"Blackbird" (robot!fic timestamp, R, Frank/Gerard, MCR)
Oh hey, remember those timestamps? I BARELY DO. I started this one a while ago, and decided to try writing it again tonight, and finished it! Soooooooooo here it is!
Blackbird
timestamp to The Way They Fly
2000 words, R
(Thank you to brooklinegirl for the instant (and live-action!) beta. ♥)
*
Gerard noticed that his hand was still poised over the tablet, the next brush stroke just a movement away. He snatched his hand back and turned his back to the window.
“What are you - what do you mean -”
“I mean, Gritter’s no longer a shareholder.”
Gerard squeezed his eyes shut and slumped down. His ass wedged against his desk, he waited for his heart rate to return to normal.
“Ray, how did you get my -”
“How do you think?”
Mikey. If Mikey had thought it safe, Gerard had to trust that. He breathed out and turned back towards the window. It was past noon, and the sun scorched the clay barn they had out back. “Okay.” Frank was patiently training Sweet Pea to bark at the ridiculous scarecrow Frank had mounted in the yard entrance. “Okay. Ray?”
“Yes?”
“I gotta go.” Gerard blindly reached out and slapped the wall unit behind him. The hum of the line went dead.
He watched as Frank’s face crinkled in a smile and he opened up his arms, Sweet Pea bouncing up to him, scrawny tail wagging back and forth. Texas yipped her way to both of them. Frank’s laughter filtered in through the window, and then Gerard could no longer see him as both droid and animal beings tumbled down to the ground and dust engulfed them whole.
*
“Gee? I’m heading into town, do you want to come?”
Frank’s head peered around the corner, and the rest of him followed the grin, striding into Gerard’s studio, the dogs yapping at his heels. It was rare that he could tell a difference between real and handmade, but just then Texas was emitting the slightest hum that Gerard would have to take a look at later. He made a conscious effort to turn his frown upside down, and said, “Sure. Let me grab my card.”
*
Celestún was a place that time forgot. A long time ago, it was a fishing village, but not anymore. Most of Yucatan’s lush forests cut down, and with the waters tainted irreparably, the town was now a small, scorched skeleton of what it once was. Stepping onto the dusty main street, Gerard always felt like he was walking through a hologram of the past. But he’d touched the stucco walls and the old women’s hands too many times not to believe it was real. Frank walked by his side, smiling against the sun. He didn’t need sunglasses like Gerard. He never thought about the past.
Gerard linked their hands together and rubbed his thumb over Frank’s tattooed fingers. He never asked where they were going, because Frank always just knew better than he did what they needed. A butcher provided them with the meat flown in from up north, a bread maker who specialized in rice breads threw in a pastry or two every now and then, and a family of six kept them in butter, milk, and cheese. Frank grew decent veggies in the shaded part of their yard, where Gerard had managed to engineer some fertile soil.
But those were never their main destinations, and Frank kept track of the list for that, too.
“Hola, Xu,” Frank said his usual greeting.
Xu never answered, simply grunting and waving them into the shaded tent he operated out of. This time, Frank headed directly for the back partition where Xu kept the pricey shit - drives, connectors, replacement toggles that Gerard and Frank had come to rely on.
Gerard let Frank lead. Xu didn’t know he was dealing with a droid, just someone whose Spanish was far superior to Gerard’s, and Frank had come to learn more haggling techniques than Gerard ever had. Gerard hung back and idly sorted through the pile of tablets and stylos, twirling a nice heavy one between two fingers before Frank’s voice called out to him. Gerard tugged on his collar - the afternoon heat was fucking unbearable sometimes - and walked over to where Frank and Xu were huddled over a delivery, taking the stylo with him.
“He wants to know if this is what we wanted,” Frank said, hefting a small battery back-up in his hand. As if responding to its kind, the backup beeped once and lit up a nice green. Gerard could feel Xu’s gaze on him as he took the piece and examined it from every possible angle. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Xu, he was just always - careful. You could never be too careful.
Putting up a single finger - “Un momento!” - he led Frank away by the arm to where they could talk in private. He could never tell if Xu couldn’t speak English, or if he just didn’t speak it in front of them.
