Fic: The Anatomy of a Fall (MCR, Frank/Gerard, 10/12)
Part Nine | Index
***
The next day, they all trekked out to the gorge and Frank waved a hand out sardonically over the empty air.
“Behold my tomb,” he intoned sepulchrally, and Gerard winced.
“Fuck,” Ray said, rubbing his arms, peering down through his hair. “Jesus fuck, Frank, how’d you end up down here?”
“What, you want the whole sordid story?” Frank asked, smirking. He sat down at the edge of the cliff, kicking his feet as Gerard wrestled with the fishing line. He’d asked if Frank could bring a piece up, but Frank had gone sullen and sharp, told Gerard that he’d have fucking moved his own body where it’d have been found if he could have, he’s not that fucking dumb. Best he could do was move some rocks around, protect his body from the river a little.
Gerard tried not to be hurt. The bitterness in Frank’s voice wasn’t for him. He knew that. He did. He’d just… Anyway, he’d thought that might be the case, so he had a little basket thing he’d found in the house, and a fishing pole from the garage. He could lower the basket and maybe he’d ask Frank to go down and move that for him instead, if Gerard couldn’t snag anything himself.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” Ray was saying earnestly. “But, I mean, did you fall or something?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Frank said, picking up a rock and chucking it across the gorge. “Yeah, you could say that. I fell.”
Gerard bit his lip until he tasted blood, and then he gave up. “Frank,” he said, staring at the snarled fishing line in his hands. They’d kissed here, right on this ledge, but he couldn’t think about that now.
“Oh, come on, Gee,” Frank said coolly, leaning back and looking over his shoulder. When Gerard glanced up, he raised an eyebrow, smirked. “You’re a smart guy. You have to have guessed.”
“Not the details,” Gerard replied quietly. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.” But that sounded like an excuse, now. He hadn’t wanted to look at the whole picture. He was a coward like that. He didn’t know if he could bear knowing the details. But Frank knew them-had lived and died by them. Gerard could at least face that it had happened.
“Go on, then,” Frank said, staring at him. “I’ll fill in the holes as you go.”
Gerard lay down on his stomach at the cliff edge, looking down. Frank was next to him, radiating cold air, and Gerard could feel him staring. Gerard didn’t want to say anything. He started lowering the wicker basket, swallowing.
“Your neck was broken,” he said, lowered the basket another couple feet. “Someone-probably more than one-person attacked you. I think-from, uh, some of the things you’ve said, that maybe they didn’t mean to murder you? But they did, even if it wasn’t on purpose. And they covered it up. Threw your body in the river.” It was hard to keep his voice from shaking, and he couldn’t see anymore, eyes too wide to keep the tears in. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d known that was how it’d happened, but he’d never articulated it, even to himself. Fuck. Fuck.
“Gold star,” Frank replied into the silence, startling Gerard. The basket snagged on an outcrop when he jerked his arm, and he bit his lip, tried to concentrate.
“I knew you didn’t run away,” Ray said quietly, and Frank shrugged at him.
“Fuck,” Bob said succinctly. “Who did it? They should have been arrested. They should be in fucking jail. Intent or not.” And Ray looked distraught and horrified and angry, pacing and wringing his hands. Gerard just felt numb and terrified. It was like the world had been broken somehow, jagged and treacherous.
He drew in breath to speak, and then Frank cut him off. “Christ, you’re taking a fucking ice age over there. Let me help you with that.” And without further ado, Frank jumped off the cliff.
“Well, that was alarming,” Bob noted, edging a bit closer and peering cautiously down. “Fuck, that-that is a body.”
“Yeah,” Gerard said tersely.
“My body,” Frank corrected, his voice rising over the crash of the river and echoing weirdly off the walls of the gorge. He was crouched next to the skeleton, patting the skull with a proprietary air. “Nice, right?”
“Sort of, uh. Not what I remembered,” Ray replied faintly, wincing. Gerard could sympathize. This was pretty damned weird, and he’d had a while to adjust to the idea. He unwound another couple inches of fishing line, concentrating on that instead of the white gleam of bone, instead of wondering-he wondered if there was an empty grave somewhere with Frank’s name carved into a tombstone. That’s what people did when they couldn’t find the body, right?
“It’s not fucking neurosurgery, Gerard,” Frank called up to them, and Gerard sucked in a startled breath. “Just drop the fucking basket and I’ll scoop something up-what do you want, a hand?”
“Well, I mean, yeah, your help is definitely going to be important, I don’t think I can maneuver the basket mys-oh,” Gerard said, and dropped the basket, only managing at the last second to snatch the string back up before it fell into the river or something. “Oh. You mean a hand, a hand. Right, um. That would work. Lots of small bones that could, uh, have washed away easily. On their own. In case we get a crime team out here later, or something.”
“No crime teams,” Frank yelled back. Gerard looked away from Frank’s bent form, biting his lip.
“Do you think we could get arrested for tampering with evidence?” Ray asked nervously, twisting a lock of his hair.
“We’re minors,” Bob said. “We should be fine, long term. But we should probably call the police at some point.”
“Yeah, because the police were so useful last time,” Frank said from behind them, and Bob yelped and jumped straight up in the air. “What? Go on, haul ‘er up, Gerard.”
“Look, this time you’ve got us. We can help the police catch the fuckers that killed you,” Bob said, clutching his chest and glaring. “Also, stop appearing out of nowhere like that, you little shit. I know you do it on purpose.”
“You’re just so pretty when you squeak in terror,” Frank said sweetly, and clapped a hand on Bob’s back.
“Nice phalanges,” Gerard whispered weakly, staring at the basket of jumbled bones, and then shook himself and looked up. “Frank, Bob’s right. Whoever did this… they shouldn’t get away with it. They should be in jail. We should call the police.”
“Not up for debate, thanks.” Frank poked at the basket. “Man, are you guys seriously going to carry my body parts around? That is some freaky serial killer shit. We definitely don’t want the police involved.”
“Frankie,” Gerard said, exasperated, and Frank threw his hands up in the air.
“What, you want to go hunt down Mark Sikowski and his goons? Be my goddamned guest, but I’m pretty sure they’ve cooked up an alibi or two by now. And if you think ‘my buddy Casper told me they done it’ will hold up in court, have fun with your meds and padded walls, my friends.” Frank dropped his hands and stopped glaring, started eyeing everyone warily instead. “What? Has the American legal system changed that much since I died? Is evidence from Slimer admissible now?”
Gerard had to sit down. He considered putting his head between his knees; he thought he might throw up.
“Sikowski,” Ray said slowly, staring. “Mark Sikowski killed you? Coach Sikowski?”
“I’ll kill him,” Gerard heard someone say, then realized it’d been his own voice. Fuck. “I mean, I-” Gerard didn’t believe in the death penalty, didn’t believe in the solution to violence being more violence, but he kept flashing on an image of the Coach’s face, and it summoned up a visceral response: the deep desire to bash the fucker’s head in with a rock. He wondered if he could actually do it, actually be capable of murder. The fingers in the basket were so fucking small. Coach Sikowski was a mountain of a man, even now, hair thinning and a slight paunch to his waist, and Gerard’s brain was way too good at painting a picture of it, of a teenaged Mark towering over Frank, sneering.
“He’s still here?” Frank asked, voice strangely hollow.
“Fucking baseball coach,” Bob said succinctly.
“Oh, that’s-that’s great,” Frank stated, eyes queerly bright. “I’ve been rotting away in the woods. He’s playing baseball. Molding young minds. Great.”
“He can’t get away with it,” Gerard said, and he still couldn’t quite recognize his own voice. It was like hearing a recording of himself on an answering machine. He didn’t sound tangled and torn, like the way he felt in his own head right now. He sound collected, confident. Bob and Ray were looking at him like he was making sense. “We’re going to do something. I don’t care if we’re arrested for fucking with the crime scene. We can’t let him get away with it.”
“Uh, newsflash? He did. He got away with it.” Frank waved a hand in front of Gerard’s face, snapped his fingers. “Hello? I know you’re lost in visions of avenging glory or whatever, but I really don’t care anymore. I’m dead. What the fuck does it matter? He can’t take it back. Nothing can fix it. And I don’t want you guys getting in trouble.”
The sky had been a brilliant, painful blue when they’d set out that afternoon, and now it was gunmetal gray, the clouds so close Gerard felt like he could reach up and touch them, and there was a cold wind whipping down across the gorge, moaning and chill. So, the whole ‘not caring’ thing-obviously a lie. Even without the meteorological tells, Gerard would have known that. There was no way Frank didn’t care.
“What about your family?” Gerard continued stubbornly, ignoring the twinge of guilt when Frank’s shoulders automatically hunched, his eyes wide and surprised. “Don’t they deserve to know what happened? See the fucker go to jail?”
“They don’t-it’s been years,” Frank said hoarsely, and then rubbed his hands over his face and glared. “This is not up for fucking discussion, Gerard. Back. Off.”
“No,” Gerard spit out. “It’s wrong. He should be in jail. We have to make this right-we can’t bring you back to life, fine, but we can send his ass to fucking prison. Who else was there? Tell us exactly what happened, where it happened-” And then Bob was tugging him back, because apparently he’d decided to get in Frank’s face and was stalking forward, forcing Frank back, and okay, it was fine if Frank fell off the cliff, he was immaterial and all, but Gerard supposed it would be a little worse if he accidentally took a step too far himself.
“Both of you fucking cool it,” Bob growled. “Let’s just… shelve the discussion for now, alright? Christ, you two.”
Frank crossed his arms over his chest and looked thunderous-literally, actually, there were storm clouds building and the first cold drops of rain falling. Great. Gerard just clutched the basket of bones to his stomach and waited for Frank to cave.
“I’d like to know exactly what the fuck you think you’re going to be able to accomplish here, but fine,” Frank grated out. “Whatever. It was him and, fuck, George Lenton, Clay Noltes, Tim Barrows. That whole fucking group, Jesus, close-minded smalltown fucks, I’m sure you know the type.”
“Yeah,” Gerard said, trying to keep the edge of outrage and determination in his voice, when suddenly he just felt really small and stupid, like a jerk. He got out his notebook and started scribbling the names down, ignoring the way the rain was picking up, splashing down on the page in round, wet drops like tears.
