Fic: Thing-Thing (1/5)
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - master post
---
Gerard is just walking down the hallway, minding his own business, thinking about faeries, when a locker right next to him bangs and rattles.
"Hey," the locker says.
"Mikey," Gerard says, and stops walking. "Hey, Mikey. Confirm something for me?"
Mikey stops and tugs one earbud out of his ear. The locker repeats, "Hey!"
"That," Gerard says. "The locker is talking."
"It totally is," Mikey agrees. "That locker is talking."
"Okay," Gerard says. "Good to know." Mikey puts his earbud back in, and they move on.
"Fucking stop," the locker says, sounding pissed now.
Gerard halts. Mikey looks back irritably and takes out the earbud again. "It said to stop," Gerard says.
Mikey rolls his eyes and goes over to the talking locker. "Dude, I have to go to math class," he tells it.
"Dude, you never go to math class," the locker answers.
Mikey looks back at Gerard, surprised, and says, "I think the talking locker's psychic."
"I'm not a fucking talking locker--"
"Dude," Gerard interrupts, "You kind of are--"
"It's fucking Frank, you fucking douche!"
"Oh!" Mikey's expression clears, and he starts fiddling with the lock. "It's Frank," Mikey tells Gerard, like Gerard doesn't have ears. Gerard's the one who noticed Frank the talking locker, for fuck's sake.
When Gerard points this out, Mikey rolls his eyes. "No, there's this guy I know in the locker," Mikey tells Gerard.
"Oh," Gerard says. "You know, that makes sense. I didn't think I was that drunk."
Mikey sniggers. "What, like, drunk enough to hear lockers?"
"Drunk enough to reach another plane of existence," Gerard says. Just saying 'another plane of existence' is proof that Gerard isn't that drunk; when he's reached that point in the past, Gerard hasn't been able to manage polysyllabic words. "Polysyllabic," Gerard says, just to show off. Mikey looks suitably impressed.
Mikey fiddles with the lock for a while longer. Finally he gives a sharp tug to the latch, kicks the bottom of the locker, and the door pops open. A little guy tumbles out of the locker, along with a couple of binders. "Mother of all fucks!" the guy says. Gerard thinks that that's a pretty good curse, for a freshman.
"Frank's a freshman, right?" Gerard asks. Mikey nods.
"I'm here now, you can talk to me directly," Frank snipes. He looks pissy. Gerard doesn't have time for this; he has art class next.
"You were cooler when you were a locker," Gerard tells Frank. Then he turns on his heel and walks away.
---
"Frank says you're an asshole," Mikey says. He settles down on the stairs next to Gerard.
Gerard grunts and finishes lighting his cigarette. "I commend his powers of observation," he says, on the exhale. Mikey rolls his eyes.
Gerard smokes silently for a minute, radiating cool and James-Dean-like mystery. Then he kind of gets tired of that and turns to Mikey. "Does he really?" he asks Mikey.
"What?" Mikey pulls out an earbud.
"Never mind," Gerard says. Mikey puts his earbud back in. "Wait," Gerard says, and Mikey takes it out again. "Does Frank really think I'm an asshole?"
"Sort of," Mikey says. "Can I listen to my music?"
"Yeah," Gerard says, “Go ahead.”
After a second, Gerard pulls one of Mikey’s earbuds back out. "Hey!" Mikey says.
"I'll buy you new ones if they die," Gerard says.
"Right away this time, not after a month," Mikey insists. Gerard nods and waves his hand. Mikey still looks mulish, but he says, "Fine, what do you want?"
"I-- shit. I forgot what I was going to ask you," Gerard says. Mikey rolls his eyes again -- seriously, it's got to be more habit than actual sentiment anymore -- and goes to put his earbud back in. "Oh! I know!" Gerard says, and flaps his wrist. Mikey pauses, his hand hovering next to his ear. "How do you know that guy?" Gerard asks.
"What guy?"
"Frank," Gerard says.
"Everyone knows Frank," Mikey says.
"Why does everyone know Frank?" Gerard asks patiently.
Mikey shrugs. "I mean, he was in the paper. The real one, not the school one."
"Okay," Gerard says. "What was he in the paper for?"
"The gay thing." Mikey looks at Gerard pointedly.
Gerard rolls his eyes, but only because Mikey is totally meriting it. "Just because I'm kind of, y'know--" Gerard takes a quick look to make sure the entire lacrosse team hasn't snuck into the stairwell while he wasn't paying attention, "--doesn't mean that I know everyone who does something, y'know."
"Gay," Mikey supplies. "And Frank's in charge of the gay-straight thing, the alliance thing. So I thought you would know him."
"He's a freshman!" Gerard says. That is outrageous. Gerard should be the head of the gay-straight alliance, if there really is one: he's a senior. Never mind that he's kind of totally in the closet, or whatever. It's the principle of the thing.
"Whatever," Mikey says. "I'm going to listen to my music."
"Whatever," Gerard replies. He settles back to smoke and leaves Mikey to his shitty britpop.
---
Frank is actually pretty cute.
Well, cute in a way. He's pretty chunk-style. Gerard is not exactly Mr. Slender, though, so he's not one to be throwing stones.
Gerard grabs his big fat belly with both hands and pushes it together, making an island of fat. No, not Mr. Slender, he decides.
Gerard wishes he were a vampire, because then he would only want to drink the blood of virgins. He thinks that maybe the beer and the pot are to blame for the chubby-hubby look.
"I'm switching to strictly vodka and pills," Gerard tells Mikey. Mikey shrugs. Gerard nods decisively and lets go of his stomach.
But Frank is actually pretty cute, even with the belly and the round chin. Frank's face is nice, and not just in the way where people tell a chubby kid that he's got a "nice face," but in the way where his face is actually nice. Gerard snuck a look at his butt, too, and Frank has a hot tush, as his grandma would say. It's round and kind of grab-able. Frank is also the first actual gay guy under twenty-five that Gerard has run into in real life. That earns Frank a lot of hot points, too.
If Gerard were not too cool -- and if Mikey wouldn’t tease him for the rest of his life -- Gerard would ask Mikey to ask Frank if he were maybe interested in going to a movie or whatever. Just to talk, about gay shit or something. But Frank is a freshman, and Mikey is kind of a dick, so Gerard is left with pretty few options.
"I need to get laid," Gerard says.
Mikey says, "You so do," like a total jerk.
"I'm going to pour paint in your hair tonight," Gerard tells him. It's an empty threat, though. Gerard's way too nice to his asshole little brother.
---
Gerard actually sees Frank after that, in between classes. Frank is passing out fliers for something, which is kind of hilarious; their school is small enough that he could just put a poster on the wall in the main stairs and everyone would see it. The fliers are probably for a gay something, too, Gerard thinks. It's like Frank doesn't know the rules.
Gerard’s not going to be the one who tells him about the rules, though. Gerard stays where he is, down the hall and behind a pillar. He peeks one eye out and watches Frank giving away his fliers. Gerard doesn’t stay for that long, but he still sees a lot of guys saying shit to Frank. One or two guys bump into Frank pretty hard. It sucks, watching it. Gerard follows the rules, sure -- he wants to survive high school and get the fuck out of there -- but that doesn't mean he likes them.
In a perfect world, Gerard would walk right over there, and he say something really cutting to the people who are being rude to Frank. It couldn’t be something normal, though, like what Gerard mutters to Mikey when people say stupid shit to them. This would have to be a perfect comeback, the best comeback Gerard has ever come up with.
If he could do that, Frank would be pretty impressed. He would lunge tongue-first at Gerard's face, obviously, and they would make out right there in the hallway, and the orchestra would have been warming up nearby and would start playing right then, and then people would just start applauding them for being so brave.
But that’s not how it works.
If Gerard actually sacked up and went over there, he would trip. He'd trip, take Frank out, and probably break Frank’s leg completely by accident. Even if Gerard didn’t trip, he would stutter and choke when he was supposed to say the comeback. And even if Gerard actually somehow convinced Frank to make out with him after that, everyone except for Ray and Matt and Mikey would beat them up.
And then Gerard would end up duct-taped to a stop sign.
Naked.
Again.
So Gerard doesn't do anything. He stays at his end of the hallway, watching Frank bounce off of people and hand out his gay fliers. Eventually Gerard leaves and goes to smoke his before-lunch cigarette, out behind the art building.
---
In sophomore year, Ray and Matt and Gerard all decided that they hated having their lunches spat on. At exactly the same time, they decided that they were never going to eat lunch in the cafeteria ever again.
They tried going off-campus for lunch for a while, but students aren't supposed to do that without a permission slip. Gerard got all twitchy and paranoid, which made him kind of gassy, and that wasn't any fun for anyone. They stopped going off-campus, but they still refused to go to the cafeteria.
Gerard is kind of the art teacher's pet--
"Mr. Fackenthal wants on your dick," Ray said sagely.
"Shut up," Gerard said, even though it's totally a huge compliment.
--so Gerard offered up the art room. Mr. Fackenthal doesn't seem to mind, as long as they don't make too much of a mess or draw attention to themselves. They mostly just read comic books or play D&D or draw on notebook paper while they eat lunch. Unless the D&D campaign gets really heated, they don't get noticed at all.
"Roll initiative," Gerard says, around a mouthful of cheese sandwich. Ray gets an eighteen, which is pretty sweet.
"Can I eat the troll?" Matt says. He and Ray start giggling like total nerds.
