fic: Horizon Catchers (Frank/Gerard)
Horizon Catchers
Frank/Gerard, Pete/Mikey
PG, 3100~ words, superpowers fic!
NOTES: I wanted to write a superpowers fic where they're all kids... That didn't happen. But this did instead. Awesome beta by turnyourankle. Inspiration gathered from here and here.
1
2004 passes in a haze but not really, because there are still nights and days and those early evenings when everything is so clear that it hurts.
Smirnoff Ice isn't really what Gerard would be drinking if he had a magic lamp, or if the minifridge was two feet closer and Otter hadn't dropped down on the floor by the bed in the first place, white glass bottle in hand, holding it too loosely for Gerard not to seize the opportunity.
To be fair, Gerard had closed his eyes momentarily, concentrating on the fridge, and managed to shed an eyelash onto his cheekbone. A thick one.
Mikey said don't be an ass when Gerard puked on his shoe, but only because Gerard had meant to puke on his shoe. He took surprisingly good aim in that state where he couldn't have pissed in the bowl not even if he had taken his time and focused solely on the task in question. It was light brown and lumpy, and somewhere in the background Frank giggled but not for the reason you might think.
.
Frank's been hanging head down from monkeybars for what feels like hours. It's made him lightheaded, which is odd because doesn't hanging head down from monkeybars mean your head gets heavy with packed blood while the skin under your knees tingles nicely at first but then starts to hurt? Frank is at that stage where it mostly just hurts now, and he scowls down at Gerard (it feels like he's scowling up at Gerard) when Gerard dares to say he's fucking timing him and he's only been up there hanging for "Fifteen minutes."
Somewhere in close proximity, Pete Wentz levitates three quarters of a foot without anyone paying the least bit of attention.
"Shut your mouth, motherfucker," Frank says, not bothering to pull spit back into his mouth when it starts stretching from his lips making its way down to Gerard's forehead. It's getting thinner, the stretched out snotty, lumpy, yellow spit he's been working on for the hours he's spent looking at the world topsy-turvy. "Motherfucker is lying," he says feeling the thread wobble and then dribble down, hitting Gerard square between the eyes.
"Motherfucker, you're fucking disgusting! Jesus fucking son of a-" There's a soft thud when Gerard hits his head on Frank's getting up, the spit squishing between skin, like when you smack a snail barehanded. It's that level of disgusting. It feels like a blood vow but more gross, except not because then Gerard would also need to be gross and spit right back at Frank.
Which he is not doing.
At the moment.
He's spat at Frank various times before but it doesn't count because then was then and now is now and the only one spitting at anyone is Frank.
Pete Wentz drops down on his ass telling Mikey to stop being a dick and help him up.
.
Warped Tour oh five. There are seven different kinds of bottles on the table outside of Left Alone's van.
Matt does that thing with his hand, where he cracks the knuckles and then shakes it loosely, making whoosh whoosh whoosh noises that can only be heard under some kind of influence, or if you have superhearing abilities. Matt as in Matt Cortez, the little bastard with a stack of porn in every corner of the room and a dvd burner.
Right now Matt is hearing pretty fucking well, which isn't really new to him. Just last week Ray muttered something under his breath, while they were playing, and Matt is certain he heard what Ray said even though he was on Frank’s side of the stage the whole time. It was: "Snickerdoodles, fucking snickerdoodles," which was probably the appropriate thing to say considering Frank had eaten a plateful earlier and was jumping Ray's back and humping Gerard and Mikey every other minute and a half. The somersaulting while having his guitar strapped onto him had been a new one for Frank.
At the end of the day, Matt settles for regular beer. That is, after he's done trying out the six other kinds of beverages. Beer quiets sounds the best, he decides, and mourns not walking around with a notebook in his backpocket so he could write it down and remember it in the morning when he's hungover and slumped over a toilet bowl.
.
It doesn't come as a complete surprise to Pete Wentz when Mikey makes it snow. They're sitting on the main stage, legs kicking the edge and it's night, too hot to be completely able to enjoy the fact that everyone is sleeping in their respectful bunks or passed out in the gutter or fucking somewhere that isn't here.
Mikey is typing on his sidekick, which isn't surprising either, because when does he not type on his sidekick? What's got Pete wondering though is whom he's typing to. It's none of his business but he can't help but be a little bit curious because, hello, 3am! The only one Pete knows is up for certain at this hour is himself, and then he feels his thigh vibrate.
