on the drugs, it makes no difference. He’s already done.

How does he make her understand? How does he get her to see that his love will not defend her from whatever’s decaying inside him?

Kimiko puts her palms on either side of Frenchie’s neck, then pulls him close until their foreheads touch. He does not breathe until she lets go. Still, her face is inches away from his.

Tears slip from Kimiko’s eyes, but she’s smiling.

“How do you know I’m not already sick too?”

-

Frenchie looks at the papers in his hands. “So it’s legit?”

“Dude,” Hughie says solemnly, “It legitimately cannot get any more legit.”

Frenchie laughs nervously, exchanges a quick glance with Kimiko before looking back. “And… you trust us like that?”

Hughie’s lips press into a thin line, eyes sharp as if he’s really thinking it through. Slowly, he smiles, then nods.

“Yeah. I trust you assholes. And if you fuck me over, well…” Hughie smiles brightly, shiny white teeth on display. “I know how to use a gun now, so I guess there’s that.”

-

They pack all their shit up from MM’s in a single afternoon. Even after being there for as long as they have, there’s not much. What Frenchie had told Kimiko before was true. What use did he have for the material? He had her. He had his friends. His mind and his body, mostly intact. What else did he really need?

Marvin, Kimiko, and Frenchie stand in the lobby of MM’s apartment, boxes and duffel bags waiting patiently on the floor. Butcher’s supposed to pick them up and ferry them over to the new place, but Frenchie has his reservations.

He can’t stop jiggling his leg from where he stands against the wall, anticipation weighing heavily in his gut.

MM holds up his hands. “He called me an’ offered, I swear.”

Frenchie sneers, but it’s not malicious. “And what made you think ‘Ouais, Charcuter, of course, Frenchie and Kimiko would love if you could pick them up!’”

“Frenchie.”

“Of course, he has no other reason to be wanting to talk to both of us-”

“Frenchie.”

“Do you get how suspicious this all sounds?”

“You know Uber exists, right, Marvin? I can afford an Uber-”

Someone slaps Frenchie on the back of the head. It doesn’t quite hurt, but it stings, and that’s enough to shut him up. Kimiko presses up to his side, and he slings an arm around her shoulder, more for his sake than hers.

MM raises an eyebrow at him, arms crossed at his chest. “Motherfucker, I think you need to relax.”

Hearing that from you is rich, Frenchie thinks, but doesn’t say. He’s just stressed, and it’ll help no one if he keeps being a dick.

“Maybe an offer for a car ride is just that. An offer for a car ride.” MM reasons. “Not like he’s offering to deliver you to the place on a fucking PJ.”

“Yeah,” Frenchie scrubs a hand down his face. “You’re right. Désolé.”

“Don’t sweat it-” MM’s starting to say, just as a long black car pulls to the side of the road in front of them.

A window rolls down, and there Butcher is, vicious smile and all.

Frenchie wants to start with the expletives all over again, but Kimiko’s already popping the trunk and hauling stuff into it, so all he can do is stare helplessly at MM.

“Aight, man.” Marvin drops a heavy hand on Frenchie’s shoulder. “I hereby discharge you from Milk’s rehab.”

Frenchie swallows. He has to fight the urge to dig his thumbs into his eye sockets, heart beating a million miles a minute.

MM smiles gently, slightly amused. “You’ll be just fine. Y’know that, right?”

Frenchie feels his face crumple. “And if I’m not?”

“Then we pick back up and figure it out again.”

“Okay. Okay.” Frenchie sucks in a fat lungful of air through his nostrils and squeezes his eyes shut tightly before opening them again. “Fuck. Okay.”

Slowly, he turns, meeting Kimiko’s eyes as she piles into the backseat of Butcher’s car. He moves forward but then stops short and whips back around. He looks at MM’s warm brown eyes and for a second, he feels like he’s staring at an immutable, larger-than-life statue.

“Thank you,” Frenchie says softly. “I mean it.”

Marvin nods.

“I know.”

-

To his credit, Butcher keeps things normal.

For a while, at least.