"Shut up," Gerard says, "You so can't eat a troll. I don't even know where to start with that."
"You shut up," Matt says, "Your mom is a troll."
"You're lucky Mikey didn't hear that," Gerard says. "Mikey would kick your ass if he heard that."
"If I heard what?"
"Matt said our mom was a troll," Gerard says.
"Tattletale," Matt says.
Mikey punches Matt in the shoulder. Matt pretends that the punch hurt. Mikey makes a face at the fact that his lame-ass version of a punch hurt his delicate little hand. In other words, everything is perfectly normal, except that the gay kid is standing there, giggling and pointing at Mikey.
Gerard, because he has no filter whatsoever, points at Frank and says, "Hey, that's the gay locker kid. Frank."
Frank looks kind of mulish. "I'm not just gay," he says snottily.
"Yeah, you're stupid, too," Gerard says, before he can think about it. Everyone laughs, which is pretty awesome, but Frank turns red and scowls at him. "Just kidding, I mean, sorry," Gerard says.
Mikey gives Gerard the stinkeye -- which is totally unfair, normally Mikey loves Gerard's one-liners -- and pats Frank on the shoulder. "Don't mind my brother," Mikey says. "He needs to get laid."
Frank looks between him and Mikey. "You're brothers," he says, and then just leaves his mouth hanging open, gaping at them. Ray and Matt crack up laughing.
Gerard kicks Ray in the ankle, because Ray is within kicking range. "Ow!" Ray says, but he keeps laughing, because he's a bastard.
Gerard would love to look like he were related to his brother. Gerard would like nothing more than to be a creepy anemic living twig. He would love to wear Mikey's ugly-ass scene clothes and listen to his shitty-ass britpop and get laid all the time. Instead Gerard is an awesome fat-ass sexless loser. Such is fucking life.
Gerard shuffles all of the character sheets into a pile and frowns down at them. "Can we actually, you know, play?" he asks.
"What are you playing?" Frank asks. Gerard ignores him. Mikey can explain things to his stupid friend. Gerard ignores Mikey's mumbling and Frank's high-pitched questions and focuses on the troll their party has to defeat.
The other guys are all nice to Frank, even though Frank's a weird gay locker-dwelling freshman asshole. Even worse, that means that Frank keeps slowing things down and getting in the way. When Frank asks to see their characters, Ray holds out his picture, and Frank pushes himself up over the edge of the table to look at it. His ass is nearly in Gerard's face.
"Your ass is right in my face," Gerard says pointedly. Mikey shoots him a look, and Gerard says, "What?"
"Stop being so lame," Mikey tells him.
"I'll stop being lame when you stop being dumb," Gerard says.
Frank giggles. "Good one," he says.
Gerard feels his face flush. Mikey shoots him another look.
"Gerard drew all our character portraits," Ray tells Frank. Frank's eyes go big and surprised. Gerard kicks Ray's ankle, and Ray says, "Ow! What?"
"Shut up," Gerard says.
"It's true, you drew it," Ray says, like that's what Gerard was debating. Gerard tells him to shut up again, and Ray sticks out his tongue. Gerard's friends have no respect for him, it's really fucking sad. Gerard wishes he were a vampire. Maybe then his friends would be respectful. Assholes.
Frank keeps glancing over at Gerard after he finds out about the portraits, like Gerard is some kind of freak who needs staring at. Gerard says, "What?" but all Frank does is shrug and turn back to look at the game.
That afternoon, when they're walking home from school, Mikey pulls out his earbuds and says, "You want to bone Frank."
Gerard tries to play it cool and say, "Who?" but it comes out garbled when he trips and faceplants into the sidewalk.
"You are so obvious," Mikey tells him, but he helps Gerard up.
"I am not. Shut up," Gerard says. He brushes at his jeans, but all that does is get blood from his scraped palms on them. It looks kind of cool. "I just want everyone to shut up and leave me alone," Gerard says.
Mikey shrugs. Before he puts in his earbuds, though, he says, "Maybe Frank would bone you, if you asked. He likes the Misfits. And he's kind of easy."
"I hate you," Gerard says, but he doesn't mean it, and Mikey isn't listening anyway.
---
Gerard wasn't even thinking about Frank like that. He wasn't. Gerard has appreciated Frank's ass aesthetically, sure, and he maybe once thought about making out with Frank in a strictly cinematic point-proving way, but Gerard hasn't had dick-touching thoughts about Frank at all.
Frank is a freshman. Frank is fourteen. Maybe some guys are into that, but not Gerard. Gerard is seventeen, on his way to eighteen -- practically an adult, fuck -- and on his birthday dick-touching thoughts about fourteen year-olds become technically illegal in the great state of New Jersey. Gerard isn't down with getting arrested for being a dirty old man.
But Mikey saying something about Frank and boning (and the Misfits, shit) kind of makes Gerard think about it, a tiny little bit.
That night, when Gerard is touching his dick, he has a few stray thoughts about Frank's shocked face, the one he made when he found out Gerard had drawn the character portraits. Gerard switches over to his usual thoughts of Brian Molko and Morrissey pretty quickly, but there's a moment of Frank and his stupid chunk-style face in there, and that's what counts.
"I'm a dirty fucking perv," Gerard groans. Mikey is off having sex and doing drugs with the popular kids -- and since when does a fourteen year-old have sex and do drugs, seriously, Gerard doesn't understand the world -- so luckily there's no one around to hear him. "Dirty old perv," Gerard says, and lifts his head up off of his pillow. He should get up or something, but he's comfortable. The pillowcase smells like himself, which is kind of nice. Gerard wipes his hand on the sheets and settles in for a nap, or maybe a full night's sleep.
When Mikey stumbles in, an hour or six later, Gerard lifts his head off of his pillow. Mikey flaps his hand, and Gerard pulls his hand off of his sticky sheets to flap his hand back.
"Party?" Gerard says, implying the how was.
"Nnkay," Mikey answers, implying the got drunk, got high, had sex with the cheerleading team and maybe a goat. There are a bunch of leaves caught in his hair.
They both pass out.
---
The next day is a Saturday, which is awesome for both of them: Gerard hates school with a volcanic passion, and Mikey is epically hung over. Mikey spends most of the morning with his head actually inside the toilet bowl, and Gerard spends it looking at naked pictures of guys on the internet and smoking an entire pack of cigarettes.
"I love weekends," Gerard calls out to Mikey. Mikey just makes a weak retching sound, but Gerard's pretty sure he agrees.
Mikey emerges from the bathroom after the longest puking session Gerard has ever been present for -- and Gerard knows from long puking sessions, he believes that if you start the handle of vodka, you finish the handle of vodka -- and says, "Frank's coming over."
"What?" Gerard says. He closes the internet window he was looking at and stubs out his cigarette. "Why the fuck is Frank coming over?"
Mikey flops down onto his bed and groans a response into his pillow. Gerard has no idea what his response was, but that's unimportant; Gerard has to hurry and figure out some way of being out of the house when Frank comes over. Gerard has had sexy thoughts about Frank, even if said thoughts were short and very prefatory.
"I thought about Frank when I jerked off last night," Gerard says. "I have to leave."
Mikey turns his head off of the pillow and says, "Fucking Christ, are you serious?"
"You're the one who brought it up!" Gerard says. "Him and boning, you were the one who mentioned it!" He considers for a second. "And the Misfits!" he adds, because seriously, Mikey knows Gerard's weaknesses.
Mikey closes his eyes. "Go away," he moans.
"Fine," Gerard says. "Fuck you, fine."
He warms up pop-tarts and coffee for Mikey before he leaves for the record store, but that's just because he is the best big brother ever.
Also maybe because he's hoping Mikey won't bring up the boning thing to Frank. Gerard would actually die.
---
Gerard smokes three cigarettes in the two blocks to the record store, and bums one to Crazy Eight, the local weirdo. There are only four cigarettes left in the pack after that, which means that Gerard has to make the horrible decision between buying a CD and buying another pack. He hopes that there won't be anything he wants at the store.
The seashell windchimes duct-taped to the door clatter around when Gerard pushes open the front door. Matt's sitting on the counter; he looks up briefly from his magazine, sees it's Gerard, and goes back to reading. Iron Maiden's on the stereo, which means Ray has got to be around somewhere. It isn't like there are very many places Ray could be hiding, anyway; it's a fucking tiny store. "Ray's in the back," Gerard says, sort of like a question. Matt nods, not looking up from his magazine, and Gerard finds the battered folding chair he likes to sit on. "You on duty?" Gerard asks.
Matt shakes his head. "Just dicking around. Ray's got this shift." He turns a page. "Jay's grandmom got percocet for her hip, unlimited refill," he says.
"There any extra?" Gerard asks.
"Saved it all for you," Matt says.
"I'll get money from my mom tonight," Gerard promises, and Matt nods and flips to another page.
They sit quietly after that, both of them bobbing their heads to "Run for the Hills," Matt occasionally turning pages. Gerard kind of zones out. When Ray shoulders open the door to the back room, Gerard startles and nearly falls off his chair.
"Dude!" Ray says. "I didn't know you'd showed up."
"Yeah," Gerard says, unnecessarily.
"Cool," Ray says, and they settle in to talk about shit.