It isn't a smug smile per se, and it dies out when he's read the message over twice, looking at Mikey dumbly because, yes, Mikey doesn't talk much but he talks some. Except now, when the cascades sing, Mikey raises his eyebrows and Pete's whole world as he knows it in the dark of the night turns white. And Mikey stays quiet.
hey watch this, he reads again, taking notice of the sarcastic little x's and o's at the end of the message. He thinks about writing a song about it, but it never makes the album.
.
Gerard's started sharing a room with Frank because there's really no other way his subconscious is willing to accept and it's useless to fight it. It's kinda embarrassing the way he kept just waking up in Frank's bed, a drool line wandering down the back of Frank's neck, hands and legs in weird positions, having absolutely no recollection of how he even got there. The door was always locked when they stayed in hotels and Donna had reassured him he never sleepwalked as a child.
Gerard tells Matt the more he drinks the worse it'll be because who the hell would want to go back to mundane normality after experiencing something like that, but Gerard can only make this reasoning from his own experiences. Truth is, it isn’t the beer that makes it stop, it just messes up the brain so much that it lets you pretend everything is normal again.
"I'd rather be hungover than hear you and Frank at nights, thanks," Matt says spitting into the toilet bowl. It isn’t even fair because Gerard has only ever whispered with Frank, and even then done it so quietly that no one should have heard. It isn't his fault he appears where ever Frank is at nights. It's just how it is. Just the same kind of weird that Ray does with the time.
.
Otter never got anything. It's not why he's kicked out of the band, but it managed to arouse suspicion, questions about whether he really belonged. He was the only one impressed with Cortez's good ears. Cortez included, who couldn’t help wondering, which would come first: alcoholism or madhouse. Beer was what made it better, but if Cortez had spent more time concentrating on managing this crazy son of a bitch of ability, he would have realized he could learn to control it.
.
Sometimes things are difficult to control, no matter how hard you try,
and then you stop trying.
.
It rains three weeks straight when Pete and Mikey break up. It's so muddy that Frank has to make his shoes hover over the ground when he steps outside, Starbucks and a double latte so clear in his mind that he doesn't even notice Gerard jumping down the bus steps until he slams his hands on Frank's back and grabs his wrist and then they just, appear.
In Starbucks.
Just behind the queue.
Gerard's hand still squeezing Frank's wrist so hard that it hurts.
"That was new," Frank says, his whole face tingling, Gerard beaming down at him from behind a thick hood and a thicker pair of sunglasses.
.
Sometimes the easiest thing in the world,
is to move on.
.
It was that tentative way Bob asked the question that made everyone fall in love with him.
"Motherfucker is staying!" Frank exclaimed, standing up from his spot on the couch next to a very sober Cortez who had gotten earmuffs for his birthday and was now proudly sporting them, pig pink or not. Frank highfived Gerard, danced over to Ray to climb his back and pull at his hair, and then made a kamikaze dive towards Mikey who had finally put his sidekick into his backpocket.
"So, like," Bob started, ignoring Frank and Mikey's wrestling match, focusing his eyes on Gerard and Ray instead. "This is normal to you guys?"
"As normal as it can ever be," Gerard said with a helpful smile, eyes drifting over to Mikey who had levitated up to the ceiling, and then at Frank sitting on the floor, eyes fixed on Mikey, tongue clicking the roof of his mouth with satisfaction and so much joy he was practically glowing.
Ray was curious. "So, you actually went back in time? Like for real?"
Bob nodded.
"That's impressive, man. I can only stop it... Freeze it?"
"I think it's freeze," Gerard offered in his 'I've read ten comics a day ever since I was a little kid; ask me anything' voice that generally impressed no one. But that weird lick of knowledge he had managed to gather during all those years of hardcore geekiness had come in handy surprisingly often ever since they discovered they had special abilities.
"Freezing time is pretty impressive, dude," Bob said, grunting when Frank wrapped an arm around his leg while still pressing Mikey into the ceiling.
"Nothing beats flying, right Mikes?"
Mikey had pulled his sidekick from his jeans' pocket and was too busy typing on it to take much notice of the situation.
2
"What would make it better?" Gerard asks against the side of Frank's neck. It's warm and a little damp from one of those colds the guy gets every other month, his immune system fucking him over again.
