Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/8598058.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Big_Brother_RPF
  Relationship:
      Frankie_Grande/Zach_Rance
  Character:
      Frankie_Grande, Zach_Rance
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Student/Teacher, Age_Difference, Pining, Murder
      Mystery, References_to_Knotting
  Series:
      Part 2 of foxes_mate_for_life
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-11-20 Chapters: 1/3 Words: 6605
****** in the fertile ground ******
by parishilton
Summary
     “i was hoping it’d be you,” zach says, shifting from one foot to the
     other, looking awkwardly down at the grass below. he seems to be
     unsure of whether or not he’s allowed to say that and, all of a
     sudden, frankie is livid.
Notes
     not sure if anyone has figured out where this story is going yet, but
     tags will be added as the series updates in order to not spoil it.
See the end of the work for more notes
“alligators,” paul says, his hands clenched tightly on the wheel as they pull
out of camp, “fucking monsters. her body was hanging over a tree branch, limp
like a fucking sweater hanging out to dry. did you know they climb trees? i
fucking didn’t.”
frankie feels nauseous just thinking about it, so he claps paul’s knee gently
and squeezes. “i’m sorry, paul.”
paul shakes his head. “i barely knew her. cody, though, he’s had a crush on her
for a long ass time. how fucked up is that?”
frankie frowns. he could have guessed that paul hadn’t known nicole well, but
to not be physically ill from seeing her body like that, frankie can’t
understand it. “why didn’t cody take the ride back with us?” 
“cause he’s a good fucking kid,” paul says, as if this is self-explanatory.
when paul realizes frankie looks more confused than before, paul clarifies, “he
wanted to be with his friends. he actually does like hayden, god only knows
why. i’m sure zach is a wreck, the kid cries when you forget you had plans with
him to play golf.”
usually when zach’s name is brought up, he can easily keep a poker face, but
this time, it’s different. at the mention of zach’s name, frankie startles. he
can see zach’s glassy eyes back at camp, he can practically smell the scent of
heartbreak, and then, much worse, the scent of acceptance that frankie didn’t
want him.
frankie was more than okay with taking the trip back to west palm beach with
paul, then getting dropped off at his mom’s, because there was no way he wanted
to be alone in an airport, on his way back to new york, but barely an hour into
the excruciatingly chatty ride, frankie’s head is pounding and his forehead is
beading with sweat.
paul drums impatiently on the wheel, driving just enough over the speed limit
on a bumpy back road full of potholes enough to concern frankie if it wasn’t
for his splitting headache. “cody is such a trooper, man, staying back on that
bus just to make sure hayden and zach are okay.”
frankie’s eyes slip shut, his forehead resting heavily against the window on
the passenger's side. he sees zach’s bare ass through his wet underwear in his
head, as zach stands with his back facing frankie. it’s strange, the way he can
almost smell zach now, so strong that frankie could almost believe he’s in the
backseat.
“frank, you okay, buddy?” paul says, nudging frankie’s arm with unnecessary
force. “you don’t look so hot.”
ironically, he feels very hot, with sweat building at his hairline and at the
back of his neck. “no, right now i’ll leave that to zach,” frankie murmurs,
carelessly.
paul balks, looking confused. “what?” he reaches over and touches frankie’s
forehead. “you’re talking nonsense. you’ve got a fever, man.”
frankie knows something is deeply wrong when, after having seen the still-fresh
blood shining on the leaves and hearing that paul had actually been the one to
find nicole’s lifeless body, he’s actually hard, having to resist the urge to
reach down and subtly readjust himself as the tires of the car hit a puddle and
water flies up onto the window his face is pressed against.
