Fic: The Anatomy of a Fall (MCR, Frank/Gerard, 6/12)
Part 5 and Part 5 cont. | Index
***
Mikey rolled his eyes.
“What?” Gerard said defensively. “Okay, fine, I won’t bring any test tubes. But I’m still ordering the EMP reader off eBay.”
“You’re so lame,” Mikey said hoarsely, but he was grinning, just a little. Gerard had his mom’s laptop balanced carefully on his knees, and they were watching streamed episodes online of the Paranormal Investigative team scouting out an abandoned textile mill. Gerard had spent the ride to the hospital texting Mikey non-stop, and Mikey seemed to have provisionally accepted that his brother wasn’t a delusional paranoid schizophrenic. He was a little put out that Gerard hadn’t taken any pictures, though.
A camera, that should totally be on Gerard’s list of supplies. He scribbled it down in his notebook.
“You make fun, but I have an obligation to science,” Gerard said loftily, and squinted at the screen again. “You think I should bring a tape recorder? For EVP?”
“I thought you could hear Frank without the aid of electronics?” Mikey asked, deadpan. It was like he could roll his eyes with his entire body. Maybe his brother had supernatural powers of sarcasm. It was possible. Anything was possible.
“It’s a brave new world!” Gerard said grandly, and Mikey rolled his eyes. Again.
“So. Lame,” he repeated, rubbing absently at his chest. “So. How’d Frank die?”
Gerard busied himself with the mouse. “Don’t know,” he muttered, then brightened. “Oh, look. Thermal imaging! Hey, that video recorder you got for last Christmas has some weird settings, right? You think it has heat sensors?”
Mikey glared at him and made the universal sibling sign for ‘if you steal my shit I’ll fucking end you’: narrowed eyes and a tight jerk of the head, followed by the jaw clench.
“I won’t break it, jeez,” Gerard said, offended, and Mikey sighed.
“Be careful, Gee.” His voice was faint and soft, but Gerard had gotten used to listening to his brother speaking in whispers and half-drawn breaths. He heard. “If Frank’s really dead… be careful with him.”
“Huh? Frank’s not going to hurt me,” Gerard said, startled into looking up. Mikey was staring at him with bruised, solemn eyes. Gerard wanted to wrap him in ten thousand quilts and take him home and feed him beer and Hot Pockets and lame late-night TV. He hated the hospital lighting, sterile and unforgiving, throwing stark shadows everywhere. He didn’t know how Mikey stood it, but the doctor said maybe Mikey could go home next week, just come in every other day for treatments, so. There was hope.
“That’s not what I meant,” Mikey replied slowly. “You know what I meant.” Gerard feigned confusion and scrolled through the next commercial break. The team was headed to a haunted duck pond next. That actually sort of almost applied to Gerard’s situation with Frank. Fucking outdoorsy ghosts.
“Maybe I’ll be out of this fucking hospital next week,” Mikey said. “Maybe I could-” He broke off and coughed carefully. Gerard shoved the notebook and pen at him and scowled.
“Okay, moratorium on talking, or you’ll be stuck here forever,” he said, and folded the pen into Mikey’s hand. Mikey wrinkled his nose and sighed. “Hey! Maybe next week you can meet Frank!”
Even Mikey’s silences had an eye-rolling, long-suffering aura about them. It was uncanny.
That was the idea, he wrote in his spidery handwriting. You think Frank would mind?
“Why would he mind?” Gerard asked, and sighed when Mikey raised an eyebrow. “I mean, yeah, I guess it’s kind of a secret, but it’s you! I’m sure he knew I’d tell you.”
There was a pointed silence.
“Fine,” Gerard huffed. “I’ll ask him tonight. We’re meeting in the forest, you know, and he’s going to make me a bonfire, and walk through walls. It’s going to be awesome.”
Then Mikey drew a picture of two stick figures sitting in a tree with hearts for eyes and one with a vapor-trail body that was apparently supposed to imply ghostness, and Gerard had to scribble it out and spend the rest of his visit carefully explaining that it wasn’t like that, shut up shut up, and then Nurse Ratched came in and yelled at him for making Mikey laugh, and Mikey smirked at him the whole time Gerard was getting chewed out.
Just for that, Gerard was totally stealing his camera.
***
It really sucked, though. Now that Mikey had brought it up, Gerard couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t just focus on how fucking awesome it was that ghosts existed when he kept getting tripped up on the fact that Frank being a ghost meant that Frank had, at some point, died. Which was less awesome and more like his heart collapsing in on itself.
He scowled at his reflection in the kitchen window and made sure to wedge a bottle of gin into his bag alongside the marshmallows and investigative supplies. He was ready to go, but once outside he found himself lingering on the porch, hesitant to step out of the pool of the light into the dark street.
Finally he had to stop dithering and just forced himself to go. He stopped in the school parking lot and fumbled through his bag for his flashlight, glad he’d remembered to pack one. It was one thing to walk through the empty streets of town, and it was something else entirely to leave the streets and approach the dark mass of the forest. To be honest, the thin beam of light didn’t seem nearly adequate to the task, but Frank would be waiting, and Gerard didn’t have time to find another, or put together a candelabra or a lantern or whatever. So he just shouldered his bag of ghost paraphernalia, took a deep breath, and left the pavement.
He stopped halfway across the field to check the temperature again on the little thermometer he’d pried off the birdbath in the backyard. 38 degrees Fahrenheit. He held the flashlight in his teeth as he carefully recorded it in his notebook, along with the time (12:19 AM) and cloud cover (minimal).
When he got to the edge of the woods, Frank was there waiting for him, grinning crookedly.
“You rang?” he asked, doing a passable impression of Lurch for someone his height, then bounced on his heels and flung his arms around Gerard’s neck as soon as Gerard crossed the boundary. Gerard tolerated it for a second and then shoved Frank off, laughing nervously.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to come,” Frank said, rocking back on his heels, eyes never leaving Gerard’s face. “Like, maybe you’d think I was a fragment of underdone potato or something.”
“Even if I did,” Gerard said, surreptitiously checking the temperature again, peeking in his bag at the thermometer. 33 degrees, holy fuck. That was fast. “I’d still have come back to make sure, you know? Plus, if you’re a potato, you’re the most awesome potato ever.”
“Aww, Gee, you say the sweetest shit,” Frank said, eyes crinkling happily. “You’d totally be a kickass spud yourself.”
Gerard smiled stupidly down at his bag.
“Hey, want me to carry that for you?” Frank said, bouncing a little closer. “I mean, we’re not going far, just into the woods enough that no one can see the fire from the town.”
“It’s just a backpack,” Gerard said hastily, clutching the bag protectively. “I can carry it. But, uh. Thanks.”
“No, I know,” Frank said, leading the way down the path. Gerard hefted the bag on his shoulder and shone the flashlight around nervously. “Just thought I’d help, if you wanted. What all do you have in there? It looks heavy as balls.”
“Uh,” Gerard said guiltily, and then, fumbling for a change of subject, waved his flashlight around nervously. “You know, I just brought supplies and stuff. Marshmallows. Hey, how do you get around out here? I mean, I guess you don’t have to worry about tripping on shit, but it’s still pretty dark.”
“Well… yeah,” Frank replied, snickering. “Well spotted. It is in fact nighttime, genius.”
Gerard aimed a kick at the back of Frank’s leg and nearly tipped over into a bush. It was the thought that counted, though.
“I can see in the dark, obviously,” continued Frank, oblivious to the ninja-revenge attempt taking place behind him. The jerk. “Well. Actually, I don’t know if that’s it, exactly. It’s more like… light and dark don’t matter so much anymore?”
“Dude,” Gerard said reverently, and dug out his little notebook to write all that down. He wished Mikey were here-Mikey would be awesome at figuring out how to test and quantify all this shit. Gerard was having to use shorthand just to scribble this all down, though, so hopefully the notes would be legible when he presented them to Mikey later.
Frank was getting way ahead of him, and Gerard was fucking useless in the woods even when it was light out. Frank didn’t say anything as Gerard jogged to catch up, just raised a quizzical eyebrow and then dragged Gerard off onto a new path, one that wound up a steep hill. Gerard wheezed at Frank unhappily and Frank laughed and shouldered Gerard’s bag, tugging him onward by the sleeve. Somehow they missed all the rocks and trees and outstretched thorny branches, as though the forest was parting before them, and then finally they were clearing the woods.
They were on top of a rocky outcrop overlooking the river, frothing white and furious fifty feet below them. There was a crescent moon in the sky, and so many stars that looking at the sky almost hurt Gerard’s eyes after the darkness beneath the trees. There was a giant stack of firewood waiting, and a perfectly crafted campfire, pyramidal logs waiting for a match. Frank immediately let go of Gerard’s sleeve and bounded towards it.
“You know how to make a campfire, Gee?” he called over his shoulder, rustling around mysteriously.
“Oh, sure,” Gerard said dryly, digging in his bag for the Seagrams. The temperature had dropped slightly, but he had a feeling that was because the outcrop was out in the open, or something. Fuck, maybe he should have environmental controls? This science shit was hard. “I mean, you just… set the wood on fire, right?”
Frank huffed out a laugh.
“Well, get your ass over here and learn, city boy,” he said, and Gerard hurried to scribble down the rest of his observations, including pyromania??? in the list of symptoms he’d drawn up. Others included: chilly as fuck (drop of 5 degrees Fahrenheit), night vision (??) and trapped in forest (might be able to get him untrapped-hypothesize later?).
“Whatcha doin’, Gee?” Frank asked, suddenly right in front of him, staring down and blocking out the stars. Gerard snapped the book shut with a guilty feeling, which was ridiculous. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“Um. Nothing. Hey, that was fast,” Gerard observed inanely. There was a fire already roaring merrily in front of them, casting flickering orange shadows on the grey rock.
Frank frowned at him and hunched his shoulders a bit. “What’s going on, Gee?” he asked, and his voice was definitely unhappy. “Are you… You know I wouldn’t do anything, I mean. I wouldn’t hurt you. I didn’t bring you out here to hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” Gerard frowned, fighting the urge to clutch the notebook protectively to his chest, or to sit on it or something, and then realized what Frank was talking about. “Oh. Oh! No, don’t be a moron. Sorry to disappoint, but I’m still not scared of your pansy ass. “
“Huh,” Frank said, smile flickering back onto his face. “Well. You should be. I’m terrifying. Come closer to the fire, man. I’m pretty sure it’s getting cold out by now, right?”
“Uh, yeah, a bit,” Gerard replied disbelievingly, and then busied himself digging around in his bag looking for nothing for a second. Okay, maybe he was bothered. Not in, like, a scared way. Just… it was disconcerting, that was all. Gerard could barely feel his nose, it was that fucking cold out tonight, and Frank apparently had no idea, couldn’t feel it at all. Well, of course he couldn’t. Gerard pulled out his bottle of Seagrams and took a quick swig before shoving it back in the knapsack. “Nice fire, man.”
“Thanks.” Frank preened, nudging a log into a slightly more flammable position with his foot before sitting down besides Gerard. “Hey, you said you brought marshmallows, right? Marshmallows are key, man, you gotta have fucking marshmallows with a fire like this. Not having marshmallows offends the gods of camping, in my opinion. Calls down dark forces. Anarchy! Mayhem.”