Frank's overdoing it to get more sympathies because it's their day off, no shows until Sunday evening. Even though the weather is a steady 75 degrees, partly cloudy so as to not hurt his eyes, Frank's managed to complain it being too cold one minute and too hot the next much to Mikey's annoyance.
He grunts, pressing a hand on Gerard's cheek, pulling at a stray lump of hair. "Miso soup," he says pathetically, feeling rather than hearing Gerard chuckling in the crook of his neck.
"You're fucking shameless. But okay, I think we can do this. Come here," Gerard says pulling Frank up from the bed, making him stand on the floor in the middle of the hotel room and promise not to say one fucking word to Brian because Brian will freak and then they will both get a lecture as long as a year of famine.
"I fucking know, okay? I'm sick not stupid."
"Okay. Well. You know what you gotta do," Gerard says tugging Frank close, locking his arms around his waist tightly and waiting for Frank to grasp his shoulders. Once Frank's settled into the embrace, Gerard closes his eyes and concentrates on things that aren't Frank, trying not to think about him, because Frank is what manages to distract him the most.
Japan is beautiful this time of the year.
"You brought me to Tokyo?" Frank is blinking dumbly at Gerard, eyes quickly drifting around the busy street they're standing in, recognizing it as belonging to the Ginza district from earlier visits.
"You said you wanted miso soup," Gerard says defensively, letting go of Frank's hand that he had somehow found himself holding when they arrived, even if his arms had been tightly around Frank's waist just a moment earlier.
"So you brought me to Tokyo," Frank says, momentarily forgetting to feel sick.
"So I did," Gerard says lamely. "Come on, then, let's go find that one place that lets you eat till you puke for a thousand yens." He starts walking down the street, pulling his hood over his head when a loud wave of teenagers in mini skirts and multicolored furry boots surge past him. The digital clock on a department store wall edges towards midnight.
It's raining by the time they finish eating, fat drops on yellow flowers, artificial light hitting wet asphalt, making Frank automatically think of Mikey. It's not Mikey who's making it rain; it doesn't work like that, they're too far away.
Frank's throat feels better after the soup but he's tired and freezing, can't find a way to stay dry in the heavy downpour that soaks through his hoodie and jeans making his skin cold and wet. Then he realizes how thankless he is for even thinking about having a new ability that would cloak and protect from rain. Like levitating isn't enough anymore even though it's more than enough.
"Ready to go?" Gerard asks, glancing up at the sky, lashes sticking together. The sky always feels higher when you're standing at the step of tall buildings.
Frank considers this. They came to Japan to eat soup. It's the strangest thing Gerard's ever done on a whim, which is saying a lot considering all the things he's ever done, but still, none of them can even compare to this, and Frank thinks, fuck it, if Gerard's being creative then he can be too.
"We're doing something else first," he says, taking Gerard's hand and dragging him out of the main street into a smaller one, and another until he finds a dark alley that's completely empty and uninteresting.
"Frank, what's up? What're you doing?" Gerard asks when Frank tugs him close all serious and secretive, pulling him into a tight hug that makes Gerard's stomach flip even worse than when Frank cracks a smile, bends his knees jumping up, and then they're flying over Tokyo twilight. It's got Gerard thinking about fucking Superman of all things, and then he can't think of anything other than Frank Frank Frank. Frank making a swoop, breaking rain clouds, Frank laughing into his mouth, Frank's hair stuck to his cheeks and forehead, Frank shivering from cold and sick.
With a well-focused thought Gerard finds himself back in the States, back in their hotel room, Frank still laughing against his face like he's high off the rain and wind and the thin feeling of clouds against his face.
Then they both collapse.
3
Funny thing is that when Gerard loses his power - and when he loses it, he can still feel it itching underneath the surface like a reminder - what he ends up missing the most is waking up with Frank in the mornings.
.
The goodbye concert tore something in Gerard’s chest, making it difficult to finish Helena for the last time, the taste of blood in his mouth too strong to go completely ignored.
Standing in snowfall on the stage, the picture frozen momentarily to allow the band take in the scene with minute attention; Frank hovering near Bob's drums as Bob tried to poke him in the ribs with his first pair of drumsticks that had gone missing years ago but were there now anyway, Ray and Mikey smiling at each other, Gerard thought the ending was as perfect as it could ever be. And apart from everything, at that very moment, he was content to start a new chapter in his life, to leave MyChem behind, tuck the memories away deep into his chest and keep them there.