Gerard figures that he has to stay at the record store for three hours, just to be on the safe side. It's not much of a hardship to hang around. Matt and Ray know him, at least as well as anyone other than Mikey can know him. Gerard told them both about the gay thing pretty much right after he realized it for himself, and they know all about his dreams of art school. Even though Ray can be a big girl about stuff, and even though sometimes Matt thinks he's too cool to call Gerard back, they're both good guys, and they're nice to Gerard. The store is nice enough, too; it smells like tape and plastic and the smelly dude who does deliveries, kind of weird and comforting, and there's a Dunkins three doors down. It's cool. Gerard likes it.
Gerard figures he doesn't really want a CD today, so he buys himself two iced coffees and a pack of cigarettes.
"Man, if you quit cigarettes, you could afford to buy CDs whenever you want," Ray says, when Gerard gets back in from buying the pack. Ray is such a girl. He has a savings account, for fuck's sake.
"If I quit cigarettes, though," Gerard points out, "I wouldn't smoke. There wouldn't be any point in listening to CDs if I didn't smoke, because my life wouldn't be worth living." He gets out his pack and starts ripping off the cellophane. All this talk of cigarettes is making him want one.
"Don't fucking light up in here, man," Ray says. "I got in so much trouble--"
"They aren't going to fire you, you practically are the store," Gerard interrupts, but he pushes himself up out of the chair. The windchime rattles again when he bumps open the door with his hip.
He has to hunch down over the cigarette to get it lit, because a breeze has kicked up while he's been inside. Gerard gets it going, though, and sucks in the first lungful of smoke gratefully. He was getting twitchy.
Gerard alternates between his coffee and his cigarette until he's smoked the cigarette down to the filter. It's cool outside, almost chilly, the kind of weather Gerard likes best, so he stays outside and lights another one.
"I didn't know he smoked. Hey, give me one," Frank says. Gerard hacks and chokes; his eyes are watering when he looks over, and Frank and Mikey are blurry.
Gerard croaks out, "Hell no, you're fourteen."
"Dude, who cares?" Frank says, and makes an impatient motion with his hand.
It's a compelling argument, even if Gerard supposedly hates Frank's guts, and Gerard hands one over. "You're only getting one," Gerard warns Frank, and gives him his lighter. "Enjoy it."
"He's always an asshole about his cigarettes," Mikey tells Frank. Gerard sticks his tongue out at Mikey, and Frank laughs. His laugh startles Gerard into smiling at him, and Frank smiles back, big and happy. Gerard ducks his head down and tucks his hair behind his ears.
Mikey says, "Gross." Gerard feels himself flushing a bright pink. He's a dirty old man, a dirty, dirty old man. When he glances up, though, Frank looks like he’s blushing too, and Mikey is giving Gerard a really weird look. Gerard has no idea what's going on.
"Ray and Matt are inside," Gerard offers, stupidly.
Mikey goes to open the door, and Frank says, "I'm just going to finish smoking." The sentence sounds a little weird. Gerard feels awkward, like he's missing something. Mikey knows how much he hates that. He glares at Mikey, but Mikey just rolls his eyes. The windchimes clack again when Mikey hauls the door open, and then Frank and Gerard are alone. Gerard smokes faster. He really doesn't want to get arrested for being a pedophile; what if the police are mindreaders? That would be pretty cool, obviously, but Gerard would also be in jail.
"I didn't know you smoked," Frank repeats. Gerard sneaks a look over at him, and Frank is looking up at him. His cigarette is hanging out of the side of his mouth, like Frank is an experienced smoker. It's kind of hot. Gerard is kind of going to hell.
"I didn't know you did, either," Gerard says. He sounds like a fucking idiot, he thinks, and looks away. "Whatever, I do."
"Me too," Frank points out. They smoke next to each other in awkward silence, until Gerard finally flicks his butt away. He turns to Frank, and Frank takes one last drag before he throws his as well. "So," Frank says.
"Inside?" Gerard says, his voice all high-pitched and stupid-sounding. He rushes over to the door before Frank can answer and hauls it open.
"Fucking finally," Ray says, before Gerard even gets all the way inside.
"What?" Gerard asks. He hunches up his shoulders and shuffles over to stand by the counter.
Ray shrugs. "Nothing, man, it's just that I wanted someone who'll actually fucking talk in here." Mikey frowns at Ray. Matt doesn't look up from his magazine; he doesn't even bother to take his hand off the page when he flips Ray the bird.
"What did you want to talk about?" Gerard asks, and Ray shrugs. "I can't talk if I don't have anything to talk about."
"Shut up, yes you can," Ray says. "You do it all the time."
"That is such a lie." Maybe if they're talking about comics or art or music or booze or D&D or cigarettes or cute boys, then Gerard could talk. Gerard talks about important things, is the thing, and then he talks a lot. He doesn't talk about nothing.
"I don't talk that much, anyway," Gerard says, after a second, because he actually doesn't. He doesn't know how Mikey got the Silent Brother reputation. "Like, today I spent a while not talking, you know, earlier? Before you came in from the back, okay, and then when you were sorting the rock section -- completely wrong, by the way, half the bands you filed under Sweden aren't even from, like, the Netherlands -- I didn't say anything for, like, an hour. Right? I think it was at least an hour."
"It was ten minutes," Matt says dryly.
"Oh," Gerard says.
Frank laughs. "What are you laughing at, chunk-style?" Gerard asks, stung.
"Don't call me chunk-style," Frank says. He’s got his fists balled up, and he’s slowly turning bright red. Gerard would maybe apologize, but Frank adds, "Fat-ass."
Gerard can totally feel his mouth drop open. None of them say anything. Ray and Matt just look away when Gerard glances at them, and even Mikey doesn't speak up. It's not their fault, though; they can’t jump to his defense, because what Frank said is true. It's fucking embarrassing, but it’s true. Gerard presses his lips together and hunches his shoulders.
"Oh my god, are you going to cry?" Frank says, and that's the last straw.
"Fuck no," Gerard says. Maybe his eyes are stinging, but he's not a baby, he's not going to cry. "I just-- you know what? Fuck you. I have to go, I'll see you guys later." He shoves past Frank and out the door, already digging his cigarettes back out of his pocket.
Gerard smokes three cigarettes, buys another iced coffee, drinks it, and then almost throws up behind a dumpster because that much nicotine and caffeine disagrees with his stomach. When he's finished heaving, then Gerard cries, because his life sucks and everyone thinks he's fat and he just puked and he wants to die. He figures crying is allowed, under the circumstances.
---
Gerard spends that night drinking vodka, smoking cigarettes, and squeezing the blackheads on his nose. By the time Mikey comes home, Gerard sounds like he ran his throat over a cheese grater, his mouth tastes like that one time when he drank bongwater, and he looks like a first-stage zombie.
Mikey doesn't say anything. He sits down on his bed. Gerard looks at him.
"You have a bruise on your face," Gerard observes.
"Yeah," Mikey says, and smiles, a little lop-sided. "Frank punches kind of hard."
"You fought Frank?"
Mikey rolls his eyes, then brings his hand up to touch his cheek, like rolling his eyes hurt. "He called you fat," Mikey says.
"It was my fault," Gerard says, and Mikey shrugs. "Sorry," Gerard adds, and Mikey shrugs again. Gerard holds out the vodka, and Mikey gets up and takes it. He drains it before his ass hits the bed again. There was only about an inch left, though, and Gerard figures Mikey deserves it, if he's been fighting for Gerard's honor. Mikey caps the bottle and throws it on top of the laundry pile.
"He shouldn't have called you fat," Mikey says, finally. He leans back on his elbows and kicks his feet over the carpet.
Gerard bites his lip and ducks his head. "Because you're not," Mikey says impatiently.
"I am," Gerard says, and he can hear the whine in his voice, but he can't help it. "Nobody even said anything--"
"We were surprised," Mikey interrupts. "I mean, you called him fat first."
Gerard tugs on his hair. "He pissed me off. He's always laughing at me," he says.
"We don't?" Mikey says, genuinely, like it's an honest question.
That kind of stings, but Gerard probably deserves it. "Yeah, I guess," Gerard says. He pulls on his hair again, smoothing one lock of it into a flat, greasy ribbon around his finger. He presses his lips together, trying to think of what else to say. He rubs his thumb over the shiny surface of his hair and sighs.
"You're such a dick," Mikey says. Gerard gives up on figuring out what to say. He shrugs and makes an apologetic face at Mikey. Mikey just rolls his eyes again.
---
Maybe Gerard actually hates weekends. He inevitably screws up and pisses off his friends, and then he's got at least a whole extra day where all he can do about it is work himself into a worried frenzy.
Gerard hunches forward on the toilet. He's holding his stomach, and hunching forward squashes his arms uncomfortably between his fat stomach and his girly thighs. Gerard groans.
"Do you seriously have the shits from worrying about Ray and Matt?" Mikey yells.
Gerard flips him the bird, even though he closed the door to the bathroom this time and Mikey can't see him. "Fuck you!" he adds, though, because Gerard needs Mikey to understand how he feels.
"Ray's going to be all, 'I think it was really mean of Frank, blah blah, you should totally go mutually apologize and hold hands and skip off into the sunset blah blah I'm a girl,' and Matt's going to be all, 'It's cool. Do you think Jane will date me, if I ask nice?'"
Gerard snorts. His ass sounds a weak echo of the sentiment, and Gerard groans again.
"How did Mom raise one awesome kid and one weirdo shitter?" Mikey asks. His voice is quieter; he's probably sitting next to the bathroom door now.
"I don't know," Gerard says, just loud enough that Mikey can probably hear him. "How did she raise one skinny one and one fat one?"