“find me a motel,” frankie says through clenched teeth, the only thing on his
mind being the feeling of zach pressed against him in his bed at camp,
practically purring.
paul looks at him like he’s sprouted another head, but frankie can’t stand to
be around anyone  - shaking from a feeling unlike his co-advisor or any of the
campers had felt - not with fear from the scene they’d all fled, but with want.
paul pulls into the parking lot of a dingy-looking motel on two wheels, taking
up two spaces, and circling the car to throw frankie’s door open and drag him
out. beside the motel is an old gas station with a broken lawnmower sitting on
the edge of the property. frankie groans aloud when he thinks about how zach’s
shorts had been tented even after they got off the lawnmower at camp.
paul looks at him with concern, mistaking frankie’s groan to be from pain, and
frankie will just let him think that. frankie plants his elbows on the desk
inside the motel to keep from shaking and rings the tiny silver bell to get
someone to come over. he doesn’t even know where the hell they are, besides
somewhere between georgia swamplands and florida forest.
frankie goes into a rut without knowing it, sneaking up on him slowly during
the long days, eyes raking over zach’s backside, mouth cotton-dry and teeth
grinding.
with the motel door locked, knowing he had no neighbors to either side of him,
judging by the empty parking lot, frankie presses his sweaty face into the
pillow and wonders if he’d pissed off someone in the kitchen staff that day
enough for them to slip him a viagra, because this was not normal, and it
wasn’t going down. his body was shaking too hard and his head throbbed too much
for him to want to touch himself. another part of him refused to on the basis
of the tragedy that had just happened.
he ripped apart one of the cheap motel pillows the first night, teeth gnashing,
and unable to stop thinking about leaving his room and screwing the first and
only person he had stumbled upon since checking in. she had been a middle-aged
woman with her prescription eyeglasses on a string, which had hung in a way
which aged her face dramatically. frankie knew something was really wrong when
he was desperate to jump into bed with someone who was not only a woman, but
also one which he had not looked twice at before.
for a painstaking four days, frankie rolls around in damp sheets, the sweat
never ceasing. he keeps the window in his room open, but bizarrely, when the
room is freezing at night, his sweat just turns cold. he doesn’t touch himself
until the second day, but if anything, it makes it worse. he jerks off, wakes
up between fevered dreams about zach, and is already hard again.
after four days, his dick is almost sore from oversensitivity. he dreams about
what would have happened if nobody had needed to be evacuated from camp. zach
would have stayed in his bed, frankie would have rolled him onto his back,
thrown his legs over his shoulders, slid into him so slow and stayed so still
that zach would have begged him to move. zach would have come entirely too soon
because zach would be tighter than anyone who had come before, but would have
asked frankie not to pull out. he would want frankie to finish inside him
because he would think it would make frankie want him even more, would think
that he could trick frankie into falling in love with him that way.
frankie wakes up and his head is foggy with visions of zach’s face when he
slides into him. he needs to talk to zach, to hear zach’s voice, but he doesn’t
have his number.
frankie’s breath is labored as his knuckles trace his groin. he knows he sounds
like he’s run a marathon. he's had cody's number ever since he and paul started
going to camp together, so he texts cody to get zach’s number. cody texts back
almost immediately. i don’t think that’s a good idea. frankie wonders why the
hell not. zach is physically attracted to frankie, can’t even help but get hard
when frankie shows the slightest bit of interest. frankie was so angry, he
started shaking. what business of cody’s was it, anyway? zach is his and he
should be able to reach him whenever he wanted. just give it to me, he texts, i
need it right now.
when he gets the number, frankie immediately calls it. it rings six times, then
goes to automated voicemail. “fuck , zach, call me back. you’re all i can think
about.” frankie breathes harshly into the phone as he thinks about zach
listening to the message later and blushing. “you’re so sexy. you’re so sexy
when you’re embarrassed. i should have - fuck - i should have kissed you in my
bed.”
all the while, frankie has a vice grip on his cock to settle his shaking. he
wishes whatever this was had just waited until they had gotten to west palm
beach, so he could beg zach to meet him somewhere. he wishes zach had answered
the phone. maybe he has the kind of parents who don’t let him close his bedroom
door so they can monitor what he’s up to.