At the apartment, Butcher helps them unload and haul everything up into the unit. After, he even offers to help them assemble the furniture they ordered online, but Frenchie’s quick to decline. Butcher and Frenchie might be cool now, and there seems to be some unspoken trust between him and Kimiko, but there’s still hot apprehension in Frenchie’s chest. It’s as if there’s another shoe still waiting to drop, except, instead of a shoe, it’s an anvil, and it’ll drop right onto Frenchie.

Butcher doesn’t seem to notice any of Frenchie’s anxiety, and instead drops down onto the new couch, legs spread wide and head thrown back like he’s planning on taking a nap. He stays there for what feels like hours, while Frenchie and Kimiko assemble not one, but three pieces of IKEA furniture on the bare living room floor.

Eventually, Kimiko taps out to go take a shower, leaving just Butcher and Frenchie.

Once she’s gone, Frenchie’s expression turns sour.

“You can stop pretending to sleep.” He says flatly. “You have a bed at yours, don’t you?”

Butcher clicks his tongue loudly, eyes creaking open. “So much animosity from such a sensitive soul, mate.”

Frenchie wants to roll his eyes, but his stomach just sinks. “Here to talk shop, aren’t you?” He swishes the colloquialism around in his mouth like its flippancy will save him from whatever Butcher’s about to say.

“What?” Butcher fakes a gasp. “Mates just can’t help mates-”

Frenchie raises an eyebrow.

“Alright, yeah. Why fuckin’ lie?”

Frenchie swears, but some of the anxiety evaporates from his body. To know is better than not to know, he supposes. He drags himself across the floor and leans against the couch, thinking things will be easier if he doesn’t have to look Butcher in the face. After a few seconds, he decides that’s a terrible idea and turns to face his boss.

“So,” Frenchie mumbles. “Say what you want to say, then.”

Butcher crosses his arms behind his head. “It’s actually quite fuckin’ simple. Don’t know why your knickers are all in a twist.”

He ignores Frenchie’s frown and rambles on, starting off with a big, loud sigh.

“What are your thoughts on partial retirement, French?”

Frenchie blinks dumbly. His face suddenly feels numb. “What?”

“Well. Just doesn’t seem like you really like going out and killing people.”

Butcher says it with a tone so plain that Frenchie sputters out a laugh.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone?”

“For your sake, I ain’t answerin’ that.”

Frenchie chews on the inside of his cheek, fingers going up to his lips. He chokes on a swallow and remembers a too-hot afternoon in Morocco. “So I’m what? Benched? Done?”

“Nah, mate. Don’t be stupid. I don’t work with fuckin’ expendables. You’re not just some guy I can replace.” Butcher leans forward, elbows on his knees, voice serious, suddenly. “You stay on, if you want. What I’m sayin’ is you just stick to the desk stuff. Strategy, tactics. Whatever engineering voodoo it is you do. That type of shite.”

Frenchie doesn’t even know how to react to that. It’s not at all what he was expecting to hear, yet he doesn’t hate the idea. He could do without seeing blood being spilled. Could do without it for a good, long while.

“You’ll still be useful, y’know,” Butcher says. He’s wearing an eerie smile, but on Butcher’s face, it’s weirdly comforting, not scary. “You don’t want to go back that badly, do you?”

Frenchie’s face twitches. He takes all of Butcher in, staring at his keen expression. The other man doesn’t break eye contact. With William Butcher, one can never be one hundred percent sure, but for once, Frenchie can’t detect any air of manipulation. He exhales slowly.

If Butcher’s being honest, Frenchie might as well follow his lead and do the same.

“No. Not really.” Frenchie kicks at leftover cardboard from the bookshelf. “It’s shit work.” He tucks his hands under his armpits before he can keep ripping at the skin of his lips. “What about Kimiko?”

“You and the bird can talk, and her an’ I can talk after, but-”

“You think she’ll want to stay on board.” Frenchie finishes for him.

Butcher shrugs, like it has nothing to do with him. And in a way, it doesn’t. Kimiko’s decisions are entirely her own.