There's a thump against the door, either Mikey's head or his hand. "You are not fat," Mikey says fiercely. "Don't make me beat you up for lying about my brother."
"Shut up. I am your brother," Gerard says.
"I don't care, fuck you," Mikey says. "I'll beat you up anyway. And then I'll beat myself up for beating up my brother."
Gerard starts giggling, and he can hear Mikey start up his stupid heh heh heh on the other side of the door. Gerard's giggles make him fart, and the two of them crack up laughing.
Gerard loves his stupid skinny brother.
---
"You know, I think Frank was really mean," Ray says, when Gerard apologizes to him during math. "But you said that he was chunky, which is pretty mean, too."
"Yeah," Gerard says, "Yeah, I know that was mean. I feel bad."
"You should apologize," Ray says earnestly. "You know? Because I'm sure neither of you really meant it. You two should be friends. I think you would have fun together, if you hung out and, like, talked. He plays the guitar!"
Gerard is really lucky that Mikey isn't there, or he might not be able to control his urge to laugh. "You're right," he says, and Ray grins at him, big and dorky. Ray is way too nice to be friends with Gerard.
Gerard turns around in his seat to apologize to Matt, but Matt cuts him off.
"I really don’t care," Matt says. "Hey, do you think I should get this snare?" He holds up the magazine he's reading, folded back to show a page full of drums. "It’s got flames on the sides," Matt informs them.
Gerard says, "I don't know, man, a snare. Do you really need a new one?" Gerard is the best actor of all time; he sounds normal, not like he's about to start cackling.
"Mr. Way, I am not afraid to fail you again," Ms. Mirkin says, and Gerard swivels back around to the front of the room.
"Sorry," he says, and she goes back to logs, or trees, or whatever it is she's talking about.
---
So Gerard spent Sunday shitting himself for nothing, really. Gerard refuses to tell Mikey that, though, because Mikey's a dickhead when he turns out to be right.
The person Gerard is still worried about is Frank. Frank is in school -- Ray said that they saw him earlier in the day -- but Gerard can't seem to find him. Gerard even goes back to the locker where he first met Frank and knocks, but no one answers.
Then Mikey comes down to lunch by himself.
"Frank said he wanted to eat up in the cafeteria," Mikey says, when Matt asks.
Gerard, Ray, and Matt just blink at him. No one tries lunch in the art room and then goes back to the cafeteria. "I didn't think I hurt his feelings that bad," Gerard says, finally.
"He's pissed at me, too," Mikey says. "I slapped him kind of hard."
"And you bit him in the armpit," Matt adds. "That was harsh."
"Yeah," Mikey says. "He punched me real bad, though." He pulls up his shirt to show the bruise on his side. It's purple, and pretty big, way worse than the little one on Mikey’s face. Gerard isn’t impressed, since punching isn't cool and since Mikey is his little brother. He’s maybe a little something, though. Not impressed, but something that feels like he’s impressed. Frank can defend himself from the bullies, but he doesn’t most of the time, and that’s-- something. Interesting.
Maybe “interested” is the word.
Gerard looks down at his sandwich. He sighs, and drops it on top of his sketchbook. "I'm going to go up there," he says. Everyone turns their surprised expressions towards him. "I feel bad," Gerard explains, "I need to apologize, or whatever. Make friends."
Ray beams at him. Matt shrugs. Mikey gives him an unreadable look, and says, "You'd better have back-up."
Gerard rolls his eyes -- like Mikey the slap-fairy is going to be any help -- but he waits for Mikey to get his stuff before he leaves.
The cafeteria is fucking scary place, is the thing. Gerard hates it up there. It's this big room full of carved wood, and it looks like it’s a billion years old. Worst of all, it’s usually filled with people, and people are assholes. Individual persons might be kind of interesting and nice, but people are dicks, and Gerard avoids them as often as he can.
Gerard pauses at the entrance to the cafeteria and takes a deep breath. Frank is sitting at one of the circular tables near the windows, within Gerard’s line of sight, but he’s all the way across the room. The table Frank is at isn't empty -- there are a bunch of other guys sitting around it -- but Frank doesn't seem like he's talking to anyone at the moment. Gerard should just walk right over there.
"What if people think I'm gay?" Gerard whispers to Mikey.
Mikey whispers, "You are."
"But what if people think it?"
"Then they'll be right." Mikey looks perplexed by the conversation, like Gerard is the one who isn't making any sense.
"I hate you," Gerard tells Mikey seriously. "So, so much."
Mikey gives him a little push, and Gerard stumbles forward, into the cafeteria. Gerard feels like a character in the movies -- the awkward girl, or Frankenstein -- like everyone must be staring at him. Gerard keeps his head down and shuffles around the tables, dodging bookbags and sprawled out feet until he gets to Frank's table. He can see Frank's Vans, and the way his uniform slacks are shredded at the bottom. Gerard takes a deep breath.
"I'm sorry," Frank says. Gerard jerks his head up, startled, and meets Frank's eyes. Frank looks pissed-off, but then he repeats, "I'm sorry, okay?"
"For what?" Gerard asks, bewildered.
"Calling you a name," Frank says, and stabs at his bowl full of rice with his spoon.
"I called you a name first," Gerard says. He's kind of pissed, because Frank stole his thunder. "I'm sorry," he says lamely, and kicks weakly at Frank's shoe. Now he just sounds like a copy-cat.
Frank apparently isn't going to say anything back, either.
"Okay, cool," Gerard finally says. "You should come eat downstairs tomorrow, or whatever. If you want."
"I want to be in your campaign if I come downstairs," Frank says. He sits back in his chair and folds his arms, but he doesn't look up at Gerard. "I want to be a warrior elf."
"Okay," Gerard says, "Okay, you can be a warrior elf. I'll draw your character tonight, if you-- I mean, I don't know what you’ll want on your character sheet, but--"
"I could come over to your house tonight and work on it with you," Frank offers.
Gerard really needs to leave the room; he can see stupid James Turner leaving the food line, and stupid James Turner always “accidentally” bumps into Gerard. Gerard says, "Okay, Mikey and me will wait for you after school. At the front steps, okay," real fast, and rushes back out of the room.
Mikey has been peeping around the edge of the doorway, waiting for Gerard. He follows in Gerard's wake when Gerard hustles back towards the art room. "What did he say?" Mikey asks.
"He's coming over tonight," Gerard says, and it finally hits him. "Oh my god, he's coming over tonight," he repeats.
Of course Mikey just fucking laughs at him. Dick.
---
Their school follows a two-week rotating block schedule that makes no sense whatsoever. Their schedule is color coded. Every year, when the schedule is mailed to their house, Gerard's mother says, "I don't know why they have to make everything so complicated." She's the one paying for a school with complications, Gerard always thinks, but he's the one who didn't want to go to public school, so he keeps that to himself.
Gerard's mom always buys Gerard a binder with clear plastic covering and makes him put a copy of his schedule on both sides. She used to get calls about Gerard's "class attendance issues." Most of the time that Gerard missed his classes, it really was because he got confused; he’s a lot better now about remembering where he’s supposed to be and when. Still, even with the double-sided color-coded schedules, Gerard has to write down his classes for the day on his arm if he wants to actually show up in the right places at the right times.
Gerard stops at the side of the hallway to draw a line through French on his arm, and when he glances up he sees Frank, maybe five feet away. It's a small school, it makes sense that Gerard would see him again before the end of the day. Gerard still feels awkward. He's going to pretend he didn't see Frank, but Frank yells, "Hey, Gerard!"
"What?" Gerard says, because there’s no need to yell when they’re five feet away from each other.
Frank blunders through a bunch of juniors to say, "Where am I meeting you again?"
"Oh, um. Mikey and me usually meet at the front steps to walk home." Gerard pulls his sleeve back and checks his class schedule; he's got a smiley face at the bottom, near the crease of his elbow. He says, "But I've got art last today. If I don't show up, Mikey'll know to come get me."
Frank says, "Okay, okay." He's kind of bouncy, like he's excited about something.
"Did something cool happen?" Gerard asks.
"No," Frank says. He looks at Gerard like Gerard's nuts. Really, what. "Okay, bye!" Frank chirps.
Gerard says “Bye,” and drags his ass to his next class.
---
It's all Gerard can do to suffer through physics, with art waiting for him in last period. When the minute hand finally oozes over to the twelve, Gerard's off like a shot, ignoring his teacher's last comments. Gerard's already down the hall before the next person gets out the door. His shoes squeak on the linoleum, and his bag bangs heavily against his ass. Gerard pulls the strap of his bag tight and runs up the hallway to the art rooms; he makes it all the way to Fack’s room without seeing anyone, and it’s worth being short of breath.
The art room actually feels better than the rest of the school. It's like there are more windows, or there's more air, or something. Gerard wouldn't put it past Mr. Fackenthal to have figured something out, like a machine that pumps more air in to just that room.
"Hey, Fack," Gerard calls, after he gets his breathing back in order.
Mr. Fackenthal looks up from his big drafting table in the corner and waves. His mustache curves up and his eyes disappear when he smiles, and he looks like the happy monsters he doodles on Gerard's portfolios at the end of the year. Gerard grins, even though it makes him look stupid, and waves back. Then he dumps his bag on the big table and goes to drag his drawing board out from the storage slots.
"Outside today?" Mr. Fackenthal says, and Gerard nods. "Don't smoke on school property."
"Okay," Gerard says. He grabs his bag again, shoulders open the fire exit door, and jogs down the steps into the back parking lot of the school.