“What do you think?”
Frank shrugged, looking Gerard in the eye in that lingering, uber-focused way he had. “It feels solid to me. I don’t think there has been any damage, and it’s worth the asking price.”
Gerard never asked the price of anything, he simply trusted Frank to know what they could and could not afford. “All right. Tell him we’ll take it.”
Frank took a step toward Xu.
“Wait -“ Gerard grabbed his arm. “For a hundred pesos less than what he wants. And throw in this.” He thrust the stylo into Frank’s hand.
Frank nodded and walked back over to Xu, speaking rapid Spanish. Gerard waited for him at the tent flap, shading his eyes against the ever-beating rays.
*
“Is that the next piece?” Frank asked, carefully planting his ass onto Gerard’s desk.
Gerard looked up and tossed the sketch tablet aside. “Nah, just…fucking around.” He was working on Frank’s next tattoo, but that shit took time.
“Are you hungry?” Frank tilted his head and took Gerard’s hand, fingers intertwining.
He’d learned so much about Gerard; Gerard sometimes wondered whether he’d ever know Frank in the same way. His life consisted of irony sometimes.
“Sure, is it time to eat?”
“And which one of us is the droid, huh?” Frank laughed and hopped off the desk. “Yes, Gee, it’s dinner time.”
Frank always watched Gerard eat. It had kind of been unsettling at first, being scrutinized like that when he wasn’t exactly at his most attractive, but he was now so used to it, it barely registered with him. Frank also went through a period of asking how every food tasted, but their menu options here were limited enough that he’d learned it all by now.
He’d also learned how much lime Gerard preferred in his guac, learned the ratio of corn meal to water that made for the best tortillas, learned all kinds of things that Gerard could never have retained on his own.
“Is it good?” Frank asked now, chin propped up on one hand.
Gerard swallowed his bite and nodded, shoveling more in. Frank just laughed at him, then went to refill Sweet Pea’s bowl.
*
He didn’t know what he wanted. That was the problem. If he knew, he could just - just tell him, just say something, ask him, what do you want?
But Frank was too literal, sometimes, for Gerard’s panicked moods. Crises of conscience, worries over the right thing - it was too simple for Frank, and too hard for Gerard. Frank was too logical; Gerard too inconsistent.
Frank simply let him stew until he was ready. Frank had learned to read him as well as the books he managed to swallow by hours.
Frank found him out in the garden at two in the morning. Gerard couldn’t sleep. The cherry of his cigarette must have given him away. Frank rarely woke up in the middle of a sleep cycle, but maybe one of the dogs had triggered the alarm.
“Hey,” he called out as he crept up to the bench. “You couldn’t sleep?”
Gerard sighed and scooted over so Frank could fit next to him. They were both wearing shorts, weird nods to modesty, even out here, where no one would see them. The peeks of Frank’s birds on his hips were just a darker shadow in the dark.
“No, I - I was thinking.” Just tell him. Just say it, we could go home.
“What about?” Frank nestled against his shoulder, completely unaware of what the trusting move did to Gerard, the kick it gave his gut every single fucking time.
“Just - us. And -“ Say it. Just say it. “I miss Mikey.”
Frank was quiet for a bit, sidling up until their hips were flush. “Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
*
He didn’t say it out on the bench, and he didn’t say it when he fucked Frank later, at the darkest of hours, right before dawn hit.
Frank clung to him, arms, legs, wrapped all around him so tight, Gerard barely had space to move. But he could move enough to bury himself balls-deep inside Frank, fuck him until they were both so loud, they woke up the dogs, who scratched at the door and yelped at them. But Gerard barely heard them, barely heard anything above their two voices. He tasted the siliskin of Frank’s shoulder, just this side of being careful with his teeth; felt the shudder, so close to real it all but undid him, and then Frank came beneath him, shouting out curses in languages that Gerard could barely recognize.
Every time; every fucking time that Frank came, Gerard felt like a god, felt like he could do anything, take on the goddamn world. He’d done this; made it; from the first twitches to the last spasms, he was the sole creator of Frank’s pleasure, and its sole recipient. The only one who’d ever know.