“I was out in the woods-I wanted to practice, my dad always yelled about the noise, and. Anyway, I had my guitar. They followed me, started shoving me around. Sound familiar, Gerard? Maybe you’ll be a little more fucking careful now, what do you fucking think?” Gerard didn’t look up, shivering. “’Cause shit got out of hand. I fell, hit my neck on a wall. Mark pushed me harder than he meant to, maybe, or maybe he did mean to, and just didn’t think-it doesn’t matter. Bam. I’m dead. They all freaked out, dumped my body in the river, took off. I’m a little shaky on the timing of events, to be honest, sorry to fuck up your investigation, there,” Frank said bitterly, tilting his head and scowling at Gerard’s notebook. “They might have stashed me in the millhouse for a while first. I’m not sure. But I wound up in the river, and, eventually, here. Home sweet fucking home.”
He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the desolate area, the stands of leafless trees and endless roar of water, the gray rock below and gray sky above. No one said anything, and the silence stretched out, significant and tense.
“Wait, Tim Barrows? Isaac’s brother?” Ray spoke up suddenly, voice almost drowned out by the river, but it got louder as he continued, indignant and surprised. “Shit, do you think Mayor Barrows was involved in this, too? Holy fuck. That’ll definitely shake up his plans for re-election. And Ted’s uncle committed murder. Do you think… I mean, his brother’s the sheriff! He was a cop even back then. Jesus! Holy fuck. It’s like the whole town’s in on it. This is fucking nuts!”
“Look, let’s just… focus on the facts for the moment, okay? Frank, do you remember exactly where the original fight took place?” Gerard asked calmly, hyper-aware of his own heartbeat. He knew this fucking town was creepy, he’d known if from the very start. And he’d been right: whole town was run by goddamned murderers. Who all knew about this? He couldn’t-he’d have to think about it later.
“Wait,” Frank said, yanking away Gerard’s notebook. “Wait, this Ted kid is a fucking Sikowski?” He had Gerard’s shoulders now and was doing the creepy ‘burning-eyes, vengeful ghost’ face.
“It’s okay! Honest, it is, Ted’s been steering clear of me since you went all ghost-Rambo on him the other night,” Gerard was trying not to give in and shiver, or look afraid, because it was just Frank, okay, it was an angry, undead Frank, but it was just Frank, and Frank would never hurt him. He tugged on the notebook again, trying to steal it back.
“Frank went what, now?” Ray asked, hovering beside them both and looking a strange mix of upset and intrigued-Gerard’s life was sort of a train wreck at the moment, he supposed. You couldn’t help but gape in horror and fascination. On one hand, obnoxious violent homophobes. On the other, crazy vengeful spirits of dead hot boys. At any rate, Gerard snatched the distraction with both hands.
“It was fucking wicked,” he told the others enthusiastically, hamming it up. “You should have seen it! It was like a tornado of undead rage. I think Noltes pissed himself.”
“No wonder those assholes have backed off,” Ray said, snickering. “Frank can be fucking scary, man, I should know. But… you know…”
“Know what?” Frank asked, eyes narrowed. He’d backed down a bit, started to look a little calmer, but he was still glassy and radiating winter cold, and Gerard just wanted to abandon the conversation, stick his head in the sand and forget all of this. It’d be so much easier.
But he couldn’t. It was wrong. It was wrong, and someone had to do something. And they were all Frank had. It was their responsibility. He tugged the notebook out of Frank’s limp hands and started scribbling again, possible plans of action.
“Well, the coach has been giving Gerard a really hard time lately,” Ray said hesitantly, looking between the two of them and wringing his hands. “I mean, he’s had detention with him every day for the last week.”
“Mark’s messing with Gerard?” Frank said slowly, deliberate and cool, and then smiled, said with a terrifying amount of cheer, “I’m going to rip out his spleen and shove it up his ass.” Which to Gerard’s mind was an overreaction, like, wow.
“One thing at a time, you lunatics,” Bob said, deceptively mild, prying Gerard away from Frank, which was good, since Gerard thought he might be getting frostbite all the places Frank’s hands had been touching him, Christ. “Let’s just see if our ‘carry around corpses’ theory works. If Frank can leave the forest and whip up tornados of rage, I’ll feel a lot better, to be honest.”
“Fine,” Gerard said, shamefully happy to leave the topic, and then he rallied himself a bit. “But we’re talking about it later!” he said firmly, and Frank rolled his eyes and kicked Gerard in the shin.
“Fine, Sherlock. Whatever. I’m starting to think you’re stalling. What, don’t want to touch my mortal coil?” Frank picked up the basket of bones and rattled it in Gerard’s face, smirking evilly. Dick. Bastard. Gerard hated him.
“I am not,” Gerard muttered, and then summoned up his courage and shoved his hand in the basket, not looking, just grabbing the first thing his fingers touched.
It was… it was lighter than he’d expected, and warmer, too. Warmer than stone would have been. He looked at it, lying small and white in his palm. A metacarpal, he thought, or a phalange. Fuck if he knew. He’d look it up later. He closed his hand around it, feeling oddly protective, wanting it to warm up to his body temperature after years of being down there in the cold and wet.
“Woah,” Frank said suddenly, chin on Gerard’s shoulder. “Huh. That feels… really funky.” His eyes had gone soft and dreamy, suddenly, like he hadn’t been acting like a total vengeful spirit moments before. “Hey, Gee,” he said, leaning into Gerard’s neck and rubbing his face against it like a cat, giggling. Was Frank fucking stoned? “Like the way you handle my bone, man.”
Gerard went bright red and coughed. Wow, not the time. Not the fucking time for this.
“Okay, gross,” Bob announced after a moment, and then picked up a second phalange gingerly, his hand covered by his sleeve. “Don’t even think about rubbing up on me, Iero.”
Frank hummed and stuck his nose behind Gerard’s ear. “Your loss,” he said brightly, and Gerard was starting to get worried he might do something embarrassing.
Ray warily took a third bone, and Frank finally detached himself from Gerard, full of well-being and smiles and apparently completely willing to forget the previous conversation about how he’d been murdered by a fucking group of assholes that were still wandering free. Gerard was having a little more trouble getting his mind to shift gears, but the way Frank kept looking at him, dreamy and speculative and oh Jesus, that was totally a leer, and they were in public, Bob and Ray were going to notice! He glared at Frank, who just bounced happily, and evilly, and licked his lips. Gah.
Luckily, Bob and Ray were a bit distracted by handling dead body parts. After some debate, they decided to snag a couple extra tiny bones, just in case, and then lowered the rest back down in the basket.
“So,” Bob said. “Nothing left to do but try this shit out. Let’s get a move on, yeah?” And they all trooped off, Gerard trying to adjust his pants subtly as they went. Fucking adorable horny ghosts.
Speak of the devil. “Man, this is great,” Frank enthused, bouncing along the path beside Gerard, crunching acorns gleefully. “You hear that? I can hear myself walk! I’m not even trying, man, I feel so fucking solid. Do I look more solid, Gee?”
“You… sorta do,” Gerard agreed, and couldn’t help beaming back. Frank didn’t look more solid than he normally did, exactly, but there was something different about him. The light was falling on him differently. He was casting a shadow, and he had more color than he usually did, Gerard was almost positive. Before, he’d been pastels and chalk and charcoal. Now there was a sort of richness to the colors in his skin, in his hair and eyes. It was pretty amazing.
“Well, before we all jizz our pants in excitement, let’s see what happens when we actually try to leave these godforsaken woods, right?”
“Buzzkill Bob strikes again,” Frank said sadly, and then hip-checked Bob into a tree trunk, giggling.
Gerard kept the small finger bone clenched tightly in his fist as he stepped out of the forest and into the grassy field behind the school. Ray and Bob followed, and then they were just waiting as Frank dithered at the forest’s edge.
“Have you even tried yet?” Ray asked finally. “Come on, Frankie, just take a step. It can’t be as bad as the wheelbarrow, right?”
“Never mention the wheelbarrow ever again,” Frank muttered, gnawing his lower lip, and then he sighed, closed his eyes, and took a step forward. Then another, and then Gerard couldn’t help it, he let out a whoop of triumph and rushed towards him, flung his arms around Frank and laughed.
“We did it!” he whispered gleefully into Frank’s neck, and then danced them around in a circle.
“Gerard,” Frank said shakily, and clung to him a moment before peeling himself free and looking around, eyes huge. “I can’t fucking believe it.”
“Awesome,” Ray said softly. “Hey, how’s it feel?”
Gerard let go of Frank, stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried not to beam too much. Frank wavered as Gerard stepped back-physically wavered, like a candle flame. He shook his head, looking confused.
“It’s weird. I feel… all stretched out, I guess? It’s a little hard to concentrate. Let’s keep going, see what happens.”
Frank faded as they walked, all the color leeching out of him, and he flat out refused to get in Bob’s car, said something about it moving too fast to keep up. So Gerard waved Bob and Ray off and set off towards his home on foot, Frankie tagging along beside him and babbling about the lack of trees. By the time they got to Gerard’s house, Frank’s voice was husky and blended with the wind, the rustle of dead leaves on the street. He was more evening fog than boy; Gerard could barely see him anymore. But his voice was cheerful, and he kept pointing out how things had changed and stayed the same-a silo had fallen down, a farm had been turned into a subdivision, and Mrs. Middleton had apparently been using the same Halloween decorations for the last two decades.
It was like trying to walk a puppy. Frank kept getting distracted and bounding off to rifle through someone’s mailbox or to peek in a window, or just staring around himself, eyes everywhere but where he was going, and he kept walking through Gerard by accident, leaving him shuddering in a wave of tingling cold.
Fifty billion years later, Gerard finally managed to herd Frank into his house.
“So, this is my room,” he said nervously, shuffling in. Frank was barely visible at all anymore. He was just a blur in the corner of Gerard’s eye, a patch of chilly air, but Gerard could imagine him bouncing forward easily enough, all bright smile and curious eyes.
“Sweet Tarantino posters!” Frank said cheerfully, and then the stack of DVDs on the floor by the dresser toppled over. “Oops, sorry. Wow, wait, are these movies?” A case popped open, DVD shining in the light. “Holy shit, the world got so fucking cool after I died.”
Gerard laughed, startled, and began struggling out of his hoodie-the damned thing was covered in prickly sticks and dust and other outdoorsy debris. Gerard’s wardrobe would seriously benefit from his sort-of-boyfriend no longer being exclusively forest-dwelling.
“Hey, they remade Dawn of the Dead? Seriously? Was it any good?”