.
Starting from the day after their last concert, it rained for a month and a half until Mikey collapsed on his bed and thought, no more, moving on.
.
When Frank comes to visit, it's with the support of crutches, leg in a cast. Gerard helps him totter up the stairs, the tingling of his dying power just under his skin burning and resurfacing upon touching Frank, making him wonder if he could bring them into the living room with the power of his mind.
He's too afraid to try.
The tingling doesn’t stop, and it feels just about the same as it felt like when he saw Bob the other week, and every time Mikey and Ray visit.
"What happened?" Gerard ends up asking, pushing all other thoughts aside.
"Broke my foot," Frank says unnecessarily, sighing when he reaches the couch, sitting down.
"Well, clearly, but-"
"I wanted to... Wanted to fly again, for the last time," Frank says sheepishly, lifting his foot on the coffee table with a soft thud, nodding when Gerard lets out a sympathetic sound. "I thought, y'know, if I could just get high enough, I'd remember again-"
"I don't think it's got to do with not 'membering as much as it's got to do with not being able to, anymore."
"Do you miss it?" There's that look on Frank's face, so earnest and open that Gerard doesn't know what to do with it, doesn't know if he should sit down on the couch next to him, pull him into a hug and let things evolve from there whichever way they want to evolve, or ask him if he wants some coffee.
What he ends up doing is shrugging, and telling Frank that yeah, he misses it. "Sometimes. Some parts more than the others."
Frank pretty much agrees, and Gerard makes coffee after that.
"Do you think we should have become superheroes when we still had the powers?" Frank asks lips touching the brim of a coffee cup that Gerard's started to consider a metaphorical signpost in just a little over five minutes time.
"Brian would have killed us," Gerard says dully, but he begins to smile when Frank cackles into the cup, puts it aside then even though he hasn't even finished it yet, not even half of it, and the undercurrent rises enough to have Gerard's skin burning again.
When Frank touches his wrist, Gerard sheds an eyelash, a thick one, that Frank brushes away without moving a muscle, holding his breath all the way through.
Frank/Gerard, Pete/Mikey
PG, 3100~ words, superpowers fic!
NOTES: I wanted to write a superpowers fic where they're all kids... That didn't happen. But this did instead. Awesome beta by turnyourankle. Inspiration gathered from here and here.
1
2004 passes in a haze but not really, because there are still nights and days and those early evenings when everything is so clear that it hurts.
Smirnoff Ice isn't really what Gerard would be drinking if he had a magic lamp, or if the minifridge was two feet closer and Otter hadn't dropped down on the floor by the bed in the first place, white glass bottle in hand, holding it too loosely for Gerard not to seize the opportunity.
To be fair, Gerard had closed his eyes momentarily, concentrating on the fridge, and managed to shed an eyelash onto his cheekbone. A thick one.
Mikey said don't be an ass when Gerard puked on his shoe, but only because Gerard had meant to puke on his shoe. He took surprisingly good aim in that state where he couldn't have pissed in the bowl not even if he had taken his time and focused solely on the task in question. It was light brown and lumpy, and somewhere in the background Frank giggled but not for the reason you might think.
.
Frank's been hanging head down from monkeybars for what feels like hours. It's made him lightheaded, which is odd because doesn't hanging head down from monkeybars mean your head gets heavy with packed blood while the skin under your knees tingles nicely at first but then starts to hurt? Frank is at that stage where it mostly just hurts now, and he scowls down at Gerard (it feels like he's scowling up at Gerard) when Gerard dares to say he's fucking timing him and he's only been up there hanging for "Fifteen minutes."
Somewhere in close proximity, Pete Wentz levitates three quarters of a foot without anyone paying the least bit of attention.
"Shut your mouth, motherfucker," Frank says, not bothering to pull spit back into his mouth when it starts stretching from his lips making its way down to Gerard's forehead. It's getting thinner, the stretched out snotty, lumpy, yellow spit he's been working on for the hours he's spent looking at the world topsy-turvy. "Motherfucker is lying," he says feeling the thread wobble and then dribble down, hitting Gerard square between the eyes.