He never lasted long after that, and Frank didn’t help. Cajoling him with his hands and his mouth and his voice, he drew Gerard to the edge, then gripped him hard as he went over; Frank’s tongue always tasted like Gerard’s, afterwards. Like real sweat and real skin and real blood.
*
He told him as they lay in bed, watching the sun slowly light its way onto the horizon.
“We can stop running,” he said.
“Running where?” Frank asked, confused, then his weight grew heavier against Gerard’s side. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“What - what changed?” Frank shifted until he was propped up on his hand, watching Gerard so carefully, he actually stopped blinking.
“We’re - the shareholder who was, you know…”
“Threatening you?” Frank asked.
“Yeah. He’s gone. The - the institute is moving in a different direction.” He’d parroted the last words, could almost hear Ray’s voice from earlier. “I guess.” He’d missed Ray, too.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
They watched each other, the pink glow settling on their bodies, their sheets, coating Frank’s hair in its pale hue. Gerard moved instinctively, pushing a strand of Frank’s hair behind his ear before leaning up and giving him a soft kiss. He could never really help himself.
“So, what do you wanna do?” Frank asked.
Why did the answers to his questions always come so much easier than when Gerard asked them himself?
*
It didn’t take long for them to pack. Most of their stuff fit into two bags; the dogs went into crates. Gerard considered powering Texas down until the trip was done, but he didn’t want to traumatize Sweet Pea any more than was necessary. She hadn’t met Texas until Texas was complete. They left the house to the care of Munzuma.
Over two years had passed, and as soon as they landed in New York, the very air tasted like home. Frank was the one to grab their luggage from the overhead, the one to help the old lady with her bag, the one to gallantly allow the mother of two walk out ahead of them. Gerard was chomping at the bit, ready to kick him in the ass just to make him move already, and the first thing he did when they were out was light up, leaning with his back against the rough stone of the terminal. It was cold. They both only had t-shirts on, but Frank barely showed that he even knew the temperature; Gerard was freezing.
Mikey pulled up deceptively casual, beeping his horn, like they did this every week.
Gerard’s gut lurched at the baby seat in the back.
Frank gave him a slight but firm push; Gerard made his legs move.
Mikey pressed the button, and the door whooshed open.
They got in.
***
Blackbird
timestamp to The Way They Fly
2000 words, R
(Thank you to brooklinegirl for the instant (and live-action!) beta. ♥)
*
Gerard noticed that his hand was still poised over the tablet, the next brush stroke just a movement away. He snatched his hand back and turned his back to the window.
“What are you - what do you mean -”
“I mean, Gritter’s no longer a shareholder.”
Gerard squeezed his eyes shut and slumped down. His ass wedged against his desk, he waited for his heart rate to return to normal.
“Ray, how did you get my -”
“How do you think?”
Mikey. If Mikey had thought it safe, Gerard had to trust that. He breathed out and turned back towards the window. It was past noon, and the sun scorched the clay barn they had out back. “Okay.” Frank was patiently training Sweet Pea to bark at the ridiculous scarecrow Frank had mounted in the yard entrance. “Okay. Ray?”
“Yes?”
“I gotta go.” Gerard blindly reached out and slapped the wall unit behind him. The hum of the line went dead.
He watched as Frank’s face crinkled in a smile and he opened up his arms, Sweet Pea bouncing up to him, scrawny tail wagging back and forth. Texas yipped her way to both of them. Frank’s laughter filtered in through the window, and then Gerard could no longer see him as both droid and animal beings tumbled down to the ground and dust engulfed them whole.
*
“Gee? I’m heading into town, do you want to come?”
Frank’s head peered around the corner, and the rest of him followed the grin, striding into Gerard’s studio, the dogs yapping at his heels. It was rare that he could tell a difference between real and handmade, but just then Texas was emitting the slightest hum that Gerard would have to take a look at later. He made a conscious effort to turn his frown upside down, and said, “Sure. Let me grab my card.”
*
Celestún was a place that time forgot. A long time ago, it was a fishing village, but not anymore. Most of Yucatan’s lush forests cut down, and with the waters tainted irreparably, the town was now a small, scorched skeleton of what it once was. Stepping onto the dusty main street, Gerard always felt like he was walking through a hologram of the past. But he’d touched the stucco walls and the old women’s hands too many times not to believe it was real. Frank walked by his side, smiling against the sun. He didn’t need sunglasses like Gerard. He never thought about the past.