Gerard is doing a series of architectural portraits right now, for one of the required assignments for Mr. Fackenthal’s advanced drawing class. It would be kind of boring, except that he and Mr. Fackenthal talked, and Mr. Fackenthal said that Gerard could draw in ghostly students standing at the windows and on the roof when he was done. It's like Mr. Fackenthal knew that that would make Gerard want to get the angles and shadows just right, so that the ghosts will look real.
Gerard hunkers down in the same spot he always draws from, by the hedge that lines the boundary of the parking lot, and squints down at the paper. The rough outline of the school is already there, a sketchy skeleton of a building. Gerard checks the angle of the roof, and he starts to draw.
---
"Hey, Gerard."
Gerard jerks, startled, and then has to pause to blink. His face feels kind of hot, and his stomach feels weird. He squeezes his eyes shut, and opens them again. Mikey waits, his hands shoved in his pockets. Frank is jittering around next to him.
"Fuck, sorry," Gerard says, scrambling up. "Mr. Fackenthal must have forgotten to yell for me."
"Or yelled for you and you didn't listen," Mikey says.
"Or that," Gerard admits. He vaguely remembers Mr. Fackenthal leaning out and saying something to him, now that he thinks about it. "Sorry, shit, did you wait forever?"
"Forever," Frank says, and swoons against Mikey.
Mikey snickers. "Half an hour. Frank said you had art, so I figured you were drawing," he says.
"Sorry," Gerard repeats. Mikey rolls his eyes. "Shut up, I am. Okay. Shit, that means the school is locked. Goddammit." Gerard picks up his drawing board and pencil case. His bag is too small for half of his textbooks -- part of the reason why Gerard picked it out -- and he's got his books for English in there already. There's no way his pencils are fitting in there. Gerard tries to squeeze the case into his jacket pocket, but that doesn't work, either.
"I can carry the board," Frank offers.
"No. I mean, I can manage," Gerard says. Frank folds his arms and glares at Gerard. Gerard throws up his hands, nearly flinging his pencil case into the hedge. "Or you can carry it, whatever," he says, and holds out the board.
Frank takes it. He looks at the drawing on top for a beat, says, "Cool," and then swings it next to his side. Frank's really pretty short, Gerard realizes, even for a fourteen year-old; the bottom of the board almost brushes the ground.
"Can we go, then?" Frank asks.
Gerard realizes he's just been staring at Frank. "Yeah!" Gerard says, too brightly, and picks up his bag. He is a horrible person. Horrible.
Mikey rolls his eyes, but Gerard just pointedly ignores him.
"You're a pretty good artist," Frank says to Gerard, when they get to the end of the block.
"Mr. Fackenthal says that if I really push myself, I could go to art school," Gerard says, "But I don't think he's right. Except Mr. Fackenthal says--"
"'Mr. Fackenthal says,'" Mikey mimics, in his squeakiest voice, and Frank laughs.
Gerard punches Mikey in the shoulder, and Mikey giggles. "Screw you," Gerard says, but he's not too pissed; Mikey always does that, and it's maybe sort of kind of true. "So whatever, I mean, thanks," Gerard says to Frank. "And thanks for carrying my board, too. If it's annoying, or whatever--"
"I'll leave it at the side of the road, totally," Frank says. Gerard is startled into laughing and looking over at Frank again. Frank grins. He's really pretty when he grins, actually.
Mikey says, "Gross," drawing out the s sound. Gerard looks away, embarrassed. His brother's such a fucking dicksmack.
"Shut up," Frank says.
When Gerard looks back, Frank's glaring at Mikey. It's kind of sweet, like he's trying to be Gerard's protector or something. Gerard really hopes Frank doesn't know what he's protecting, though. Frank probably wouldn't approve of an old fatso perving on him.
"I'm just saying," Mikey says, but then he doesn't say whatever it was he was supposedly saying.
"Okay, fine," Frank says, stubbornly. "You said it, now shut up."
Gerard is confused. They walk the rest of the way home in silence.
---
"Do you want some cookies?" Mikey asks, when they get in the house. Frank shakes his head, and Mikey shrugs. "I'm going to get some. Gerard, you want any?"
Gerard feels like he should say that he's on a diet, just for appearance's sake, but. Well. He's not. "Two," he says. They're small cookies, anyway.
"Can I have a juice or something?" Frank asks.
Mikey says, "I think we have orange."
"Didn't we use that up with the, y'know?" Gerard asks.
"Maybe," Mikey allows. "Vodka and orange is the best," he tells Frank.
"Mikey!" Gerard says, horrified.
"What?"
"He's fourteen!"
"So am I!" Mikey says.
"So is he," Frank agrees, like his input is necessary.
Gerard sighs, exasperated. "You're a Way, you're already-- whatever, weird," he says to Mikey. "He's really fourteen."
"Shut up," Frank says, drawing himself up. "I'm almost fifteen. And I've been drunk before."
"Sure you have," Gerard says, smiling in spite of himself.
"I have," Frank says. "I bet I've done lots of things you haven't done."
It's a weirdly tense moment. Gerard feels cornered, like he’s in an argument that’s mostly happening over his head. Gerard doesn't know how to figure it out, though, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. He just shrugs and says, "Whatever," and leaves it at that. Frank gives Gerard a hard look, but he doesn't add anything else.
"I'll get Sprite, if we don't have any orange juice," Mikey sighs, finally.
"Okay," Gerard says. "Make it four cookies."
"They are pretty small," Mikey agrees.
Frank and Gerard thump down the narrow stairs to the basement while Mikey goes and gets the drinks and cookies. Gerard makes a half-assed attempt at neatening up -- he throws his blanket back over the bed and kicks some of the mess under his desk -- but Frank still looks a little weirded out by the room. Gerard figures that can't really be avoided, though. It's theirs.
Frank sets down Gerard's drawing board carefully in the corner, then stands there and looks around. Gerard sits down on his bed and plays with his hair. It's kind of awkward, Gerard thinks. That's par for the course with Gerard's life, too, but that doesn't mean Gerard has to like it.
"You draw a lot," Frank observes.
Gerard nods, then adds, "Yeah."
Frank looks at Gerard and smiles. "I meant it, though, you're a good artist. Your stuff looks like… stuff."
Gerard laughs, quietly. Frank grins at him again. His grin makes Gerard want to tell him things. This is extremely unfortunate, given the limited number of things that Gerard can tell Frank.
"I really like Mr. Fackenthal," Gerard offers, instead of god you're pretty do me right now you hot manchild. "He's a really cool guy."
"He freaks me out," Frank says. "It's his mustache, I can't tell what his mouth is doing."
"It wiggles around when he's mad," Gerard says. Frank giggles, and covers his mouth with his hand like he's embarrassed by it. "And it does a little parenthesis when he's smiling," Gerard adds, to see if he can get Frank to laugh again. Gerard wags his finger in a curve over his top lip, demonstrating the parenthesis. Frank obligingly giggles and slaps his hand over his mouth again. Gerard grins, satisfied.
Frank drops his hand, after a beat, and says, "Mikey told me Fack really likes you."
Gerard shrugs. "I hope he does. I really like him. I mean," Gerard continues, when Frank seems like he's listening, "Fack's the best, you know, he like, he talks to me about my stuff like-- I don't know, like I meant to do all the stuff that I did? Like, he'll point out a random line and be like, 'why did you choose purple here?' And I'm like, 'Uh… 'cause I picked up the purple marker first?' But I can't say that to Fack, obviously, so I have to come up with a reason. And then the next time I draw, I'm thinking about, 'hey, I can't use purple there, I don't have a good reason.' You know?" Frank nods seriously, and Gerard realizes he's been rambling. "Sorry, I like-- sorry, blah blah, you know."
"It's cool," Frank says. He looks back up at the drawings Gerard has tacked up on the wall. "It's like, it’s the good part about school for you."
"Yeah. It's-- Fack makes me feel like a normal person, I guess," Gerard says.
Thankfully, Mikey comes in right then and saves Gerard from his own random freak show declarations.
Gerard puts all of his attention on the cookies, and on digging out the handle of vodka he managed to get. By the time he looks back up Mikey and Frank are distracted by making dumb jokes, back in Beavis and Butthead mode.
Gerard thinks: fourteen. Fourteen.
---
Gerard changes in the bathroom, even though Mikey teases him and Frank swears he won't look. It's not as big a deal as Mikey makes about it, really. Gerard just hates having people look at him when he's naked, or even nearly naked.
"Gerard is horribly disfigured," Mikey tells Frank, like Gerard can't hear him through the bathroom door.
"I am," Gerard yells. "My legs are uglier than Mikey!" Which makes no sense, but he can hear Mikey sputtering and Frank cracking up, so Gerard is still pleased with himself.
When he emerges, though, Mikey is mixing Frank a drink.
"I still feel weird about that," Gerard says, pointing. Mikey rolls his eyes, and Gerard rolls his right back. "He's too young!" Gerard insists.
"Whatever," Mikey says. He hands Frank his cup, and Frank takes a sip, looking at Gerard from under his eyelashes. It is both disturbingly hot and kidlike. Gerard is going to hell.
"Fine," Gerard says. "Fine, whatever, just don't drive or anything."
Frank coughs a little on his second sip, but he keeps it down, and he nods at Mikey. "It's good," he says. Gerard is unwillingly impressed; Mikey kind of overdoes it on the liquor when he mixes.