“Amazing, actually, but I really prefer the slow zombie trope, you know?” Gerard said, pawing through his closet and finding a ratty King Coopa t-shirt he was pretty sure belonged to Mikey. It was a little too small, but it smelled clean. “I mean, fast zombies, it’s scary, but it’s a totally different feel, less of the crushing weight of despair and inevitability, more of the ‘holy fucking shit, we’re all gonna die in a spray of bodily fluid, run for your lives,’ you know?”
“I do not know,” Frank said gravely, and there was a squeak of bedsprings, so he’d probably launched himself at the bed. Gerard understood; if he’d been stuck in a forest for a decade, he’d be pretty fucking excited to have access to a bed himself. “But I would like to. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fast zombie movie. Can we watch it?”
“Totally,” Gerard said, beaming in what he assumed was Frank’s direction. Watching zombie flicks in his bedroom with a hot boy that liked him, who also happened to be a fucking ghost. Gerard had honestly never imagined his life being this awesome. Though he did sort of wish Frank was more visible at the moment. Not being able to tell exactly where he was or what he was looking at at any given moment was… stressful. “Uh, I’m going to change into my pjs, if that’s okay?”
“Knock yourself out,” Frank said, sounding amused.
“I… don’t suppose you’d close your eyes.”
“Not a chance in the world,” Frank agreed complacently, and Gerard sighed and shuffled half-into the closet, contorting himself to expose as little skin as possible. He was pale and awkward and only Mikey, and his mom, he supposed, had ever seen him without a shirt on, let alone without pants, and Frank was… well, Frank.
“This is the worst strip tease I’ve ever seen,” Frank commented after a couple minutes. “Like, ever. I think I saw one nipple, for three seconds. I want a refund.”
“You want me to throw your metacarpal into a lake?” Gerard said crankily, trying not to blush, and then squeaked as a rush of cold air pressed against his cheek.
“Gee, you’re fucking adorable,” Frank said in his ear, so close Gerard automatically leaned in, but there was nothing to lean against. No lips, no body. Nothing. “But I’ll respect your personal boundaries. I solemnly swear not to sneak in your bathroom while you’re taking a shower. More than once.”
Holy shit, Gerard hadn’t even though about the potential havoc he was unleashing upon the world by taking Frank’s bones out of the forest.
“No!” he said sternly, a little more breathlessly than he’d have liked, and stomped over to the bed. “No spying on people in the nude without express permission! That’s just creepy.”
“Oh, murder and life-after-death and carrying around pieces of a skeleton, that he’s okay with. It’s the voyeurism that’s creepy. Got it. Makes total sense.”
“Who are you even talking to?” Gerard inquired snippily, and began hunting in his blankets for the remote control. He thought he saw a shadow move by the window and glanced up. “Hey, uh, are you okay? Is this working alright for you?”
“Kinda tired,” Frank said, closer than Gerard had expected, again. His voice was-not staticky, exactly, but it sounded like tiny bits and pieces of the things he said were missing, like the sound wasn’t all coming through. “It’s getting harder to concentrate.”
“Oh,” Gerard said, disappointed. “I… thought maybe it might get easier, over time.”
“Nah, I just need to get used to it. It’s-easier if you’re holding the bone in your hand, I think? If it’s touching your skin. You should make it into a necklace or something.”
Gerard went and got the bone back out of his jeans pocket, staring at it. “Yeah, because that won’t get me arrested or sent to therapy for the rest of my life.”
“You could just stick it in your underwear,” Frank suggested, voice low and amused. “Sure, the repercussions if it gets found might be worse, but who’s going to find it, right?” Gerard squawked indignantly and flailed out a hand to hit where he thought Frank might be. He stuck the bone in one of his pajama pockets after checking to make sure these weren’t the holes in them.
“Fiiiine, I guess a that’ll work for now,” Frank sighed, and his voice did sound a little stronger, actually. Fuck, Gerard really was going to have to figure out how to carry the damned thing later on, if skin contact worked best to boost Frank’s signal, or whatever. Maybe he could duct tape it to himself.
“You know, you’re kind of sending mixed messages, here,” Gerard said after a moment of wriggling around and poking at the DVD player. He’d finally gotten the menu pulled up; gore was dripping across the screen and Frank was making appreciative noises about the clarity and the lack of a need to fast-forward through previews. “First you say we can’t make out because you’re dead and my heart must go on, or whatever. Now you’re trying to get me to strip and telling me to stick your bone in my pants.”
“I am dead,” Frank argued, and his voice was light and cheerful, except Gerard had heard that tone before, and he didn’t buy it. “I’m not exactly boyfriend material, Gee. You living boys, you’ll only break my heart.”
“Never,” Gerard said, more seriously than he’d meant to, and for a moment he thought Frank might have disappeared, because there was only silence in the room, so of course Gerard had to fill it by babbling like a lunatic brook. “We just met recently, really, so maybe it’ll take you a while to believe it, and I’m okay with waiting, honest. But I know what I want. I’m willing to take a risk on it. And we’ve already done more than you thought we could, right? You can leave the forest, now, and I-well, all of us-we can take you with us wherever we go, and not just, like, a soppy ‘memory of you,’ but actually you, so that’s not a problem anymore, right?”
“Gerard,” Frank said, and if Gerard closed his eyes he could see it perfectly, Frank lying in the bed next to him, on his stomach, head propped on his hands and eyes huge and mouth perfect.
“It’s not exactly like you can introduce me to your parents,” Frank continued, after a moment. “I still-I still think it’s a bad idea. It’s not-you won’t get to be normal, not with me around. Not if you want to, I dunno, go steady or whatever.”
“Like I was ever going to be normal anyway,” Gerard said, thumping his head back on the pillow, frustrated. He jabbed a finger in Frank’s direction, towards a sort of glum-looking shimmer in the air. “I do, okay, I do want to go steady with you, and go to the movies, and all that shit. And I will totally introduce you to my mom sometime; I don’t even care if she thinks I’m insane. Alright?”
Frank barked out a laugh. “God, you’re just-look. I don’t mean to, uh, assume, but at some point you’re going to want to have sex, right? You’re fucking seventeen! It’s been a while, but I remember how it goes. And I-if you laugh, I’ll go fucking poltergeist on your ass-but Gerard, man, I don’t know how much I can give you.”
“Well, this may surprise you, but I am, in fact, down for some experimentation in the area of, uh, non-traditional sex,” Gerard admitted, and man, he was definitely blushing now. Ah, well. Fuck it. He’d just propositioned his undead best friend. Blushing was probably a normal response, given the circumstances. “But, I mean, do you-I mean, you like kissing, right? And you still feel the things you did when you were alive, just… differently. And your experience, it’s changing, like, you can leave the forest and you’re more solid now. We can practice. I think it’s worth practicing.”
“Oh, a seventeen-year-old doesn’t mind practicing sex, wow. I am overcome with shock. Hold me before I swoon into a faint.” But Frank was laughing and Gerard was felt a wash of chill air, all along his side, and that meant-well, apparently he could blush harder, that was good to know. They were spooning, sort of. Fucking awesome.
“So…” Gerard managed, biting his lower lip. There was a mirror on his closet door, and if he looked across the room he could see himself in it, splayed out on the bed, laying on his back. And the slightest distortion of air beside him that must be Frank. Mirror-Gerard looked rumpled and dazed, hair sticking in all directions and too-tight t-shirt rucked up, showing a pale slice of belly. He put a hand there, on his exposed skin, and watched himself in the mirror, shivering. “Can you see me right now?”
“Yes,” Frank answered. “But-oh my god. That is-fuck, Gerard, that’s not fair, I can’t-”
“I’ll stop if you want,” Gerard managed to say, not quite believing in his own daring as he slipped his hand beneath the waistband of his pajamas, into his boxers. “Um. I’ve never really… done this with someone else here, before.”
“So this is all for me, huh,” Frank breathed, and Gerard nodded, hair falling in his eyes, his cheeks hot.
“I mean-if you don’t want me to, I-”
“Don’t you fucking dare stop now,” Frank growled, and there was a feeling almost like-Gerard arched his neck into Frank’s touch, felt the quick sting of teeth. “Do it for me,” he said lowly, voice crackling like static, and Gerard bucked his hips and gasped.
“Fuck, Frankie,” Gerard said, voice high, shivering. “I wish I could touch you.”
“Experiment for another time.” Frank’s voice was right in his ear, panting-almost. Part of Gerard wanted to ask what it was like, if it was just muscle memory, the panting thing, because Frank didn’t need to breathe anymore, right? But when he opened his mouth all that came out was an inarticulate moan.
“I want to see,” Frank demanded hoarsely. “Please, Gerard.” The television flickered briefly, and Gerard shuddered, already so close to the edge it would have been embarrassing, except he could just barely feel a cold rush of air, in the shape of a hand, tracing his cheek.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, and arched his back, lifted his hips off the bed so he could shimmy out of the flannel pants and Batman boxers, and heard Frank curse, but he sort of thought it was a good curse, so he didn’t stop. “Do ghosts jerk off, Frankie?” he heard himself ask, cock twitching at a particularly cold brush of air. Fuck, okay, now that was kinky-Gerard could already tell he was going to develop inappropriate reactions to ice cubes and air conditioners. “Do you, ah, touch yourself? Like this?”
“I did,” Frank said, ghost of a whisper. “At first, I did, but it wasn’t-it’s not the same. God, Gerard, you’re so fucking warm.”
“Not hot?” Gerard asked, half teasing, because of course he looked fucking ridiculous, Mario Brothers t-shirt and cock out on an empty bed, pants around his ankles, talking to no one. But suddenly he couldn’t quite breathe, because Frank, Frank had to be kissing him, right now, like a cold rush of air, like gin and winter and mentholated smoke.
“So hot,” Frank said into Gerard’s mouth, and a chill grip suddenly enveloped his cock, his balls, and Gerard almost shrieked, but it came out as a high startled moan, because it was almost so cold it hurt, but it was so good, and smooth, and fuck, it was Frank’s hand, even if he couldn’t see it. Frank’s tattoos, blurring as he jacked Gerard off. Gerard couldn’t figure out what to do, trying to buck into Frank’s hand and away from the chill all at once.
“You like that?” Frank asked anxiously, hand slowing, and fuck, Gerard was going to have to find words.