frankie fantasizes about the scandalized way zach would respond to hearing
frankie groaning quietly over the phone, thinks he would be louder on purpose
to rile zach up. he wonders if zach would risk rubbing one out in a pair of his
basketball shorts with his door wide open, trying to bite his lip to stay
quiet. “shit, zach, i wish you were here. need you to - need you-”
frankie feels the pulse of something altogether unnatural shift beneath his
hand, where his groin meets the base of his cock. it’s a ripple so gentle that
frankie almost thinks he’s imagined it until it happens again. through the
sweat on his brow bone, he looks down and sees the swelling before his own
eyes, but he still doesn’t believe it. his dick is somehow marginally thicker
than before, but not to the effect of simple biology. it’s never been this
thick before and frankie can’t explain it. the nerves have his hands sweating
the way they do whenever he takes a date to the top of the empire state
building and looks down at all the cars below. his hand slips with sweat over
the head of his dick, which feels heavier than ever before.  
frankie hangs up just before he comes and sleeps for twenty-four hours. he
wakes up and the sweat on his body is minimal and concentrated under his
armpits finally instead of beaded on his head, but he still doesn’t have the
energy to shower. his mind is finally, blissfully, clear. he feels like he’s
waking up with the kind of hangover that only comes after binging on alcohol
for a week.
it’s not until he checks his phone to get the time that he remembers what he
did. it floods back to him, the way he lowered himself to the level of almost
begging and the way he had given this young kid a glimmer of hope when he
hadn’t been firing on all cylinders. he’s not ashamed, but he’s fucking angry.
he’s fucking angry that cody didn’t have the common sense to withhold zach’s
number. zach, who was probably mourning not only frankie breaking his heart,
but also nicole’s death, who was a close friend of his.
why the fuck did you give me zach’s number? frankie texts, i just had the worst
fever of my life. i was practically hallucinating. cody replies almost
instantly. it wasn’t zach’s number. i didn’t want you to freak him out again
after you were a huge dick to him.
well, frankie thinks, apparently zach was not so embarrassed of what had
happened at camp that he didn’t want to tell his best friend. but what poor
fucker was going to listen to that voicemail and have something to laugh about
for days? whose number did you give me?he waits five full minutes before cody
responds.
it was victoria’s.
cody has some sick sense of humor.
===============================================================================
frankie has bed bugs. not bed bugs in the sense of a parting gift from the
previous occupant of his dorm bed like he experienced in his first year of
college, but instead, dead crickets that have shown up mysteriously in his bed
every morning since frankie got back to florida.
feather-light pressure on his forehead accompanied by the urge to slap his own
face is what wakes him up one morning, thanks to a dead cricket. after that, he
walks into the only sex shop within a twenty-five mile radius of him that has
above a one star yelp review, buys handcuffs with cash, smiles at the cashier,
and brings them home to test his theory.
the culprit behind nicole’s death, according to the six o’clock news, was an
animal, because of the marks left on her body. they never say what kind of
marks - bite marks or claw marks - but there’s no animal capable of killing her
that would venture that far from the swamp. frankie knows that much. not even
the alligators have ever made it smack into the middle of the campgrounds, not
in at least fifty-some years, far before the campgrounds was built.
he doesn't understand why any person would want to hurt a girl like nicole, but
he knows it had to be a person, not an animal. he just hasn't thought that it
could be possible for it to be him until he starts sleepwalking.
he wakes up every morning and the window in his bedroom is open, though he
shuts it every night. one morning he wakes up and there’s dirt all over his
bedroom floor like he’d walked outside with wet shoes and trudged dirt into his
room, but he would have had to come in through his own window, because there’s
no dirt anywhere else in the house.
then, dead crickets. frankie can’t figure out if they got in through the window
or if he had somehow collected them in his sleep.
to his knowledge, he had never sleepwalked before nicole had been killed, but
he realized soon after that he had developed the ability to. he’s his only
suspect in nicole’s murder and he has to know what happened.
===============================================================================
this isn’t the first time frankie has laid in a bed with the feeling of cold
metal handcuffs sending goosebumps up his arms as they slide around his wrists,
but it’s certainly the first time he’s done so alone, and with the express
purpose of falling asleep wearing them.
the cashier had sworn the handcuffs were real silver, though it doesn’t matter
to frankie, not unless he’s been turning into a werewolf at night and the
silver might prevent that from happening. he supposes he’ll know if that’s the
case if he wakes up with burn marks in the morning.
he never sleepwalked as a child, so why now? there’s a part of him that really
does think he could have killed nicole.
ariana barges into his room as he’s laying on his back in bed, head propped up
on several pillows and his handcuffed hands folded over his chest like a
vampire in a coffin, and she promptly gapes when she sees him. “are you waiting
for a boy to come over? this is weird. i should go.”
frankie rolls his eyes, thinking of when she was a little kid and had walked
around the house wearing his cock ring as a bracelet, blissfully unaware of
what it was. “no, i’m not. what did you want?”