"Motherfucker, you're fucking disgusting! Jesus fucking son of a-" There's a soft thud when Gerard hits his head on Frank's getting up, the spit squishing between skin, like when you smack a snail barehanded. It's that level of disgusting. It feels like a blood vow but more gross, except not because then Gerard would also need to be gross and spit right back at Frank.
Which he is not doing.
At the moment.
He's spat at Frank various times before but it doesn't count because then was then and now is now and the only one spitting at anyone is Frank.
Pete Wentz drops down on his ass telling Mikey to stop being a dick and help him up.
.
Warped Tour oh five. There are seven different kinds of bottles on the table outside of Left Alone's van.
Matt does that thing with his hand, where he cracks the knuckles and then shakes it loosely, making whoosh whoosh whoosh noises that can only be heard under some kind of influence, or if you have superhearing abilities. Matt as in Matt Cortez, the little bastard with a stack of porn in every corner of the room and a dvd burner.
Right now Matt is hearing pretty fucking well, which isn't really new to him. Just last week Ray muttered something under his breath, while they were playing, and Matt is certain he heard what Ray said even though he was on Frank’s side of the stage the whole time. It was: "Snickerdoodles, fucking snickerdoodles," which was probably the appropriate thing to say considering Frank had eaten a plateful earlier and was jumping Ray's back and humping Gerard and Mikey every other minute and a half. The somersaulting while having his guitar strapped onto him had been a new one for Frank.
At the end of the day, Matt settles for regular beer. That is, after he's done trying out the six other kinds of beverages. Beer quiets sounds the best, he decides, and mourns not walking around with a notebook in his backpocket so he could write it down and remember it in the morning when he's hungover and slumped over a toilet bowl.
.
It doesn't come as a complete surprise to Pete Wentz when Mikey makes it snow. They're sitting on the main stage, legs kicking the edge and it's night, too hot to be completely able to enjoy the fact that everyone is sleeping in their respectful bunks or passed out in the gutter or fucking somewhere that isn't here.
Mikey is typing on his sidekick, which isn't surprising either, because when does he not type on his sidekick? What's got Pete wondering though is whom he's typing to. It's none of his business but he can't help but be a little bit curious because, hello, 3am! The only one Pete knows is up for certain at this hour is himself, and then he feels his thigh vibrate.
It isn't a smug smile per se, and it dies out when he's read the message over twice, looking at Mikey dumbly because, yes, Mikey doesn't talk much but he talks some. Except now, when the cascades sing, Mikey raises his eyebrows and Pete's whole world as he knows it in the dark of the night turns white. And Mikey stays quiet.
hey watch this, he reads again, taking notice of the sarcastic little x's and o's at the end of the message. He thinks about writing a song about it, but it never makes the album.
.
Gerard's started sharing a room with Frank because there's really no other way his subconscious is willing to accept and it's useless to fight it. It's kinda embarrassing the way he kept just waking up in Frank's bed, a drool line wandering down the back of Frank's neck, hands and legs in weird positions, having absolutely no recollection of how he even got there. The door was always locked when they stayed in hotels and Donna had reassured him he never sleepwalked as a child.
Gerard tells Matt the more he drinks the worse it'll be because who the hell would want to go back to mundane normality after experiencing something like that, but Gerard can only make this reasoning from his own experiences. Truth is, it isn’t the beer that makes it stop, it just messes up the brain so much that it lets you pretend everything is normal again.
"I'd rather be hungover than hear you and Frank at nights, thanks," Matt says spitting into the toilet bowl. It isn’t even fair because Gerard has only ever whispered with Frank, and even then done it so quietly that no one should have heard. It isn't his fault he appears where ever Frank is at nights. It's just how it is. Just the same kind of weird that Ray does with the time.
.
Otter never got anything. It's not why he's kicked out of the band, but it managed to arouse suspicion, questions about whether he really belonged. He was the only one impressed with Cortez's good ears. Cortez included, who couldn’t help wondering, which would come first: alcoholism or madhouse. Beer was what made it better, but if Cortez had spent more time concentrating on managing this crazy son of a bitch of ability, he would have realized he could learn to control it.
.
Sometimes things are difficult to control, no matter how hard you try,
and then you stop trying.
.
It rains three weeks straight when Pete and Mikey break up. It's so muddy that Frank has to make his shoes hover over the ground when he steps outside, Starbucks and a double latte so clear in his mind that he doesn't even notice Gerard jumping down the bus steps until he slams his hands on Frank's back and grabs his wrist and then they just, appear.