“Yes, I brought marshmallows, jeez, calm down.” Gerard rustled around in his bag-there they were, under the camera. Slightly squashed and old as hell, but probably still good. “I mean, it’s not like you can eat them.” That Gerard knew of. “Uh… can you?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Frank scoffed, snatching the bag from Gerard’s fingers and ripping it open with his teeth. “Of course not. I’m dead. I don’t eat. I don’t drink. I don’t sleep, not really. I smoke, but, you know, that’s different. I can almost remember how it tastes, though. Marshmallows. Well, vegan ones, anyway. But they’re all better burnt, right?” He handed Gerard a branch with like, twelve fucking marshmallows covering the twigs at the end. It was like a campfire menorah. Gerard struggled with it as he tried to inch out his notebook again without Frank noticing. The fire was going to totally mess up his temperature readings, dammit. And how did Frank know he couldn’t eat? Did he want to and just couldn’t? Did he not even want to? And he had that sleeping bag back at the mill house, so what was that about? Had he tried-
Frank waved a be-marshmallowed stick in his face and glared. “Seriously, Gerard. What the fuck is going on. Is that-is that a thermometer?” he asked incredulously, catching the edge of Gerard’s knapsack and looking in.
Gerard gnawed his lower lip. He was going to have to come clean, he guessed. Although Frank might have already cottoned on to his cunning scientific scheme anyway, what with all the glowering and the pawing through his bag. The discovery of the Ouiji board elicited a particularly terrible noise. Also, physical violence.
“I’m sorry!” Gerard squeaked, holding his arms in front of his face protectively as Frank beat him with his own branch of marshmallows. “Stop hitting me, asshole, I’m just trying to help!”
“I’m surprised you’re not fucking waving an EMP reader in my face and flinging Tarot cards at me,” Frank spluttered, and gave Gerard another vicious whack before he abandoned the marshmallows and started pulling shit out of Gerard’s bag and waving it around in the air. “You are such a jackass. What the fuck are you even doing with this compass? Are you trying to find your way to the goddamned north pole? What is this?” He was shaking the compass in Gerard’s face now, voice rising with each word.
Gerard edged closer-he could see the compass needle spinning wildly in Frank’s hand. “Well, uh. The EMP reader’s still in the mail?” he offered apologetically, trying to unobtrusively get a better look at the compass. “I mean, it’s for science, anyway. For discovery! The afterlife! But, um. I’m sorry? I just wanted to know, I guess. I-it’s the afterlife! Don’t you want to know more about it?”
“What, am I just an experiment to you?” Frank bit out. He looked-upset, and hurt. Gerard abruptly felt sick.
“No!” Gerard protested. His throat felt funny, tight. Frank’s eyes were-not empty, but hollow. Like looking through a dark doorway, and seeing a long hallway without an end. “No. It’s-I think-you’re kinda my best friend, Frank.” He paused and stared at his feet and tried not to shiver. “But, dude, you’re a fucking ghost. I mean, that’s so cool! You can’t expect me not to want to know more, and you said you didn’t want to talk about it, so, I. Thought I could figure shit out on my own, you know?”
He’d also thought-well, if he could figure out what it meant to be a ghost, how it worked, then he could help Frank. Help him stay visible, help him leave the forest, help him figure out how to eat marshmallows again. But he didn’t want to say that when it would sound like he was making excuses, especially when some part of him was selfishly jumping up and down over ghosts being real, on there being life after death, because that meant if-if anybody died, they wouldn’t just be gone. Not forever.
But he hadn’t meant to treat Frank like an experiment, like he wasn’t human. Except. Fuck. That was sort of how he’d been acting, wasn’t it?
Frank didn’t respond to him at all, just went back to rummaging through the bag, and Gerard felt like he was going to throw up. He watched Frank miserably, hunching his shoulders and pulling his knees up to his chest, away from the fire. Maybe he should apologize again. Maybe he should just slink home in the dark. Fuck.
Then Frank lifted out the little thermometer with the cheerily smiling bluebird painted on it, and his expression flickered. He looked at Gerard from the corner of his eye. Gerard tried not to wring his hands.
“So you think I’m cool, huh,” Frank said, voice neutral, but a tiny smile was unfurling on his face and Gerard felt his whole body melt with relief. “I don’t know who I thought I was kidding, thinking you liked me for me. You just came out here to hear more about the Great Beyond, you giant asshole.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Gerard said, edging closer to the fire and fumbling around for his marshmallow stick, almost shaking he was so relieved. Frank handed the branch to him wordlessly after a few seconds and Gerard flushed, hoping Frank’s dead-o-vision wouldn’t let him see how fucking embarrassed Gerard was at the moment. Who the fuck beat someone with marshmallows, anyway? “I followed you around in the fucking woods and fell in a creek-a motherfucking creek, okay? And that was before I knew you were a ghost or anything. I would have come out here no matter what. I mean, even if you were a serial killer, or, well, maybe not that. But, like. A vampire. Or a zombie. Or… or just a normal kid. I don’t know.”
Gerard trailed off awkwardly, staring unhappily across the river and trying not to shiver too obviously.
“Your marshmallows are on fire,” Frank commented after a moment, and Gerard jerked his eyes back down. His candelabra of marshmallows had gone up like a fucking torch, and he wasted a couple minutes flailing it around uselessly before just giving up and jabbing it in the fire and watching the remains crackle and bubble and burn.
“Well,” he said, staring gloomily at the blackened husks. “You, uh. Did say they were better burnt.”
“Oh, sure,” Frank said, giggling. “Eat up.” Then he tossed the bag of fresh marshmallows over. Gerard started prying off the incinerated blobs off his stick, wondering if it was better to just abandon this one to the fire gods and start over entirely. Frank ignored his plight, fishing the compass back out of the knapsack and eyeing it uncertainly. The needle was spinning wildly, north suddenly unfixed.
“You know, it doesn’t bother me that you have questions,” Frank commented, just as Gerard had gotten his marshmallows situated again. “Just ask. You don’t have to sneak around taking notes and shit.”
“I don’t… I can stop,” Gerard said weakly. He valiantly tried to keep his eye from straying back towards the compass needle, which appeared to be oscillating between west and southwest, a frantic red-tipped blur. Frank snorted, cocking an eyebrow, and Gerard frowned. “I mean it,” he insisted. “You’re not a game or a science experiment or anything. It doesn’t even matter. I’ll… I’ll pretend you’re totally alive, just a weird hermit hobo like I thought before. I don’t even care that you’re a ghost. Honest.”
“Uh huh,” Frank drawled, running a finger along the compass rim. North came slightly more unglued. “My face is up here, genius.”
Gerard guiltily jerked his eyes back up. Frank grinned.
“You know, this is actually sort of awesome,” he said, coming back to sit down by the fire, propping his legs up on one of the burning logs. “I didn’t know I did this to compasses.”
“Have you tried with other magnets?” Gerard asked before he could stop himself, and then bit his tongue and busied himself getting a new marshmallow perfectly skewered on his toasting stick.
“What, you didn’t pack any extras in your bag of tricks?” Frank teased, voice carefully light. “Seriously, don’t pretend I’m alive. I’m not. I mean, I am sort of a fucking hobo; I’ve been wearing this outfit for like ten years, so, you know, that’s fair. Oh, go ahead and get out your fucking notebook, you dweeb. Christ.”
Gerard got out his notebook. Only because Frank had asked. Obviously.
“Go on,” Frank said, shooting Gerard a sideways look. “What do you want to know? You want me to walk through a tree or something? Walk through you?”
Gerard choked on his own tongue, because, holy fuck, Frank, like. Inside him. It made his brain fizzle in unexpected directions and wow, time to change the subject a bit. “What was dying like?” he blurted out, and then wanted to erase time, because, wow, way to ask a loaded question right out the gate, Gerard. You moron.
Frank took his feet out of the fire and shrugged. “Well, you know, I fucking died,” Frank said, examining his nails. “What else is there to say?”
There was so much more to say. How did Frank die, what was it like, was there a light? Were there guardians? Did anyone weigh his soul? Why was he a ghost, why hadn’t he moved on? Were there lots of ghosts out there, and if so, why hadn’t Gerard seen any? Gerard wound up just making a frustrated noise. Frank snorted and shook his head.
“I told you, just spit it out,” he said resignedly, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t mind. You’ll just creep around making notes, otherwise.”
“But I don’t want to offend you or anything,” Gerard said earnestly. “Like, I dunno, I want to know! But it seems really-” Gerard’s mind went blank. “Um, personal. So, uh. I don’t need to know.”
Frank rolled his eyes and patted the log next to him. The fire was roaring merrily, casting warm, dancing shadows on the surrounding rock, but they seemed to bend around Frank, refracting strangely.
“Sit the fuck down, already. You’re too far away,” Frank said, a challenging note in his voice.
Gerard stood up and shuffled over, huddling closer to the ring of warmth. Fires only ever warmed the front of you, how inconvenient was that? If you wanted your ass not to get frostbitten, you had to rotate yourself like a rotisserie chicken. Having Frank on his right side wouldn’t exactly help matters, but he wasn’t complaining. When Gerard sat down next to him, Frank smiled a little into one of his hands, like he hadn’t expected Gerard to actually do it.
“My neck broke.” Frank said next, unexpectedly, and Gerard sucked in a sharp, cold breath. “And it was like… hmm. Like pop rocks.”
“Breaking your neck was like pop rocks,” Gerard said blankly, notebook forgotten.
“Pop rocks in soda,” Frank agreed. He’d taken hold of his own marshmallow stick again and was poking at the fire with it, sending sparks flying up as he talked. “Or, no, like. You ever do that experiment in Chemistry class? Where you burn sugar with some kind of chlorate, and it goes up in this fucking crazy flame? I loved that shit. Dying was like that.” He paused. “Well, for me, anyway.”
“Did it hurt?” Gerard asked tentatively, and Frank smiled lopsidedly, shoving the branch he held further into the fire.
“Nah,” he said, eyes focused on the flames. “It was just fucking confusing. That moment, that, uh, flash? That’s the last clear memory I have for weeks. Maybe longer. I told you, I’m bad at keeping track of time.”
Swallowing, Gerard pressed a hand to his eyes for a moment. Maybe Frank would think it was the smoke. He scooted a little closer to Frank and Frank slanted a look at him.
“I imagine dying is a little disconcerting,” Gerard said, and didn’t ask how he’d broken his neck. Frank laughed and shrugged again. ‘What can you do,’ his shoulders said, and there was a wry tilt to his smile, and Gerard wanted to wrap Frank up in his coat and never let him out of his sight ever again.
“Can you feel this?” Gerard asked suddenly. Frank raised an eyebrow. “The fire,” Gerard clarified, gnawing at his lower lip. “I mean. The heat. Can you feel temperature differences?”
And apparently Frank had somehow managed to sneak his cold dead hand under Gerard’s shirt without Gerard noticing until it was too late, because there were suddenly cold fingertips trailing along his lower back. Gerard shrieked and writhed away, winding up falling backwards off the log onto the cold ground with a jarring thump.
“You asshole!” Gerard spluttered, shivering wildly. Frank's hands weren't totally freezing, not like ice or anything, but the weather was already cold as hell, and that had just been unfair, insult to injury. Not to mention it’d tickled like a motherfucker.
“I’m always cold,” Frank said with a half-smile, leaning over Gerard and smirking. “That’s what I feel, all the time.”
“So… you can’t feel the fire, then?” Gerard asked, frowning. He was still lying on his back, staring up at Frank and the stars, and the thought of Frank being cold all the time made his chest hurt in ways that had nothing to do with all the wind being knocked out of him when he fell.
“I can feel you,” Frank said, still smiling crookedly down at Gerard. He held out a hand and when Gerard reached up to grab it, his smile widened. Gerard forgot for a moment what they’d been talking about, because, jeez. Dimples.
“Actually, I can feel the fire too,” Frank continued once Gerard was upright again. He hadn’t let go of Gerard’s hand, not that Gerard was focusing every iota of his attention on that or anything. “But not-not like it’s real. It’s, um. Only on the surface? I don’t know how to explain any of this,” he laughed, a little incredulously. “I’ve never had to explain it to anyone. I don’t even think about it, usually.”
