"Are we really going to have this argument again? It was cute the first time, but this is seriously getting ridiculous."
"Forgive me for thinking that there's something going on between you two. You're out all day doing God knows what, how am I supposed to know where you are?"
Frankie stared at Brad, her eyes wide. From the floor next to the nightstand, glistening light bounced off shattered glass and reflected onto the ceiling, reminding her to avoid bringing water to bed that night.
"I'm out every day trying to find a job so I can pay you back for this fucking apartment! I don't go out and get high at three in the afternoon and call it 'stockbroking,'" she yelled, adding air quotes for extra emphasis.
"You've spent months looking for a job, I'm finding it hard to believe that no one's hiring you."
"You did not just say that."
"Frankie, I swear, this kid has been calling you every day for the past month and you expect me to just act like it's nothing?"
"Who are you calling 'kid,' he's older than me!"
Brad stepped around Frankie and as he walked past, his shoulder brushed hers with just enough force to make her stumble. Righting herself quickly, she watched as he stormed back into the kitchen, picking up the containers that he'd brought home for dinner.
It was funny really, the amount of energy that she'd spent ignoring Winn. At first, it'd had something to do with trying to avoid this kind of situation, this exact argument, but once it became clear that there was nothing she could do to protect Brad's fragile masculinity, she'd kept turning Winn's almost constant calls to voicemail as a matter of habit.
Plus, she had no desire to make the situation any worse.
"You've never met Winn, how could you possibly know anything about him?" Frankie yelled, moving into the kitchen as well.
"He's a dude, dudes are all the same." Brad stopped in the middle of throwing the lobster box in the trash and whipped around to face her, pointing it in her general direction. Frankie had to suppress the urge to move out of the way, despite the number of feet still between them. "They don't call you like that unless they want to put it in! It's as simple as that."
"Just because you don't have a sensitive bone in your body doesn't mean every other guy in the world walks around with his dick in his hand twenty-four-seven."
"Fuck off, Frankie. I'm being serious, here."
"So am I!"
A knock from the front door stopped Brad from saying anything else and Frankie breathed a sigh of relief.
After a few seconds of neither of them moving, it became clear that he had no intention of opening the door, so Frankie walked over to the entrance and the closer she got, the more she could recognise the sound of sloshing liquid.
Now undeniably curious, Frankie opened the door and standing in the hall was a woman, looking absolutely exhausted, a baby asleep in a sling over her chest and a bottle of some frothed, milky looking beverage in her hand that she was shaking vigorously. As Frankie stood back to take her in, she stopped mixing the drink, but the sound of it carried down the hallway all the same, eerily echoing off the high stone walls.
"Hey, sorry guys but uh… my name's Joanna. I live underneath you- thirty-three B- and I hate to interrupt," the woman said quietly, not whispering, but clearly making a conscious effort to not disturb the baby she was carrying. "This is the third time this week I've noticed you two and I'm starting to get slightly concerned by the noise that's coming from up here."
Frankie turned to look at Brad, who, upon hearing that the woman- Joanna- was here to complain, walked over to stand by Frankie's side and plastered his most sincere apology smile all over his face, nodding like he meant it.
Bitch.
"Look, I've got three young kids at home and I hate to be a nuisance, but is there any way you could keep it down a little?"
Brad extended a hand to her, taking the one that wasn't holding the bottle in his own. "I'm sorry, Joanna, I really am, I've just been going through something at the moment and… you're right." He turned to look back at Frankie, and if it were possible, his smile grew even wider, still without reaching his eyes in the slightest. "There's really no excuse, we'll keep it down."
Spinning on his heel, Brad left Frankie and Joanna alone. The moment he was facing away from their neighbour, his expression dropped and was replaced with the surly frown he'd been sporting since they'd started arguing. When he got back to the counter, he continued his anger-induced tidying with even more intensity than before.
Joanna, instead of seeming grateful, looked at Frankie with the most sympathy she'd ever seen a human being produce and instantly, Frankie knew that she could hear every single word of their conversations from her apartment.
Torn between feeling grateful that someone else understood how ridiculous this whole argument was and wondering whether or not she could hear everything, Frankie apologised one more time for good measure and shut the door before anything else could be said.
"I swear, the next time someone knocks on this door to complain about you…"
"The next time?" Frankie asked indignantly, now consciously trying to keep her voice down. It was difficult. "Are you planning on starting this up again?"
Looking up from the last of the food, Brad narrowed his eyes and watched her carefully. Frankie wasn't entirely sure what he was searching for and so tried to seem as inconspicuous as possible, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jeans and stopping herself from bobbing on her heels, her sweaty palms and insufferable inability to stand still for more than two seconds likely giveaways for whatever it was he was looking for.
"You never gave me a proper answer."
"To which question?"
"Whether or not you're sleeping with him."
Frankie ran a hand through her hair, ruining the curls she'd spent so long perfecting that morning, and gestured between the two of them exasperatedly with the other. "I thought this conversation was enough for you to figure that out."
