fic: My Ferry Romance (2/4)
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Monday morning on the ferry and Frank was occupied with a new friend.
There was a pug the size of an adult tomcat circling Frank’s ankles and snuffing at his pant legs. It was the kind of dog that looked like it had run face first into a wall as a puppy. Gerard had always felt a strange fondness for their breed.
Frank was wiping the tables clean and whistling, occasionally dropping the dog treats from abandoned breakfast plates underhandedly. When he spotted Gerard, he smiled wide and waved him over.
"Just sit down right here and I'll bring you some coffee, okay?" Frank gestured at the table he had just finished cleaning, and laughed sharply when the dog waggled its tail at Gerard, tongue hanging from its mouth and all.
The dog didn't follow Frank back to the counter. Instead, it shuffled on the floor for a while and then jumped on the chair next to Gerard. They sat and stared at each other for a while, Gerard contemplating whether he should pat it on the head, the dog lolling its tongue and drooling on the chair.
When Frank came back with a large mug of black coffee -- for some reason Gerard always seemed to get the largest mug available -- even when he didn't select it from the cart himself -- the dog had started nosing Gerard's wrist and licking at his palm.
"Aw, man. I hope Jekyll's not bothering you," Frank said while offering the mug to Gerard. Gerard took it and watched as Frank scooped the pug up in his arms. He cuddled the dog and licked at its muzzle, and Gerard was fucking sold.
"Nah," he said, and burned his tongue on the coffee. "Ungk. You named it Jekyll...as in, Dr. Jekyll?" His eyes were watering.
The dog fussed a bit and Frank bit gently at the top of its head. "Yep," he said.
"He's beautiful."
Frank flashed Gerard a brilliant smile, the smile of a proud parent.
"He was my ex-girlfriend's dog, actually, but she had to move to this place that doesn't allow any pets." Frank jutted out his lower lip as if he was sad about the news, but it was obviously faked since the guy was practically bouncing on his heels. "His real name's Nacho," Frank leaned in to whisper, covering the dog's ears as if that would keep it from hearing the name. "But I'm trying to teach him out of it."
Gerard was confused. Ex-girlfriend? He didn't know what the fuck to think anymore. What about Bob The Viking cook/The Boyfriend? "Huh," was all he managed to say.
"Yea, but s'okay. He's always liked me better anyway. I just need to fatten him up, scrawny pets are the worst. I dunno what she's been feeding him, poor pug." Jekyll whimpered and licked at Frank's face, maybe begging for more snacks, everywhere it could reach.
Gerard kind of wanted to run away and pull them both into a big bone-crushing hug all at once. He settled for fiddling with the corners of his folders, and when he finally left the ferry, they were left forgotten on the table.
--
Work was murder that day.
Gerard was twenty minutes late due to a sprout up construction site that definitely wasn't there yesterday. He had tried to sneak his way through the site, and even gotten halfway through before a fat man in blue overalls and a reflex vest noticed him and drove him away, calling him a motherfucker and a fag, a word he was so used to getting by now that it had completely lost its power. Nothing really could rival high school after playing Peter Pan in green tights for drama class.
He checked his calendar for any possible events that he could be late for, pink faced and sweaty, pulling at his scarves. There was a smudged scribble on the small square of today, which Gerard squinted to read.
"Son of a bitch," he swore, and tried to grab his folders, hands fumbling for ghost shapes on the desk, but nothing even remotely reminiscent of a folder stuck to his fingers. They weren't there, because he had fucking lost them this morning, so distracted by Frank and his dog that he hadn't realized to pick the folders up from the table when he left.
And since when was the meeting supposed to be in the morning? He was sure he had marked it for the afternoon. He was so screwed.
Feeling defeated and more than a little helpless, he sprinted off to meet The Boss.
Vicky found him brooding two hours later in the break room.
"New character?" she asked, perching up on the table, white stockings and the hem of her short black dress over her thighs.
Gerard stopped drawing and glanced up. Vicky nodded at the white napkin with a stylized marker pen Frank holding equally stylized Jekyll in his black and white cartoony arms and staring up at Gerard.
