Work Text:
Frankie arrives home earlier than Andi, as is expected. Andi's been getting home later and later these days. Frankie suspects there's some kind of secret project that she's getting to work on. The thought excites her, even if Andi won't tell her what it is. The mystery only makes her all the more excited to join Andi, get a job there next to her, and then that will be the surprise of the century. She imagines a smile cracking across Andi's face, one she hasn't truly seen since childhood.
They'll be an engineering force to beat all others, Frankie just knows it.
She gets to work on something resembling dinner. She's a passable cook — she thinks she could be a good cook, even, if they were able to get better ingredients. As it is, the soy protein refuses to crumble, and half of the mushrooms she’s using are sort of slimy, even though Andi bought them yesterday.
Frankie will deal. It's what she’s best at.
The door creaks open almost an hour later.
“Helloooo,” Frankie calls back from the kitchen. “Dinner's on the table.”
“Thanks, Frankie,” Andi mumbles, pulling off her outer jacket. “What is it?”
“Stir fry.” Frankie sets the dish that she's washing off to the side, slips her gloves off, and goes to grab her own plate. “Not much to work with. Hopefully it's good.”
“I'm sure it will be,” Andi says, a tired heaviness to her voice, but the edge of her mouth pulling into a half-smile nonetheless. “I like the part where I don’t have to cook it.”
“Symbiosis,” Frankie says, setting her plate on the table and putting a hand on Andi's shoulder.
Andi laughs. “Vocab word?”
“You know it.”
Frankie settles into her chair and starts eating, finally. Luckily, it hasn't cooled too much. Still pretty good for what it is. She allows herself, for a moment, to feel proud.
“So, how was your day at work?” Frankie asks, probing for any detail to seize on.
Andi's face falls, minutely — maybe unnoticeable to most people, but Frankie is not most people. “It was fine,” she says, poking at a mushroom with her fork. “Same old, same old.”
“No interesting projects?” Frankie asks. “Guinevere androids?” she adds, because she just can't help herself.
“No, Frankie, there were no Guinevere androids,” Andi says, and, okay, now her frustration is pretty readily apparent. “Or top-secret projects, or whatever sort of fantasy you've come up with.” She picks up her plate and brings it to the sink before collapsing back into her chair. “Just extremely normal, boring, average things. Okay?”
Frankie watches as Andi puts her elbows on the table and covers her face with her hands. “Well, something's wrong,” she observes, as neutrally as she can.
“Nothing is wrong,” Andi says, muffled. “And even if something was wrong, I would have it totally under control and you wouldn't have to worry about it at all.”
Frankie stands up and walks behind Andi, reaching to gently massage her shoulders. “Hey, okay, I get it. No more questions.” She lets Andi sit there, feels her body relax under Frankie's hands just a little bit. “Wanna watch a movie or something?” Frankie offers.
“Yeah,” Andi says, relief evident in her voice. “Yeah, let's watch a movie.”
Andi tucks herself under Frankie's arm, head resting on her collarbone, just after the movie starts. She's pointy, all sharp bones and joints, but Frankie doesn't mind. She wouldn't have anybody else. Andi's taken her hair down, too, so it spills all across Frankie's shoulder and chest.
Watching a movie and cuddling with Andi are, by all accounts, things Frankie enjoys quite a lot. She just wishes Andi would relax. She's jumpier than usual, keeps twitching into Frankie's body. She doesn't want to say anything — that would risk a repeat of what happened at dinner — so she just tries to hold Andi tighter each time. Frankie wishes she could solve all her problems by sheer force of hug.
It does seem to help. Maybe not as much as Frankie wants it to, but still.
As the credits of Space Destroyer 5: Ultimate Alien Invasion roll, Frankie glances down at Andi, face barely illuminated by the glow of the screen. Her eyes are closed, but Frankie's not fooled — she knows when Andi's asleep, and it's not when every muscle in her body is tensed.
“Dee,” she whispers, breaking the silence.
“Yeah?” Andi whispers back, matching her.
Frankie hesitates. “Are you …. okay?”
The pause is so long that she thinks maybe Andi didn't hear her, despite her lips being inches from Andi's ears.
“No,” Andi says, barely audible. “Not…. not really.” Frankie feels something wet on her shirt and looks down and — oh, God, Andi's actually crying. Frankie hasn't seen her cry since middle school, maybe, but she doesn't have time to be surprised about this, she has to do something about this. Frankie has absolutely no idea how to do something about this.
So she just pulls Andi closer and holds her instead.
“I lost it,” Andi says into Frankie's neck. “I lost it, I lost it.”
“Lost what?” Frankie asks, genuinely confused. “I’m — I'm good at finding stuff, I can help.”
Andi shakes her head. “The job, Frankie, I lost my job, I've been looking for a new one for a full—” She chokes on this last word, almost fully sobbing, but Frankie thinks it might be ‘week,’ which, okay, now this whole week makes a lot more sense. She tries not to let herself dwell on this epiphany, because Andi is actually sobbing in her arms, which is an unfamiliar and frankly sort of scary thing to have happen.
“It's okay, it’s okay,” she whispers, because it's the best thing that she can think of to whisper. She rubs circles on Andi's back and tries frantically to solve this problem like any other.
Andi composes herself eventually, sits up under her own power. She won't look into Frankie's eyes, but Frankie jumps on the chance to have a solution-based discussion.
“You can work with me,” she says. “Sparky'll let you on, I'll vouch. You won't even have to do much. I can handle a lot more than he thinks I can.”
Andi shakes her head. “He treats you like shit. I'd punch him in the face on the second day after he disrespects you and then we'd both be out of a job.”
Frankie mulls this over. This is probably not an exaggeration on Andi's part, as much as Frankie would like it to be.
“I could get you into a smuggling group,” she offers. “Probably. All you'd have to do is drop notes, not even any of the really illegal stuff.”
“And get beat up for being a crownie, even though I literally got fired?” Andi mumbles. She reaches up and grabs a handful of her hair, tugging on it, wincing at the pain. Frankie resists the urge to stop her from doing that. “I just need to prove myself. Somehow. So they see that they need me.”
Frankie can't stop a sad smile from reaching her face at this. That's exactly what she's been trying to do for the entire year Andi's had this job. It's harder than it seems.
“Maybe we'll just find you a passion project, then,” she says. “We have some savings. I'll work some extra hours. We'll make it work.”
Andi sighs. “I don't want to make you do that.”
Frankie grabs her hand, squeezes it. “Hey, you've never made me do anything. If anything, I'm usually the one dragging you into stuff.” She grins. “Besides. Maybe lifting more stuff will make me even more buff.” She flexes her other arm dramatically, and, despite herself, Andi laughs a little bit.
“Sometimes I think I don't trust you enough and sometimes I think I trust you too much,” Andi says.
“What does that mean?” Frankie asks, because she genuinely doesn't understand. But Andi just shakes her head and leans back into Frankie, closing her eyes again. And Frankie thinks: maybe it doesn't matter what it means, as long as it means Andi is here, her body no longer pulled taut, her heartbeat no longer racing.
She presses a light kiss to Andi's head and looks up at the ceiling. Tomorrow will be a different day.