“Yes?” he managed. “It’s just-oh, fuck yes.” And okay, either he was totally getting used to the cold, or Frank was warming up, but either way Gerard was definitely liking it. Frank’s hand not just skimming his skin, but dipping through it-so intense. Gerard almost couldn’t stand it.
He could see himself in the mirror, eyes wide, mouth open and panting, but he couldn’t see Frank, and it was so fucking-he didn’t even know what to think, because he didn’t like watching himself, but he liked to know Frank was there, watching him, seeing the look on his face, the way each twist of Frank’s wrist made Gerard’s back arch and his mouth fall slack.
“Fuck yeah, you like it,” Frank said in a wondering voice, and then sped up his strokes, and Gerard lost control for a moment, tossed his head to the side and thrust up his hips and just keened.
“You fucking love it. Look at me.” And Gerard couldn’t breathe for a moment, but Frank repeated it, and Gerard managed to drag his eyes open, saw himself wrecked and wild in the mirror, staring into his own eyes. “Come. Do it, right, for me, Gerard, I want-please, let me feel it.” And his voice was shaking, broken and yearning, and Gerard did. Came right on command, toes curling and eyes screwed shut, and it was so cold and so hot, the rush of semen and chill of air, so goddamned good.
He went limp after, gasping for breath, and Frank was panting something in his ear, the words indistinct and fuzzy. As though Gerard was capable of listening. Gerard was barely capable of consciousness. But then Frank sounded upset, what the fuck was there to be upset about? He managed to pry open his eyes, to focus on something besides how fucking good he felt.
“Frank,” he mumbled, flapping a hand around, wanting to tug Frank in closer, to wrap around him, and thought he felt what might be cold lips brushing his cheek.
“Gee, I can’t, not much longer-”Frank whispered hoarsely, voice going in and out like cell reception on a mountain road, and then his voice cut off entirely. Gerard opened his eyes, even though he already knew. The room was lukewarm and empty. Frank was gone.
Mirror-Gerard was looking totally debauched, dick out and messy, hair going all directions. Gerard stared at himself dejectedly, then gathered all the sheets and covers around himself in a sweaty cocoon. He’d hoped Frank could spend the night. It would have been nice-kind of boring for Frank watching Gerard sleep, or whatever, but Gerard had plenty of comics, and movies, at least. And then maybe they’d have had morning sex, when Gerard woke up again. Gerard had always thought morning sex sounded nice, and-
Holy fuck, he realized. Frank hadn’t gotten off. Gerard had gotten off-and how-but Frank hadn’t, and that hadn’t even occurred to Gerard until just now. He felt like a total selfish jerk. He was just as bad as Ted. He’d meant to try and reciprocate at some point earlier, to try to touch Frank somehow, or, like, will him into solidity, maybe even attempt a blowjob. But it turned out having someone else touching your cock was really fucking distracting. And now Frank was gone.
On the television screen, a zombie was flopping around in a mall fountain, floundering murderously until the moment someone shot him between the eyes. Gerard watched for a moment, miserable, and then flailed around in the mess of sheets and discarded clothes until he found the remote and managed to at least mute the gore-fest. Then it was time to hunt down his cell phone and have a minor panic attack at his little brother. There was a lot to panic about.
Like, for one thing, had that even been real sex? Was Gerard still a virgin? He meant, well, it’d sort of been sex. Two people participating, even if it was kind of non-corporeal. Gerard had hopes for the eventual corporeality of both involved parties, except what if he’d done something wrong? What if Frank-Frank had seen him naked, oh god. This was the most awkward of all awkward things to ever happen to him.
Mikey was no fucking help. He just sent back an extremely unhelpful series of numbers and symbols and capital letters, and then followed that up with another text that just said, DO NOT WANT TO KNOW, EVER.
Gerard was still staring at the phone screen indignantly when another message popped up with a contrite little beep. ‘srsly ur ridiculous. he adores u, even i kno that. just tell him sry. can he even get off neway?’
It was not that simple, Gerard seethed, and texted Mikey as much, but his heart rate was going back to normal, and he felt a little less panicked. Mikey oversimplified things and made fun of him, but that was comforting, normal. And maybe, just maybe, Mikey was right. Frank had sounded kind of alarmed and upset before he’d gone zinging off into the night-like a rubber band back to his corpse, Gerard guessed. Maybe Frank was just as embarrassed as Gerard was.
Gerard rubbed his eyes, pulled his pants back up and checked to make sure Frank’s bone hadn’t fallen out of his pocket, and then went stumbling about the room, cursing as he ran into shit. He finally hit the light, and then found Ferdinand sitting on the windowsill, not on the bookshelf, like he’d thought. Ferdinand was leaning drunkenly in his coffee cup, a few last leaves clinging pathetically to his stem.
Gerard picked the plant up and eyed it. “Um, Frankie?” he said, coughing and shuffling his feet. “I just, uh. You left kind of quickly, which I… hope wasn’t intentional? I dunno. Anyway. I… just wanted to say that it was awesome. Really awesome, like, wow, awesome is so inadequate. And I’m totally sorry for, um, not reciprocating.” Jesus, he was talking to a plant and blushing. “I feel really awful, but, uh. If you want to try later, that’d be… nice. So. I hope you had fun anyway?”
He stood there a moment, cupping the little plant in his hands and staring at it, willing Frank’s voice to emit out of the stem, or for Frank himself to appear. But nothing happened, not really. The wind picked up a bit, but that was it.
“Goodnight, I guess,” he sighed, and set the cup down on the window ledge, then crawled back into bed. He fell asleep way easier than he’d expected, content and wound in dirty sheets.
It was totally brutal going to school the next day, though, having to focus on navigating the halls and listening to lectures and taking notes, instead of skipping off to the forest to molest Frank against a tree, or something. He was stuck in goddamned English, where they were reading Frankenstein, for fuck’s sake. It was like the universe was mocking him.
Gerard sort of wished he’d brought the metacarpal or whatever with him-he bet Frank would have gotten a kick out of the discussion, at least. But he’d thought he should play it safe for once. Getting caught with the skeletal remains of a boy who’d been missing for over a decade was probably the one way his standing at this school could plummet any further.
At least Ted was still quiet today-he was still watching Gerard, unhappy and wary, but he didn’t approach, didn’t kick the back of Gerard’s desk or hiss anything under his breath. He just sat next to Tanya, passing notes with her, and that was just fine with Gerard. They could raise a pack of hateful backwoods, small town hell-children, for all Gerard cared. He was getting out of this town and out of their lives forever this summer, hopefully. And Frank was coming with him.
God, Frank. He really hoped Frank was down to try the whole sex thing again tonight. Gerard sort of couldn’t stop thinking about it-he’d replayed the whole scene in his mind and come to the conclusion that Frank probably had been having a pretty good time, even if he hadn’t technically gotten off, which was great but had the unfortunate effect of making it really uncomfortable to sit still in class.
He’d finally had to go for a celebratory ‘probably not a virgin’ cigarette between classes, feeling happy and at peace with the whole world, even grinning and waving at that weird Ryan Ross kid. Ryan made a squeaking noise, went bright red, and fled into the girl’s bathroom.
Gerard watched him flee, feeling oddly fond. Ryan’s crush was kind of cute, even if he did act kind of like a creeper about it. He shook his head and turned to go-the halls were already practically empty, he was going to probably be late for History if he didn’t sprint or something-and then he ran smack into someone’s chest as he rounded the corner.
His pack of Marlboros tumbled out onto the floor at his feet, red and blatant. Coach Sikowski stared at it for a second, and then looked up with a smug smile. Then his expression slowly shifted, probably because Gerard had bared his teeth and was practically snarling.
To be honest, he’d actually sort of forgotten about Mark Sikowski, about what he’d done. Gerard couldn’t believe himself-that should have been at the front of his brain the entire fucking day. But then, he’d been pretty distracted. He was technically no longer a virgin, for one thing, and he still hadn’t really gotten to talk to Frank about it. And then there was all the mundane bullshit of a typical school day to deal with, a group project in English and a pop quiz in math, and pizza at lunch. Murder had seemed very far off, very distant and unreal-more like a story arc in a comic book than something that had happened to someone he really knew.
But it was all coming back to him now, in a sort of misty red haze of anger as he stared up at the broad, hateful face of the coach. How dare this fucking bastard, how dare he-
“Smoking on school property, Mr. Way?” The coach scowled down at him. “Underage, too. You think I don’t have better things to do with my time than discipline you?”
Gerard glared up at him, tried to broadcast ‘I’m not a-fucking-fraid of you’ with every fiber in his being. This fucker had killed Frank, picked up Frank’s body, dumped him in the deepest, darkest part of the forest, in a river where no one would find him. He’d gotten away with it. But he wouldn’t forever, Gerard would make fucking sure of that.
When Gerard didn’t respond, Sikowski’s eyes tightened. “Pick them smokes up,” Sikowski growled, crossing his arms over his chest. “And you answer me when I’m speakin’ to you, Way.”
“No,” Gerard gritted out, and crossed his own arms over his chest, heart beating so loudly he thought you could probably hear it from the parking lot. “You want them so much, pick them up yourself.”
“You little shit,” the coach breathed, nostrils flaring, and he advanced a pace, overtly threatening. “You’re lucky detention’s all I can give you.”
And just like that, something inside Gerard snapped, and he was barely conscious of taking a threatening forward step of his own.
“What,” he said between his teeth, glaring, remembering that forlorn gorge, the pile of bones tucked away there, forgotten, alone. “What else would you give me, huh? You gonna break my neck too? Bring all your friends and get me alone, you fucking coward, is that how it works? You make me fucking sick!”
As Gerard’s voice rose, the coach’s face went pale, and then red, and Gerard had a moment where the outrage and hate dimmed enough for him to realize that maybe he shouldn’t have said any of that-that maybe he should have kept his damned mouth shut for once in his life. And then Mark Sikowski’s left hand was tight on his wrist and his right was clamped over Gerard’s mouth, and before Gerard could do anything or scream or bite, he was being dragged into the empty stairwell.
It was like his brain fizzled shut, turned off. He knew he should be kicking and screaming and biting, he knew that, but for a few second his brain was just full of white noise, buzzing with disbelief and shock. He was in school. He was in public. This shouldn’t be happening; it didn’t compute.
By the time he started struggling, Sikowski was already shoving him into the wall and swinging his fist. Gerard had a second to think how much he looked like Ted, in that moment, and then his fist connected with Gerard’s jaw and everything went bright and black with a sickening crunch.