Gerard linked their hands together and rubbed his thumb over Frank’s tattooed fingers. He never asked where they were going, because Frank always just knew better than he did what they needed. A butcher provided them with the meat flown in from up north, a bread maker who specialized in rice breads threw in a pastry or two every now and then, and a family of six kept them in butter, milk, and cheese. Frank grew decent veggies in the shaded part of their yard, where Gerard had managed to engineer some fertile soil.
But those were never their main destinations, and Frank kept track of the list for that, too.
“Hola, Xu,” Frank said his usual greeting.
Xu never answered, simply grunting and waving them into the shaded tent he operated out of. This time, Frank headed directly for the back partition where Xu kept the pricey shit - drives, connectors, replacement toggles that Gerard and Frank had come to rely on.
Gerard let Frank lead. Xu didn’t know he was dealing with a droid, just someone whose Spanish was far superior to Gerard’s, and Frank had come to learn more haggling techniques than Gerard ever had. Gerard hung back and idly sorted through the pile of tablets and stylos, twirling a nice heavy one between two fingers before Frank’s voice called out to him. Gerard tugged on his collar - the afternoon heat was fucking unbearable sometimes - and walked over to where Frank and Xu were huddled over a delivery, taking the stylo with him.
“He wants to know if this is what we wanted,” Frank said, hefting a small battery back-up in his hand. As if responding to its kind, the backup beeped once and lit up a nice green. Gerard could feel Xu’s gaze on him as he took the piece and examined it from every possible angle. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Xu, he was just always - careful. You could never be too careful.
Putting up a single finger - “Un momento!” - he led Frank away by the arm to where they could talk in private. He could never tell if Xu couldn’t speak English, or if he just didn’t speak it in front of them.
“What do you think?”
Frank shrugged, looking Gerard in the eye in that lingering, uber-focused way he had. “It feels solid to me. I don’t think there has been any damage, and it’s worth the asking price.”
Gerard never asked the price of anything, he simply trusted Frank to know what they could and could not afford. “All right. Tell him we’ll take it.”
Frank took a step toward Xu.
“Wait -“ Gerard grabbed his arm. “For a hundred pesos less than what he wants. And throw in this.” He thrust the stylo into Frank’s hand.
Frank nodded and walked back over to Xu, speaking rapid Spanish. Gerard waited for him at the tent flap, shading his eyes against the ever-beating rays.
*
“Is that the next piece?” Frank asked, carefully planting his ass onto Gerard’s desk.
Gerard looked up and tossed the sketch tablet aside. “Nah, just…fucking around.” He was working on Frank’s next tattoo, but that shit took time.
“Are you hungry?” Frank tilted his head and took Gerard’s hand, fingers intertwining.
He’d learned so much about Gerard; Gerard sometimes wondered whether he’d ever know Frank in the same way. His life consisted of irony sometimes.
“Sure, is it time to eat?”
“And which one of us is the droid, huh?” Frank laughed and hopped off the desk. “Yes, Gee, it’s dinner time.”
Frank always watched Gerard eat. It had kind of been unsettling at first, being scrutinized like that when he wasn’t exactly at his most attractive, but he was now so used to it, it barely registered with him. Frank also went through a period of asking how every food tasted, but their menu options here were limited enough that he’d learned it all by now.
He’d also learned how much lime Gerard preferred in his guac, learned the ratio of corn meal to water that made for the best tortillas, learned all kinds of things that Gerard could never have retained on his own.
“Is it good?” Frank asked now, chin propped up on one hand.
Gerard swallowed his bite and nodded, shoveling more in. Frank just laughed at him, then went to refill Sweet Pea’s bowl.
*
He didn’t know what he wanted. That was the problem. If he knew, he could just - just tell him, just say something, ask him, what do you want?
But Frank was too literal, sometimes, for Gerard’s panicked moods. Crises of conscience, worries over the right thing - it was too simple for Frank, and too hard for Gerard. Frank was too logical; Gerard too inconsistent.