“homecoming dress options,” she grins, balancing her laptop on one hand. “liz
said i should go as molly ringwald in pretty in pink and get a custom dress
made.”
frankie snorts, patting his bed so she’ll sit down. “liz will use those
pictures as blackmail one day when you least expect it.”
ariana kneels on his bed, wrenches a pillow out from frankie’s head, and hits
him in the face with it. “speaking of blackmail opportunities,” she smirks,
“say cheese.” she grabs frankie’s flip phone from his bedside table and snaps a
photo. “do i even want to know?”
“i’m trying to see if i still sleepwalk while wearing these.” frankie shakes
his hands so the metal clinks together noisily.
“not this again.” ariana looks unimpressed. “you’re obviously still going to
sleepwalk.”
“why’s that?” frankie asks.
“because you didn’t handcuff yourself to the bed frame, dumbass.”
===============================================================================
after a full week of handcuffing himself to his bed frame and waking up only to
a cramped wrist and a hand full of pins and needles, frankie packs his things
and heads back to new york. now that he’s sure he had nothing to do with
nicole’s death, he has no real leads. he guesses he’s been sleepwalking due to
the stress of a camper being mauled to death, but not because he caused it.
he goes back to his old life. he teaches dance classes and improv to kids full
time and tries to forget about how fucking surreal and scary it is that he’s
maybe losing control of his mind and body completely. first, when he had a
fever so strong, he was almost delusional. then, when he started sleepwalking
and climbing out of his window at night.
ten months later it’s still on his mind, so he explains the fever to paul, the
only person from camp he talks to regularly, choosing to leave out the parts
where his dick was hard enough to break wood and maybe somehow grew without any
reason to. paul laughs and says he must have caught the flu from a camper.
“those kids fucking swap spit so much, we’re fucking lucky we didn’t catch
mono,” paul chuckles.
frankie grimaces. “we would have had to kiss a camper to get mono.”
“yeah...true,” paul says, clearing his throat. “anyway, the fever and the
sleepwalking aren’t fucking related, man. what kind of fucking weird shit would
cause that, swamp foot disease? the skunk ape? hey, sweetheart!” paul’s voice
bellows and frankie has to pull his phone away from his ear. he guesses paul is
at the gym and trying to hit on girls again. “do you have any italian in you?
no? do you want some?”
strangely, paul actually brings up a good point. the only odd thing that
happened to frankie at camp, nicole being killed notwithstanding, was that ten
months ago frankie had saved a seventeen year old from drowning in a small
patch of swamp water. it was zach who he saved in the swamp. then, when he was
feverish, it was zach that consumed his thoughts.
they’re seemingly unrelated instances that frankie’s gut tells him are actually
not unrelated at all.
zach - short name, short kid - had made anything but a short impact on that
summer, if frankie’s willingness to track him down nearly a year later says
anything about it. there are plenty of reasons to track someone down who
manages to look good in basketball shorts.
zach’s ass is as good a reason as any, but that’s not the reason.
frankie wishes that were the reason.
maybe the key is zach. maybe zach is somehow responsible for all of this. he
already blames zach for that fever, but if zach was involved in nicole’s death
in any way, and he’s going back to camp this summer, frankie has to be there to
make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“paul, speaking of camp-” frankie shouts to get back paul’s attention.
“none of us are going back there this year,” paul says, echoing frankie’s
thoughts, “all the blood gave cody nightmares for three months.”
“none of you?” frankie hedges, the phone nestled between his ear and shoulder,
opening his laptop and hovering over the keys with steady hands. he wonders
what his friends in new york would think of him if they knew that his summer
plans rested entirely on whether a high school senior wanted to waste his
summer going back to a camp in georgia or to just stay home in florida.
paul takes a long pause before speaking in such a manner that frankie can hear
his sneer. “you’re not still holding a fucking candle for the kid?”
frankie clicks to book his flight back to florida, jostling the phone so it
doesn’t fall off of his shoulder. “what kid?”