Gerard wriggled uncomfortably in his chair, his ears were burning up. "Uh. He's the guy I get my coffee from," he said vaguely, watching half-horrified, half-curious where Vicky would go with this information. She was a nice person, but ever since she had started dating Ryland Blackinton -- in the right, but still very small circles a well-admired one-half of a cult-like college music duo, This Is Ivy League -- she had began to feel that everyone else should have Someone To Love, too.
She cooed and smacked her booted heels together with excitement. Then she made Gerard tell her all about Frank. When they were done, Vicky claimed to be the number one fan of their Bigger Than Life Love Story, and told him to make a move already unless he wanted her to make that move for him.
At the end of their conversation, Gerard's spirits had lifted some, but they weren't high enough to take him through the rest of the day with his head held high.
The meeting had been a flop, a disaster that could have been avoided so easily, if only he wasn't such a fucking failure, if only he hadn't fucked things up so bad.
At the end of the day, he was glad that he still had his stupid job to return to.
--
Gerard's headache was reflecting his mood when he finally got back on the ferry that evening. He walked past two big guys leaning against a safety railing, shrinking deeper into his jacket, and did his best not to glare at them when they pointedly stopped talking and watched him go.
He had dressed up in his best and only suit for the occasion, hoping it would give him an air of professionalism. It was your basic black suit with a red and white striped tie, and it smelled like someone had died wearing it, and then spent his afterlife in the dumpster behind Gerard's apartment building until Gerard found him, rid him of his pants and jacket, and continued his journey upstairs.
Not that that was really what had happened.
The jacket's armpits were stiff from layers of deodorant Gerard had applied, not really covering the smell but adding to it. Gerard had deemed it fine, though, as long as you kept at an arm's length from him at all times.
Gerard looked around the place. He checked the chairs, and peeked under the table he sat by in the morning, but his folders weren't there. And fuck this shit, of all the days in his life he just had to lose them today. He sat down, frowned at the whole world and pressed his head down on folded arms.
"Gerard, hey."
It was Frank.
His hand dropped on Gerard's shoulder. Frank felt impossibly warm after the chilly evening air.
Gerard made a quiet noise. He didn't understand how Frank knew his name. He was sure he had never told it to him. In fact, he had spent the previous night wondering how he could still introduce himself in the least awkward way possible. He hadn't come up with anything.
"How d'you know m'name?" Gerard mumbled into his arms. The pressure on his shoulder increased momentarily, but just as suddenly it was gone. Under the table he could feel Frank's pug licking at his ankles.
"Here," Frank said, pushing something right-angled and worn under Gerard's arms. It was his art folders. Frank had kept them safe for him. "It says so inside. 'Property of Gerard Way'. I took a peek at your work." Frank's voice was quiet and reverent.
Gerard lifted his head and looked at Frank. There was that Hello My Name Is sticker again, now tacked on the chest of his skeleton apron, and reading 'PANSY' with easy flowers around the letters. His eyes were always pretty, but heavier in the evenings.
"Okay okay, I couldn't stop looking, like. Bob had to kick my ass to get me back to work," Frank confessed with a chuckle. "I think he just wanted to look at the sketches himself. 'Cause just. What you do... Fuck, it's all fucking incredible, man."
"Thanks," Gerard said with a dull voice. What did it matter how great his drawings were if he kept fucking up all the important meetings?
"I - shit, I hope you don't mind that I looked. I just, I got fucking curious as hell. You've been kind of a mystery to me. All I know about you is that you live and breathe coffee."
Gerard managed an unenthusiastic smile. He didn't even remember to freak out about Frank talking to him. Frank was pretty harmless anyway. "It's fine," he said.
"Like those Doom Patrol sketches? Fuckin' awesome, seriously," Frank gushed.
"You know Doom Patrol?" Gerard asked, momentarily forgetting to sulk. He could vaguely remember that boring afternoon when he was dicking around at work, sketching Cliff and Crazy Jane encased in something he'd rather not think about right now, and felt his face start to get hot.
Frank scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Well, duh," he said, and if Gerard hadn't been a complete goner for him before, he sure was now.
"Okay," he said. There was nothing short of genuine about that smile.
Frank paused, perched on the table, and just looked at Gerard in this concerned way that started to get kind of unsettling after a while. "Bad day, huh?" he finally asked.
