Authors Note: Ok so this was meant to be a complete story, Franky and Dean's history end to end. But I've gotten SO attached to Dean's character (in part because I rp as Franky and Dean on Tumblr) that this is going to be a series of oneshots. They'll be sort of random, out of order chronologically and just be whatever I wrote at the time. So... yeah PX If that bugs you sorry!
"I had a mate. A best mate. Dean. But he went Young Offenders."
Dean and I met in the foster system.
I ended up in the foster system when I was four. My parents weren't the greatest. And one day they decided never to pick me up from preschool. I waited with a teacher until five, three hours after school let out. Finally she drove me to the nearest police station. At nine thirty a sad looking officer came to the room I'd been settled in, set a mug of cocoa in front of me and informed me they couldn't locate my parents. My house was deserted. I blinked at him and, not sure what else I could say, I replied quietly, "Ok." I don't remember being very surprised.
When I was first put in the system it was easier to stay in homes longer. I wasn't difficult, had good manners, was smart. According to everyone I was an "old soul". Fosters liked me but never seemed to be able to keep me for long. Too many kids. They wanted to travel. I didn't match the furniture. Different reasons, a million reasons why I could never stay.
As you get older you're wanted less. Older kids are less malleable and more unpredictable. They're bigger and need more food. I started being more of a threat to other foster kids, started getting beaten up. I started wetting the bed. Suddenly I was becoming more of a problem.
There are two main ways foster kids grow up. One is they become loud and destructive. They demand the attention they have been deprived of. They act out and relish the punishment because they're there. Not just props in a house. They move things. They push and people push back. The other is that they withdraw into themselves. They try to shrink into the background, not call attention to themselves, not cause problems. They go silent. That one is me. It's how I reacted to it all.
Foster parents don't want a girl who doesn't talk and wets the bed every night. Who gets mysterious bruises. She's obviously hurting herself somehow. Throwing herself down stairs. Slamming her face into cabinet doors. Send her to a head doctor. If she doesn't talk just send her to a new home.
When I was eight and a half years old I got sent to my third home for the year. I'd decided to chop my hair off and when the last foster had tried to take the scissors away I'd accidentally driven one of the blades into the back of his hand. So they certainly didn't want to keep me. No one had taken me to a barber so when I arrived at the new home my hair hung in a choppy patchwork against my head. In one hand I held my garbage bag. In my other I had my Manikin.
The foster mum greeted me enthusiastically and tried to take my bag form me. I tugged it back to my chest and she backed off. "Francesca! We're so glad to have you!"
"I… prefer Franky," I mumbled.
"Alrighty! Sounds good to me Franky!" She moved to the side in the doorway and I went past her. The social worker who had driven me here started to whisper my various problems to the foster in what I think was an attempt at a quiet voice. I sat down on the edge of the sofa, feet firmly planted. I could stand quickly if I need.
A head bobbed around the corner. Hazel eyes and a mess of wavy dark brown hair disappeared again, then reappeared. A big smile split the boy's face and he sauntered over to plop down next to me. I leaned away and looked in the opposite direction. "New girl! Hey there."
I fiddled with the arms of my Manikin. I felt the boy shift a better distance from me and say, "One of those. I get it. I'm the opposite. Got too LOUD for people." He laughed. I turned my face to look at him out of the corner of my eye and a smile tugged at my lips.
"I like your hair." He reached over and tugged at a lock. That was another thing about loud ones, they sometimes forgot personal bubbles. I pushed his arm away and he tilted his head. "Oh, right. Sorry."
"I'm Dean by the way. Dean No-Last-Name! What about you?"
"….Franky. Franky… nothing either."
"Welcome Franks!"
Franks? Already so familiar. I tried to hide a smile. Dean could read people though so he saw it. It's a technique all foster kids pick up, they're in the system long enough. You had to be able to read situations in a flash, so that you could distract, diffuse tension, defend yourself at the drop of a hat. Dean patted me roughly on the back and said, "I really do like your hair. Reminds me of a lion or somefink."
"…thanks. It's not exactly what I was going for."
"Keep it! It looks great!"
The fosters took me to the barber the next day. Dean hummed and hawed about it for ages. And he called me Lion for years later. I don't know exactly how it happened. First Rule of Foster Kids: Don't get attached. But Dean and I became close. Did everything together. Went everywhere together. Something clicked on, like a light in both of us. For the first time since entering foster care I started thinking of something as mine. Dean was mine and I was his.
Dean warned me off the bat that he'd probably be gone soon. He'd been their two months before I arrived. Something was bound to go wrong for him soon. But it didn't. For five whole months we lived in that house, together and positively inseparable. Dean swore it must have been because I was around that he behaved so well for so long. He wanted to stick around so we could be together.