***
PART ELEVEN
***
The next day, they all trekked out to the gorge and Frank waved a hand out sardonically over the empty air.
“Behold my tomb,” he intoned sepulchrally, and Gerard winced.
“Fuck,” Ray said, rubbing his arms, peering down through his hair. “Jesus fuck, Frank, how’d you end up down here?”
“What, you want the whole sordid story?” Frank asked, smirking. He sat down at the edge of the cliff, kicking his feet as Gerard wrestled with the fishing line. He’d asked if Frank could bring a piece up, but Frank had gone sullen and sharp, told Gerard that he’d have fucking moved his own body where it’d have been found if he could have, he’s not that fucking dumb. Best he could do was move some rocks around, protect his body from the river a little.
Gerard tried not to be hurt. The bitterness in Frank’s voice wasn’t for him. He knew that. He did. He’d just… Anyway, he’d thought that might be the case, so he had a little basket thing he’d found in the house, and a fishing pole from the garage. He could lower the basket and maybe he’d ask Frank to go down and move that for him instead, if Gerard couldn’t snag anything himself.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” Ray was saying earnestly. “But, I mean, did you fall or something?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Frank said, picking up a rock and chucking it across the gorge. “Yeah, you could say that. I fell.”
Gerard bit his lip until he tasted blood, and then he gave up. “Frank,” he said, staring at the snarled fishing line in his hands. They’d kissed here, right on this ledge, but he couldn’t think about that now.
“Oh, come on, Gee,” Frank said coolly, leaning back and looking over his shoulder. When Gerard glanced up, he raised an eyebrow, smirked. “You’re a smart guy. You have to have guessed.”
“Not the details,” Gerard replied quietly. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.” But that sounded like an excuse, now. He hadn’t wanted to look at the whole picture. He was a coward like that. He didn’t know if he could bear knowing the details. But Frank knew them-had lived and died by them. Gerard could at least face that it had happened.
“Go on, then,” Frank said, staring at him. “I’ll fill in the holes as you go.”
Gerard lay down on his stomach at the cliff edge, looking down. Frank was next to him, radiating cold air, and Gerard could feel him staring. Gerard didn’t want to say anything. He started lowering the wicker basket, swallowing.
“Your neck was broken,” he said, lowered the basket another couple feet. “Someone-probably more than one-person attacked you. I think-from, uh, some of the things you’ve said, that maybe they didn’t mean to murder you? But they did, even if it wasn’t on purpose. And they covered it up. Threw your body in the river.” It was hard to keep his voice from shaking, and he couldn’t see anymore, eyes too wide to keep the tears in. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d known that was how it’d happened, but he’d never articulated it, even to himself. Fuck. Fuck.
“Gold star,” Frank replied into the silence, startling Gerard. The basket snagged on an outcrop when he jerked his arm, and he bit his lip, tried to concentrate.
“I knew you didn’t run away,” Ray said quietly, and Frank shrugged at him.
“Fuck,” Bob said succinctly. “Who did it? They should have been arrested. They should be in fucking jail. Intent or not.” And Ray looked distraught and horrified and angry, pacing and wringing his hands. Gerard just felt numb and terrified. It was like the world had been broken somehow, jagged and treacherous.
He drew in breath to speak, and then Frank cut him off. “Christ, you’re taking a fucking ice age over there. Let me help you with that.” And without further ado, Frank jumped off the cliff.
“Well, that was alarming,” Bob noted, edging a bit closer and peering cautiously down. “Fuck, that-that is a body.”
“Yeah,” Gerard said tersely.
“My body,” Frank corrected, his voice rising over the crash of the river and echoing weirdly off the walls of the gorge. He was crouched next to the skeleton, patting the skull with a proprietary air. “Nice, right?”
“Sort of, uh. Not what I remembered,” Ray replied faintly, wincing. Gerard could sympathize. This was pretty damned weird, and he’d had a while to adjust to the idea. He unwound another couple inches of fishing line, concentrating on that instead of the white gleam of bone, instead of wondering-he wondered if there was an empty grave somewhere with Frank’s name carved into a tombstone. That’s what people did when they couldn’t find the body, right?
“It’s not fucking neurosurgery, Gerard,” Frank called up to them, and Gerard sucked in a startled breath. “Just drop the fucking basket and I’ll scoop something up-what do you want, a hand?”
“Well, I mean, yeah, your help is definitely going to be important, I don’t think I can maneuver the basket mys-oh,” Gerard said, and dropped the basket, only managing at the last second to snatch the string back up before it fell into the river or something. “Oh. You mean a hand, a hand. Right, um. That would work. Lots of small bones that could, uh, have washed away easily. On their own. In case we get a crime team out here later, or something.”
“No crime teams,” Frank yelled back. Gerard looked away from Frank’s bent form, biting his lip.
“Do you think we could get arrested for tampering with evidence?” Ray asked nervously, twisting a lock of his hair.
“We’re minors,” Bob said. “We should be fine, long term. But we should probably call the police at some point.”
“Yeah, because the police were so useful last time,” Frank said from behind them, and Bob yelped and jumped straight up in the air. “What? Go on, haul ‘er up, Gerard.”
“Look, this time you’ve got us. We can help the police catch the fuckers that killed you,” Bob said, clutching his chest and glaring. “Also, stop appearing out of nowhere like that, you little shit. I know you do it on purpose.”
“You’re just so pretty when you squeak in terror,” Frank said sweetly, and clapped a hand on Bob’s back.
“Nice phalanges,” Gerard whispered weakly, staring at the basket of jumbled bones, and then shook himself and looked up. “Frank, Bob’s right. Whoever did this… they shouldn’t get away with it. They should be in jail. We should call the police.”
“Not up for debate, thanks.” Frank poked at the basket. “Man, are you guys seriously going to carry my body parts around? That is some freaky serial killer shit. We definitely don’t want the police involved.”
“Frankie,” Gerard said, exasperated, and Frank threw his hands up in the air.
“What, you want to go hunt down Mark Sikowski and his goons? Be my goddamned guest, but I’m pretty sure they’ve cooked up an alibi or two by now. And if you think ‘my buddy Casper told me they done it’ will hold up in court, have fun with your meds and padded walls, my friends.” Frank dropped his hands and stopped glaring, started eyeing everyone warily instead. “What? Has the American legal system changed that much since I died? Is evidence from Slimer admissible now?”
Gerard had to sit down. He considered putting his head between his knees; he thought he might throw up.
“Sikowski,” Ray said slowly, staring. “Mark Sikowski killed you? Coach Sikowski?”
“I’ll kill him,” Gerard heard someone say, then realized it’d been his own voice. Fuck. “I mean, I-” Gerard didn’t believe in the death penalty, didn’t believe in the solution to violence being more violence, but he kept flashing on an image of the Coach’s face, and it summoned up a visceral response: the deep desire to bash the fucker’s head in with a rock. He wondered if he could actually do it, actually be capable of murder. The fingers in the basket were so fucking small. Coach Sikowski was a mountain of a man, even now, hair thinning and a slight paunch to his waist, and Gerard’s brain was way too good at painting a picture of it, of a teenaged Mark towering over Frank, sneering.
“He’s still here?” Frank asked, voice strangely hollow.
“Fucking baseball coach,” Bob said succinctly.
“Oh, that’s-that’s great,” Frank stated, eyes queerly bright. “I’ve been rotting away in the woods. He’s playing baseball. Molding young minds. Great.”
“He can’t get away with it,” Gerard said, and he still couldn’t quite recognize his own voice. It was like hearing a recording of himself on an answering machine. He didn’t sound tangled and torn, like the way he felt in his own head right now. He sound collected, confident. Bob and Ray were looking at him like he was making sense. “We’re going to do something. I don’t care if we’re arrested for fucking with the crime scene. We can’t let him get away with it.”
“Uh, newsflash? He did. He got away with it.” Frank waved a hand in front of Gerard’s face, snapped his fingers. “Hello? I know you’re lost in visions of avenging glory or whatever, but I really don’t care anymore. I’m dead. What the fuck does it matter? He can’t take it back. Nothing can fix it. And I don’t want you guys getting in trouble.”
The sky had been a brilliant, painful blue when they’d set out that afternoon, and now it was gunmetal gray, the clouds so close Gerard felt like he could reach up and touch them, and there was a cold wind whipping down across the gorge, moaning and chill. So, the whole ‘not caring’ thing-obviously a lie. Even without the meteorological tells, Gerard would have known that. There was no way Frank didn’t care.
“What about your family?” Gerard continued stubbornly, ignoring the twinge of guilt when Frank’s shoulders automatically hunched, his eyes wide and surprised. “Don’t they deserve to know what happened? See the fucker go to jail?”
“They don’t-it’s been years,” Frank said hoarsely, and then rubbed his hands over his face and glared. “This is not up for fucking discussion, Gerard. Back. Off.”
“No,” Gerard spit out. “It’s wrong. He should be in jail. We have to make this right-we can’t bring you back to life, fine, but we can send his ass to fucking prison. Who else was there? Tell us exactly what happened, where it happened-” And then Bob was tugging him back, because apparently he’d decided to get in Frank’s face and was stalking forward, forcing Frank back, and okay, it was fine if Frank fell off the cliff, he was immaterial and all, but Gerard supposed it would be a little worse if he accidentally took a step too far himself.
“Both of you fucking cool it,” Bob growled. “Let’s just… shelve the discussion for now, alright? Christ, you two.”
Frank crossed his arms over his chest and looked thunderous-literally, actually, there were storm clouds building and the first cold drops of rain falling. Great. Gerard just clutched the basket of bones to his stomach and waited for Frank to cave.
“I’d like to know exactly what the fuck you think you’re going to be able to accomplish here, but fine,” Frank grated out. “Whatever. It was him and, fuck, George Lenton, Clay Noltes, Tim Barrows. That whole fucking group, Jesus, close-minded smalltown fucks, I’m sure you know the type.”
“Yeah,” Gerard said, trying to keep the edge of outrage and determination in his voice, when suddenly he just felt really small and stupid, like a jerk. He got out his notebook and started scribbling the names down, ignoring the way the rain was picking up, splashing down on the page in round, wet drops like tears.