"That's like, the understatement of the year."
"Had it something to do with forgetting these in here?" Frank nudged one of the folders with the tip of a finger. There was flaky black nail polish trying to break free from his fingernail.
Gerard grunted. Jekyll had settled down over his feet under the table. The pressure was warm and comforting, and Gerard just knew he would miss the presence when he had to leave.
"Shit, I'm sorry. I woulda like, brought it to you if I knew where you worked. Good job at writing down your name but no return address, dude."
"You woulda brought it to me?" Gerard asked with a frown.
Frank did that eyerolling thing again like Gerard was a complete moron for asking, and said, sincerely, "Of course I woulda. That's what I said."
Gerard just blinked at him until Jekyll started fussing over his feet. The dog finally leaped from under the table onto Gerard's lap, licked Gerard's chin questioningly, maybe looking for scratches under its ears. Frank gave Gerard an apologetic look, and reached down to pick the pug up in his arms, looking like he was making to leave. But before he could walk away, Gerard quickly wrapped his hand around Frank's arm, just under the elbow, and stopped him.
"Thank you," Gerard said with as much feeling he could muster, and gave Frank a reassuring smile. He didn't want them to leave. He had just started feeling like a human again. Frank and his pug were currently saving his day.
Frank nodded, wide eyes and all, and before he settled back on the table with Gerard unnecessarily aiding him, he leaned down and planted a quick kiss on the crown of Jekyll's head, forehead almost brushing against Gerard's chin.
Frank's nose was kind of near Gerard's armpit, and Gerard was sure Frank could smell his god awful suit jacket. He fidgeted self-consciously in his chair.
"S'no problem," Frank said with a kind of calmness that Gerard wouldn't have necessarily connected to him. "I hope you're not like, in trouble or anything. At work, I mean."
"Nah," Gerard said. "It's just that I was supposed to present something to my boss. And I kinda like, blew up my chance." He rolled his hand around its axis before he pushed it into Jekyll's wrinkly skin: it was like sinking his fingers into a mass of solid waves. The dog tried to roll its head enough to reach Gerard's hand with its wet nose and lick his palm.
Frank made an appropriate noise, but it was the most genuine sound Gerard thought he had ever heard. "Tell you what?" Frank said, and then called out to Bob who had just come out of the kitchen. "Yo Bob, my man!"
Bob let out an audible grunt and turned to look at Frank.
"You save any of that cake you made for me yesterday?"
"Yeah?" Bob said. He gave Gerard a look that Gerard wasn't sure how to interpret.
"Well, then! Bring Gerard some of that! After today, he totally deserves a piece or two." Bob shrugged and shambled back in the kitchen, flipping Frank off when he yelled after him, "And coffee!"
"You really didn't have to do that," Gerard said, a little horrified. Bob looked like he could kick Gerard's ass any day.
"Oh please," Frank huffed. "S'awesome cake."
By the time Bob came back with a bigger-than-life piece of what looked like really rich pumpkin cake topped with a large dollop of vanilla ice cream and a big mug of black coffee -- Frank seemed to have given up with his no coffee after eight rule -- Frank was still sitting on the table, his foot pressing into the side of Gerard's thigh, easily chatting with him about comic books. Comic books was one of the safest subjects to choose from when you were trying to hold a conversation with Gerard, and Frank exploited it shamelessly, like he was onto Gerard.
"So finally after our motherfucking long conversation is over, this dude," Frank pointed and grinned hard at Bob as the guy pushed the plate under Gerard's nose. "He's like, 'I can't believe you made me feel shitty about Superman' and then proceeded to sulk the entire fucking week. He wouldn't even cook for me, I had to resort to microwavable dinners. Felt like I was back in Rutgers even though I promised myself never again."
"Don't you have work to do?" Bob asked. He curled his finger around Frank's bangs and tugged hard enough to make Frank's whole face scrunch up.
Frank made a dismissive noise and pushed Bob away. "Waiting builds character."
"Wait till I tell Brian you said that." Bob winked at Gerard conspiringly.
"Ha. Brian loves me," Frank retorted, but he looked somewhat unsure of himself even as he said it.
"Keep telling yourself that," Bob said, shaking his head. Before he got back to work, he petted the dog and then Frank with similar affection.