===============================================================================
in early may, frankie fills up three suitcases of clothes, boards a plane out
of new york city, and traipses back to the house where his sister still lives.
close to this time last year, being in his home away from home for the past
seven summers of his life caused the most bizarre series of events in his whole
life to transpire. this was the place where he began as a rambunctious
nineteen-year-old camper and came out of as a fully-developed twenty-six year
old camp advisor. up until nicole’s death, the worst thing that had happened at
okefenoke was either the christine brecht camper scandal involving the married
badminton coach or the time fifteen-year-old paola shea had a nose bleed over
the grill during a hot dog eating competition. now it was tainted by death and,
though frankie knows this, it feels odd to be traveling somewhere other than
georgia for the summer.
on the other hand, this is the first year in seven years that frankie will be
with ariana for her birthday in june, and since he missed the milestone of her
sixteenth, he’s glad he won’t miss this. she’s overjoyed when she sees him walk
through the house with their mother, her ponytail bouncing as she jumps at him,
all five feet and two inches of her springing up like a slinky.
when frankie lifts her off her feet, he takes a few blind steps forwards, her
body blocking out his vision entirely, and he walks into a set of streamers
decorating the doorway. when he puts her back down, he looks at the pink paper
streamers that have fallen to his feet. “what is all this for?”
“your homecoming!” she says, eyes twinkling with mirth. “you asshole, you
haven’t seen me in almost a year!”
frankie raises an eyebrow. “mommy,” he calls in a falsetto, “ariana is
cursing.”
joan sits down on a dining room chair, her small black sunglasses still perched
high on her nose even though they’re inside, and sighs heavily. “put a sock in
it, frankie, mommy is tired.”
frankie presses his lips together to keep from laughing. when he looks back to
ariana, expecting her to be equally as amused, he sees that she’s staring at
him expectantly, like she’s awaiting an apology. “sis, look, you know that my
schedule is chaotic. don’t give me that face.”
joan seems to have acquired a glass of red wine out of nowhere and sips it
before interrupting their conversation. “take it easy on our sissy,” she
reasons, eyes on her wine, rather than either of them.
ariana rolls her eyes, turning towards their mother and kicking at the pink
streamers on the floor with her kitten heel. “i’m fine, mommy.”
“i was talking about frankie,” joan manages to explain between chuckles.
as ariana and joan both laugh at his expense, frankie walks over to the
security panel on the wall beside them, finger hovering over the call button,
pretending to actually press it. “security !” he barks into the speaker. “there
are intruders in my home pretending to be my family! i’d like them removed
immediately.”
===============================================================================
the skunk ape, the online article reads, is a carnivorous swamp-dwelling
floridian creature that was first sighted in the sixties.frankie rolls his
eyes. he thinks he would remember seeing a skunk ape, had one existed, sometime
within the seven summers he attended camp near the florida-georgia border. that
seems far-fetched at best and a sore excuse for a bigfoot copycat at worst. no,
the skunk ape doesn’t have anything to do with nicole’s murder, or even
frankie’s peculiar fever or sleepwalking tendencies. of course paulie’s help is
really no help at all.
frankie continues searching for other abnormal happenings around swamps and
comes across the rougarou, a swamp monster that was part wolf and part human,
and originated in louisiana. he supposes if he had been a rougarou, and
transformed into a wolfman in the night, he would have broken his handcuffs at
least once when he had tested them.
that leavs the tales of marie laveau, a voodoo practitioner in the deep south
that would use animal hair in her rituals, and frequented louisiana swamps.
frankie reads that she was rumored to have died in a lake somewhere in
louisiana, so that ends any unlikely connection that could have existed between
marie laveau and the okefenokee swamp.
the only thing that really ties any of these strange, southern superstitions
together is the fact that they seem to all surround swamplands. he wonders
whether that’s just part of the natural appeal of folklore - that these stories
must have an origin somewhere eerie and swamps are inherently eerie places - or
if there really is any truth to any of it.
but everyone at camp who participated in the obstacle course in the okefenokee
swamp did swim in the swamp water - yet only one girl died. what did nicole do
wrong that nobody else had? frankie tries to remember every detail of that day
- how every camper behaved near the water and the way they swam - but there had
been so much roughhousing going on, it was impossible to remember anything with
clarity.
the roughhousing had been what caused zach’s nose bleed. could human blood
coming into contact with the swamp water for the first time in potentially a
century cause something beyond the normal realm of science? if zach is the
reason all of this is happening, does that mean frankie has to find a way to
stop him?