A further increase in the amount of passion in his wiping down of the counter was the only indication Brad gave that he had heard her, so Frankie continued without waiting for him to speak.
"Do you need a direct yes or no?"
Again, no answer.
"I am not sleeping with Winn!" Frankie wasn't entirely sure what she'd done to get into the position she had. One minute, they were swapping between The Matrix and Sherlock marathons, eating so much stir fry that she felt in constant risk of popping, the next they'd ended up… here. Wherever this was. "No matter how much it seems like you want me to admit it, I am not cheating on you. I never have, and I never will, so unless there's something that you're neglecting to tell me, I would appreciate it if we could just put this thing to rest."
Now that the kitchen was clean and Brad had nothing to keep himself busy with, he started walking over to the couch, looking, for all intents and purposes, like a surly toddler.
"So you're just ignoring me now?"
"Can you clean up all the glass on the bedroom floor? I almost cut my foot on it before."
So this is how we're doing it.
Frankie had no intention of arguing any more that night. It was getting late and she was still exhausted from another day of traipsing around the city for pointless interviews that had yet to go anywhere. She couldn't bring herself to fight back.
She couldn't count the number of times they'd finished conversations like this, open-ended and full of unresolved anger, and she used to try harder to keep it fair, but deep down, there wasn't any part of her left that could be bothered.
She'd only wake up next to a boy determined to win her over again using whatever hormone-charged variations on breakfast in bed he could think of.
"I'm not doing this today."
"Clean it up!"
From below the floor, Frankie could just hear the muffled sounds of a baby crying.
"Keeping your eyes closed isn't going to make me disappear."
Astra, ever the drama queen, opened one of her eyes lazily, stared at Alex for a few seconds, then screwed it shut again, returning to her state of unmoving.
Alex had been standing outside her cell for hours, trying to get something out of her, but nothing had changed in the months that they'd had her in the DEO. By this point, it was a solidified routine; sign in, check on Vasquez and her team, come downstairs and wait for something new to happen. She'd thought that this amount of time in custody would be enough to make even the most hardened criminals crack, but they were still stuck in the same stalemate they'd settled into from the beginning and if Astra's current choice of physically blocking her out like a child was proving anything, it was only that that theory was far from correct.
Alex liked to consider herself somewhat of a behaviour expert. Her ability to read a situation and act accordingly to get her way was so ingrained into her that the silence was eating her inside out, especially since Astra seemed so calculated, so… prepared. She'd given herself up so willingly when they'd arrested her that Alex had been suspicious, almost ready to declare it the wrong move and let her go. Was it really part of her big scheme to stay locked up and silent for this long? Or had something gone wrong?
Had they thrown a kink in her plans just by being so lenient and letting her get away with not fessing up?
She'd had this job for a while. Alex knew better than to get her hopes up too high.
"You haven't got anything to say to me, have you?"
Astra remained silent and despite the double-walled bulletproof glass between them, Alex could still feel the disdain coming off of her in waves.
Resigned to the fact that she was about to end yet another day with zero progress, she turned from the cell and gestured to the guard standing by the door (was it Cash or Dominic? She could never tell those two apart) and waved him over.
"I swear to God if she makes even one noise, you call me back in here. I don't care if it's two in the morning and you have to send someone to my apartment, I need to be here."
The agent nodded and Alex noticed his hand quiver slightly, almost like he was itching to salute her.
Right. Definitely Dominic. She'd recruited him the other week; he was a navy brat and the DEO scouts had yanked him right before his deployment. He was definitely still trying to find his place among her team, but she liked the kid. He wasn't sexist, which was already much more than she could say about most of the agents she commanded.
As she left the room, Alex was immediately swarmed by Kara, who'd recently taken up standing outside the cell rooms trying desperately to eavesdrop on every conversation that took place inside them. However annoying it was, she had to admire Kara's commitment considering J'onn still hadn't relented in his decision to line the DEO walls with lead.
"Anything new?"
"Yeah, she started singing a moderately sexual version of Tomorrow from Annie."
Alex started walking down the corridor, nodding to the agents she passed, but Kara took a second to catch up and when Alex turned to see where she was, she noticed how rough and ashen Kara looked, all sulking and covered in dirt.
"That was a joke, Kara."
"I know, I just…" Finally starting to match Alex's stride, Kara grabbed onto the end of her cape and began to fiddle with it the way she did when she was upset. "It wasn't a very funny joke."
As they reached the command centre, Alex scanned the room for her boss, and when she couldn't see him, tried to avoid looking so openly relieved. Part of her daily routine also included getting berated with questions about why the whole operation was taking so long and why isn't she talking to you, why haven't you gotten through to her yet, Danvers?
It was yet another problem to add to the list of things that were keeping her up at night.
"You look like crap."