“You’re doing a good job. I mean, it’s tough shit to put in words, I bet.” He tentatively hugged Frank towards him so that Frank was plastered to his side, almost in Gerard’s lap. Frank made a startled, happy sound and pressed his face into Gerard’s shoulder for a moment.
“Is this, um. Is this warmer?” Gerard asked, and manfully didn’t shiver when Frank’s arm dislodged his hoodie a bit and snuck beneath it, curling around Gerard’s side.
“Gerard Way,” Frank said, and seemed to run out of words. “Yeah. Yes.”
They sat that way for a few minutes longer, the fire hot on Gerard’s face and casting otherworldly shadows against the trees on the opposite side of the river
“This is cold for you, though, isn’t it?” Frank said reluctantly, starting to pull back.
“Maybe if we got closer to the fire?” Gerard asked, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. It wasn’t that cold. Compared to, say, Hoth. He wanted to go for his thermometer and see if it was actually subzero out here, but there’d be time for that later. He tugged the hem of his hoodie lower, grimacing.
“Any closer and you’ll actually be on fire, dumbass,” Frank laughed and stuck his face back against Gerard’s side, fingers trailing hesitantly along his neck. Gerard couldn’t help but shiver, which sucked, because Frank immediately backed off.
“I’m not cold!” Gerard lied between his teeth. Frank looked unimpressed. Gerard switched tactics. “My other side?” he said, widening his eyes. “Totally burning up. You’d be doing me a favor.”
He’d tell Frank to get in his lap, because his knees were almost painfully hot and actually only a spark away from being on fire, but he didn’t think he could quite handle that without having an aneurysm, or an erection. Frank looked skeptical, but he apparently couldn’t resist the invitation to warm up a bit and shuffled around to Gerard’s left side, snuggling in beneath his arm.
“Let me know if you get too cold, though,” Frank said, voice drowsy and lazy. “I don’t want you to get pneumonia. That shit fucking blows, I used to get that all the time.” Frank was totally fucking snuggling with him. Gerard was blatantly being used for his body warmth, and he was so okay with that. It was sort of sad that this was the most action he’d gotten in, like, years, but he wasn’t going to complain. He could use a drink, though, if his perfect dream guy was going to lounge about all sweet and dead and unavailable in his arms for the rest of the night.
“You know not everyone can see me like you do, right?” Frank spoke up as Gerard tried to maneuver his backpack without dislodging him. “I mean, not as clear as this.”
“I got that impression, yeah,” Gerard agreed, and held the Seagrams bottle so that it caught the firelight. He caught himself just before he offered some to Frank. Frank didn’t drink. Right.
“I’m not really sure why,” Frank said thoughtfully. “I mean, you can’t help but wonder, but I dunno. I can affect how people see me to some degree, if I concentrate or whatever, but it’s mostly them, not me.”
“Huh,” Gerard said. “Well, maybe… maybe I can help you figure that out?”
“Yeah, with your EMP reader. Dork,” Frank said fondly, and Gerard hit him with the notebook. Frank grinned and then started talking again, getting a distant look on his face. “The first year or so after I died was the hardest for me. It was hard to concentrate, to figure out what was going on, you know?”
Gerard couldn’t help but shiver, and not from the cold this time. Fuck, that sounded miserable. He drank straight from the bottle again and Frank made a face.
“Dude, that shit is foul. It’s like drinking pine tar.”
“Nah, ‘s good.” Gerard grinned and exhaled pointedly in Frank’s face, breath coming out as a white cloud. “Tastes like Christmas.”
“Christmas is not a beverage,” Frank said, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, yeah, it took me a while to figure out how to be, um, corporeal? I was pretty scattered right after I died, and I couldn’t leave my corpse for, like, the longest fucking time. And can I just say, that was sorta weird.”
“Creepy,” he commented, and drained half the bottle in one go, because holy shit.
“Oh, you totally love it, you freaky fuck,” Frank giggled.
Gerard was about equal parts fascinated and fucking disturbed, to be honest. And one hundred percent sure he didn’t want to be sober for this conversation. He was such a crappy scientist.
“You, uh, watched yourself decompose?” Gerard asked, voice maybe squeaking a bit as Frank’s fingers spiderwalked along his side, only marginally warmer that the wind.
“Watched fishes eat my eyes,” Frank agreed, and Gerard made a noise he hadn’t known was humanly possible. “It was just my body, chill out!” Frank said, sounding a bit affronted.
“Gross, gross gross gross grossssss,” Gerard moaned into his hands. He hadn’t brought enough alcohol for this. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world for this. “Gross. I am never eating fish again.”
“Damn straight,” Frank sniggered, poking Gerard in the side, because he was an asshole and Gerard was never letting him leech body heat ever again, even if he did have dimples. “Meat is murder.”
Gerard flailed out a hand and smacked Frank in the side of his head.
“Oh, come on, you want to see my body. Don’t lie,” Frank leered, snickering. Gerard sort of did. But now that the reality of Frank sleeping with the fucking fishes had just been shoved into his face, Gerard was a little less confident about the whole thing.
“Anyway, those first couple weeks, if I tried to get a few fucking feet away from my body, I’d just… wind up back in the same place. No matter how hard I tried. Always the same place.” Frank hesitated a moment, propping his chin on his hand and furrowing his brow. Gerard furtively reached down for his notebook and pen. “I think it’s sort of how I remember dreams being,” Frank said finally. “I haven’t dreamed in ages, but you know the way you suddenly go from standing in the kitchen making, like, a gumball pie, and then all of a sudden you’re cutting a piece and you’re serving it to Bon Jovi on stage at Madison Square Garden and he’s blowing a bubble and climbing into it? Stop laughing, asshole. But it’s like that. No transitions, just. You’re one place, then you’re not.”
“Bubble gum pie,” Gerard said, trying not to giggle. “Okay, right. Does that still happen? The, uh, yo-yo effect back to your grave?”
“It’s not so much a grave. And nah, I’m better at concentrating now. I can walk further, obviously. Can’t go on forever, but I don’t get poinged backward, either,” Frank said, waving a hand nonchalantly. “And I don’t lose as much time as I used to, but it still happens, you know?”
“Not really?” Gerard laughed disbelievingly. “Sounds sort of like being fucked up. Hardcore fucked up, I mean. Heavy duty shit.”
“Only without the potential fun parts, yeah,” Frank agreed. “Actually, that’s a lie, there’s fun parts. I rode a bear once. That was pretty fucking awesome. And there’s always campers to dick around with, but it’d be more fun if I wasn’t stuck in a goddamned forest, I bet. I shouldn’t complain, though. If they’d actually found me and buried me, I’d be stuck in a graveyard somewhere like Sally.”
Gerard startled upright. “Sally’s real?” he spluttered, outraged. “She’s a ghost too? Why didn’t I see her?”
“Oh, she’s shy,” Frank replied offhandedly, blowing his bangs out of his eyes. The wind was really starting to pick up. “And she’s, you know, really fucking old, both of you’d probably have to be concentrating really hard for you to see her. Even I don’t always see her. She’s just not always there.” Frank got kind of a blank look on his face. “I hope she doesn’t leave soon. There was another girl, for a little while, but she’s gone now,” Frank said flatly, then looked at Gerard and beamed. “But I have you now, at least.”
Gerard looked at him and felt a faint twinge of unease. Frank didn’t seem to notice, sitting up and peering at the fire.
“Hold up, needs another log,” he said, and stood. Gerard still felt cold.
“So, you said I’m, what, better at seeing you than other people?” he said, fiddling with his hoodie and leaning in closer to the coals, holding out his hands.
“Better than most,” Frank said absently, stacking the logs in some bizarre arcane configuration. “It’s different for everyone I run into, like I said. Some people see me but don’t hear me, some people hear me but don’t see me. Some sad fuckers just get a weird feeling and freak out and run away.” When Gerard stayed silent, he glanced up and then sighed, long-suffering.
“What?” Frank asked, sounding bemused, and reached into the fire to adjust a log. “C’mon, Gerard, we’ve been over this. Just spit it out. We don’t have all night.”
“It might help us understand more, what makes me able to see you normally, if, um. You could. Can you go more ghostly around me too?” Gerard asked, excited and nervous at the same time. As long as Gerard’d known Frank, he’d looked pretty much normal, like any other teenager. He didn’t necessarily act normal, and he sometimes looked subtly off. But nothing like what other people had seen, apparently. “Like, could you go see-through or something? I don’t know. Nevermind.”
“No, sure,” Frank said. “You’re so cute. You want me to float, too, Princess?”
“Oh shut up,” Gerard said, mouth twitching. “If you’re just gonna make fun of me.”
Frank scrunched up his face, and at first Gerard just thought it was more mockery, but then he noticed the edges of Frank’s t-shirt blurring, and when Frank opened his eyes, he looked-like glass, like if Gerard held him up to the fire he’d throw Frank-colored gleams of light.
“Holy shit,” Gerard breathed, and reached out a hand before drawing it back, hesitant. Frank rolled his eyes and reached out and grabbed Gerard’s wrist. Gerard could feel his own pulse, beating faster and faster, and then the strangest fucking sensation. Like getting cold all at once, but not cold, exactly. And it was focused in one place in his pulse. Frank was looking at him with half-lidded eyes, and Gerard could feel his veins throbbing. “Holy shit,” he repeated, weakly, and Frank took his fingers out of Gerard’s skin. In the next breath he was firm and solid again.
“I don’t have to try as hard with you,” he said, flexing his fingers. Gerard stared at his own wrist. “To look alive, be solid, all that,” Frank clarified. “I don’t have to concentrate as hard.”
“Why not?” Gerard swallowed. His wrist looked perfectly normal. Gerard felt like it should look different, now. “What-why’s there a difference?”
Frank grinned, showing all his teeth. “You tell me, Gerard Way.” Then he sighed, and rubbed his head. “I better get you home,” he said. “There’s storm front coming in. It wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow,” he scowled.
Gerard protested and whined and brandished the travel umbrella he’d stowed away in his bag, but to no avail. Frank was adamant on Gerard not dying a miserable, snot-related death, and so Gerard had to submit to being hustled home beneath the quiet trees. Before Gerard left, Frank reached out a hand and touched Gerard’s cheek, fingertips melting into his skin.
“Just,” Frank said, eyes bright. “Thanks. Seriously. I can’t believe I met you. I’m never letting you go.”
“You’re about to let me go right now,” Gerard grumbled, and wondered if he should kiss Frank now. It would be the perfect time, right?
“It’s a metaphor, jackass,” Frank laughed. “I just, you know, don’t want you ending up like me. You’re going to SVA. You’re gonna be fucking famous, Gee.”
And Gerard didn’t even know what to say. He’d told Frank about how he’d applied to SVA earlier that week, the first day they’d met. He didn’t realize that Frank thought it was such a big deal.
“Well… thanks,” he said, and leaned into Frank’s touch, and it felt so weird, the cold spreading beneath his skin, into his bones, intimate, and-Frank yanked his hand away and Gerard nearly fell over.
“You’re gonna get fucking soaked if you don’t hurry,” Frank said, and shoved at Gerard’s back. “Get going, genius.”
“Okay, okay,” Gerard muttered. Jeez. But he couldn’t keep up his indignation when Frank was leaning up against the edge of the path, watching Gerard with huge eyes.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Bye, Frankie,” Gerard said, giving in and offering Frank a small smile, and Frank smiled back, all dimples and shiny eyes, and Gerard didn’t feel cold at all.
He got home just in time, hurrying down the empty streets in a daze and feeling the wind pick up, cold and cutting, and fell asleep listening to the first raindrops hitting his window, the light from the TV flickering against the rain-streaked glass.