In Starbucks.
Just behind the queue.
Gerard's hand still squeezing Frank's wrist so hard that it hurts.
"That was new," Frank says, his whole face tingling, Gerard beaming down at him from behind a thick hood and a thicker pair of sunglasses.
.
Sometimes the easiest thing in the world,
is to move on.
.
It was that tentative way Bob asked the question that made everyone fall in love with him.
"Motherfucker is staying!" Frank exclaimed, standing up from his spot on the couch next to a very sober Cortez who had gotten earmuffs for his birthday and was now proudly sporting them, pig pink or not. Frank highfived Gerard, danced over to Ray to climb his back and pull at his hair, and then made a kamikaze dive towards Mikey who had finally put his sidekick into his backpocket.
"So, like," Bob started, ignoring Frank and Mikey's wrestling match, focusing his eyes on Gerard and Ray instead. "This is normal to you guys?"
"As normal as it can ever be," Gerard said with a helpful smile, eyes drifting over to Mikey who had levitated up to the ceiling, and then at Frank sitting on the floor, eyes fixed on Mikey, tongue clicking the roof of his mouth with satisfaction and so much joy he was practically glowing.
Ray was curious. "So, you actually went back in time? Like for real?"
Bob nodded.
"That's impressive, man. I can only stop it... Freeze it?"
"I think it's freeze," Gerard offered in his 'I've read ten comics a day ever since I was a little kid; ask me anything' voice that generally impressed no one. But that weird lick of knowledge he had managed to gather during all those years of hardcore geekiness had come in handy surprisingly often ever since they discovered they had special abilities.
"Freezing time is pretty impressive, dude," Bob said, grunting when Frank wrapped an arm around his leg while still pressing Mikey into the ceiling.
"Nothing beats flying, right Mikes?"
Mikey had pulled his sidekick from his jeans' pocket and was too busy typing on it to take much notice of the situation.
2
"What would make it better?" Gerard asks against the side of Frank's neck. It's warm and a little damp from one of those colds the guy gets every other month, his immune system fucking him over again.
Frank's overdoing it to get more sympathies because it's their day off, no shows until Sunday evening. Even though the weather is a steady 75 degrees, partly cloudy so as to not hurt his eyes, Frank's managed to complain it being too cold one minute and too hot the next much to Mikey's annoyance.
He grunts, pressing a hand on Gerard's cheek, pulling at a stray lump of hair. "Miso soup," he says pathetically, feeling rather than hearing Gerard chuckling in the crook of his neck.
"You're fucking shameless. But okay, I think we can do this. Come here," Gerard says pulling Frank up from the bed, making him stand on the floor in the middle of the hotel room and promise not to say one fucking word to Brian because Brian will freak and then they will both get a lecture as long as a year of famine.
"I fucking know, okay? I'm sick not stupid."
"Okay. Well. You know what you gotta do," Gerard says tugging Frank close, locking his arms around his waist tightly and waiting for Frank to grasp his shoulders. Once Frank's settled into the embrace, Gerard closes his eyes and concentrates on things that aren't Frank, trying not to think about him, because Frank is what manages to distract him the most.
Japan is beautiful this time of the year.
"You brought me to Tokyo?" Frank is blinking dumbly at Gerard, eyes quickly drifting around the busy street they're standing in, recognizing it as belonging to the Ginza district from earlier visits.
"You said you wanted miso soup," Gerard says defensively, letting go of Frank's hand that he had somehow found himself holding when they arrived, even if his arms had been tightly around Frank's waist just a moment earlier.
"So you brought me to Tokyo," Frank says, momentarily forgetting to feel sick.
"So I did," Gerard says lamely. "Come on, then, let's go find that one place that lets you eat till you puke for a thousand yens." He starts walking down the street, pulling his hood over his head when a loud wave of teenagers in mini skirts and multicolored furry boots surge past him. The digital clock on a department store wall edges towards midnight.
It's raining by the time they finish eating, fat drops on yellow flowers, artificial light hitting wet asphalt, making Frank automatically think of Mikey. It's not Mikey who's making it rain; it doesn't work like that, they're too far away.