Frank simply let him stew until he was ready. Frank had learned to read him as well as the books he managed to swallow by hours.
Frank found him out in the garden at two in the morning. Gerard couldn’t sleep. The cherry of his cigarette must have given him away. Frank rarely woke up in the middle of a sleep cycle, but maybe one of the dogs had triggered the alarm.
“Hey,” he called out as he crept up to the bench. “You couldn’t sleep?”
Gerard sighed and scooted over so Frank could fit next to him. They were both wearing shorts, weird nods to modesty, even out here, where no one would see them. The peeks of Frank’s birds on his hips were just a darker shadow in the dark.
“No, I - I was thinking.” Just tell him. Just say it, we could go home.
“What about?” Frank nestled against his shoulder, completely unaware of what the trusting move did to Gerard, the kick it gave his gut every single fucking time.
“Just - us. And -“ Say it. Just say it. “I miss Mikey.”
Frank was quiet for a bit, sidling up until their hips were flush. “Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
*
He didn’t say it out on the bench, and he didn’t say it when he fucked Frank later, at the darkest of hours, right before dawn hit.
Frank clung to him, arms, legs, wrapped all around him so tight, Gerard barely had space to move. But he could move enough to bury himself balls-deep inside Frank, fuck him until they were both so loud, they woke up the dogs, who scratched at the door and yelped at them. But Gerard barely heard them, barely heard anything above their two voices. He tasted the siliskin of Frank’s shoulder, just this side of being careful with his teeth; felt the shudder, so close to real it all but undid him, and then Frank came beneath him, shouting out curses in languages that Gerard could barely recognize.
Every time; every fucking time that Frank came, Gerard felt like a god, felt like he could do anything, take on the goddamn world. He’d done this; made it; from the first twitches to the last spasms, he was the sole creator of Frank’s pleasure, and its sole recipient. The only one who’d ever know.
He never lasted long after that, and Frank didn’t help. Cajoling him with his hands and his mouth and his voice, he drew Gerard to the edge, then gripped him hard as he went over; Frank’s tongue always tasted like Gerard’s, afterwards. Like real sweat and real skin and real blood.
*
He told him as they lay in bed, watching the sun slowly light its way onto the horizon.
“We can stop running,” he said.
“Running where?” Frank asked, confused, then his weight grew heavier against Gerard’s side. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“What - what changed?” Frank shifted until he was propped up on his hand, watching Gerard so carefully, he actually stopped blinking.
“We’re - the shareholder who was, you know…”
“Threatening you?” Frank asked.
“Yeah. He’s gone. The - the institute is moving in a different direction.” He’d parroted the last words, could almost hear Ray’s voice from earlier. “I guess.” He’d missed Ray, too.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
They watched each other, the pink glow settling on their bodies, their sheets, coating Frank’s hair in its pale hue. Gerard moved instinctively, pushing a strand of Frank’s hair behind his ear before leaning up and giving him a soft kiss. He could never really help himself.
“So, what do you wanna do?” Frank asked.
Why did the answers to his questions always come so much easier than when Gerard asked them himself?
*
It didn’t take long for them to pack. Most of their stuff fit into two bags; the dogs went into crates. Gerard considered powering Texas down until the trip was done, but he didn’t want to traumatize Sweet Pea any more than was necessary. She hadn’t met Texas until Texas was complete. They left the house to the care of Munzuma.
Over two years had passed, and as soon as they landed in New York, the very air tasted like home. Frank was the one to grab their luggage from the overhead, the one to help the old lady with her bag, the one to gallantly allow the mother of two walk out ahead of them. Gerard was chomping at the bit, ready to kick him in the ass just to make him move already, and the first thing he did when they were out was light up, leaning with his back against the rough stone of the terminal. It was cold. They both only had t-shirts on, but Frank barely showed that he even knew the temperature; Gerard was freezing.
Mikey pulled up deceptively casual, beeping his horn, like they did this every week.
Gerard’s gut lurched at the baby seat in the back.
Frank gave him a slight but firm push; Gerard made his legs move.
Mikey pressed the button, and the door whooshed open.
They got in.
***