***
Rain made the classroom darker, full of strangely flung shadows and watery light. Gerard had slouched to school beneath his useless umbrella, feet cold and wet, face numb, and arrived with smudged eyeliner spiderwebbing down his cheeks and his clothes thoroughly, miserably damp.
It was like a totally different room now, gray and filled with the sound of the wind flinging rain against the windows, as if the storm was trying to reach inside the building and find Gerard, make sure he was completely and thoroughly soaked. Fucking rain.
Mrs. Hall was graphing something on the chalkboard, the grating of the chalk blending with the white rain noise into a seamless gray whole. He wondered if the rain bothered Frank, if Frank even went solid when Gerard wasn’t there to see him. If it felt strange to have water slide through your skin. Shit he shouldn’t be thinking about right now, probably.
Ted seemed to be in a particularly foul mood that morning, hair plastered to his head and flannel dripping. He’d shaken himself when he’d wandered past Gerard’s desk, spattering his notebook with watery blue splotches. Then he spent the rest of class kicking at the back of Gerard’s chair, an irregular jarring thump Gerard had just managed to force himself to endure when it ceased abruptly.
“Your make-up is running, fag,” Ted sneered, leaning over the back of Gerard’s desk. Gerard fought the urge to scrub at his cheeks.
“I know,” he said, gritting his teeth. Fuck, it was cold in here. It was hard to concentrate, to acknowledge reality after last night. He rubbed at his wrist absently, felt the delicate bones. He wondered what Frank was doing now, if he didn’t ever sleep, didn’t dream. Did he just-stop being? Or was he always there, always half awake. Maybe being dead was like dreaming all the time.
He caught himself doodling Frank’s HALLOWEEN tattoos on his own knuckles and had to stop before Ted or Isaac noticed. Fuck, Frank. He wished he could have skipped school, stayed with Frank in the forest all day, even if it was raining and cold and miserable. He had to stop thinking about it, or he’d start beaming and being ridiculous and fiddling with his hair and recreating that blowjob scene from Ghostbusters in his head, and that wasn’t healthy for anyone.
He wound up entertaining himself by drawing the girl across the row from him, which seemed safe enough. She was sitting in front of the window and looking like she might doze off at any moment. The rain was throwing strange shadows over her tanned skin and corkscrew curls. She was totally stacked, Gerard noticed-he wasn’t blind. But more than that, there was something about her face, broad and clear, with swooping arched cheekbones like Japanese calligraphy. It caught his eye and glimmered in his hindbrain. He bit his pen, thinking. There was something about it that reminded him of the scroll of a violin or a viola.
“What the fucking hell are you doing,” Ted said in his ear, chair screeching forward. Gerard froze, hunched over his paper. “What are you goddamn drawing my girlfriend for? What the fuck, you’re-you’re supposed to be gay!”
“Bi, actually,” Gerard said, mind totally blank-and holy fuck, that had been the wrong thing to say. There was actually a throbbing vein in Ted’s forehead, Jesus. “But I wasn’t, I was just-she has interesting lines, it’s not like-“
“Don’t look at my girlfriend’s lines, you sick fuck!” Ted said incredulously. Mrs. Hall was going to notice what was going on any second now, and then Gerard was going to beat a quick retreat to the highway and hitchhike back to civilization. Or maybe, like, hide out in the Trumbull Research Center and feed off the extra pudding cups the nurses brought Mikey.
“The lines of her face, Jesus!” he hissed back, trying to scoot his chair as far forward as it would go. The girl in front of him was pointedly ignoring this attempt, but Ted’s chair followed Gerard forward until all Gerard could do was lean up, away from Ted’s looming, hateful face, the edge of the desk pressing in a hard bruising line against his ribs. “The lines of her face are just, you know, interesting, and different-“
“Different?”
Gerard had never heard someone whisper and bellow at the same time before. And oh, fuck, of course the girl in question noticed something was going on, and yeah, Gerard finally got on the clue bus, because she was in fact the girl who sucked face with Ted every day in the hall. He’d just never actually noticed her face during those occasions. Ted’s groping hands sort of tended to dominate the tableau, and plus, Gerard tried not to look too closely at that particular clinch if he could help it. The girl was frowning at both of them, now. Gerard couldn’t blame her.
“Baby, don’t you pay him no mind,” Ted said immediately, in a surprisingly syrupy voice. The girl ignored him, shooting Gerard a cool look.
“You like my… lines?” she said to him, raising an eyebrow, and holy shit, okay, she really was gorgeous and this was awful. Gerard should totally have stayed in the forest and caught pneumonia and avoided this whole clusterfuck.
“Of your face,” Gerard moaned and tried to duck his head as far down into his hoodie as possible. “Not other, uh, lines, or curves or whatever-not that your other lines aren’t nice, I mean, it’s just. I.”
Ted made a low growling noise behind him and Gerard tried to edge further up in his seat, but his ass already had bare minimum contact with the chair; he was holding himself upright purely by clutching at the desk.
“Settle, class!” Mrs. Hall trilled without turning away from the board.
“Can I see it?” the girl asked, pursing her lips. “The drawing, I mean.”
“I, uh,” Gerard said intelligently, and oh Christ, Ted was literally breathing down the back of his neck.
“Tanya, let it be,” Ted growled. Gerard glanced over furtively to see if anyone else had noticed what was going on, and yes, sure enough, Noltes was staring at him, face terrifyingly blank. Tanya took advantage of Gerard’s rodent-like paralysis to snag his notebook.
“Hey now,” she said, and Gerard turned, startled at the tone in her voice. She looked at him from under her lashes, twirling a curl with one finger. Gerard, if possible, felt himself tense up even more than he already was. “This is real nice-Gerard, right?” she drawled, smiling slow at him. “Can I keep this, Gerard?”
Gerard literally wanted to hide under his desk or pull his hoodie over his head and scuttle out of the room. He made a vague gesture with his hand that he hoped conveyed this, but apparently Tanya either missed the subtleties or chose to ignore them, because she carefully tore the paper from the notebook and folded it into her purse.
“What the fuck, Tanya!” Ted exploded behind him, thunderous and outraged, and apparently not even Mrs. Hall could ignore it.
“That will be enough,” Mrs. Hall said frostily, peering at the room over her spectacles, a tiny ineffectual Mephistopheles. Like Clarence from It’s A Wonderful Life, only on the other side, the side of the fallen angels and cheerful sadists. Gerard really shouldn’t have ever been born. It would definitely have been better that way.
Ted leaned even farther forward-seriously, by this point neither of them were even in their desks any more. The rain had picked up, and thunder, almost too low to hear, thrummed through the room like a counterpoint to the adrenaline and dread in Gerard’s veins.
“You’re fucking dead, Way,” Ted said in Gerard’s ear, quiet enough that Mrs. Hall only glanced at them briefly before turning back to her asymptotes and away from the unfolding disaster.
“Yeah,” Noltes said, and leaned on his desk, biceps flexing menacingly. “Way dead.”
There was a long pause. “Christ, shut up, Noltes,” Ted said, slumping back in his desk and grinding a palm into one eye. Gerard would have been sympathetic-good minions clearly were hard to find-if Ted wasn’t such a mouth-breathing homophobic murderous prick. “Ike,” Ted hissed, clearly disgruntled. “Ike, what the fuck, man, where’s the support? Where’s the back up? Noltes is fucking useless over here.”
Gerard kept his head forward, but he heard Noltes grunt noncommittally and Isaac whisper back, “I’m taking notes, idiot, shut the fuck up.”
Ted made an outraged noise, but Gerard was busy trying to look subtly out of the corner of his eye, hoping for an opportunity to snag his notebook from Tanya’s desk and bolt while the Jock Trio was distracted. Tanya noticed Gerard’s glance, and her eyes widened as she smiled at him. Ted, attention apparently recaptured, made an awful noise behind him.
“Tanya,” he hissed. “You’re encouraging him!”
The bell finally, finally rang and Gerard shot to his feet before getting dragged backward by Ted’s hand on his hoodie.
“Where you goin’,” he snarled.
“I heard some girls like guys with that whole nonlinear sexuality eyeliner thing going on,” Isaac said, sounding interested as the class swirled around them, students pouring out into the hallway. Gerard looked longingly after them. “Didn’t know it was true, mind.”
Tanya stood up, statuesque and lovely even in the gray morning light. She rolled her eyes and tossed Gerard his notebook. She pointedly ignored Ted’s attempts to get her attention, looking supremely bored.
“Shut the fuck up, Ike,” Ted said, turning to look at his minion, betrayal written all over his face. Et tu, Brute? Gerard thought, and then had to work really hard on not bursting into hysterical giggles. “What the fuck do you know, she’s just trying to rile me up, aren’t you, baby? S’ real cute, actually.”
“That’s totally it, probably, hah, I mean, that’s the only thing that makes sense, right?” Gerard babbled, tugging his hoodie free of Ted’s grip and backing away. Straight into the brick wall that was Noltes. Fuck fuck fuck. Noltes looked down at Gerard and smiled big and white, like a fucking shark. He had surprisingly nice teeth.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tanya said, examining her pink nails, cool as a fucking cucumber, and she was clearly evil incarnate. Gerard was sort of in awe. “I think he’s cute. Sweet, too.”
Gerard could literally feel his will to live draining out of him. Which was lucky, because judging by the shade of apocalyptic red Ted was turning, his life was about to end anyway. Maybe he could go haunt the forest with Frank.
“Get out of my way, Noltes,” Tanya said, sliding past Noltes with her friend.
“Baby,” Ted said, chasing after her. “Baby, you gotta be fucking kidding me, right? Right? Baby, he’s leading you on! He doesn’t even like girls, goddammit!” And Tanya sailing off, back ramrod-straight and head high, totally ignoring him.
Isaac laughed and hiked his bag on his shoulder.
“Run along to class now, Gerard,” he said, nodding at Noltes. Noltes moved out of the way, slightly, enough that Gerard could edge past him towards freedom. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing you later, though. Ted’s a little touchy about his girl.”
Noltes just kept smiling, eyes following Gerard across the room as he bolted out the door.
Gerard spent a really fantastic English period with Ted staring murderously at the back of his head the entire time, completely silent. It was really, really fucking creepy, especially since Gerard had sort of gotten used to the whole constant droning of insults and condescending pet names. This silence was new and terrible. Gerard was starting to think he could hear Ted’s eyes bulging.
And fuck, even though Gerard had about a thousand other things to worry about-ranging from how to get to English without one of the goons next to him shoving him in a locker to how he’d get out of the school building later without being beaten to a pulp and shoved in a coffin-he still couldn’t get Frank out of his head. Which was really stupid, since what he should be thinking about was how to rectify this godawful situation. Tanya, now that he’d noticed her, was everywhere, and she apparently was having a great time waving languidly at Gerard and winding up her Neanderthal boyfriend, which, super. Thanks for that, Tanya.
Gerard was pretty sure she was just winding Ted up, anyway.
Mostly sure.
The rest of the day sucked serious ass. Gerard had never been so grateful for a Friday in his entire life-he was looking forward to a weekend respite from being shoved into water fountains and having his notebooks stolen and generally fearing for his life.
“You call this lying low?” Ray hissed at him disbelievingly, as though it was in any way Gerard’s fault he’d just gotten tripped into a mud puddle. Oh God, he was totally going to get ringworm and go bald, he just knew it.
“Well, technically, I am,” Gerard said, pulling himself into a sitting position. “And, anyway, this is not my fault!”
Ray just clucked his tongue and dragged him upright. “You take him outside, I’ll get the food,” he told Bob, who shrugged and pulled Gerard to his feet and out of the mud puddle with a disgusting squelching noise. It wasn’t even worth the effort to go inside to one of the bathrooms and try to clean up. Gerard would just bask in misery and mud for the rest of his classes; it was that kind of day.