After a minute of silence, Butcher speaks again. “She’s not some lil’ glass animal, y’know.” He presses a palm to his cheek and frowns in annoyance, as if remembering some landed punch. “Quite the opposite actually.”

Frenchie looks down at his socked feet, and feels the stubble at the underside of his jaw. “I know.”

Butcher sighs again, like he’s bored with the conversation. “Like I said, her and I’ll have a lil’ chat later-”

“Earlier,” Frenchie cuts him off, eyes fixed on some unseeable thing on the wall. “You said I wasn’t replaceable.” He glances at the older man and hopes he doesn’t look as desperate for a particular answer as he feels. “Did you mean that?”

Billy Butcher shakes his head in disbelief and stands up from the couch, groaning and stretching along the way. He smacks his lips, cracks his jaw, then sends an intense stare Frenchie's way.

“If you find someone who has your same skill set, send them my way. Maybe they won’t be half the sap you are.”

-

The new apartment is warm and comfortable in a way no place has been before.

The first day, they’re tired from building furniture, and Frenchie’s exhausted from his conversation with Butcher, so he and Kimiko call it quits early.

They sleep together on a mattress on the floor. The other one hasn’t come in yet.

No other reason.

-

Time passes, slow and fast all at once.

Weeks go by in the new place, and in full sobriety, somewhat out of a job, Frenchie has to find something to fill his time with.

Kimiko figures this out after she sees him disappear enough times, come back drenched from rain or burnt from the sun, or out of breath and exhausted. Before he can leave again, she grabs him by the arm, face knit together with concern.

Frenchie sighs, but he understands. “Do you think I’m gonna go get high?”

She shrugs. “Sometimes.”

He smiles tiredly and pulls up his boot. “Look,” He points at the wear of the soles, the almost hole near the heel. He drops the shoe back down and shrugs. “I just walk, mon coeur. Up and down Manhattan.”

Frenchie keeps his shoes on, but underneath there are red-hot blisters, skin rubbing against decaying leather, over and over, for miles and miles.

Kimiko seems hesitant to believe him, but he can’t fault her. He’s not exactly an easy person to trust. Frenchie purses his lips and digs into his pockets, pulling out the meager pile of crap he usually carries with him. A scuffed-up iPod nano, a pair of green wireless headphones. Sunglasses in case it gets too bright, a packet of menthol cigarettes, and a pink lighter. A 9mm and two tactical knives.

Sometimes he sees the tweakers under awnings on the street, sees the type of people who sell what he used to buy, sees the bright neon signs of 24-hour liquor stores, and feels a sharp tug in his chest. A blooming warmth, like the flow of heroin from the syringe through a needle and into his bruised veins. A craving so sharp it makes his mouth water just to think about it.

When he passes those places, he runs until his lungs constrict and he can’t breathe. Until his nostrils burn and his feet ache, muscles screaming from the buildup of lactic acid. Until he can spit out the saliva pooling in his mouth, as if he can get rid of the taste of addiction, the wailing void of self-destruction.

Frenchie doesn’t trust himself enough yet to deny temptation, so he doesn’t carry money with him. Even though that isn’t a guarantee that he’ll be good.

There’s always something to sell.

-

There are more good days now. Frenchie can tell because he marks them on a calendar. Still, the bad days are bad, and the bad nights are even worse. He’s stayed an insomniac more out of necessity than choice.

Sometimes he falls asleep where he shouldn’t, like at breakfast or during a late-night conversation on the couch, or while he’s babysitting Janine.

There are permanent dark circles under his eyes, and when Kimiko tries to thumb them away, Frenchie pulls her wrist down. He gives her a rueful smile. “It’s ok, mon coeur. ‘M okay.”

Kimiko smooths a hand over his short hair, eyes down-turned. “You say one thing, but your body says something else.”

He puffs his cheeks and blows air out slowly. “I’ve slept a long time. Just don’t want to anymore.”

She snorts softly. “You said that. Before.”

He raises an eyebrow, not remembering. “Ouais? Quand?”

“After.” She spreads her hand out and pushes it up against his fist until their palms are touching, then drops her hand. She smiles funny before her face twists painfully.