Gerard watched him walk away. Frank had gone to Rutgers. Huh. Small world. He asked, though, "Who's Brian?"
"He's the owner," Frank said. "And the captain. He like, inherited the ferry from his granpa. Around these parts this is the only ferry that isn't owned by some big company."
"Huh, that's pretty awesome," Gerard said. Brian becoming the captain explained the disappearance of the old staff at least. Gerard wasn't generally a big fan of reforms, but he couldn't help but feel like this had been an improvement. He didn't even remember to miss old Edie very much.
He took a bite at the cake. It didn't look like much but it tasted pretty good, and it was already lifting his spirits higher than his chat with Vicky ever could have.
"I had no idea this was like, a private enterprise."
"That's the main reason I'm even working here," Frank said, conversationally. "Gotta support small businesses and the Schechters are old family friends."
Gerard would like to know if Frank was even real, because even with his ex-girlfriends and big dudes he occasionally liked to climb on and call them his, Frank was just too awesome to exist. All Gerard managed was a croak, though, and then he quickly stuffed more cake in his mouth.
The ferry was quiet again, softly illuminated by big white bulbs on wires. The bulbs were wound around the pillars and Frank's counter, and they were the only visible sign of Edie that still remained. She always liked her evenings served with a dash of romance and atmospheric lighting.
Gerard had seen some possible customers lining up near the counter earlier, but Frank had managed to completely ignore each and every one of them. He was still sitting with Gerard, currently busy reprimanding Jekyll for trying to snack on Gerard's plate.
"Jekyll, stop, no, stop doing that!" he said, and pulled on its collar. "Hey, hello? I'm talking to you, you motherfucker. What the fuck? For Christ's sake. Nacho, no!" The dog pricked up its ears upon hearing its old name, and looked around excitedly.
Frank let out a long, suffering sigh.
"I don't mind him eating this, really," Gerard tried to be helpful. "I'm actually really full already, that was a big piece. Besides, you told me you don't like scrawny pets."
"Doesn't mean he can just eat everything he sees." Jekyll made a pathetic noise and Frank relented. He put the dog on the table next to a tray full of dirty plates still waiting for Frank to take them back in the kitchen. Jekyll snuffed the plates for a while as if contemplating the supply until it finally settled for leftover eggs and bacon. It licked at the plate noisily while Frank scratched behind its ears.
They chatted the rest of the journey about Gerard's job. What had happened at the meeting today, and why Gerard was still pretty down about it.
Gerard told Frank all about his own concept, told him about Mother War, one of his favorite characters, how she was kind of the opposite of Brecht's Mother Courage, but more kickass.
Frank seemed really into the concept as well, and asked a lot of questions that Gerard was more than happy to answer. He was especially interested in the Parade of The Dead, a motley assortment of not-quite-your-ordinary heroes down in the underworld.
He made Gerard believe in his work in a way only Mikey had ever managed to, and Gerard's fingers itched to draw again; his head was full of ideas.
--
Bob had a project of some sort going on, Gerard concluded on an early October evening on the ferry.
He had been pondering about this for a while now, over various platefuls of dishes he could only connect to Halloween. For some inexplainable reason, Bob had taken to cooking something new to him every evening, and Frank was more than happy to serve Gerard, giving him every bit of his attention and only ignored him when pay time came.
Gerard hadn't been paying for his food and coffee since the folder incident a couple of weeks ago. One night on the phone, Mikey had advised him to slip bills into Frank's back pocket, but they had both soon come to the realization that Frank's skinny jeans were probably too tight for it to work, and Gerard just wasn't suave enough try anyway.
"Dracula's Blood Soup?" Gerard repeated after Frank. He needed to bring Mikey here sometime because there were just some things you couldn't explain over the phone.
"Bob really outdid himself this time, huh?" Frank said with the same kind of excitement he always had for Bob's culinary experiments. Frank was Bob's biggest fan. They didn't seem to have crossed the line between friends and, well, something more, though. Or if they had, they hid it really well.