Frank's throat feels better after the soup but he's tired and freezing, can't find a way to stay dry in the heavy downpour that soaks through his hoodie and jeans making his skin cold and wet. Then he realizes how thankless he is for even thinking about having a new ability that would cloak and protect from rain. Like levitating isn't enough anymore even though it's more than enough.
"Ready to go?" Gerard asks, glancing up at the sky, lashes sticking together. The sky always feels higher when you're standing at the step of tall buildings.
Frank considers this. They came to Japan to eat soup. It's the strangest thing Gerard's ever done on a whim, which is saying a lot considering all the things he's ever done, but still, none of them can even compare to this, and Frank thinks, fuck it, if Gerard's being creative then he can be too.
"We're doing something else first," he says, taking Gerard's hand and dragging him out of the main street into a smaller one, and another until he finds a dark alley that's completely empty and uninteresting.
"Frank, what's up? What're you doing?" Gerard asks when Frank tugs him close all serious and secretive, pulling him into a tight hug that makes Gerard's stomach flip even worse than when Frank cracks a smile, bends his knees jumping up, and then they're flying over Tokyo twilight. It's got Gerard thinking about fucking Superman of all things, and then he can't think of anything other than Frank Frank Frank. Frank making a swoop, breaking rain clouds, Frank laughing into his mouth, Frank's hair stuck to his cheeks and forehead, Frank shivering from cold and sick.
With a well-focused thought Gerard finds himself back in the States, back in their hotel room, Frank still laughing against his face like he's high off the rain and wind and the thin feeling of clouds against his face.
Then they both collapse.
3
Funny thing is that when Gerard loses his power - and when he loses it, he can still feel it itching underneath the surface like a reminder - what he ends up missing the most is waking up with Frank in the mornings.
.
The goodbye concert tore something in Gerard’s chest, making it difficult to finish Helena for the last time, the taste of blood in his mouth too strong to go completely ignored.
Standing in snowfall on the stage, the picture frozen momentarily to allow the band take in the scene with minute attention; Frank hovering near Bob's drums as Bob tried to poke him in the ribs with his first pair of drumsticks that had gone missing years ago but were there now anyway, Ray and Mikey smiling at each other, Gerard thought the ending was as perfect as it could ever be. And apart from everything, at that very moment, he was content to start a new chapter in his life, to leave MyChem behind, tuck the memories away deep into his chest and keep them there.
.
Starting from the day after their last concert, it rained for a month and a half until Mikey collapsed on his bed and thought, no more, moving on.
.
When Frank comes to visit, it's with the support of crutches, leg in a cast. Gerard helps him totter up the stairs, the tingling of his dying power just under his skin burning and resurfacing upon touching Frank, making him wonder if he could bring them into the living room with the power of his mind.
He's too afraid to try.
The tingling doesn’t stop, and it feels just about the same as it felt like when he saw Bob the other week, and every time Mikey and Ray visit.
"What happened?" Gerard ends up asking, pushing all other thoughts aside.
"Broke my foot," Frank says unnecessarily, sighing when he reaches the couch, sitting down.
"Well, clearly, but-"
"I wanted to... Wanted to fly again, for the last time," Frank says sheepishly, lifting his foot on the coffee table with a soft thud, nodding when Gerard lets out a sympathetic sound. "I thought, y'know, if I could just get high enough, I'd remember again-"
"I don't think it's got to do with not 'membering as much as it's got to do with not being able to, anymore."
"Do you miss it?" There's that look on Frank's face, so earnest and open that Gerard doesn't know what to do with it, doesn't know if he should sit down on the couch next to him, pull him into a hug and let things evolve from there whichever way they want to evolve, or ask him if he wants some coffee.
What he ends up doing is shrugging, and telling Frank that yeah, he misses it. "Sometimes. Some parts more than the others."
Frank pretty much agrees, and Gerard makes coffee after that.
"Do you think we should have become superheroes when we still had the powers?" Frank asks lips touching the brim of a coffee cup that Gerard's started to consider a metaphorical signpost in just a little over five minutes time.
"Brian would have killed us," Gerard says dully, but he begins to smile when Frank cackles into the cup, puts it aside then even though he hasn't even finished it yet, not even half of it, and the undercurrent rises enough to have Gerard's skin burning again.
When Frank touches his wrist, Gerard sheds an eyelash, a thick one, that Frank brushes away without moving a muscle, holding his breath all the way through.