Mikey passes Gerard a cup next. Gerard takes a big mouthful of it, letting the vodka scratch the itch in the back of his throat before he swallows. "Thanks," he tells Mikey, and Mikey looks up from pouring his own drink to smile at him.
Gerard thinks that they're going to sit around and talk, maybe that Frank and Mikey will talk about school. Then Mikey puts his earbuds in, turns his mp3 player on, and opens his math book.
"Do you have schoolwork to do, too?" Gerard asks. He feels weirdly fatherly for asking, until Frank shakes his head, and his hair falls in his eyes. Then Gerard feels like a pedophile. Again.
Frank says, "I did most of it during lunch."
"Sorry," Gerard says, because he's technically the reason why Frank had nothing to do during lunch. Well, him and Mikey, but Mikey never remembers to apologize.
"No big," Frank says. "Make me a warrior elf, c'mon."
Gerard has to play the hardass mod a couple of times while they make up the sheet -- not even cute boys get a pass on unstoppable Awe, not in Gerard's game -- but mostly Frank just tells Gerard what he's thinking and lets Gerard do the filling-in.
Frank gets a little more giggly as he sips his drink, but he doesn't pass out or need to throw up, like Gerard was expecting. Gerard relaxes a little bit. He drinks his own drink, and gets Mikey to make him a second one. By the time they're almost done the sheet, Gerard is just tipsy enough to relax about his early-onset pedophilia.
Which means that it's also a little harder to do the math than usual. "Two," Gerard says carefully, "Right?" Not that he's good at math to begin with.
Frank squints at the sheet. "No," he says, "I think you mean four." He takes Gerard's pencil out of his hand, and fixes it.
"Thanks," Gerard says. His hand is kind of tingling where Frank touched it. He looks away from Frank's stupid pretty face and pulls over his sketchbook. "Okay, now shut up," he says.
"Jerk," Frank says, but not like he's mad, and Gerard gives him a quick smile before he turns his attention back to the book.
Gerard sketches out a quick basic frame for the character, then starts filling it in. Frank is quiet, which Gerard wasn't expecting; he just watches Gerard draw, biting his lip like what Gerard's doing is something he has to concentrate on.
"Black hair, right?" Gerard says, and does a rough outline of Frank's unruly hair. He looks over, and Frank's frowning.
"Don't you think it should look a little less like me?" Frank asks. "He's supposed to be an elf."
"I think that's a good argument for him looking more like you," Gerard says. He didn't think before he said it, and for once that turns out okay; Frank's expression goes surprised, then pleased.
"You think?" he says. Gerard nods, and Frank says, "Oh. Okay."
Gerard sketches a little bit longer, taking brief breaks for sips of his drink, and when he's got a basic idea done he turns it towards Frank. Frank touches the edges of the sketchpad, like he's touching a photograph. "It's so awesome," he says. Gerard can actually feel his skin flush. He’s so fucking stupid, Jesus.
"I'll color it later," Gerard promises. "And then you have to play with us, because we made you a sheet and everything."
"Yeah, I really want to try playing," Frank says earnestly, looking up at Gerard.
They're maybe a little too close, Gerard thinks. He tries to shift his weight back, but they’ve moved at some point, somehow, and his back bumps into the side of his bed. Gerard tips his head back against the side of his mattress. He considers Frank, since Frank is still looking at the portrait. Frank is gay like Gerard, but not quite like Gerard, better than Gerard. Frank had to have come out in middle school, if he’s already the gay kid in his freshman year of high school; he’s already head of the gay-straight alliance, after all. Gerard has no idea what it would feel like, what he would be like if he were that sure of himself.
"How did you know you were gay?" Gerard asks. Then he closes his eyes and fervently prays for death. Or a better brain-to-mouth filter.
Frank just snickers, though. Gerard opens one eye. Frank is smiling at him. Gerard cautiously opens the other. "Sorry," Gerard says, "I just wondered--"
"No, it's fine," Frank says. "Everyone asks me that. I mean." He stops and plays with the leg of his uniform slacks, pinching the pleat between his fingers. "I guess it's like asking how you knew you were straight," Frank says. "I didn't-- it's not like when I was little I didn't chase girls around and try to kiss them, or whatever. I did that, is the thing, but. I don't know. I didn't do it like the other boys did it." He shrugs uncomfortably. "I don't know."
"No, I get it," Gerard says. "I get it."
Frank looks down at the picture of his character, chewing his lip. He jerks his head up and blurts, “I'm pretty sure it was when I was twelve," like he’s saying something embarrassing. "Summer camp. I saw my two counselors kissing."
"Boy counselors?" Gerard says, dumbfounded.
Frank laughs, folding forward with his giggles. "Yeah! Of course. Which, I saw it and I was like, 'Oh.'" Frank mimics his younger self's expression, with wide eyes and lips in a pinched pink circle. Gerard looks away. "I mean, I sort of knew before that, but that's how I really knew, when I was sure I was gay. Anyway, how did you?" Frank asks. Gerard glances back.
"How did I what?" Gerard asks, after an awkward pause. He didn't think anyone could tell by looking at him.
"How did you know you were straight?" Frank clarifies. “If I told you about mine, you have to tell me.”
Gerard should probably lie. He swallows, instead, trying to get the sticky feeling in his throat to go away. It's stupid, because he’s sure Frank won't beat him up -- even more sure than when he told Mikey and Ray and Matt -- but he's still weirdly nervous about saying something. Probably because it'll make his dirty old man thoughts obvious as hell, and then Frank will stop hanging out with them, and Mikey will be mad. Gerard swallows again. The pause is officially long and awkward.
"Oh," Frank says, like Gerard actually said what he’s thinking.
"Yeah," Gerard says. "I didn't ever know. That, I mean. What you said. I didn't know that I was straight. Ever."
"So you're not straight," Frank says. It feels like he's leaned closer.
Gerard mumbles, "No. I mean, I'm not."
Frank's eyes keep jerking up to Gerard's eyes and down to his mouth, like he's watching a tennis match on Gerard's face. Gerard touches Frank's cheek to get him to stop -- seriously, it's kind of distracting -- and Frank jerks a breath in.
"Are you--" Gerard starts, and then doesn't know what he wants to say. Frank's eyes linger on his for a long moment.
"Can I kiss you?" Frank asks. His breath smells like sugar and alcohol, almost cloyingly sweet.
"I shouldn't," Gerard says. He leaves his hand on Frank's cheek, though, and when Frank leans forward he doesn't shift away.
Frank's lips just barely press against his at first. Gerard's used to sloppy drunken makeout sessions; he doesn't kiss people without tongue all that often. It's nice, actually.
Frank pulls back and looks at Gerard. "Is it okay?" he asks. Gerard should shake his head, maybe even push Frank away. But Frank's eyes are so pretty -- watchful, like Gerard is something worth watching -- and Gerard doesn't push or shake his head. He leans forward and kisses Frank back, his mouth slightly open. Gerard slides his fingers into Frank's hair, and he tugs Frank with him as he leans back. Frank takes the opportunity to push his tongue into Gerard's mouth, and Gerard's eyes flutter closed.
In the movies, the actors always look like they're totally spaced out on each other, just thinking of one thing, but for Gerard it's like his brain goes into overdrive. There's a part going fourteen omigod fourteen and a part going I think I've forgotten how to do this fuck fuck fuck and another part going wow, fuck, he is really good at this, jesus christ and then another part, which is unfortunately taking precedent, going boner boner BONER.
Frank's hard, too, Gerard thinks, because he's pretty sure that's Frank's dick pressed against his leg. Which is good, it's a sign that Frank has at least gone past puberty and oh god that's a bad thought shit.
Gerard yanks his head back, smushing it back against the side of his mattress. "No, wait, we have to stop," he says.
"What?" Frank asks, irritably. Frank is really, really hot right now. His mouth is shiny, his uniform shirt is rumpled, and his hair is everywhere. Gerard did all that to him. Gerard did that to him when his puberty could have been in question. Gerard is going to hell.
"Fuck," Gerard says, "No, we have to stop. You are fourteen." He checks over Frank's shoulder, but Mikey hasn't heard them or looked up. Thank fucking God for mp3 players.
"Are you fucking serious?" Frank says, but at least he sits back enough that Gerard can worm away from him. "You've got to be fucking shitting me," Frank says, "come on."
"You sound like a child when you whine," Gerard tells him, kind of nastily. Frank flips him off with both hands. "I'm going to go get myself something to eat," Gerard says. Frank continues to hold up his middle fingers. Gerard adds, "Very mature," but he flips Frank off before he closes the door.
---
part two
---
Gerard is just walking down the hallway, minding his own business, thinking about faeries, when a locker right next to him bangs and rattles.
"Hey," the locker says.
"Mikey," Gerard says, and stops walking. "Hey, Mikey. Confirm something for me?"
Mikey stops and tugs one earbud out of his ear. The locker repeats, "Hey!"
"That," Gerard says. "The locker is talking."
"It totally is," Mikey agrees. "That locker is talking."
"Okay," Gerard says. "Good to know." Mikey puts his earbud back in, and they move on.
"Fucking stop," the locker says, sounding pissed now.
Gerard halts. Mikey looks back irritably and takes out the earbud again. "It said to stop," Gerard says.
Mikey rolls his eyes and goes over to the talking locker. "Dude, I have to go to math class," he tells it.
"Dude, you never go to math class," the locker answers.
Mikey looks back at Gerard, surprised, and says, "I think the talking locker's psychic."