“I was out in the woods-I wanted to practice, my dad always yelled about the noise, and. Anyway, I had my guitar. They followed me, started shoving me around. Sound familiar, Gerard? Maybe you’ll be a little more fucking careful now, what do you fucking think?” Gerard didn’t look up, shivering. “’Cause shit got out of hand. I fell, hit my neck on a wall. Mark pushed me harder than he meant to, maybe, or maybe he did mean to, and just didn’t think-it doesn’t matter. Bam. I’m dead. They all freaked out, dumped my body in the river, took off. I’m a little shaky on the timing of events, to be honest, sorry to fuck up your investigation, there,” Frank said bitterly, tilting his head and scowling at Gerard’s notebook. “They might have stashed me in the millhouse for a while first. I’m not sure. But I wound up in the river, and, eventually, here. Home sweet fucking home.”
He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the desolate area, the stands of leafless trees and endless roar of water, the gray rock below and gray sky above. No one said anything, and the silence stretched out, significant and tense.
“Wait, Tim Barrows? Isaac’s brother?” Ray spoke up suddenly, voice almost drowned out by the river, but it got louder as he continued, indignant and surprised. “Shit, do you think Mayor Barrows was involved in this, too? Holy fuck. That’ll definitely shake up his plans for re-election. And Ted’s uncle committed murder. Do you think… I mean, his brother’s the sheriff! He was a cop even back then. Jesus! Holy fuck. It’s like the whole town’s in on it. This is fucking nuts!”
“Look, let’s just… focus on the facts for the moment, okay? Frank, do you remember exactly where the original fight took place?” Gerard asked calmly, hyper-aware of his own heartbeat. He knew this fucking town was creepy, he’d known if from the very start. And he’d been right: whole town was run by goddamned murderers. Who all knew about this? He couldn’t-he’d have to think about it later.
“Wait,” Frank said, yanking away Gerard’s notebook. “Wait, this Ted kid is a fucking Sikowski?” He had Gerard’s shoulders now and was doing the creepy ‘burning-eyes, vengeful ghost’ face.
“It’s okay! Honest, it is, Ted’s been steering clear of me since you went all ghost-Rambo on him the other night,” Gerard was trying not to give in and shiver, or look afraid, because it was just Frank, okay, it was an angry, undead Frank, but it was just Frank, and Frank would never hurt him. He tugged on the notebook again, trying to steal it back.
“Frank went what, now?” Ray asked, hovering beside them both and looking a strange mix of upset and intrigued-Gerard’s life was sort of a train wreck at the moment, he supposed. You couldn’t help but gape in horror and fascination. On one hand, obnoxious violent homophobes. On the other, crazy vengeful spirits of dead hot boys. At any rate, Gerard snatched the distraction with both hands.
“It was fucking wicked,” he told the others enthusiastically, hamming it up. “You should have seen it! It was like a tornado of undead rage. I think Noltes pissed himself.”
“No wonder those assholes have backed off,” Ray said, snickering. “Frank can be fucking scary, man, I should know. But… you know…”
“Know what?” Frank asked, eyes narrowed. He’d backed down a bit, started to look a little calmer, but he was still glassy and radiating winter cold, and Gerard just wanted to abandon the conversation, stick his head in the sand and forget all of this. It’d be so much easier.
But he couldn’t. It was wrong. It was wrong, and someone had to do something. And they were all Frank had. It was their responsibility. He tugged the notebook out of Frank’s limp hands and started scribbling again, possible plans of action.
“Well, the coach has been giving Gerard a really hard time lately,” Ray said hesitantly, looking between the two of them and wringing his hands. “I mean, he’s had detention with him every day for the last week.”
“Mark’s messing with Gerard?” Frank said slowly, deliberate and cool, and then smiled, said with a terrifying amount of cheer, “I’m going to rip out his spleen and shove it up his ass.” Which to Gerard’s mind was an overreaction, like, wow.
“One thing at a time, you lunatics,” Bob said, deceptively mild, prying Gerard away from Frank, which was good, since Gerard thought he might be getting frostbite all the places Frank’s hands had been touching him, Christ. “Let’s just see if our ‘carry around corpses’ theory works. If Frank can leave the forest and whip up tornados of rage, I’ll feel a lot better, to be honest.”
“Fine,” Gerard said, shamefully happy to leave the topic, and then he rallied himself a bit. “But we’re talking about it later!” he said firmly, and Frank rolled his eyes and kicked Gerard in the shin.
“Fine, Sherlock. Whatever. I’m starting to think you’re stalling. What, don’t want to touch my mortal coil?” Frank picked up the basket of bones and rattled it in Gerard’s face, smirking evilly. Dick. Bastard. Gerard hated him.
“I am not,” Gerard muttered, and then summoned up his courage and shoved his hand in the basket, not looking, just grabbing the first thing his fingers touched.
It was… it was lighter than he’d expected, and warmer, too. Warmer than stone would have been. He looked at it, lying small and white in his palm. A metacarpal, he thought, or a phalange. Fuck if he knew. He’d look it up later. He closed his hand around it, feeling oddly protective, wanting it to warm up to his body temperature after years of being down there in the cold and wet.
“Woah,” Frank said suddenly, chin on Gerard’s shoulder. “Huh. That feels… really funky.” His eyes had gone soft and dreamy, suddenly, like he hadn’t been acting like a total vengeful spirit moments before. “Hey, Gee,” he said, leaning into Gerard’s neck and rubbing his face against it like a cat, giggling. Was Frank fucking stoned? “Like the way you handle my bone, man.”
Gerard went bright red and coughed. Wow, not the time. Not the fucking time for this.
“Okay, gross,” Bob announced after a moment, and then picked up a second phalange gingerly, his hand covered by his sleeve. “Don’t even think about rubbing up on me, Iero.”
Frank hummed and stuck his nose behind Gerard’s ear. “Your loss,” he said brightly, and Gerard was starting to get worried he might do something embarrassing.
Ray warily took a third bone, and Frank finally detached himself from Gerard, full of well-being and smiles and apparently completely willing to forget the previous conversation about how he’d been murdered by a fucking group of assholes that were still wandering free. Gerard was having a little more trouble getting his mind to shift gears, but the way Frank kept looking at him, dreamy and speculative and oh Jesus, that was totally a leer, and they were in public, Bob and Ray were going to notice! He glared at Frank, who just bounced happily, and evilly, and licked his lips. Gah.
Luckily, Bob and Ray were a bit distracted by handling dead body parts. After some debate, they decided to snag a couple extra tiny bones, just in case, and then lowered the rest back down in the basket.
“So,” Bob said. “Nothing left to do but try this shit out. Let’s get a move on, yeah?” And they all trooped off, Gerard trying to adjust his pants subtly as they went. Fucking adorable horny ghosts.
Speak of the devil. “Man, this is great,” Frank enthused, bouncing along the path beside Gerard, crunching acorns gleefully. “You hear that? I can hear myself walk! I’m not even trying, man, I feel so fucking solid. Do I look more solid, Gee?”
“You… sorta do,” Gerard agreed, and couldn’t help beaming back. Frank didn’t look more solid than he normally did, exactly, but there was something different about him. The light was falling on him differently. He was casting a shadow, and he had more color than he usually did, Gerard was almost positive. Before, he’d been pastels and chalk and charcoal. Now there was a sort of richness to the colors in his skin, in his hair and eyes. It was pretty amazing.
“Well, before we all jizz our pants in excitement, let’s see what happens when we actually try to leave these godforsaken woods, right?”
“Buzzkill Bob strikes again,” Frank said sadly, and then hip-checked Bob into a tree trunk, giggling.
Gerard kept the small finger bone clenched tightly in his fist as he stepped out of the forest and into the grassy field behind the school. Ray and Bob followed, and then they were just waiting as Frank dithered at the forest’s edge.
“Have you even tried yet?” Ray asked finally. “Come on, Frankie, just take a step. It can’t be as bad as the wheelbarrow, right?”
“Never mention the wheelbarrow ever again,” Frank muttered, gnawing his lower lip, and then he sighed, closed his eyes, and took a step forward. Then another, and then Gerard couldn’t help it, he let out a whoop of triumph and rushed towards him, flung his arms around Frank and laughed.
“We did it!” he whispered gleefully into Frank’s neck, and then danced them around in a circle.
“Gerard,” Frank said shakily, and clung to him a moment before peeling himself free and looking around, eyes huge. “I can’t fucking believe it.”
“Awesome,” Ray said softly. “Hey, how’s it feel?”
Gerard let go of Frank, stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried not to beam too much. Frank wavered as Gerard stepped back-physically wavered, like a candle flame. He shook his head, looking confused.
“It’s weird. I feel… all stretched out, I guess? It’s a little hard to concentrate. Let’s keep going, see what happens.”
Frank faded as they walked, all the color leeching out of him, and he flat out refused to get in Bob’s car, said something about it moving too fast to keep up. So Gerard waved Bob and Ray off and set off towards his home on foot, Frankie tagging along beside him and babbling about the lack of trees. By the time they got to Gerard’s house, Frank’s voice was husky and blended with the wind, the rustle of dead leaves on the street. He was more evening fog than boy; Gerard could barely see him anymore. But his voice was cheerful, and he kept pointing out how things had changed and stayed the same-a silo had fallen down, a farm had been turned into a subdivision, and Mrs. Middleton had apparently been using the same Halloween decorations for the last two decades.
It was like trying to walk a puppy. Frank kept getting distracted and bounding off to rifle through someone’s mailbox or to peek in a window, or just staring around himself, eyes everywhere but where he was going, and he kept walking through Gerard by accident, leaving him shuddering in a wave of tingling cold.
Fifty billion years later, Gerard finally managed to herd Frank into his house.
“So, this is my room,” he said nervously, shuffling in. Frank was barely visible at all anymore. He was just a blur in the corner of Gerard’s eye, a patch of chilly air, but Gerard could imagine him bouncing forward easily enough, all bright smile and curious eyes.
“Sweet Tarantino posters!” Frank said cheerfully, and then the stack of DVDs on the floor by the dresser toppled over. “Oops, sorry. Wow, wait, are these movies?” A case popped open, DVD shining in the light. “Holy shit, the world got so fucking cool after I died.”
Gerard laughed, startled, and began struggling out of his hoodie-the damned thing was covered in prickly sticks and dust and other outdoorsy debris. Gerard’s wardrobe would seriously benefit from his sort-of-boyfriend no longer being exclusively forest-dwelling.
“Hey, they remade Dawn of the Dead? Seriously? Was it any good?”