===============================================================================
“paulie,” a familiar voice calls, “dad says it’s your turn to clean the
gutters.”
frankie has been listening to this for fifteen minutes. he now knows which
calafiore sibling has dishwashing duty, vacuuming duty, and gutter patrol for
the next month. frankie continues to paint a clear coat of nail polish onto his
fingernails as the phone rests facing up on his desk. unfortunately, the
calafiore family all boast voices that carry, including cody.
“hey, i gotta fucking go, man,” paulie says, having finally returned.
frankie snorts. “i think the gutters can wait for your phone call to be over.”
“no, i got a lacrosse summer program to hit up. gotta get there early and make
sure the old broads on the school committee know they won’t have any
jurisdiction on my team. i’m not like that last guy. he was a total pussy,
according to cody.”
“the school committee?”
“yeah!” paul barks, “but keep your fucking voice down!” frankie stares blankly
ahead, wishing paul was there for frankie to smack. “cody doesn’t know that i
got this job to keep an eye on him this summer. i told him i needed it for my
resume, so dad will finally give me a job managing one of his gyms this fall.”
“do you even know how to play lacrosse?” frankie asks in disbelief.
“nah,” paul replies, sounding annoyed, “how hard can it fucking be? no punching
on the field, no dishonorable conduct-” a door slams in the distance and paul
laughs, “-and no fucking crying on the field either, rance! you hear me?”
frankie jolts in his seat. “anyway, bro, i’ll have to catch you later. i'm
leaving now and cody's driving there later-”
frankie supposes he doesn’t really have plans for the day, besides dinner with
his mom. “...do you need an assistant?”
===============================================================================
“she just couldn’t say no to me,” paul simpers as they stand in the locker
room, “it’s that goddamn calafiore charm, baby!”
frankie rolls his eyes. “that and she said we saved her the trouble of having
to make a call to someone who would expect a salary.”
paul frowns. “why the fuck did you agree to be a volunteer assistant coach,
anyway? don’t you need money for, like, two-hundred dollar jeans?”
“i already have a job in new york waiting for me,” frankie reminds him, “i’m
just doing this to-” he cuts himself off. he really has no idea what to say to
cover up the fact that he’s only here to figure out how zach was involved in
nicole’s death.
“to help out these kids?” paul smiles widely and claps frankie hard on the
back. “that’s fucking admirable, man. you’re a fucking stud.”
as kids start shuffling in, frankie inhales deeply, waiting for zach to walk
through the door. he’s not going to let some kid have any impact on him, not
when his career expressedly revolves around teaching kids to dance and not
giving them the opportunity to act out in his presence. there’s nothing special
about zach that would make him an exemption to that, yet his stomach continues
to tighten as more kids, including hayden, bang open the door and zach is not
one of them.
frankie watches paul introduce himself to the team as cody’s cooler, older
brother, much to hayden’s chagrin, all the while wondering where zach was.
maybe he was in the bathroom, sick with nerves because he didn’t want to be
compared to everyone else who he would soon be training with. maybe he was
still in the parking lot, on the phone with his mom, begging her not to make
him participate.
“frankie?” paul asks, while waving his hand across frankie’s face slowly,
“earth to frank?”
hayden sniggers, earning a glare from cody from across the room. frankie
watches as a kid he’s never seen before leans over and murmurs something to
hayden, locking eyes with frankie, and getting caught in the act. “yeah,”
hayden answers softly, “it’s the same guy.”
frankie feels his nerves lift completely, swiped away effortlessly by
overhearing one comment. people already know who he is. zach has been talking
about him, or at least, cody has been talking about frankie, to explain zach’s
behavior, which he assumes must be bad. frankie still holds all the power. how
could he forget that? with his eyes still locked with the kid asking about him,
frankie winks. the kid pales and looks suddenly to his left and right, as if
frankie had meant to wink at someone else.
paul clears his throat, oblivious to the silent exchange happening before him.