"Try rescuing a family of seven from their burning minivan and then flying across multiple state borders without getting hounded by the FBI and still look good while doing it."
"Where the hell did you go?"
"Montana." Noticing Alex's confused stare, Kara turned a slight shade of pink that was barely noticeable under what Alex now knew was literal ash. "I'm bored, ok? I needed a change of pace."
Vasquez walked up to Alex, handing her a tablet.
"We got reports of an alien attack down on the south promenade, but Agent Porter was already in the area and confirmed that it was nothing to worry about."
Alex liked Vasquez. She was blunt and unapologetic, but it made her a good leader and an even better badass. They'd worked together long enough that Alex could ignore the breach of protocol in her neglect to inform her superior of a possibly dangerous alien because she knew that Vasquez understood her daily routine better than anybody here. Except maybe J'onn, simply because he was so good at appearing out of the shadows and pointing out how poorly she was doing. Vasquez knew exactly how hard she would punch the person that pulled her out of Astra's cell for a misunderstanding.
"Nothing to worry about, or Porter took care of it on his own?"
"Give the guy some credit, he's not all bad."
After quickly scanning the report on the tablet and finding nothing out of the ordinary, Alex handed it back to Vasquez, thanking her before gesturing for Kara to follow as she started moving down one of the adjacent corridors.
If it was in any way possible, Kara sulked even harder and Alex could almost feel the vibrations of her boots stamping on the floor.
"Have you talked to Frankie yet?" Alex asked, watching Kara out of the corner of her eye for any change in the way her eyebrows were bunching together but also trying to avoid bumping into someone at the same time.
"No, and I bet you haven't either. I don't know why you're still asking every day, nothing's changed."
Ignoring her blatant disregard for Frankie's wellbeing, Alex turned into the locker room and pulled off her long-sleeve shirt, stuffing it into a ball and tossing it onto one of the benches that sat in the middle.
"Is this whole moody teenager thing still about you being bored? Because you've got like, an actual day job and I've got a feeling Winn's getting pissed having to cover for you all the time."
"It's not about that."
"Ok great, so what is it?"
Kara didn't respond, so Alex turned around, grabbed her by the shoulders and looked up at her face, trying to catch her eyes.
"Kara…"
She tried to shrug Alex off, but that only made Alex hold on tighter. She had a feeling she knew what it was about, but waited for Kara to gather her thoughts anyway.
"I don't know why Astra won't talk to me."
A clang echoed from the other end of the room and an agent appeared from around a block of lockers. He stared at the two of them, his eyes narrowed, so Alex stared right back, sending him storming out of the doorway.
"You'd think that I'd be the one she actually talks to, that's usually how it works, isn't it?"
"Kara, I wish I had something to say right now that could make it any better, but I've seriously got no idea what her plan is," Alex said, her voice low just in case there was someone else hiding in the darkness. "I can't even imagine how you feel right now, but as much as I hate to admit it, I don't know where we're going from here."
If anything, it only made Kara's frown deepen and she twisted out of Alex's grip, stalking towards the exit.
"I'm going to go talk to Mum."
Alex thought about calling out after her, but decided quickly against it, knowing she'd only make things worse.
Kara had spent a lot of time with the hologram of Alura recently, and Alex was starting to feel slightly worried. The DEO had only ever programmed it with whatever knowledge it had of Krypton in its database and Kara knew that. She knew that whatever comfort she got from it was superficial, it was in no way a real representation of her mother, but yet she still spent whatever time she wasn't spying on Astra up with the hologram.
Although, now that Alex thought about it more, Kara's reasons became clearer in her mind. If there was a hologram somewhere with her father's voice and image, she didn't think she'd ever be able to tear herself away from it.
She almost felt bad about her continual pursuit of Astra, not because she was annoying her- that was obviously the whole point- but because she couldn't help but draw comparisons between her conversations with Astra and her recent conversations with Frankie. Mostly because neither of the two actually involved any real talking, but there was something else nagging at her that she couldn't quite figure out.
Alex had a strong feeling part of the reason Kara was so upset was that, in her mind, Alex was spending hours a day relentlessly trying to crack Astra, yet couldn't apply the same determination to Frankie which, in principle was definitely false, but in practice…
She'd stopped trying to call Frankie not because she'd given up, but there was a difference between her little sister and a cocky Kryptonian in a jail cell. Frankie had freedom and if she was planning on spending it ignoring every loving advance Alex and Kara made, then so be it. What could they do to stop her?
It took every ounce of Alex's being to not throw up from how hard she had to work to ignore her instinct screaming that something was wrong.
A/N
Ok so here's the skinny, I get that the abuse warning was fucking ages ago but this part of the story ended up taking a very different path to the one I had planned when I wrote it I just,,,
I'm probably going to end up taking it out completely just because I've matured beyond thinking that I can tastefully pull that off so if you were looking forward to it (?) consider this an apology :(
Also I'm sorry this wasn't out sooner, burn out's a bitch
K bye