The ferry in itself seemed to have gradually changed in clientele: where there once was a gray mass of workers on their way to Manhattan and back now swarmed with kids, young women and pensioners, all attracted to Frank like moths to fire. It would have been cuter if they didn't all crowd around Frank like he was the next Idol or something, and Gerard couldn't believe he had sunk so low that he was jealous of five-year-old pigtail girls and women older than Elena, all bad perms and smelling like sweeteners.
The young women were the worst. They moved in large groups and chatted noisily, getting into hysterics whenever Frank was nearby.
A pack walked past Gerard and Frank like a storm, giggles and noisy whispers, but Frank's eyes stayed on Gerard, expectant and pretty. "Aren't you gonna try it out?" he asked, and Gerard suddenly remembered he was supposed to eat the soup and give Frank his honest, unbiased opinion. So far he had only ever dared to praise the food. He wondered if they would ever end up on the menu.
Gerard pushed a tentative spoonful into his mouth. It was just tomato soup, which he was thankful for. He was the first to admit how awesome it would be to have real blood in Dracula's Blood Soup, but in the end, he just wasn't all that confident in his digestion's ability to handle it.
On a Wednesday evening Gerard finally found out what the strange dishes were all about.
"It's kinda totally lame, but that's what I asked for my birthday this year," Frank said with a flicker of a smile. "To have Bob cook for me something special each day in October until my birthday on Halloween."
Gerard had never met anyone with as much faith in someone else's abilities as Frank had.
"Your birthday's on Halloween?" he asked. He didn't know why he was so surprised about it. It looked like Halloween had vomited all over Frank, rubbed up against him, and then become his best friend for life. Everything about Frank screamed Halloween.
Frank grinned really fucking hard. "Coolest day ever, huh?"
Gerard agreed. Because, yeah.
"Was there a reason why I ate your present, though?"
Frank grinned harder. "Leftovers," he said.
"Oh."
"Dude, don't be that way!" Frank joked. "I only ever share with cool people." There was a tick of a pause before he added, "People I like."
Gerard was kind of pleased to notice that Frank's face was a nice shade of pink now; he was sure that his own one looked at least twice as red.
"So hey," Frank prompted after a beat. Gerard had slumped into silence again. But, what do you even say after something like that? "There's gonna be this totally lame party at my place on Halloween. It's kinda like, a tradition?"
"Sure," Gerard said, unsuspecting.
"I've always had them as far as I can remember. My mom's pretty into Halloween, too, and she used to always throw me these big spook parties when I was a kid, sometimes she had all the kids in the neighborhood come by, but mostly it was just me and her. And it'll kinda just, follow me to the end, I think. I doubt that I can go through Halloween without doing something and --" Frank took a breath. Gerard had never seen him nervous before.
"Would you like to come?"
Gerard blinked.
"To my place, I mean, on Halloween," Frank added quickly. His thumb was pressing hard on the inside of his hoodie cuff and there was a knoll on his mouth where his tongue was poking his lip ring.
"Oh!" Gerard said loudly. His ears were ringing.
It had been a long time since he was invited anywhere that didn't have something to do with his brother or his work, or Ray's heavy metal/hard rock get-togethers where Ray proceeded to thrum at his guitar all the while making comments about Campbell and how Persian Risk were totally the shit.
"It's gonna be just me and Bob and a couple of friends. Gabe's totally cool once you get over the weirdness factor. And I think you might like Nolan and Jesse. They can come off as a little...uh, pretentious, but not obnoxiously so. Um." He glanced up at the counter. There were people there, waiting to be served. "Just think about it, okay? I gotta get back to work." Frank said before jogging away.
Gerard watched as Frank chatted with a woman in her mid-thirties who was holding a little girl's hand. The girl had black hair in braids peeking out from the trimming of her hat and a stuffed cotton ghost under her arm.
Frank winked at the kid and climbed over the counter, dropping down to his knees, eye-level with her. Frank reached up and took a handful of candy from a glass jar on the counter, smiling at the kid as he pushed colorfully wrapped sweets into the girl's kelly green parka pocket. Her mother said something Gerard couldn't make out of, and the kid reached up on tiptoes, wrapped her tiny arms around Frank's neck, and kissed his cheek.
And yeah, as much as Gerard hated parties where he didn't know the majority of the people, he'd have to go this time.
He'd do it for Frank.
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