His heart twinges weirdly, a sharp spike of pain that curls down and through his ribs. He doesn’t remember the last days of his captivity, or the first weeks in the hospital at all, and it’s one of the few things for which he feels no guilt whatsoever.

Frenchie focuses on the feel of their palms together, skin on skin. He lets his eyes slide close.

“This is nice,” He whispers. “Real.”

-

Sometimes his friends go out together. Frenchie’s always invited, with the promise that Hughie’s going too, but he takes it upon himself to avoid bars and clubs. A good day can turn into a bad night, and he owes it to everyone else, if not to himself, to at least try.

One afternoon, Frenchie comes home from one of his walks to see Kimiko sitting at the kitchen counter, flicking her fingers at a stolen Denny’s mug. The apartment smells slightly of alcohol and sweat, but Frenchie’s only seen Kimiko this drunk a few times, so he just laughs softly and opens a window.

He leans on the kitchen counter next to her and smiles.

“I take it Bottomless Brunch was fun?”

Kimiko swivels on the stool to look at him and nods. “It was so fun. Annie and I made new friends. But we weren’t bottomless, so maybe it was the wrong brunch. Do you want some?” She points at her mug and he peers over to see it’s just orange juice.

Frenchie tries and fails to stifle a laugh. “It doesn’t have champagne, does it? Can’t have that.”

“Nope,” She signs sloppily, letter by letter. If she could speak, he imagines she’d pop the sound of the p like a bubble in the air. Kimiko pulls the mug back. “No, you can’t. Bad for you.”

He slides down onto the barstool next to her, hands splayed out on the counter. The reflection of the sun through the window makes his skin look saturated with color, his new-but-fading scars a sharp pink. Frenchie keeps his eyes trained on the old Formica and licks his lips with thirst. Not for alcohol, but for water. New York’s turning to Summer again, and his walks are getting more tiring in the humid heat.

There’s the sound of swallowing, and in his peripheral vision, he sees Kimiko’s fingers make a flicking motion again. He moves off the stool before his brain even processes what she’s doing, reflexes re-sharpened by sobriety.

The ceramic Denny’s mug explodes against her fingers, and for a moment, there’s only silence. Juice drips down from the counter and onto the tile below. It’s the only sound in the apartment. Frenchie’s never noticed before, but they both breathe quietly. If it weren’t for the persistent nightmares, he wonders if there’d be any noise at all.

Frenchie looks to see Kimiko blinking in shock, eyes following a rivulet of blood that trails down her wrist. She’s still drunk enough that the shock doesn’t seem to last.

“Sorry.” Kimiko stares at her sliced-up knuckles. “I just felt like doing that, I guess.”

Frenchie takes her offered hand and picks a piece of ceramic out from the side of her finger. He wonders if she left the shard buried in her skin, how long her body would take to reject the foreign body. Or maybe it would just heal around, encasing the sharp edges of the mug in sinew and blood. He flicks the offending shard onto the counter. They’ll have to clean the mess anyway.

Kimiko’s skin knits itself back together, but Frenchie doesn’t let go of her hand. He knows she was just playing around with the mug, probably forgetting her strength with the haze of alcohol, but he asks anyway.

“Does it hurt? You know…in the moment?”

She stares at the ceiling dreamily, lips quirked. “Yes. No?” She slips her hand out of his and spins on the stool, round and round, but then stops directly in front of him. Kimiko grabs at the collar of his shirt and pulls, making him stumble forward.

She taps a finger on his sternum, like his chest is a glass cage.

“Does it hurt?”

Frenchie stares down. He swears he can feel an electric pulse with each tap, heart zapping like a real, living thing. His mind reels.

He thinks of a dirty Hello Kitty duvet mashed against his face, sequins cutting into the pink of his cheeks. Hypoxia turning his brain into jelly. The great heaving breaths he took after the suffocating weight lifted off, how he felt those same electrical zaps in his chest. The scratches on his papa’s chest, the brightness of the blood beading on his skin. A morning sun, orange and blinding. Air coursing through his lungs as if it were the first time. The smile of the living, trying to tear his face in two.