But the day came when Dean broke a plate, and when the fosters scolded him he flipped out and started smashing everything he could get his hands on. I tried to stop him but he pushed me out of the way and I landed on my arse. That's when he froze and he helped me up. The fosters couldn't risk him hurting another kid (or the rest of their plates) so he was gone the next day. With barely a goodbye.
I literally shut down. I stopped talking, took to biting people when they got too close, started wetting the bed again (I'd stopped after a while when I was with Dean). I was moved from there as well, but no one thought to put me with Dean again. No one checked. I was just all of a sudden a problem again. I was sent to countless new places. Didn't speak, barely functioned. I'd lost the only thing I had besides my Manikin. He never left my side after that. I sewed pockets into all my clothes just above my heart so that I could feel him constantly.
Just after my tenth birthday I was playing with my flint on my current house's porch, setting fire to small leaves and the hair of all the dolls of one of the other foster kids in the house who had taken to ripping up any drawing of mine that she could find.
"Lion, what the fuck you doing?"
My head snapped up. Dean slouched in front of our stairs, hands in pockets and a smirk on his face. With a cry I leapt off the porch and into his arms. He was taller and stronger and he picked me up and gave a half spin. I buried my face in the nape of his neck and was surprised to find he smelled so familiar, as if I'd seen him just yesterday.
I finally detached myself and looked him up and down. He was a bit more gaunt than I remembered and he had shadows under his eyes. As if seeing something similar he let out a harsh laugh and said, "Geez Franks, anybody feed you this past year? I could feel your ribs through your t-shirt." I smiled happily up at him but didn't say anything. My throat felt like sandpaper. I hadn't said a word since his departure and my illused voice was refusing to work when I actually wanted it to. Dean frowned and said, "We back to this? Not too much talk? It's me Franky." I looked down and grabbed one of his hands. He sighed and nodded, understanding without words. "Ok. But I know you're happy to see me so there's that. I hope I get to hear your voice again soon you little loon." From him it wasn't an insult when he called me a loon. It was falling back into old habits.
"We'll never let this happen again OK? They wouldn't let me talk to you until they thought I was settled and by the time I was you were gone. And they wouldn't tell me where you were. It took AGES to befriend one of the Socials enough to get an address." A well of happiness made my cheeks tint pink. He looked for me? And then shame made me bite my lip. I hadn't looked for him. I'd given up. He shook his head. "Hey, don't be like that. It's you and me, the dream team back again. And nothing will ever get in the way of that."
How I wish that had been true.
About then the bitch who'd been ruining my drawings came out, saw us and called into the house that I was making out with a stranger. Dean being Dean yelled at her to fuck off and the ensuing fight made the fosters come out and ask Dean to leave. Before I could have my own meltdown Dean grabbed my hand and pressed a piece of paper into my palm. I tightened my fingers around it and when the fosters demanded I get back in the house I didn't argue. I went straight up to my room and unfolded the paper. Written in Dean's scrawl was his current address.
It took a few days to escape long enough to make the trip to Dean's new residence, and when I got there I already knew he was gone. Because recently carved into the doorframe was the message "Lion, pirate ship." No way would he have gotten away with that.
The pirate ship. It was this beat up fixture in this old playground near the center of town. We'd been taken there loads of times when we'd lived together. The other kids would spread out, running for the swings and slides but Dean and I would spend the whole trip on the pirate ship. Claim it as our own. Chase kids who got too close away.
I hopped onto the bus again and reached the ship around five in the afternoon. One kid and his dad were at the swings and everything else was deserted. I clambered up onto the pirate ship and dangled my legs over the helm, waiting.
I waited for hours. Sat there like a statue, Manikin in hands. The sky darkened and I stayed, refusing to move from that very spot until Dean arrived.
"There you are. I've been waiting for days."
I turned and grinned. Dean was climbing up onto the back of the ship. I swung my legs back over onto the deck and walked over to give him a hug. When we detached we sat down cross-legged facing each other and Dean launched into telling me what haad been going on in lis life. I listened with rapt attention to him, just to hear him talk.
Finally he said loudly, "Your turn!"
I bit my lip and paused. Dean poked my knee. "Come on! It's been too long since I've heard your voice! It's no fair!"
I cleared my throat and opened my mouth to tell him my own story. Instead what escaped was a choked, "I missed you." And to my utter mortification I started to cry.
Without even asking my permission Dean knelt forward and grabbed me into a hug. And if it had been anyone else I would have freaked and tried to get them off. Instead I dug my fingers into his back, trying to pull him closer. All I wanted to do at that moment was absorb him into myself so that we could never be separated again.