"I'm not a fucking talking locker--"
"Dude," Gerard interrupts, "You kind of are--"
"It's fucking Frank, you fucking douche!"
"Oh!" Mikey's expression clears, and he starts fiddling with the lock. "It's Frank," Mikey tells Gerard, like Gerard doesn't have ears. Gerard's the one who noticed Frank the talking locker, for fuck's sake.
When Gerard points this out, Mikey rolls his eyes. "No, there's this guy I know in the locker," Mikey tells Gerard.
"Oh," Gerard says. "You know, that makes sense. I didn't think I was that drunk."
Mikey sniggers. "What, like, drunk enough to hear lockers?"
"Drunk enough to reach another plane of existence," Gerard says. Just saying 'another plane of existence' is proof that Gerard isn't that drunk; when he's reached that point in the past, Gerard hasn't been able to manage polysyllabic words. "Polysyllabic," Gerard says, just to show off. Mikey looks suitably impressed.
Mikey fiddles with the lock for a while longer. Finally he gives a sharp tug to the latch, kicks the bottom of the locker, and the door pops open. A little guy tumbles out of the locker, along with a couple of binders. "Mother of all fucks!" the guy says. Gerard thinks that that's a pretty good curse, for a freshman.
"Frank's a freshman, right?" Gerard asks. Mikey nods.
"I'm here now, you can talk to me directly," Frank snipes. He looks pissy. Gerard doesn't have time for this; he has art class next.
"You were cooler when you were a locker," Gerard tells Frank. Then he turns on his heel and walks away.
---
"Frank says you're an asshole," Mikey says. He settles down on the stairs next to Gerard.
Gerard grunts and finishes lighting his cigarette. "I commend his powers of observation," he says, on the exhale. Mikey rolls his eyes.
Gerard smokes silently for a minute, radiating cool and James-Dean-like mystery. Then he kind of gets tired of that and turns to Mikey. "Does he really?" he asks Mikey.
"What?" Mikey pulls out an earbud.
"Never mind," Gerard says. Mikey puts his earbud back in. "Wait," Gerard says, and Mikey takes it out again. "Does Frank really think I'm an asshole?"
"Sort of," Mikey says. "Can I listen to my music?"
"Yeah," Gerard says, “Go ahead.”
After a second, Gerard pulls one of Mikey’s earbuds back out. "Hey!" Mikey says.
"I'll buy you new ones if they die," Gerard says.
"Right away this time, not after a month," Mikey insists. Gerard nods and waves his hand. Mikey still looks mulish, but he says, "Fine, what do you want?"
"I-- shit. I forgot what I was going to ask you," Gerard says. Mikey rolls his eyes again -- seriously, it's got to be more habit than actual sentiment anymore -- and goes to put his earbud back in. "Oh! I know!" Gerard says, and flaps his wrist. Mikey pauses, his hand hovering next to his ear. "How do you know that guy?" Gerard asks.
"What guy?"
"Frank," Gerard says.
"Everyone knows Frank," Mikey says.
"Why does everyone know Frank?" Gerard asks patiently.
Mikey shrugs. "I mean, he was in the paper. The real one, not the school one."
"Okay," Gerard says. "What was he in the paper for?"
"The gay thing." Mikey looks at Gerard pointedly.
Gerard rolls his eyes, but only because Mikey is totally meriting it. "Just because I'm kind of, y'know--" Gerard takes a quick look to make sure the entire lacrosse team hasn't snuck into the stairwell while he wasn't paying attention, "--doesn't mean that I know everyone who does something, y'know."
"Gay," Mikey supplies. "And Frank's in charge of the gay-straight thing, the alliance thing. So I thought you would know him."
"He's a freshman!" Gerard says. That is outrageous. Gerard should be the head of the gay-straight alliance, if there really is one: he's a senior. Never mind that he's kind of totally in the closet, or whatever. It's the principle of the thing.
"Whatever," Mikey says. "I'm going to listen to my music."
"Whatever," Gerard replies. He settles back to smoke and leaves Mikey to his shitty britpop.
---
Frank is actually pretty cute.
Well, cute in a way. He's pretty chunk-style. Gerard is not exactly Mr. Slender, though, so he's not one to be throwing stones.
Gerard grabs his big fat belly with both hands and pushes it together, making an island of fat. No, not Mr. Slender, he decides.
Gerard wishes he were a vampire, because then he would only want to drink the blood of virgins. He thinks that maybe the beer and the pot are to blame for the chubby-hubby look.
"I'm switching to strictly vodka and pills," Gerard tells Mikey. Mikey shrugs. Gerard nods decisively and lets go of his stomach.
But Frank is actually pretty cute, even with the belly and the round chin. Frank's face is nice, and not just in the way where people tell a chubby kid that he's got a "nice face," but in the way where his face is actually nice. Gerard snuck a look at his butt, too, and Frank has a hot tush, as his grandma would say. It's round and kind of grab-able. Frank is also the first actual gay guy under twenty-five that Gerard has run into in real life. That earns Frank a lot of hot points, too.
If Gerard were not too cool -- and if Mikey wouldn’t tease him for the rest of his life -- Gerard would ask Mikey to ask Frank if he were maybe interested in going to a movie or whatever. Just to talk, about gay shit or something. But Frank is a freshman, and Mikey is kind of a dick, so Gerard is left with pretty few options.
"I need to get laid," Gerard says.
Mikey says, "You so do," like a total jerk.
"I'm going to pour paint in your hair tonight," Gerard tells him. It's an empty threat, though. Gerard's way too nice to his asshole little brother.
---
Gerard actually sees Frank after that, in between classes. Frank is passing out fliers for something, which is kind of hilarious; their school is small enough that he could just put a poster on the wall in the main stairs and everyone would see it. The fliers are probably for a gay something, too, Gerard thinks. It's like Frank doesn't know the rules.
Gerard’s not going to be the one who tells him about the rules, though. Gerard stays where he is, down the hall and behind a pillar. He peeks one eye out and watches Frank giving away his fliers. Gerard doesn’t stay for that long, but he still sees a lot of guys saying shit to Frank. One or two guys bump into Frank pretty hard. It sucks, watching it. Gerard follows the rules, sure -- he wants to survive high school and get the fuck out of there -- but that doesn't mean he likes them.
In a perfect world, Gerard would walk right over there, and he say something really cutting to the people who are being rude to Frank. It couldn’t be something normal, though, like what Gerard mutters to Mikey when people say stupid shit to them. This would have to be a perfect comeback, the best comeback Gerard has ever come up with.
If he could do that, Frank would be pretty impressed. He would lunge tongue-first at Gerard's face, obviously, and they would make out right there in the hallway, and the orchestra would have been warming up nearby and would start playing right then, and then people would just start applauding them for being so brave.
But that’s not how it works.
If Gerard actually sacked up and went over there, he would trip. He'd trip, take Frank out, and probably break Frank’s leg completely by accident. Even if Gerard didn’t trip, he would stutter and choke when he was supposed to say the comeback. And even if Gerard actually somehow convinced Frank to make out with him after that, everyone except for Ray and Matt and Mikey would beat them up.
And then Gerard would end up duct-taped to a stop sign.
Naked.
Again.
So Gerard doesn't do anything. He stays at his end of the hallway, watching Frank bounce off of people and hand out his gay fliers. Eventually Gerard leaves and goes to smoke his before-lunch cigarette, out behind the art building.
---
In sophomore year, Ray and Matt and Gerard all decided that they hated having their lunches spat on. At exactly the same time, they decided that they were never going to eat lunch in the cafeteria ever again.
They tried going off-campus for lunch for a while, but students aren't supposed to do that without a permission slip. Gerard got all twitchy and paranoid, which made him kind of gassy, and that wasn't any fun for anyone. They stopped going off-campus, but they still refused to go to the cafeteria.
Gerard is kind of the art teacher's pet--
"Mr. Fackenthal wants on your dick," Ray said sagely.
"Shut up," Gerard said, even though it's totally a huge compliment.
--so Gerard offered up the art room. Mr. Fackenthal doesn't seem to mind, as long as they don't make too much of a mess or draw attention to themselves. They mostly just read comic books or play D&D or draw on notebook paper while they eat lunch. Unless the D&D campaign gets really heated, they don't get noticed at all.
"Roll initiative," Gerard says, around a mouthful of cheese sandwich. Ray gets an eighteen, which is pretty sweet.
"Can I eat the troll?" Matt says. He and Ray start giggling like total nerds.
"Shut up," Gerard says, "You so can't eat a troll. I don't even know where to start with that."
"You shut up," Matt says, "Your mom is a troll."
"You're lucky Mikey didn't hear that," Gerard says. "Mikey would kick your ass if he heard that."
"If I heard what?"
"Matt said our mom was a troll," Gerard says.
"Tattletale," Matt says.
Mikey punches Matt in the shoulder. Matt pretends that the punch hurt. Mikey makes a face at the fact that his lame-ass version of a punch hurt his delicate little hand. In other words, everything is perfectly normal, except that the gay kid is standing there, giggling and pointing at Mikey.
Gerard, because he has no filter whatsoever, points at Frank and says, "Hey, that's the gay locker kid. Frank."
Frank looks kind of mulish. "I'm not just gay," he says snottily.
"Yeah, you're stupid, too," Gerard says, before he can think about it. Everyone laughs, which is pretty awesome, but Frank turns red and scowls at him. "Just kidding, I mean, sorry," Gerard says.