A corner of his mouth tilts. “Not so much anymore.”

-

When the apartment door swings open, Frenchie and Kimiko trudge in like a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.

He’d heard over the comms how the mission had been shit, bloody and awful from the start until the very end. He’d done his best to keep all intel updated, help where he could, but there wasn’t much to do behind the closed doors of their van.

No one had been terribly injured. Stitches here, a bullet removal there, but everyone had made it home okay. When Frenchie had seen all the blood on Kimiko, his heart had fallen through his feet, but any injuries she’d suffered were long healed. Now she just needed to get clean.

By now, they have a well-practiced routine. Today was much bloodier than normal, so they navigate through the apartment carefully, trying their best not to get blood on any of the furniture, floors, or walls.

In the bathroom, Kimiko sits on the toilet lid, and Frenchie leans a hip on the sink, finally exhaling. He lets his body dump adrenaline before inhaling and itching at the dried, flaking blood on his arms.

“Why don’t we get cleaned up? Ouais?”

Kimiko’s eyelashes catch in the sun. She nods hazily.

“Okay.” Frenchie nods his head quickly. “Ok.”

He turns the shower on and waits until steaming water spurts out, checking the temperature every few seconds. Kimiko tears off her completely soiled shirt, but then doesn’t see the point in doing much else besides sitting. The shower will take care of most of the blood. All the while, they watch each other with soft, tired eyes.

A chilly breeze pulls in through the open window, and Frenchie hopes she’s not too cold, just sitting there in a sports bra, cut-off shorts, and dried blood. When the water’s at a good temp, he motions towards it with his chin. “Get in. I’ll go get you a towel and some clothes.”

Kimiko stands up as he turns to leave, but before he can open the bathroom door, she grabs his hand, yanking him back. He makes a soft sound of surprise as they stand face to face in the foggy room.

Frenchie gives her the ghost of a smile. “Hi,”

The corners of her lips lift in return, and she puts the palm of her hand on the back of his neck.  She stares at him for a few seconds, like she’s searching for something in his eyes, before releasing him.

Frenchie stands there, looking stupid, just as she begins to strip off her clothes. She gets into the shower and leaves him standing back against the sink, eyes unable to focus. He’s not quite sure what just happened. When he presses his own palm against his neck, it’s hot and feverish with want.

-

He comes back to the bathroom with clothes and a towel, and pulls himself up to sit on the sink, waiting for his turn in the shower. He always goes second, seeing as he’s never directly involved in the action anymore.

While he waits, he turns his head and traces patterns in the fog on the mirror, mind blissed out like it always is after a good adrenaline crash.

There’s a sharp rap on the wall, and he turns his head to see Kimiko peeking her head out of the shower curtain. She holds her hand out and brings her fingers to her palm, beckoning him to come closer.

He’s still for a little bit, unsure of what she wants him to do. It takes a minute for him to shake the dizziness from his head, but when he finally moves, it’s with renewed clarity. Frenchie hops off from the counter, feet hitting the floor silently. He peels off his own dirtied clothes and pulls back the curtain, stepping into the blinding steam of the shower.

The hot spray instantly hits him in the back of the neck, and he gasps with relief, like an eons-old ache has lifted off his shoulders. When he blinks, Kimiko is standing in front of him, dark eyes clear and yearning. Frenchie puts both palms on either side of her face, smooths back her wet hair. She is so beautiful. He wonders if he’s ever said that out loud to her. He’s about to, but instead, what comes out is:

“I love you.”

He leans forward, presses his forehead against hers. When he stares into her eyes, he hopes she can see every last part of him. The good stuff that she knows, but even all the torn and diseased and terrifying parts too. Maybe the rot is real. Maybe it took root in Algeria, or Morocco, or Philadelphia, or here in New York City, and it will never leave. Maybe, she is rotting too.

Like wild trees, damaged, and storm-worn, still standing despite the holes that threaten to uproot them. Their branches and leaves rustle and tangle together, and that’s enough to keep them upright.

He kisses her, then says it again: “I love you like I’ve loved no one else.”

Frenchie knows she’ll always say it back.