“frank, before you decided to check out, i was asking you to introduce yourself
to the guys.”
frankie grins. “i don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”
he’s met with a mixture of raised eyebrows and impressed shrugs.
paul bends over, throwing one foot up on the bench in the locker room, looking
about ready to burst into an inspirational speech lamenting their team’s
struggles as the underdogs, like in the movies, though the juniors are merely
all here for practice for the fall team and the seniors merely hear for a
summer program, simply because paul is an egomaniac, even coming from frankie.
paul seems to be channeling every bit of zac efron in high school musical as he
possibly can, though paul being distracted does provide frankie with the
opportunity to notice paul’s cell phone sitting on the bench, beside his
sneaker. he waits for everyone’s attention to be diverted to watching paul
before he reaches for it.
meet me in the field after, he types, this isn't paul. and don’t bring cody.
he waits for a response to come, for the phone to vibrate, and to be asked who
is this, but none of those things come.
===============================================================================
“jesus, frankie.” paul scrubs his hand over his face, slumping against the side
of his car as they stand in the parking lot. “i didn’t know you were going to
be such a legend around here. what the hell did you do?”
frankie snickers. “not zach, though i’m getting the impression that’s what
people think.”
“what?” paul bites. “he’s significantly younger than you!”
frankie raises his eyebrows. “you’re significantly dumber than i am, but that
doesn’t stop people from thinking we’re friends.”
paul lowers his voice. “did you or did you not sleep with zach?” he asks
accusatorially.
“of course not,” frankie answers smugly, “but not because he didn’t want to.”
paul grimaces. “can you fucking stop? he’s like my little brother. i didn’t
even know he liked guys.”
“calm down,” frankie says, rolling his eyes. “it’s not like he’s taking it up
the ass from anyone. he just had a crush on me.”
paul looks green. “well, that’s my cue.” he opens his car door and jumps in.
“you sure you’re alright to wait for your mom to pick you up?”
“what’s the rush?” frankie laughs. “you don’t want to talk about zach taking a
big, hard dick, and loving it?”
paul slams the car door shut and turns on his engine. “you piece of shit!” he
yells, laughing, over the sound of the motor. frankie steps back and watches as
paul peels out of the parking lot, honking loudly as he goes. frankie
attributes that more to paul’s napoleon complex than wanting to honk just to
say goodbye.
===============================================================================
frankie has been waiting on the field for almost no time at all before zach
shows up. on the long walk from the parking lot all the way across the other
side of the high school campus to the empty lacrosse field, frankie wonders if
zach won’t show. if zach had heard beforehand that frankie was going to be
helping paul with the team and skipped out on the introductions in the locker
room, with plenty of people present to keep distance between them, why would he
voluntarily meet frankie anywhere completely alone?
the lacrosse goal is netted, standing tall enough to where frankie can lean
against it, and he imagines the soccer team might share it with the lacrosse
team come the fall semester. he sees zach walking towards him with his hands in
the pockets of his black track pants, making eye contact with frankie only
once, then keeping his head low, though frankie thinks he can detect a soft
smile on his face.
when he comes closer and pauses a few feet from the goal, frankie eyes him
skeptically. he looks even smaller than frankie remembers and, though the
logical side of his brain tells him that zach isn’t physically capable of
tearing someone’s body apart with his bare hands, frankie has no other leads,
nobody else to blame for all the shit he’s been through since last summer, and
an itch to place blame wherever he sees fit.