***
PART SEVEN
***
Mikey rolled his eyes.
“What?” Gerard said defensively. “Okay, fine, I won’t bring any test tubes. But I’m still ordering the EMP reader off eBay.”
“You’re so lame,” Mikey said hoarsely, but he was grinning, just a little. Gerard had his mom’s laptop balanced carefully on his knees, and they were watching streamed episodes online of the Paranormal Investigative team scouting out an abandoned textile mill. Gerard had spent the ride to the hospital texting Mikey non-stop, and Mikey seemed to have provisionally accepted that his brother wasn’t a delusional paranoid schizophrenic. He was a little put out that Gerard hadn’t taken any pictures, though.
A camera, that should totally be on Gerard’s list of supplies. He scribbled it down in his notebook.
“You make fun, but I have an obligation to science,” Gerard said loftily, and squinted at the screen again. “You think I should bring a tape recorder? For EVP?”
“I thought you could hear Frank without the aid of electronics?” Mikey asked, deadpan. It was like he could roll his eyes with his entire body. Maybe his brother had supernatural powers of sarcasm. It was possible. Anything was possible.
“It’s a brave new world!” Gerard said grandly, and Mikey rolled his eyes. Again.
“So. Lame,” he repeated, rubbing absently at his chest. “So. How’d Frank die?”
Gerard busied himself with the mouse. “Don’t know,” he muttered, then brightened. “Oh, look. Thermal imaging! Hey, that video recorder you got for last Christmas has some weird settings, right? You think it has heat sensors?”
Mikey glared at him and made the universal sibling sign for ‘if you steal my shit I’ll fucking end you’: narrowed eyes and a tight jerk of the head, followed by the jaw clench.
“I won’t break it, jeez,” Gerard said, offended, and Mikey sighed.
“Be careful, Gee.” His voice was faint and soft, but Gerard had gotten used to listening to his brother speaking in whispers and half-drawn breaths. He heard. “If Frank’s really dead… be careful with him.”
“Huh? Frank’s not going to hurt me,” Gerard said, startled into looking up. Mikey was staring at him with bruised, solemn eyes. Gerard wanted to wrap him in ten thousand quilts and take him home and feed him beer and Hot Pockets and lame late-night TV. He hated the hospital lighting, sterile and unforgiving, throwing stark shadows everywhere. He didn’t know how Mikey stood it, but the doctor said maybe Mikey could go home next week, just come in every other day for treatments, so. There was hope.
“That’s not what I meant,” Mikey replied slowly. “You know what I meant.” Gerard feigned confusion and scrolled through the next commercial break. The team was headed to a haunted duck pond next. That actually sort of almost applied to Gerard’s situation with Frank. Fucking outdoorsy ghosts.
“Maybe I’ll be out of this fucking hospital next week,” Mikey said. “Maybe I could-” He broke off and coughed carefully. Gerard shoved the notebook and pen at him and scowled.
“Okay, moratorium on talking, or you’ll be stuck here forever,” he said, and folded the pen into Mikey’s hand. Mikey wrinkled his nose and sighed. “Hey! Maybe next week you can meet Frank!”
Even Mikey’s silences had an eye-rolling, long-suffering aura about them. It was uncanny.
That was the idea, he wrote in his spidery handwriting. You think Frank would mind?
“Why would he mind?” Gerard asked, and sighed when Mikey raised an eyebrow. “I mean, yeah, I guess it’s kind of a secret, but it’s you! I’m sure he knew I’d tell you.”
There was a pointed silence.
“Fine,” Gerard huffed. “I’ll ask him tonight. We’re meeting in the forest, you know, and he’s going to make me a bonfire, and walk through walls. It’s going to be awesome.”
Then Mikey drew a picture of two stick figures sitting in a tree with hearts for eyes and one with a vapor-trail body that was apparently supposed to imply ghostness, and Gerard had to scribble it out and spend the rest of his visit carefully explaining that it wasn’t like that, shut up shut up, and then Nurse Ratched came in and yelled at him for making Mikey laugh, and Mikey smirked at him the whole time Gerard was getting chewed out.
Just for that, Gerard was totally stealing his camera.
***
It really sucked, though. Now that Mikey had brought it up, Gerard couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t just focus on how fucking awesome it was that ghosts existed when he kept getting tripped up on the fact that Frank being a ghost meant that Frank had, at some point, died. Which was less awesome and more like his heart collapsing in on itself.
He scowled at his reflection in the kitchen window and made sure to wedge a bottle of gin into his bag alongside the marshmallows and investigative supplies. He was ready to go, but once outside he found himself lingering on the porch, hesitant to step out of the pool of the light into the dark street.
Finally he had to stop dithering and just forced himself to go. He stopped in the school parking lot and fumbled through his bag for his flashlight, glad he’d remembered to pack one. It was one thing to walk through the empty streets of town, and it was something else entirely to leave the streets and approach the dark mass of the forest. To be honest, the thin beam of light didn’t seem nearly adequate to the task, but Frank would be waiting, and Gerard didn’t have time to find another, or put together a candelabra or a lantern or whatever. So he just shouldered his bag of ghost paraphernalia, took a deep breath, and left the pavement.
He stopped halfway across the field to check the temperature again on the little thermometer he’d pried off the birdbath in the backyard. 38 degrees Fahrenheit. He held the flashlight in his teeth as he carefully recorded it in his notebook, along with the time (12:19 AM) and cloud cover (minimal).
When he got to the edge of the woods, Frank was there waiting for him, grinning crookedly.
“You rang?” he asked, doing a passable impression of Lurch for someone his height, then bounced on his heels and flung his arms around Gerard’s neck as soon as Gerard crossed the boundary. Gerard tolerated it for a second and then shoved Frank off, laughing nervously.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to come,” Frank said, rocking back on his heels, eyes never leaving Gerard’s face. “Like, maybe you’d think I was a fragment of underdone potato or something.”
“Even if I did,” Gerard said, surreptitiously checking the temperature again, peeking in his bag at the thermometer. 33 degrees, holy fuck. That was fast. “I’d still have come back to make sure, you know? Plus, if you’re a potato, you’re the most awesome potato ever.”
“Aww, Gee, you say the sweetest shit,” Frank said, eyes crinkling happily. “You’d totally be a kickass spud yourself.”
Gerard smiled stupidly down at his bag.
“Hey, want me to carry that for you?” Frank said, bouncing a little closer. “I mean, we’re not going far, just into the woods enough that no one can see the fire from the town.”
“It’s just a backpack,” Gerard said hastily, clutching the bag protectively. “I can carry it. But, uh. Thanks.”
“No, I know,” Frank said, leading the way down the path. Gerard hefted the bag on his shoulder and shone the flashlight around nervously. “Just thought I’d help, if you wanted. What all do you have in there? It looks heavy as balls.”
“Uh,” Gerard said guiltily, and then, fumbling for a change of subject, waved his flashlight around nervously. “You know, I just brought supplies and stuff. Marshmallows. Hey, how do you get around out here? I mean, I guess you don’t have to worry about tripping on shit, but it’s still pretty dark.”
“Well… yeah,” Frank replied, snickering. “Well spotted. It is in fact nighttime, genius.”
Gerard aimed a kick at the back of Frank’s leg and nearly tipped over into a bush. It was the thought that counted, though.
“I can see in the dark, obviously,” continued Frank, oblivious to the ninja-revenge attempt taking place behind him. The jerk. “Well. Actually, I don’t know if that’s it, exactly. It’s more like… light and dark don’t matter so much anymore?”
“Dude,” Gerard said reverently, and dug out his little notebook to write all that down. He wished Mikey were here-Mikey would be awesome at figuring out how to test and quantify all this shit. Gerard was having to use shorthand just to scribble this all down, though, so hopefully the notes would be legible when he presented them to Mikey later.
Frank was getting way ahead of him, and Gerard was fucking useless in the woods even when it was light out. Frank didn’t say anything as Gerard jogged to catch up, just raised a quizzical eyebrow and then dragged Gerard off onto a new path, one that wound up a steep hill. Gerard wheezed at Frank unhappily and Frank laughed and shouldered Gerard’s bag, tugging him onward by the sleeve. Somehow they missed all the rocks and trees and outstretched thorny branches, as though the forest was parting before them, and then finally they were clearing the woods.
They were on top of a rocky outcrop overlooking the river, frothing white and furious fifty feet below them. There was a crescent moon in the sky, and so many stars that looking at the sky almost hurt Gerard’s eyes after the darkness beneath the trees. There was a giant stack of firewood waiting, and a perfectly crafted campfire, pyramidal logs waiting for a match. Frank immediately let go of Gerard’s sleeve and bounded towards it.
“You know how to make a campfire, Gee?” he called over his shoulder, rustling around mysteriously.
“Oh, sure,” Gerard said dryly, digging in his bag for the Seagrams. The temperature had dropped slightly, but he had a feeling that was because the outcrop was out in the open, or something. Fuck, maybe he should have environmental controls? This science shit was hard. “I mean, you just… set the wood on fire, right?”
Frank huffed out a laugh.
“Well, get your ass over here and learn, city boy,” he said, and Gerard hurried to scribble down the rest of his observations, including pyromania??? in the list of symptoms he’d drawn up. Others included: chilly as fuck (drop of 5 degrees Fahrenheit), night vision (??) and trapped in forest (might be able to get him untrapped-hypothesize later?).
“Whatcha doin’, Gee?” Frank asked, suddenly right in front of him, staring down and blocking out the stars. Gerard snapped the book shut with a guilty feeling, which was ridiculous. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“Um. Nothing. Hey, that was fast,” Gerard observed inanely. There was a fire already roaring merrily in front of them, casting flickering orange shadows on the grey rock.
Frank frowned at him and hunched his shoulders a bit. “What’s going on, Gee?” he asked, and his voice was definitely unhappy. “Are you… You know I wouldn’t do anything, I mean. I wouldn’t hurt you. I didn’t bring you out here to hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” Gerard frowned, fighting the urge to clutch the notebook protectively to his chest, or to sit on it or something, and then realized what Frank was talking about. “Oh. Oh! No, don’t be a moron. Sorry to disappoint, but I’m still not scared of your pansy ass. “
“Huh,” Frank said, smile flickering back onto his face. “Well. You should be. I’m terrifying. Come closer to the fire, man. I’m pretty sure it’s getting cold out by now, right?”
“Uh, yeah, a bit,” Gerard replied disbelievingly, and then busied himself digging around in his bag looking for nothing for a second. Okay, maybe he was bothered. Not in, like, a scared way. Just… it was disconcerting, that was all. Gerard could barely feel his nose, it was that fucking cold out tonight, and Frank apparently had no idea, couldn’t feel it at all. Well, of course he couldn’t. Gerard pulled out his bottle of Seagrams and took a quick swig before shoving it back in the knapsack. “Nice fire, man.”
“Thanks.” Frank preened, nudging a log into a slightly more flammable position with his foot before sitting down besides Gerard. “Hey, you said you brought marshmallows, right? Marshmallows are key, man, you gotta have fucking marshmallows with a fire like this. Not having marshmallows offends the gods of camping, in my opinion. Calls down dark forces. Anarchy! Mayhem.”
