Surveillance
A/N: Written in 41 minutes for the contrelamontre "this is not the worst moment of my life" challenge. Takes place during the events of the movie. Lots and lots of SPOILERS.
This is not the worst moment of my life.
It's one of those thoughts that pops into Frank's head in an instant and causes
him hours of mental backpedaling. He grudgingly recognizes it as such, and
wonders if maybe he's going to have to get really drunk tonight.
He laughs-not bitterly, he tells himself-and shifts positions, adjusts the
binoculars. If anyone asks, he's a birdwatcher.
If anyone asks, he is sure as hell not sitting on a park bench watching his
business partner push his daughter on the swings. He's not watching him lean in
and casually, comfortably, place an arm around her, smile and reassure or
praise her.
Roy would never sit out in the sunlight for him.
Frank tries not to wonder why that matters to him so much.
He hears about all of it, too, as a matter of business: bowling, ice cream, con
tutorials. Dinner.
Fuck it. He just wants to be a professional. And being a professional means
setting up your partner and manipulating his emotions and robbing him blind,
because after all he's a sucker and he deserves it. Frank likes to tell himself
he learned that from Roy, but what he's learned from Roy is something entirely
different, something that, if he were to ever think about it too hard, would
mortify him.
He watches them walking across the park, she swinging her arms, practically
skipping, exactly like the fourteen-year-old girl she isn't.
And Roy...Roy watches her, watches her with what Frank thinks must be a kind of
wonder.
Frank's wondering, too. Wondering why the hell he's still here. Still watching
them.
He could, after all, go catch a movie. He could go out drinking. He could do
any number of utterly meaningless, empty things, and regret every minute of it
because he knows they're the kinds of things Roy pictures him doing right now.
That's the kind of person Roy thinks he is. If Roy even thinks about it at all.
If he's not more concerned with his carpet.
He's known the girl for what, a week? And he's already letting her crash at his
place. He's taking her for walks in the park. He's reorganizing his life around
her.
If it occurs to Frank that maybe Roy needs this, he doesn't acknowledge the
thought. Doesn't consider that someone with OCD must have something missing
from his life (But not something wrong with him. Because if there is something
wrong with Roy, there's that and a dozen other things besides wrong with
Frank.). He just stares through the binoculars, seething, and refuses to
consider why.
They disappear from view, father and daughter, walking shoulder to shoulder,
and Frank tries to picture brushing Roy's shoulder without the other man
flinching. He lowers the binoculars and closes his eyes.
In two weeks, Roy will still be here, although he probably won't want to leave
his house anymore. He'll probably never see this park again. He'll have an
empty safety deposit box and a wide variety of tics and neuroses with no
medication and Frank to direct all his anger at.
And Frank, Frank will have just short of a million dollars and be in some other
country drinking foreign beer and butchering the native language. He'll be
flirting shamelessly with beautiful women, throwing cash around like it's
nothing. He'll stay in the finest hotels and move in the most elite circles.
And that, he thinks, that will be the worst moment of my life.