“i was hoping it’d be you,” zach says, shifting from one foot to the other,
looking awkwardly down at the grass below. he seems to be unsure of whether or
not he’s allowed to say that and, all of a sudden, frankie is livid.
zach is not allowed to say that. everything that’s happened, it’s all zach’s
fault. winding up stranded in a motel in the middle of nowhere with the worst
fever of his life, that’s zach’s fault. waking up every morning with his bed
covered in insects and having no recollection of how it happened, that’s zach’s
fault. standing here on this field after volunteering to waste his entire
summer in florida instead of finding more work in new york, that’s zach’s fault
too. all of his summer plans now gone in order to investigate this kid who is
in all likelihood involved in nicole’s murder, yet looks at frankie like he’s
afraid of frankie, or what frankie will think of him. zach is not allowed to
act like he’s being asked to prom. this is nothing other than business.
“those kids all seemed to know about me,” frankie says, scanning zach’s face
for any dead giveaways, and it’s zach, so of course there’s plenty.
with a red face and two subtly-shifting feet, zach looks like a deer in the
headlights. “cody tells everyone stories about you and paul.”
“you don’t have any stories you wanted to tell?”
zach bites his lip. “not really. then everyone would know i embarrassed myself
in all of them.”
frankie stares at zach, uncomprehending. “you didn’t embellish anything and
tell people something had been going on between us?”
zach looks a little pained to think frankie wouldn’t want people knowing.
“would that really be embellishing?” his voice raises slightly, so he probably
told at least some people that something had been going on between them last
summer.
“yes,” frankie says with a heavy sigh, “because nothing happened.”
“well,” zach says, his face scrunching up in confusion, “that’s not really how
it felt in your cabin.”
frankie grinds his teeth together, not understanding why zach would be arguing
so childishly with him. “well, it felt like nothing to me. it was nothing.”
zach looks caught off guard and frankie notices that it’s the first time that
his feet have stopped anxiously shifting back and forth. “oh.” zach expels a
quiet breath, looking stunned.
it would figure that for zach, ten minutes of cuddling would be blown up in his
mind as something more than what it was. he was inexperienced when it came to
dating in general, moreso, frankie would guess, when it came to guys, and
unless he’d gotten a boyfriend in the last ten months, frankie wouldn’t be
shocked to know that zach could have been fixated on those insignificant ten
minutes for every second of those past ten months. for some reason, the idea
that zach had been daydreaming about being cuddled by him incessantly for
months, while frankie had been analyzing merely the facts surrounding nicole’s
death, made frankie’s confidence surge again. “so, what did you tell people?”
“nothing, really. cody made a lot of jokes. hayden too. people guessed.” zach
looks startlingly uncomfortable, like he could crawl out of his own skin at any
moment and wanted to, just to be anywhere else but with frankie right then.
frankie realizes he’s probably just broken zach’s heart again, but he still has
something else to tell zach, and he’s not about to get sidetracked by any
potential waterworks.
“that night,” frankie pauses, “did you have anything to do with what happened?”
zach shakes his head in disbelief. “with nicole? she was my friend.”
“that’s not what you said when you were spending the night in the nurse’s
cabin,” frankie says with suspicion, “you said she wasn’t your friend because
she was a total nerd.”
zach scowls, like frankie is rewriting history, when he’s only using zach’s
real words against him. “so you think i would kill her because she was a dork?”
his lip curls around the word dork, like it’s nothing short of a placeholder
for something kinder, like he wants to say she was a sweet girl, and he hopes
nicole had known that he thought so. frankie doesn’t know what to make of it.
zach’s never been a great actor, so he doubts zach is lying. “nice, frankie,”
zach tacks on with a hurt tone.
frankie can already tell this is not the meeting zach has expected. maybe zach
had seen the text, clenched his phone pitifully, praying it was from frankie,
thinking he was going to apologize to zach for how he treated him that night in
camp, or maybe even for never contacting zach since then.
but that’s not why frankie is here. even if zach misses nicole and would never
have consciously done any harm to her, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have
without knowing. frankie’s sleepwalking only proves that.
frankie reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, his fingers digging for the
cool metal of his handcuffs. he wants to be the one to prove zach has something
to do with nicole’s death, with frankie’s painfully agonizing fever, with the
sleepwalking that only the handcuffs had prevented, and there’s only one thing
to have zach do.
End Notes
     thank you for reading! let me know if you've figured it out yet or if
     you're interested to see where it goes.
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