“Yes, I brought marshmallows, jeez, calm down.” Gerard rustled around in his bag-there they were, under the camera. Slightly squashed and old as hell, but probably still good. “I mean, it’s not like you can eat them.” That Gerard knew of. “Uh… can you?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Frank scoffed, snatching the bag from Gerard’s fingers and ripping it open with his teeth. “Of course not. I’m dead. I don’t eat. I don’t drink. I don’t sleep, not really. I smoke, but, you know, that’s different. I can almost remember how it tastes, though. Marshmallows. Well, vegan ones, anyway. But they’re all better burnt, right?” He handed Gerard a branch with like, twelve fucking marshmallows covering the twigs at the end. It was like a campfire menorah. Gerard struggled with it as he tried to inch out his notebook again without Frank noticing. The fire was going to totally mess up his temperature readings, dammit. And how did Frank know he couldn’t eat? Did he want to and just couldn’t? Did he not even want to? And he had that sleeping bag back at the mill house, so what was that about? Had he tried-
Frank waved a be-marshmallowed stick in his face and glared. “Seriously, Gerard. What the fuck is going on. Is that-is that a thermometer?” he asked incredulously, catching the edge of Gerard’s knapsack and looking in.
Gerard gnawed his lower lip. He was going to have to come clean, he guessed. Although Frank might have already cottoned on to his cunning scientific scheme anyway, what with all the glowering and the pawing through his bag. The discovery of the Ouiji board elicited a particularly terrible noise. Also, physical violence.
“I’m sorry!” Gerard squeaked, holding his arms in front of his face protectively as Frank beat him with his own branch of marshmallows. “Stop hitting me, asshole, I’m just trying to help!”
“I’m surprised you’re not fucking waving an EMP reader in my face and flinging Tarot cards at me,” Frank spluttered, and gave Gerard another vicious whack before he abandoned the marshmallows and started pulling shit out of Gerard’s bag and waving it around in the air. “You are such a jackass. What the fuck are you even doing with this compass? Are you trying to find your way to the goddamned north pole? What is this?” He was shaking the compass in Gerard’s face now, voice rising with each word.
Gerard edged closer-he could see the compass needle spinning wildly in Frank’s hand. “Well, uh. The EMP reader’s still in the mail?” he offered apologetically, trying to unobtrusively get a better look at the compass. “I mean, it’s for science, anyway. For discovery! The afterlife! But, um. I’m sorry? I just wanted to know, I guess. I-it’s the afterlife! Don’t you want to know more about it?”
“What, am I just an experiment to you?” Frank bit out. He looked-upset, and hurt. Gerard abruptly felt sick.
“No!” Gerard protested. His throat felt funny, tight. Frank’s eyes were-not empty, but hollow. Like looking through a dark doorway, and seeing a long hallway without an end. “No. It’s-I think-you’re kinda my best friend, Frank.” He paused and stared at his feet and tried not to shiver. “But, dude, you’re a fucking ghost. I mean, that’s so cool! You can’t expect me not to want to know more, and you said you didn’t want to talk about it, so, I. Thought I could figure shit out on my own, you know?”
He’d also thought-well, if he could figure out what it meant to be a ghost, how it worked, then he could help Frank. Help him stay visible, help him leave the forest, help him figure out how to eat marshmallows again. But he didn’t want to say that when it would sound like he was making excuses, especially when some part of him was selfishly jumping up and down over ghosts being real, on there being life after death, because that meant if-if anybody died, they wouldn’t just be gone. Not forever.
But he hadn’t meant to treat Frank like an experiment, like he wasn’t human. Except. Fuck. That was sort of how he’d been acting, wasn’t it?
Frank didn’t respond to him at all, just went back to rummaging through the bag, and Gerard felt like he was going to throw up. He watched Frank miserably, hunching his shoulders and pulling his knees up to his chest, away from the fire. Maybe he should apologize again. Maybe he should just slink home in the dark. Fuck.
Then Frank lifted out the little thermometer with the cheerily smiling bluebird painted on it, and his expression flickered. He looked at Gerard from the corner of his eye. Gerard tried not to wring his hands.
“So you think I’m cool, huh,” Frank said, voice neutral, but a tiny smile was unfurling on his face and Gerard felt his whole body melt with relief. “I don’t know who I thought I was kidding, thinking you liked me for me. You just came out here to hear more about the Great Beyond, you giant asshole.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Gerard said, edging closer to the fire and fumbling around for his marshmallow stick, almost shaking he was so relieved. Frank handed the branch to him wordlessly after a few seconds and Gerard flushed, hoping Frank’s dead-o-vision wouldn’t let him see how fucking embarrassed Gerard was at the moment. Who the fuck beat someone with marshmallows, anyway? “I followed you around in the fucking woods and fell in a creek-a motherfucking creek, okay? And that was before I knew you were a ghost or anything. I would have come out here no matter what. I mean, even if you were a serial killer, or, well, maybe not that. But, like. A vampire. Or a zombie. Or… or just a normal kid. I don’t know.”
Gerard trailed off awkwardly, staring unhappily across the river and trying not to shiver too obviously.
“Your marshmallows are on fire,” Frank commented after a moment, and Gerard jerked his eyes back down. His candelabra of marshmallows had gone up like a fucking torch, and he wasted a couple minutes flailing it around uselessly before just giving up and jabbing it in the fire and watching the remains crackle and bubble and burn.
“Well,” he said, staring gloomily at the blackened husks. “You, uh. Did say they were better burnt.”
“Oh, sure,” Frank said, giggling. “Eat up.” Then he tossed the bag of fresh marshmallows over. Gerard started prying off the incinerated blobs off his stick, wondering if it was better to just abandon this one to the fire gods and start over entirely. Frank ignored his plight, fishing the compass back out of the knapsack and eyeing it uncertainly. The needle was spinning wildly, north suddenly unfixed.
“You know, it doesn’t bother me that you have questions,” Frank commented, just as Gerard had gotten his marshmallows situated again. “Just ask. You don’t have to sneak around taking notes and shit.”
“I don’t… I can stop,” Gerard said weakly. He valiantly tried to keep his eye from straying back towards the compass needle, which appeared to be oscillating between west and southwest, a frantic red-tipped blur. Frank snorted, cocking an eyebrow, and Gerard frowned. “I mean it,” he insisted. “You’re not a game or a science experiment or anything. It doesn’t even matter. I’ll… I’ll pretend you’re totally alive, just a weird hermit hobo like I thought before. I don’t even care that you’re a ghost. Honest.”
“Uh huh,” Frank drawled, running a finger along the compass rim. North came slightly more unglued. “My face is up here, genius.”
Gerard guiltily jerked his eyes back up. Frank grinned.
“You know, this is actually sort of awesome,” he said, coming back to sit down by the fire, propping his legs up on one of the burning logs. “I didn’t know I did this to compasses.”
“Have you tried with other magnets?” Gerard asked before he could stop himself, and then bit his tongue and busied himself getting a new marshmallow perfectly skewered on his toasting stick.
“What, you didn’t pack any extras in your bag of tricks?” Frank teased, voice carefully light. “Seriously, don’t pretend I’m alive. I’m not. I mean, I am sort of a fucking hobo; I’ve been wearing this outfit for like ten years, so, you know, that’s fair. Oh, go ahead and get out your fucking notebook, you dweeb. Christ.”
Gerard got out his notebook. Only because Frank had asked. Obviously.
“Go on,” Frank said, shooting Gerard a sideways look. “What do you want to know? You want me to walk through a tree or something? Walk through you?”
Gerard choked on his own tongue, because, holy fuck, Frank, like. Inside him. It made his brain fizzle in unexpected directions and wow, time to change the subject a bit. “What was dying like?” he blurted out, and then wanted to erase time, because, wow, way to ask a loaded question right out the gate, Gerard. You moron.
Frank took his feet out of the fire and shrugged. “Well, you know, I fucking died,” Frank said, examining his nails. “What else is there to say?”
There was so much more to say. How did Frank die, what was it like, was there a light? Were there guardians? Did anyone weigh his soul? Why was he a ghost, why hadn’t he moved on? Were there lots of ghosts out there, and if so, why hadn’t Gerard seen any? Gerard wound up just making a frustrated noise. Frank snorted and shook his head.
“I told you, just spit it out,” he said resignedly, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t mind. You’ll just creep around making notes, otherwise.”
“But I don’t want to offend you or anything,” Gerard said earnestly. “Like, I dunno, I want to know! But it seems really-” Gerard’s mind went blank. “Um, personal. So, uh. I don’t need to know.”
Frank rolled his eyes and patted the log next to him. The fire was roaring merrily, casting warm, dancing shadows on the surrounding rock, but they seemed to bend around Frank, refracting strangely.
“Sit the fuck down, already. You’re too far away,” Frank said, a challenging note in his voice.
Gerard stood up and shuffled over, huddling closer to the ring of warmth. Fires only ever warmed the front of you, how inconvenient was that? If you wanted your ass not to get frostbitten, you had to rotate yourself like a rotisserie chicken. Having Frank on his right side wouldn’t exactly help matters, but he wasn’t complaining. When Gerard sat down next to him, Frank smiled a little into one of his hands, like he hadn’t expected Gerard to actually do it.
“My neck broke.” Frank said next, unexpectedly, and Gerard sucked in a sharp, cold breath. “And it was like… hmm. Like pop rocks.”
“Breaking your neck was like pop rocks,” Gerard said blankly, notebook forgotten.
“Pop rocks in soda,” Frank agreed. He’d taken hold of his own marshmallow stick again and was poking at the fire with it, sending sparks flying up as he talked. “Or, no, like. You ever do that experiment in Chemistry class? Where you burn sugar with some kind of chlorate, and it goes up in this fucking crazy flame? I loved that shit. Dying was like that.” He paused. “Well, for me, anyway.”
“Did it hurt?” Gerard asked tentatively, and Frank smiled lopsidedly, shoving the branch he held further into the fire.
“Nah,” he said, eyes focused on the flames. “It was just fucking confusing. That moment, that, uh, flash? That’s the last clear memory I have for weeks. Maybe longer. I told you, I’m bad at keeping track of time.”
Swallowing, Gerard pressed a hand to his eyes for a moment. Maybe Frank would think it was the smoke. He scooted a little closer to Frank and Frank slanted a look at him.
“I imagine dying is a little disconcerting,” Gerard said, and didn’t ask how he’d broken his neck. Frank laughed and shrugged again. ‘What can you do,’ his shoulders said, and there was a wry tilt to his smile, and Gerard wanted to wrap Frank up in his coat and never let him out of his sight ever again.
“Can you feel this?” Gerard asked suddenly. Frank raised an eyebrow. “The fire,” Gerard clarified, gnawing at his lower lip. “I mean. The heat. Can you feel temperature differences?”
And apparently Frank had somehow managed to sneak his cold dead hand under Gerard’s shirt without Gerard noticing until it was too late, because there were suddenly cold fingertips trailing along his lower back. Gerard shrieked and writhed away, winding up falling backwards off the log onto the cold ground with a jarring thump.
“You asshole!” Gerard spluttered, shivering wildly. Frank's hands weren't totally freezing, not like ice or anything, but the weather was already cold as hell, and that had just been unfair, insult to injury. Not to mention it’d tickled like a motherfucker.
“I’m always cold,” Frank said with a half-smile, leaning over Gerard and smirking. “That’s what I feel, all the time.”
“So… you can’t feel the fire, then?” Gerard asked, frowning. He was still lying on his back, staring up at Frank and the stars, and the thought of Frank being cold all the time made his chest hurt in ways that had nothing to do with all the wind being knocked out of him when he fell.
“I can feel you,” Frank said, still smiling crookedly down at Gerard. He held out a hand and when Gerard reached up to grab it, his smile widened. Gerard forgot for a moment what they’d been talking about, because, jeez. Dimples.
“Actually, I can feel the fire too,” Frank continued once Gerard was upright again. He hadn’t let go of Gerard’s hand, not that Gerard was focusing every iota of his attention on that or anything. “But not-not like it’s real. It’s, um. Only on the surface? I don’t know how to explain any of this,” he laughed, a little incredulously. “I’ve never had to explain it to anyone. I don’t even think about it, usually.”