“Amazing, actually, but I really prefer the slow zombie trope, you know?” Gerard said, pawing through his closet and finding a ratty King Coopa t-shirt he was pretty sure belonged to Mikey. It was a little too small, but it smelled clean. “I mean, fast zombies, it’s scary, but it’s a totally different feel, less of the crushing weight of despair and inevitability, more of the ‘holy fucking shit, we’re all gonna die in a spray of bodily fluid, run for your lives,’ you know?”
“I do not know,” Frank said gravely, and there was a squeak of bedsprings, so he’d probably launched himself at the bed. Gerard understood; if he’d been stuck in a forest for a decade, he’d be pretty fucking excited to have access to a bed himself. “But I would like to. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fast zombie movie. Can we watch it?”
“Totally,” Gerard said, beaming in what he assumed was Frank’s direction. Watching zombie flicks in his bedroom with a hot boy that liked him, who also happened to be a fucking ghost. Gerard had honestly never imagined his life being this awesome. Though he did sort of wish Frank was more visible at the moment. Not being able to tell exactly where he was or what he was looking at at any given moment was… stressful. “Uh, I’m going to change into my pjs, if that’s okay?”
“Knock yourself out,” Frank said, sounding amused.
“I… don’t suppose you’d close your eyes.”
“Not a chance in the world,” Frank agreed complacently, and Gerard sighed and shuffled half-into the closet, contorting himself to expose as little skin as possible. He was pale and awkward and only Mikey, and his mom, he supposed, had ever seen him without a shirt on, let alone without pants, and Frank was… well, Frank.
“This is the worst strip tease I’ve ever seen,” Frank commented after a couple minutes. “Like, ever. I think I saw one nipple, for three seconds. I want a refund.”
“You want me to throw your metacarpal into a lake?” Gerard said crankily, trying not to blush, and then squeaked as a rush of cold air pressed against his cheek.
“Gee, you’re fucking adorable,” Frank said in his ear, so close Gerard automatically leaned in, but there was nothing to lean against. No lips, no body. Nothing. “But I’ll respect your personal boundaries. I solemnly swear not to sneak in your bathroom while you’re taking a shower. More than once.”
Holy shit, Gerard hadn’t even though about the potential havoc he was unleashing upon the world by taking Frank’s bones out of the forest.
“No!” he said sternly, a little more breathlessly than he’d have liked, and stomped over to the bed. “No spying on people in the nude without express permission! That’s just creepy.”
“Oh, murder and life-after-death and carrying around pieces of a skeleton, that he’s okay with. It’s the voyeurism that’s creepy. Got it. Makes total sense.”
“Who are you even talking to?” Gerard inquired snippily, and began hunting in his blankets for the remote control. He thought he saw a shadow move by the window and glanced up. “Hey, uh, are you okay? Is this working alright for you?”
“Kinda tired,” Frank said, closer than Gerard had expected, again. His voice was-not staticky, exactly, but it sounded like tiny bits and pieces of the things he said were missing, like the sound wasn’t all coming through. “It’s getting harder to concentrate.”
“Oh,” Gerard said, disappointed. “I… thought maybe it might get easier, over time.”
“Nah, I just need to get used to it. It’s-easier if you’re holding the bone in your hand, I think? If it’s touching your skin. You should make it into a necklace or something.”
Gerard went and got the bone back out of his jeans pocket, staring at it. “Yeah, because that won’t get me arrested or sent to therapy for the rest of my life.”
“You could just stick it in your underwear,” Frank suggested, voice low and amused. “Sure, the repercussions if it gets found might be worse, but who’s going to find it, right?” Gerard squawked indignantly and flailed out a hand to hit where he thought Frank might be. He stuck the bone in one of his pajama pockets after checking to make sure these weren’t the holes in them.
“Fiiiine, I guess a that’ll work for now,” Frank sighed, and his voice did sound a little stronger, actually. Fuck, Gerard really was going to have to figure out how to carry the damned thing later on, if skin contact worked best to boost Frank’s signal, or whatever. Maybe he could duct tape it to himself.
“You know, you’re kind of sending mixed messages, here,” Gerard said after a moment of wriggling around and poking at the DVD player. He’d finally gotten the menu pulled up; gore was dripping across the screen and Frank was making appreciative noises about the clarity and the lack of a need to fast-forward through previews. “First you say we can’t make out because you’re dead and my heart must go on, or whatever. Now you’re trying to get me to strip and telling me to stick your bone in my pants.”
“I am dead,” Frank argued, and his voice was light and cheerful, except Gerard had heard that tone before, and he didn’t buy it. “I’m not exactly boyfriend material, Gee. You living boys, you’ll only break my heart.”
“Never,” Gerard said, more seriously than he’d meant to, and for a moment he thought Frank might have disappeared, because there was only silence in the room, so of course Gerard had to fill it by babbling like a lunatic brook. “We just met recently, really, so maybe it’ll take you a while to believe it, and I’m okay with waiting, honest. But I know what I want. I’m willing to take a risk on it. And we’ve already done more than you thought we could, right? You can leave the forest, now, and I-well, all of us-we can take you with us wherever we go, and not just, like, a soppy ‘memory of you,’ but actually you, so that’s not a problem anymore, right?”
“Gerard,” Frank said, and if Gerard closed his eyes he could see it perfectly, Frank lying in the bed next to him, on his stomach, head propped on his hands and eyes huge and mouth perfect.
“It’s not exactly like you can introduce me to your parents,” Frank continued, after a moment. “I still-I still think it’s a bad idea. It’s not-you won’t get to be normal, not with me around. Not if you want to, I dunno, go steady or whatever.”
“Like I was ever going to be normal anyway,” Gerard said, thumping his head back on the pillow, frustrated. He jabbed a finger in Frank’s direction, towards a sort of glum-looking shimmer in the air. “I do, okay, I do want to go steady with you, and go to the movies, and all that shit. And I will totally introduce you to my mom sometime; I don’t even care if she thinks I’m insane. Alright?”
Frank barked out a laugh. “God, you’re just-look. I don’t mean to, uh, assume, but at some point you’re going to want to have sex, right? You’re fucking seventeen! It’s been a while, but I remember how it goes. And I-if you laugh, I’ll go fucking poltergeist on your ass-but Gerard, man, I don’t know how much I can give you.”
“Well, this may surprise you, but I am, in fact, down for some experimentation in the area of, uh, non-traditional sex,” Gerard admitted, and man, he was definitely blushing now. Ah, well. Fuck it. He’d just propositioned his undead best friend. Blushing was probably a normal response, given the circumstances. “But, I mean, do you-I mean, you like kissing, right? And you still feel the things you did when you were alive, just… differently. And your experience, it’s changing, like, you can leave the forest and you’re more solid now. We can practice. I think it’s worth practicing.”
“Oh, a seventeen-year-old doesn’t mind practicing sex, wow. I am overcome with shock. Hold me before I swoon into a faint.” But Frank was laughing and Gerard was felt a wash of chill air, all along his side, and that meant-well, apparently he could blush harder, that was good to know. They were spooning, sort of. Fucking awesome.
“So…” Gerard managed, biting his lower lip. There was a mirror on his closet door, and if he looked across the room he could see himself in it, splayed out on the bed, laying on his back. And the slightest distortion of air beside him that must be Frank. Mirror-Gerard looked rumpled and dazed, hair sticking in all directions and too-tight t-shirt rucked up, showing a pale slice of belly. He put a hand there, on his exposed skin, and watched himself in the mirror, shivering. “Can you see me right now?”
“Yes,” Frank answered. “But-oh my god. That is-fuck, Gerard, that’s not fair, I can’t-”
“I’ll stop if you want,” Gerard managed to say, not quite believing in his own daring as he slipped his hand beneath the waistband of his pajamas, into his boxers. “Um. I’ve never really… done this with someone else here, before.”
“So this is all for me, huh,” Frank breathed, and Gerard nodded, hair falling in his eyes, his cheeks hot.
“I mean-if you don’t want me to, I-”
“Don’t you fucking dare stop now,” Frank growled, and there was a feeling almost like-Gerard arched his neck into Frank’s touch, felt the quick sting of teeth. “Do it for me,” he said lowly, voice crackling like static, and Gerard bucked his hips and gasped.
“Fuck, Frankie,” Gerard said, voice high, shivering. “I wish I could touch you.”
“Experiment for another time.” Frank’s voice was right in his ear, panting-almost. Part of Gerard wanted to ask what it was like, if it was just muscle memory, the panting thing, because Frank didn’t need to breathe anymore, right? But when he opened his mouth all that came out was an inarticulate moan.
“I want to see,” Frank demanded hoarsely. “Please, Gerard.” The television flickered briefly, and Gerard shuddered, already so close to the edge it would have been embarrassing, except he could just barely feel a cold rush of air, in the shape of a hand, tracing his cheek.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, and arched his back, lifted his hips off the bed so he could shimmy out of the flannel pants and Batman boxers, and heard Frank curse, but he sort of thought it was a good curse, so he didn’t stop. “Do ghosts jerk off, Frankie?” he heard himself ask, cock twitching at a particularly cold brush of air. Fuck, okay, now that was kinky-Gerard could already tell he was going to develop inappropriate reactions to ice cubes and air conditioners. “Do you, ah, touch yourself? Like this?”
“I did,” Frank said, ghost of a whisper. “At first, I did, but it wasn’t-it’s not the same. God, Gerard, you’re so fucking warm.”
“Not hot?” Gerard asked, half teasing, because of course he looked fucking ridiculous, Mario Brothers t-shirt and cock out on an empty bed, pants around his ankles, talking to no one. But suddenly he couldn’t quite breathe, because Frank, Frank had to be kissing him, right now, like a cold rush of air, like gin and winter and mentholated smoke.
“So hot,” Frank said into Gerard’s mouth, and a chill grip suddenly enveloped his cock, his balls, and Gerard almost shrieked, but it came out as a high startled moan, because it was almost so cold it hurt, but it was so good, and smooth, and fuck, it was Frank’s hand, even if he couldn’t see it. Frank’s tattoos, blurring as he jacked Gerard off. Gerard couldn’t figure out what to do, trying to buck into Frank’s hand and away from the chill all at once.
“You like that?” Frank asked anxiously, hand slowing, and fuck, Gerard was going to have to find words.
“Yes?” he managed. “It’s just-oh, fuck yes.” And okay, either he was totally getting used to the cold, or Frank was warming up, but either way Gerard was definitely liking it. Frank’s hand not just skimming his skin, but dipping through it-so intense. Gerard almost couldn’t stand it.
