“Before you start yelling…” {Frank - Sweet Virginia, Stripper or Journalist - cause daddy as fuck}
Send me memes ??? | @icameasiam | [[au. sweet virginia]]
there’s a stinging twist of guilt in his gut as he drove to the sheriffs office- a darkened sky not yet woken from her slumber. he’d brought her here- he hadn’t thought about what the local talent might have to offer; it was a different world to him. he smoked occasionally, to help with the shakes, and racing thoughts- but that was stuff from Margaret’s own stash- given to him within his first week here (though he’d been too hard headed to try it until she promised him it would help him sleep) from there he’d picked it up- not proud of his need for the crutch, but desperate enough to lean on it. it was something he kept private about, not wanting people to know how much he was still hurting. he’d suspected she’d had some kind of substance use; there were days when she wouldn’t leave her room. her appetite was sporadic. he let her be, for a while. there was an understanding in him, that sometimes people needed something to take it away. he’d thought she would ease up in time, but that had yet to happen.
seeing her on the bench inside of the local sheriffs office at 3 am- not that the call had woke him -set a fire in his stomach. it was the downwind of a spiral, and a place he’d been many times before- always doing something incredibly dangerous as if he was still holding out hope that his time was up. the sight is concerning to say the least, and Frank had never been one who was good at expressing his worries gently. she’d been picked up on the side of the main road in town (a strip mall, one fast food joint, the laundrymat & a string of bars and local businesses lined the sides of the street that always died around eleven p.m. in their little world.) it wasn’t a dangerous place- most of the time. people still went missing, & bad things still happened- Frank was the type to play out those bad things in his head on repeat, blaming himself if anything was to go wrong.
“ this one yours? ” the sheriff questioned as Frank got to where he was standing.
he looked at her, his lips pursing together before he glanced back at him. “ yeah. I’ll get her home- Thanks John. “ Frank shakes his hand, & his free hand is placed on his shoulder as he walks by, nodding at him. one good thing about small towns - everyone was always helping everyone out. the bad thing, was that everyone knew everything that happened. this, at least could be contained between the two of them. John understood Franks preference for privacy- & he could assume that extended to those in his life as well. “come on-” he spoke simply nodding to the door after he approached her. his hands hung by his side as his face stayed a stone until they got outside.
“ what the hell were you thinking? “
the question came out abruptly. underage drinking- she was lucky the town was as close knit as it was, and a conversation on the phone with the sheriff got her released before any processing was finalized. he wasn’t sure if she’d care about word of mouth here, or if she even wanted to be here at all- he figured she did’t.
“ he said he found you wandering down the side of the street halfway out of your mind-” drunk. & alcohol hadn’t been the only thing running through her veins. suspicions had been confirmed, but in the moment he was more concerned about making sure she didn’t pull a stunt like this again. “look- you got some shit going on- i know that.“ he breathed in, leaning towards her slightly unbreaking his eye contact. “but you can’t pull this kind of shit. - your phone was off; you never came home- I thought-” he looked away, clenching his jaw. he wouldn’t of been surprised to find that she’d run away. not being surprised by it, would not mean it wouldn’t of stung like hell, and that wasn’t the only outcome he’d pictured. he felt a certain level of responsibility for her, to help her at least- to show her life could be good even after it had been so rotten. “you’re lucky the sheriff owed me. get in the truck.”
maybe he cared too much for the girl he’d found on the side of the road all those nights ago. maybe he was too involved in the possible development she could achieve from not being so shut off from the world- or at least from him, if she couldn’t find it in her heart to trust anyone else. Frank had seen what it did to someone to battle the world alone, and she was far too young to already be so shut off to the idea of finding at least one person she could trust- at least, that was part of the reason it tugged at his heart strings to see her this way.