“You’re doing a good job. I mean, it’s tough shit to put in words, I bet.” He tentatively hugged Frank towards him so that Frank was plastered to his side, almost in Gerard’s lap. Frank made a startled, happy sound and pressed his face into Gerard’s shoulder for a moment.
“Is this, um. Is this warmer?” Gerard asked, and manfully didn’t shiver when Frank’s arm dislodged his hoodie a bit and snuck beneath it, curling around Gerard’s side.
“Gerard Way,” Frank said, and seemed to run out of words. “Yeah. Yes.”
They sat that way for a few minutes longer, the fire hot on Gerard’s face and casting otherworldly shadows against the trees on the opposite side of the river
“This is cold for you, though, isn’t it?” Frank said reluctantly, starting to pull back.
“Maybe if we got closer to the fire?” Gerard asked, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. It wasn’t that cold. Compared to, say, Hoth. He wanted to go for his thermometer and see if it was actually subzero out here, but there’d be time for that later. He tugged the hem of his hoodie lower, grimacing.
“Any closer and you’ll actually be on fire, dumbass,” Frank laughed and stuck his face back against Gerard’s side, fingers trailing hesitantly along his neck. Gerard couldn’t help but shiver, which sucked, because Frank immediately backed off.
“I’m not cold!” Gerard lied between his teeth. Frank looked unimpressed. Gerard switched tactics. “My other side?” he said, widening his eyes. “Totally burning up. You’d be doing me a favor.”
He’d tell Frank to get in his lap, because his knees were almost painfully hot and actually only a spark away from being on fire, but he didn’t think he could quite handle that without having an aneurysm, or an erection. Frank looked skeptical, but he apparently couldn’t resist the invitation to warm up a bit and shuffled around to Gerard’s left side, snuggling in beneath his arm.
“Let me know if you get too cold, though,” Frank said, voice drowsy and lazy. “I don’t want you to get pneumonia. That shit fucking blows, I used to get that all the time.” Frank was totally fucking snuggling with him. Gerard was blatantly being used for his body warmth, and he was so okay with that. It was sort of sad that this was the most action he’d gotten in, like, years, but he wasn’t going to complain. He could use a drink, though, if his perfect dream guy was going to lounge about all sweet and dead and unavailable in his arms for the rest of the night.
“You know not everyone can see me like you do, right?” Frank spoke up as Gerard tried to maneuver his backpack without dislodging him. “I mean, not as clear as this.”
“I got that impression, yeah,” Gerard agreed, and held the Seagrams bottle so that it caught the firelight. He caught himself just before he offered some to Frank. Frank didn’t drink. Right.
“I’m not really sure why,” Frank said thoughtfully. “I mean, you can’t help but wonder, but I dunno. I can affect how people see me to some degree, if I concentrate or whatever, but it’s mostly them, not me.”
“Huh,” Gerard said. “Well, maybe… maybe I can help you figure that out?”
“Yeah, with your EMP reader. Dork,” Frank said fondly, and Gerard hit him with the notebook. Frank grinned and then started talking again, getting a distant look on his face. “The first year or so after I died was the hardest for me. It was hard to concentrate, to figure out what was going on, you know?”
Gerard couldn’t help but shiver, and not from the cold this time. Fuck, that sounded miserable. He drank straight from the bottle again and Frank made a face.
“Dude, that shit is foul. It’s like drinking pine tar.”
“Nah, ‘s good.” Gerard grinned and exhaled pointedly in Frank’s face, breath coming out as a white cloud. “Tastes like Christmas.”
“Christmas is not a beverage,” Frank said, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, yeah, it took me a while to figure out how to be, um, corporeal? I was pretty scattered right after I died, and I couldn’t leave my corpse for, like, the longest fucking time. And can I just say, that was sorta weird.”
“Creepy,” he commented, and drained half the bottle in one go, because holy shit.
“Oh, you totally love it, you freaky fuck,” Frank giggled.
Gerard was about equal parts fascinated and fucking disturbed, to be honest. And one hundred percent sure he didn’t want to be sober for this conversation. He was such a crappy scientist.
“You, uh, watched yourself decompose?” Gerard asked, voice maybe squeaking a bit as Frank’s fingers spiderwalked along his side, only marginally warmer that the wind.
“Watched fishes eat my eyes,” Frank agreed, and Gerard made a noise he hadn’t known was humanly possible. “It was just my body, chill out!” Frank said, sounding a bit affronted.
“Gross, gross gross gross grossssss,” Gerard moaned into his hands. He hadn’t brought enough alcohol for this. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world for this. “Gross. I am never eating fish again.”
“Damn straight,” Frank sniggered, poking Gerard in the side, because he was an asshole and Gerard was never letting him leech body heat ever again, even if he did have dimples. “Meat is murder.”
Gerard flailed out a hand and smacked Frank in the side of his head.
“Oh, come on, you want to see my body. Don’t lie,” Frank leered, snickering. Gerard sort of did. But now that the reality of Frank sleeping with the fucking fishes had just been shoved into his face, Gerard was a little less confident about the whole thing.
“Anyway, those first couple weeks, if I tried to get a few fucking feet away from my body, I’d just… wind up back in the same place. No matter how hard I tried. Always the same place.” Frank hesitated a moment, propping his chin on his hand and furrowing his brow. Gerard furtively reached down for his notebook and pen. “I think it’s sort of how I remember dreams being,” Frank said finally. “I haven’t dreamed in ages, but you know the way you suddenly go from standing in the kitchen making, like, a gumball pie, and then all of a sudden you’re cutting a piece and you’re serving it to Bon Jovi on stage at Madison Square Garden and he’s blowing a bubble and climbing into it? Stop laughing, asshole. But it’s like that. No transitions, just. You’re one place, then you’re not.”
“Bubble gum pie,” Gerard said, trying not to giggle. “Okay, right. Does that still happen? The, uh, yo-yo effect back to your grave?”
“It’s not so much a grave. And nah, I’m better at concentrating now. I can walk further, obviously. Can’t go on forever, but I don’t get poinged backward, either,” Frank said, waving a hand nonchalantly. “And I don’t lose as much time as I used to, but it still happens, you know?”
“Not really?” Gerard laughed disbelievingly. “Sounds sort of like being fucked up. Hardcore fucked up, I mean. Heavy duty shit.”
“Only without the potential fun parts, yeah,” Frank agreed. “Actually, that’s a lie, there’s fun parts. I rode a bear once. That was pretty fucking awesome. And there’s always campers to dick around with, but it’d be more fun if I wasn’t stuck in a goddamned forest, I bet. I shouldn’t complain, though. If they’d actually found me and buried me, I’d be stuck in a graveyard somewhere like Sally.”
Gerard startled upright. “Sally’s real?” he spluttered, outraged. “She’s a ghost too? Why didn’t I see her?”
“Oh, she’s shy,” Frank replied offhandedly, blowing his bangs out of his eyes. The wind was really starting to pick up. “And she’s, you know, really fucking old, both of you’d probably have to be concentrating really hard for you to see her. Even I don’t always see her. She’s just not always there.” Frank got kind of a blank look on his face. “I hope she doesn’t leave soon. There was another girl, for a little while, but she’s gone now,” Frank said flatly, then looked at Gerard and beamed. “But I have you now, at least.”
Gerard looked at him and felt a faint twinge of unease. Frank didn’t seem to notice, sitting up and peering at the fire.
“Hold up, needs another log,” he said, and stood. Gerard still felt cold.
“So, you said I’m, what, better at seeing you than other people?” he said, fiddling with his hoodie and leaning in closer to the coals, holding out his hands.
“Better than most,” Frank said absently, stacking the logs in some bizarre arcane configuration. “It’s different for everyone I run into, like I said. Some people see me but don’t hear me, some people hear me but don’t see me. Some sad fuckers just get a weird feeling and freak out and run away.” When Gerard stayed silent, he glanced up and then sighed, long-suffering.
“What?” Frank asked, sounding bemused, and reached into the fire to adjust a log. “C’mon, Gerard, we’ve been over this. Just spit it out. We don’t have all night.”
“It might help us understand more, what makes me able to see you normally, if, um. You could. Can you go more ghostly around me too?” Gerard asked, excited and nervous at the same time. As long as Gerard’d known Frank, he’d looked pretty much normal, like any other teenager. He didn’t necessarily act normal, and he sometimes looked subtly off. But nothing like what other people had seen, apparently. “Like, could you go see-through or something? I don’t know. Nevermind.”
“No, sure,” Frank said. “You’re so cute. You want me to float, too, Princess?”
“Oh shut up,” Gerard said, mouth twitching. “If you’re just gonna make fun of me.”
Frank scrunched up his face, and at first Gerard just thought it was more mockery, but then he noticed the edges of Frank’s t-shirt blurring, and when Frank opened his eyes, he looked-like glass, like if Gerard held him up to the fire he’d throw Frank-colored gleams of light.
“Holy shit,” Gerard breathed, and reached out a hand before drawing it back, hesitant. Frank rolled his eyes and reached out and grabbed Gerard’s wrist. Gerard could feel his own pulse, beating faster and faster, and then the strangest fucking sensation. Like getting cold all at once, but not cold, exactly. And it was focused in one place in his pulse. Frank was looking at him with half-lidded eyes, and Gerard could feel his veins throbbing. “Holy shit,” he repeated, weakly, and Frank took his fingers out of Gerard’s skin. In the next breath he was firm and solid again.
“I don’t have to try as hard with you,” he said, flexing his fingers. Gerard stared at his own wrist. “To look alive, be solid, all that,” Frank clarified. “I don’t have to concentrate as hard.”
“Why not?” Gerard swallowed. His wrist looked perfectly normal. Gerard felt like it should look different, now. “What-why’s there a difference?”
Frank grinned, showing all his teeth. “You tell me, Gerard Way.” Then he sighed, and rubbed his head. “I better get you home,” he said. “There’s storm front coming in. It wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow,” he scowled.
Gerard protested and whined and brandished the travel umbrella he’d stowed away in his bag, but to no avail. Frank was adamant on Gerard not dying a miserable, snot-related death, and so Gerard had to submit to being hustled home beneath the quiet trees. Before Gerard left, Frank reached out a hand and touched Gerard’s cheek, fingertips melting into his skin.
“Just,” Frank said, eyes bright. “Thanks. Seriously. I can’t believe I met you. I’m never letting you go.”
“You’re about to let me go right now,” Gerard grumbled, and wondered if he should kiss Frank now. It would be the perfect time, right?
“It’s a metaphor, jackass,” Frank laughed. “I just, you know, don’t want you ending up like me. You’re going to SVA. You’re gonna be fucking famous, Gee.”
And Gerard didn’t even know what to say. He’d told Frank about how he’d applied to SVA earlier that week, the first day they’d met. He didn’t realize that Frank thought it was such a big deal.
“Well… thanks,” he said, and leaned into Frank’s touch, and it felt so weird, the cold spreading beneath his skin, into his bones, intimate, and-Frank yanked his hand away and Gerard nearly fell over.
“You’re gonna get fucking soaked if you don’t hurry,” Frank said, and shoved at Gerard’s back. “Get going, genius.”
“Okay, okay,” Gerard muttered. Jeez. But he couldn’t keep up his indignation when Frank was leaning up against the edge of the path, watching Gerard with huge eyes.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Bye, Frankie,” Gerard said, giving in and offering Frank a small smile, and Frank smiled back, all dimples and shiny eyes, and Gerard didn’t feel cold at all.
He got home just in time, hurrying down the empty streets in a daze and feeling the wind pick up, cold and cutting, and fell asleep listening to the first raindrops hitting his window, the light from the TV flickering against the rain-streaked glass.