He could see himself in the mirror, eyes wide, mouth open and panting, but he couldn’t see Frank, and it was so fucking-he didn’t even know what to think, because he didn’t like watching himself, but he liked to know Frank was there, watching him, seeing the look on his face, the way each twist of Frank’s wrist made Gerard’s back arch and his mouth fall slack.
“Fuck yeah, you like it,” Frank said in a wondering voice, and then sped up his strokes, and Gerard lost control for a moment, tossed his head to the side and thrust up his hips and just keened.
“You fucking love it. Look at me.” And Gerard couldn’t breathe for a moment, but Frank repeated it, and Gerard managed to drag his eyes open, saw himself wrecked and wild in the mirror, staring into his own eyes. “Come. Do it, right, for me, Gerard, I want-please, let me feel it.” And his voice was shaking, broken and yearning, and Gerard did. Came right on command, toes curling and eyes screwed shut, and it was so cold and so hot, the rush of semen and chill of air, so goddamned good.
He went limp after, gasping for breath, and Frank was panting something in his ear, the words indistinct and fuzzy. As though Gerard was capable of listening. Gerard was barely capable of consciousness. But then Frank sounded upset, what the fuck was there to be upset about? He managed to pry open his eyes, to focus on something besides how fucking good he felt.
“Frank,” he mumbled, flapping a hand around, wanting to tug Frank in closer, to wrap around him, and thought he felt what might be cold lips brushing his cheek.
“Gee, I can’t, not much longer-”Frank whispered hoarsely, voice going in and out like cell reception on a mountain road, and then his voice cut off entirely. Gerard opened his eyes, even though he already knew. The room was lukewarm and empty. Frank was gone.
Mirror-Gerard was looking totally debauched, dick out and messy, hair going all directions. Gerard stared at himself dejectedly, then gathered all the sheets and covers around himself in a sweaty cocoon. He’d hoped Frank could spend the night. It would have been nice-kind of boring for Frank watching Gerard sleep, or whatever, but Gerard had plenty of comics, and movies, at least. And then maybe they’d have had morning sex, when Gerard woke up again. Gerard had always thought morning sex sounded nice, and-
Holy fuck, he realized. Frank hadn’t gotten off. Gerard had gotten off-and how-but Frank hadn’t, and that hadn’t even occurred to Gerard until just now. He felt like a total selfish jerk. He was just as bad as Ted. He’d meant to try and reciprocate at some point earlier, to try to touch Frank somehow, or, like, will him into solidity, maybe even attempt a blowjob. But it turned out having someone else touching your cock was really fucking distracting. And now Frank was gone.
On the television screen, a zombie was flopping around in a mall fountain, floundering murderously until the moment someone shot him between the eyes. Gerard watched for a moment, miserable, and then flailed around in the mess of sheets and discarded clothes until he found the remote and managed to at least mute the gore-fest. Then it was time to hunt down his cell phone and have a minor panic attack at his little brother. There was a lot to panic about.
Like, for one thing, had that even been real sex? Was Gerard still a virgin? He meant, well, it’d sort of been sex. Two people participating, even if it was kind of non-corporeal. Gerard had hopes for the eventual corporeality of both involved parties, except what if he’d done something wrong? What if Frank-Frank had seen him naked, oh god. This was the most awkward of all awkward things to ever happen to him.
Mikey was no fucking help. He just sent back an extremely unhelpful series of numbers and symbols and capital letters, and then followed that up with another text that just said, DO NOT WANT TO KNOW, EVER.
Gerard was still staring at the phone screen indignantly when another message popped up with a contrite little beep. ‘srsly ur ridiculous. he adores u, even i kno that. just tell him sry. can he even get off neway?’
It was not that simple, Gerard seethed, and texted Mikey as much, but his heart rate was going back to normal, and he felt a little less panicked. Mikey oversimplified things and made fun of him, but that was comforting, normal. And maybe, just maybe, Mikey was right. Frank had sounded kind of alarmed and upset before he’d gone zinging off into the night-like a rubber band back to his corpse, Gerard guessed. Maybe Frank was just as embarrassed as Gerard was.
Gerard rubbed his eyes, pulled his pants back up and checked to make sure Frank’s bone hadn’t fallen out of his pocket, and then went stumbling about the room, cursing as he ran into shit. He finally hit the light, and then found Ferdinand sitting on the windowsill, not on the bookshelf, like he’d thought. Ferdinand was leaning drunkenly in his coffee cup, a few last leaves clinging pathetically to his stem.
Gerard picked the plant up and eyed it. “Um, Frankie?” he said, coughing and shuffling his feet. “I just, uh. You left kind of quickly, which I… hope wasn’t intentional? I dunno. Anyway. I… just wanted to say that it was awesome. Really awesome, like, wow, awesome is so inadequate. And I’m totally sorry for, um, not reciprocating.” Jesus, he was talking to a plant and blushing. “I feel really awful, but, uh. If you want to try later, that’d be… nice. So. I hope you had fun anyway?”
He stood there a moment, cupping the little plant in his hands and staring at it, willing Frank’s voice to emit out of the stem, or for Frank himself to appear. But nothing happened, not really. The wind picked up a bit, but that was it.
“Goodnight, I guess,” he sighed, and set the cup down on the window ledge, then crawled back into bed. He fell asleep way easier than he’d expected, content and wound in dirty sheets.
It was totally brutal going to school the next day, though, having to focus on navigating the halls and listening to lectures and taking notes, instead of skipping off to the forest to molest Frank against a tree, or something. He was stuck in goddamned English, where they were reading Frankenstein, for fuck’s sake. It was like the universe was mocking him.
Gerard sort of wished he’d brought the metacarpal or whatever with him-he bet Frank would have gotten a kick out of the discussion, at least. But he’d thought he should play it safe for once. Getting caught with the skeletal remains of a boy who’d been missing for over a decade was probably the one way his standing at this school could plummet any further.
At least Ted was still quiet today-he was still watching Gerard, unhappy and wary, but he didn’t approach, didn’t kick the back of Gerard’s desk or hiss anything under his breath. He just sat next to Tanya, passing notes with her, and that was just fine with Gerard. They could raise a pack of hateful backwoods, small town hell-children, for all Gerard cared. He was getting out of this town and out of their lives forever this summer, hopefully. And Frank was coming with him.
God, Frank. He really hoped Frank was down to try the whole sex thing again tonight. Gerard sort of couldn’t stop thinking about it-he’d replayed the whole scene in his mind and come to the conclusion that Frank probably had been having a pretty good time, even if he hadn’t technically gotten off, which was great but had the unfortunate effect of making it really uncomfortable to sit still in class.
He’d finally had to go for a celebratory ‘probably not a virgin’ cigarette between classes, feeling happy and at peace with the whole world, even grinning and waving at that weird Ryan Ross kid. Ryan made a squeaking noise, went bright red, and fled into the girl’s bathroom.
Gerard watched him flee, feeling oddly fond. Ryan’s crush was kind of cute, even if he did act kind of like a creeper about it. He shook his head and turned to go-the halls were already practically empty, he was going to probably be late for History if he didn’t sprint or something-and then he ran smack into someone’s chest as he rounded the corner.
His pack of Marlboros tumbled out onto the floor at his feet, red and blatant. Coach Sikowski stared at it for a second, and then looked up with a smug smile. Then his expression slowly shifted, probably because Gerard had bared his teeth and was practically snarling.
To be honest, he’d actually sort of forgotten about Mark Sikowski, about what he’d done. Gerard couldn’t believe himself-that should have been at the front of his brain the entire fucking day. But then, he’d been pretty distracted. He was technically no longer a virgin, for one thing, and he still hadn’t really gotten to talk to Frank about it. And then there was all the mundane bullshit of a typical school day to deal with, a group project in English and a pop quiz in math, and pizza at lunch. Murder had seemed very far off, very distant and unreal-more like a story arc in a comic book than something that had happened to someone he really knew.
But it was all coming back to him now, in a sort of misty red haze of anger as he stared up at the broad, hateful face of the coach. How dare this fucking bastard, how dare he-
“Smoking on school property, Mr. Way?” The coach scowled down at him. “Underage, too. You think I don’t have better things to do with my time than discipline you?”
Gerard glared up at him, tried to broadcast ‘I’m not a-fucking-fraid of you’ with every fiber in his being. This fucker had killed Frank, picked up Frank’s body, dumped him in the deepest, darkest part of the forest, in a river where no one would find him. He’d gotten away with it. But he wouldn’t forever, Gerard would make fucking sure of that.
When Gerard didn’t respond, Sikowski’s eyes tightened. “Pick them smokes up,” Sikowski growled, crossing his arms over his chest. “And you answer me when I’m speakin’ to you, Way.”
“No,” Gerard gritted out, and crossed his own arms over his chest, heart beating so loudly he thought you could probably hear it from the parking lot. “You want them so much, pick them up yourself.”
“You little shit,” the coach breathed, nostrils flaring, and he advanced a pace, overtly threatening. “You’re lucky detention’s all I can give you.”
And just like that, something inside Gerard snapped, and he was barely conscious of taking a threatening forward step of his own.
“What,” he said between his teeth, glaring, remembering that forlorn gorge, the pile of bones tucked away there, forgotten, alone. “What else would you give me, huh? You gonna break my neck too? Bring all your friends and get me alone, you fucking coward, is that how it works? You make me fucking sick!”
As Gerard’s voice rose, the coach’s face went pale, and then red, and Gerard had a moment where the outrage and hate dimmed enough for him to realize that maybe he shouldn’t have said any of that-that maybe he should have kept his damned mouth shut for once in his life. And then Mark Sikowski’s left hand was tight on his wrist and his right was clamped over Gerard’s mouth, and before Gerard could do anything or scream or bite, he was being dragged into the empty stairwell.
It was like his brain fizzled shut, turned off. He knew he should be kicking and screaming and biting, he knew that, but for a few second his brain was just full of white noise, buzzing with disbelief and shock. He was in school. He was in public. This shouldn’t be happening; it didn’t compute.
By the time he started struggling, Sikowski was already shoving him into the wall and swinging his fist. Gerard had a second to think how much he looked like Ted, in that moment, and then his fist connected with Gerard’s jaw and everything went bright and black with a sickening crunch.
***
PART ELEVEN