***
Rain made the classroom darker, full of strangely flung shadows and watery light. Gerard had slouched to school beneath his useless umbrella, feet cold and wet, face numb, and arrived with smudged eyeliner spiderwebbing down his cheeks and his clothes thoroughly, miserably damp.
It was like a totally different room now, gray and filled with the sound of the wind flinging rain against the windows, as if the storm was trying to reach inside the building and find Gerard, make sure he was completely and thoroughly soaked. Fucking rain.
Mrs. Hall was graphing something on the chalkboard, the grating of the chalk blending with the white rain noise into a seamless gray whole. He wondered if the rain bothered Frank, if Frank even went solid when Gerard wasn’t there to see him. If it felt strange to have water slide through your skin. Shit he shouldn’t be thinking about right now, probably.
Ted seemed to be in a particularly foul mood that morning, hair plastered to his head and flannel dripping. He’d shaken himself when he’d wandered past Gerard’s desk, spattering his notebook with watery blue splotches. Then he spent the rest of class kicking at the back of Gerard’s chair, an irregular jarring thump Gerard had just managed to force himself to endure when it ceased abruptly.
“Your make-up is running, fag,” Ted sneered, leaning over the back of Gerard’s desk. Gerard fought the urge to scrub at his cheeks.
“I know,” he said, gritting his teeth. Fuck, it was cold in here. It was hard to concentrate, to acknowledge reality after last night. He rubbed at his wrist absently, felt the delicate bones. He wondered what Frank was doing now, if he didn’t ever sleep, didn’t dream. Did he just-stop being? Or was he always there, always half awake. Maybe being dead was like dreaming all the time.
He caught himself doodling Frank’s HALLOWEEN tattoos on his own knuckles and had to stop before Ted or Isaac noticed. Fuck, Frank. He wished he could have skipped school, stayed with Frank in the forest all day, even if it was raining and cold and miserable. He had to stop thinking about it, or he’d start beaming and being ridiculous and fiddling with his hair and recreating that blowjob scene from Ghostbusters in his head, and that wasn’t healthy for anyone.
He wound up entertaining himself by drawing the girl across the row from him, which seemed safe enough. She was sitting in front of the window and looking like she might doze off at any moment. The rain was throwing strange shadows over her tanned skin and corkscrew curls. She was totally stacked, Gerard noticed-he wasn’t blind. But more than that, there was something about her face, broad and clear, with swooping arched cheekbones like Japanese calligraphy. It caught his eye and glimmered in his hindbrain. He bit his pen, thinking. There was something about it that reminded him of the scroll of a violin or a viola.
“What the fucking hell are you doing,” Ted said in his ear, chair screeching forward. Gerard froze, hunched over his paper. “What are you goddamn drawing my girlfriend for? What the fuck, you’re-you’re supposed to be gay!”
“Bi, actually,” Gerard said, mind totally blank-and holy fuck, that had been the wrong thing to say. There was actually a throbbing vein in Ted’s forehead, Jesus. “But I wasn’t, I was just-she has interesting lines, it’s not like-“
“Don’t look at my girlfriend’s lines, you sick fuck!” Ted said incredulously. Mrs. Hall was going to notice what was going on any second now, and then Gerard was going to beat a quick retreat to the highway and hitchhike back to civilization. Or maybe, like, hide out in the Trumbull Research Center and feed off the extra pudding cups the nurses brought Mikey.
“The lines of her face, Jesus!” he hissed back, trying to scoot his chair as far forward as it would go. The girl in front of him was pointedly ignoring this attempt, but Ted’s chair followed Gerard forward until all Gerard could do was lean up, away from Ted’s looming, hateful face, the edge of the desk pressing in a hard bruising line against his ribs. “The lines of her face are just, you know, interesting, and different-“
“Different?”
Gerard had never heard someone whisper and bellow at the same time before. And oh, fuck, of course the girl in question noticed something was going on, and yeah, Gerard finally got on the clue bus, because she was in fact the girl who sucked face with Ted every day in the hall. He’d just never actually noticed her face during those occasions. Ted’s groping hands sort of tended to dominate the tableau, and plus, Gerard tried not to look too closely at that particular clinch if he could help it. The girl was frowning at both of them, now. Gerard couldn’t blame her.
“Baby, don’t you pay him no mind,” Ted said immediately, in a surprisingly syrupy voice. The girl ignored him, shooting Gerard a cool look.
“You like my… lines?” she said to him, raising an eyebrow, and holy shit, okay, she really was gorgeous and this was awful. Gerard should totally have stayed in the forest and caught pneumonia and avoided this whole clusterfuck.
“Of your face,” Gerard moaned and tried to duck his head as far down into his hoodie as possible. “Not other, uh, lines, or curves or whatever-not that your other lines aren’t nice, I mean, it’s just. I.”
Ted made a low growling noise behind him and Gerard tried to edge further up in his seat, but his ass already had bare minimum contact with the chair; he was holding himself upright purely by clutching at the desk.
“Settle, class!” Mrs. Hall trilled without turning away from the board.
“Can I see it?” the girl asked, pursing her lips. “The drawing, I mean.”
“I, uh,” Gerard said intelligently, and oh Christ, Ted was literally breathing down the back of his neck.
“Tanya, let it be,” Ted growled. Gerard glanced over furtively to see if anyone else had noticed what was going on, and yes, sure enough, Noltes was staring at him, face terrifyingly blank. Tanya took advantage of Gerard’s rodent-like paralysis to snag his notebook.
“Hey now,” she said, and Gerard turned, startled at the tone in her voice. She looked at him from under her lashes, twirling a curl with one finger. Gerard, if possible, felt himself tense up even more than he already was. “This is real nice-Gerard, right?” she drawled, smiling slow at him. “Can I keep this, Gerard?”
Gerard literally wanted to hide under his desk or pull his hoodie over his head and scuttle out of the room. He made a vague gesture with his hand that he hoped conveyed this, but apparently Tanya either missed the subtleties or chose to ignore them, because she carefully tore the paper from the notebook and folded it into her purse.
“What the fuck, Tanya!” Ted exploded behind him, thunderous and outraged, and apparently not even Mrs. Hall could ignore it.
“That will be enough,” Mrs. Hall said frostily, peering at the room over her spectacles, a tiny ineffectual Mephistopheles. Like Clarence from It’s A Wonderful Life, only on the other side, the side of the fallen angels and cheerful sadists. Gerard really shouldn’t have ever been born. It would definitely have been better that way.
Ted leaned even farther forward-seriously, by this point neither of them were even in their desks any more. The rain had picked up, and thunder, almost too low to hear, thrummed through the room like a counterpoint to the adrenaline and dread in Gerard’s veins.
“You’re fucking dead, Way,” Ted said in Gerard’s ear, quiet enough that Mrs. Hall only glanced at them briefly before turning back to her asymptotes and away from the unfolding disaster.
“Yeah,” Noltes said, and leaned on his desk, biceps flexing menacingly. “Way dead.”
There was a long pause. “Christ, shut up, Noltes,” Ted said, slumping back in his desk and grinding a palm into one eye. Gerard would have been sympathetic-good minions clearly were hard to find-if Ted wasn’t such a mouth-breathing homophobic murderous prick. “Ike,” Ted hissed, clearly disgruntled. “Ike, what the fuck, man, where’s the support? Where’s the back up? Noltes is fucking useless over here.”
Gerard kept his head forward, but he heard Noltes grunt noncommittally and Isaac whisper back, “I’m taking notes, idiot, shut the fuck up.”
Ted made an outraged noise, but Gerard was busy trying to look subtly out of the corner of his eye, hoping for an opportunity to snag his notebook from Tanya’s desk and bolt while the Jock Trio was distracted. Tanya noticed Gerard’s glance, and her eyes widened as she smiled at him. Ted, attention apparently recaptured, made an awful noise behind him.
“Tanya,” he hissed. “You’re encouraging him!”
The bell finally, finally rang and Gerard shot to his feet before getting dragged backward by Ted’s hand on his hoodie.
“Where you goin’,” he snarled.
“I heard some girls like guys with that whole nonlinear sexuality eyeliner thing going on,” Isaac said, sounding interested as the class swirled around them, students pouring out into the hallway. Gerard looked longingly after them. “Didn’t know it was true, mind.”
Tanya stood up, statuesque and lovely even in the gray morning light. She rolled her eyes and tossed Gerard his notebook. She pointedly ignored Ted’s attempts to get her attention, looking supremely bored.
“Shut the fuck up, Ike,” Ted said, turning to look at his minion, betrayal written all over his face. Et tu, Brute? Gerard thought, and then had to work really hard on not bursting into hysterical giggles. “What the fuck do you know, she’s just trying to rile me up, aren’t you, baby? S’ real cute, actually.”
“That’s totally it, probably, hah, I mean, that’s the only thing that makes sense, right?” Gerard babbled, tugging his hoodie free of Ted’s grip and backing away. Straight into the brick wall that was Noltes. Fuck fuck fuck. Noltes looked down at Gerard and smiled big and white, like a fucking shark. He had surprisingly nice teeth.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tanya said, examining her pink nails, cool as a fucking cucumber, and she was clearly evil incarnate. Gerard was sort of in awe. “I think he’s cute. Sweet, too.”
Gerard could literally feel his will to live draining out of him. Which was lucky, because judging by the shade of apocalyptic red Ted was turning, his life was about to end anyway. Maybe he could go haunt the forest with Frank.
“Get out of my way, Noltes,” Tanya said, sliding past Noltes with her friend.
“Baby,” Ted said, chasing after her. “Baby, you gotta be fucking kidding me, right? Right? Baby, he’s leading you on! He doesn’t even like girls, goddammit!” And Tanya sailing off, back ramrod-straight and head high, totally ignoring him.
Isaac laughed and hiked his bag on his shoulder.
“Run along to class now, Gerard,” he said, nodding at Noltes. Noltes moved out of the way, slightly, enough that Gerard could edge past him towards freedom. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing you later, though. Ted’s a little touchy about his girl.”
Noltes just kept smiling, eyes following Gerard across the room as he bolted out the door.
Gerard spent a really fantastic English period with Ted staring murderously at the back of his head the entire time, completely silent. It was really, really fucking creepy, especially since Gerard had sort of gotten used to the whole constant droning of insults and condescending pet names. This silence was new and terrible. Gerard was starting to think he could hear Ted’s eyes bulging.
And fuck, even though Gerard had about a thousand other things to worry about-ranging from how to get to English without one of the goons next to him shoving him in a locker to how he’d get out of the school building later without being beaten to a pulp and shoved in a coffin-he still couldn’t get Frank out of his head. Which was really stupid, since what he should be thinking about was how to rectify this godawful situation. Tanya, now that he’d noticed her, was everywhere, and she apparently was having a great time waving languidly at Gerard and winding up her Neanderthal boyfriend, which, super. Thanks for that, Tanya.
Gerard was pretty sure she was just winding Ted up, anyway.
Mostly sure.
The rest of the day sucked serious ass. Gerard had never been so grateful for a Friday in his entire life-he was looking forward to a weekend respite from being shoved into water fountains and having his notebooks stolen and generally fearing for his life.
“You call this lying low?” Ray hissed at him disbelievingly, as though it was in any way Gerard’s fault he’d just gotten tripped into a mud puddle. Oh God, he was totally going to get ringworm and go bald, he just knew it.
“Well, technically, I am,” Gerard said, pulling himself into a sitting position. “And, anyway, this is not my fault!”
Ray just clucked his tongue and dragged him upright. “You take him outside, I’ll get the food,” he told Bob, who shrugged and pulled Gerard to his feet and out of the mud puddle with a disgusting squelching noise. It wasn’t even worth the effort to go inside to one of the bathrooms and try to clean up. Gerard would just bask in misery and mud for the rest of his classes; it was that kind of day.
***
PART SEVEN