Mikey gives Gerard the stinkeye -- which is totally unfair, normally Mikey loves Gerard's one-liners -- and pats Frank on the shoulder. "Don't mind my brother," Mikey says. "He needs to get laid."
Frank looks between him and Mikey. "You're brothers," he says, and then just leaves his mouth hanging open, gaping at them. Ray and Matt crack up laughing.
Gerard kicks Ray in the ankle, because Ray is within kicking range. "Ow!" Ray says, but he keeps laughing, because he's a bastard.
Gerard would love to look like he were related to his brother. Gerard would like nothing more than to be a creepy anemic living twig. He would love to wear Mikey's ugly-ass scene clothes and listen to his shitty-ass britpop and get laid all the time. Instead Gerard is an awesome fat-ass sexless loser. Such is fucking life.
Gerard shuffles all of the character sheets into a pile and frowns down at them. "Can we actually, you know, play?" he asks.
"What are you playing?" Frank asks. Gerard ignores him. Mikey can explain things to his stupid friend. Gerard ignores Mikey's mumbling and Frank's high-pitched questions and focuses on the troll their party has to defeat.
The other guys are all nice to Frank, even though Frank's a weird gay locker-dwelling freshman asshole. Even worse, that means that Frank keeps slowing things down and getting in the way. When Frank asks to see their characters, Ray holds out his picture, and Frank pushes himself up over the edge of the table to look at it. His ass is nearly in Gerard's face.
"Your ass is right in my face," Gerard says pointedly. Mikey shoots him a look, and Gerard says, "What?"
"Stop being so lame," Mikey tells him.
"I'll stop being lame when you stop being dumb," Gerard says.
Frank giggles. "Good one," he says.
Gerard feels his face flush. Mikey shoots him another look.
"Gerard drew all our character portraits," Ray tells Frank. Frank's eyes go big and surprised. Gerard kicks Ray's ankle, and Ray says, "Ow! What?"
"Shut up," Gerard says.
"It's true, you drew it," Ray says, like that's what Gerard was debating. Gerard tells him to shut up again, and Ray sticks out his tongue. Gerard's friends have no respect for him, it's really fucking sad. Gerard wishes he were a vampire. Maybe then his friends would be respectful. Assholes.
Frank keeps glancing over at Gerard after he finds out about the portraits, like Gerard is some kind of freak who needs staring at. Gerard says, "What?" but all Frank does is shrug and turn back to look at the game.
That afternoon, when they're walking home from school, Mikey pulls out his earbuds and says, "You want to bone Frank."
Gerard tries to play it cool and say, "Who?" but it comes out garbled when he trips and faceplants into the sidewalk.
"You are so obvious," Mikey tells him, but he helps Gerard up.
"I am not. Shut up," Gerard says. He brushes at his jeans, but all that does is get blood from his scraped palms on them. It looks kind of cool. "I just want everyone to shut up and leave me alone," Gerard says.
Mikey shrugs. Before he puts in his earbuds, though, he says, "Maybe Frank would bone you, if you asked. He likes the Misfits. And he's kind of easy."
"I hate you," Gerard says, but he doesn't mean it, and Mikey isn't listening anyway.
---
Gerard wasn't even thinking about Frank like that. He wasn't. Gerard has appreciated Frank's ass aesthetically, sure, and he maybe once thought about making out with Frank in a strictly cinematic point-proving way, but Gerard hasn't had dick-touching thoughts about Frank at all.
Frank is a freshman. Frank is fourteen. Maybe some guys are into that, but not Gerard. Gerard is seventeen, on his way to eighteen -- practically an adult, fuck -- and on his birthday dick-touching thoughts about fourteen year-olds become technically illegal in the great state of New Jersey. Gerard isn't down with getting arrested for being a dirty old man.
But Mikey saying something about Frank and boning (and the Misfits, shit) kind of makes Gerard think about it, a tiny little bit.
That night, when Gerard is touching his dick, he has a few stray thoughts about Frank's shocked face, the one he made when he found out Gerard had drawn the character portraits. Gerard switches over to his usual thoughts of Brian Molko and Morrissey pretty quickly, but there's a moment of Frank and his stupid chunk-style face in there, and that's what counts.
"I'm a dirty fucking perv," Gerard groans. Mikey is off having sex and doing drugs with the popular kids -- and since when does a fourteen year-old have sex and do drugs, seriously, Gerard doesn't understand the world -- so luckily there's no one around to hear him. "Dirty old perv," Gerard says, and lifts his head up off of his pillow. He should get up or something, but he's comfortable. The pillowcase smells like himself, which is kind of nice. Gerard wipes his hand on the sheets and settles in for a nap, or maybe a full night's sleep.
When Mikey stumbles in, an hour or six later, Gerard lifts his head off of his pillow. Mikey flaps his hand, and Gerard pulls his hand off of his sticky sheets to flap his hand back.
"Party?" Gerard says, implying the how was.
"Nnkay," Mikey answers, implying the got drunk, got high, had sex with the cheerleading team and maybe a goat. There are a bunch of leaves caught in his hair.
They both pass out.
---
The next day is a Saturday, which is awesome for both of them: Gerard hates school with a volcanic passion, and Mikey is epically hung over. Mikey spends most of the morning with his head actually inside the toilet bowl, and Gerard spends it looking at naked pictures of guys on the internet and smoking an entire pack of cigarettes.
"I love weekends," Gerard calls out to Mikey. Mikey just makes a weak retching sound, but Gerard's pretty sure he agrees.
Mikey emerges from the bathroom after the longest puking session Gerard has ever been present for -- and Gerard knows from long puking sessions, he believes that if you start the handle of vodka, you finish the handle of vodka -- and says, "Frank's coming over."
"What?" Gerard says. He closes the internet window he was looking at and stubs out his cigarette. "Why the fuck is Frank coming over?"
Mikey flops down onto his bed and groans a response into his pillow. Gerard has no idea what his response was, but that's unimportant; Gerard has to hurry and figure out some way of being out of the house when Frank comes over. Gerard has had sexy thoughts about Frank, even if said thoughts were short and very prefatory.
"I thought about Frank when I jerked off last night," Gerard says. "I have to leave."
Mikey turns his head off of the pillow and says, "Fucking Christ, are you serious?"
"You're the one who brought it up!" Gerard says. "Him and boning, you were the one who mentioned it!" He considers for a second. "And the Misfits!" he adds, because seriously, Mikey knows Gerard's weaknesses.
Mikey closes his eyes. "Go away," he moans.
"Fine," Gerard says. "Fuck you, fine."
He warms up pop-tarts and coffee for Mikey before he leaves for the record store, but that's just because he is the best big brother ever.
Also maybe because he's hoping Mikey won't bring up the boning thing to Frank. Gerard would actually die.
---
Gerard smokes three cigarettes in the two blocks to the record store, and bums one to Crazy Eight, the local weirdo. There are only four cigarettes left in the pack after that, which means that Gerard has to make the horrible decision between buying a CD and buying another pack. He hopes that there won't be anything he wants at the store.
The seashell windchimes duct-taped to the door clatter around when Gerard pushes open the front door. Matt's sitting on the counter; he looks up briefly from his magazine, sees it's Gerard, and goes back to reading. Iron Maiden's on the stereo, which means Ray has got to be around somewhere. It isn't like there are very many places Ray could be hiding, anyway; it's a fucking tiny store. "Ray's in the back," Gerard says, sort of like a question. Matt nods, not looking up from his magazine, and Gerard finds the battered folding chair he likes to sit on. "You on duty?" Gerard asks.
Matt shakes his head. "Just dicking around. Ray's got this shift." He turns a page. "Jay's grandmom got percocet for her hip, unlimited refill," he says.
"There any extra?" Gerard asks.
"Saved it all for you," Matt says.
"I'll get money from my mom tonight," Gerard promises, and Matt nods and flips to another page.
They sit quietly after that, both of them bobbing their heads to "Run for the Hills," Matt occasionally turning pages. Gerard kind of zones out. When Ray shoulders open the door to the back room, Gerard startles and nearly falls off his chair.
"Dude!" Ray says. "I didn't know you'd showed up."
"Yeah," Gerard says, unnecessarily.
"Cool," Ray says, and they settle in to talk about shit.
Gerard figures that he has to stay at the record store for three hours, just to be on the safe side. It's not much of a hardship to hang around. Matt and Ray know him, at least as well as anyone other than Mikey can know him. Gerard told them both about the gay thing pretty much right after he realized it for himself, and they know all about his dreams of art school. Even though Ray can be a big girl about stuff, and even though sometimes Matt thinks he's too cool to call Gerard back, they're both good guys, and they're nice to Gerard. The store is nice enough, too; it smells like tape and plastic and the smelly dude who does deliveries, kind of weird and comforting, and there's a Dunkins three doors down. It's cool. Gerard likes it.
Gerard figures he doesn't really want a CD today, so he buys himself two iced coffees and a pack of cigarettes.
"Man, if you quit cigarettes, you could afford to buy CDs whenever you want," Ray says, when Gerard gets back in from buying the pack. Ray is such a girl. He has a savings account, for fuck's sake.
"If I quit cigarettes, though," Gerard points out, "I wouldn't smoke. There wouldn't be any point in listening to CDs if I didn't smoke, because my life wouldn't be worth living." He gets out his pack and starts ripping off the cellophane. All this talk of cigarettes is making him want one.
"Don't fucking light up in here, man," Ray says. "I got in so much trouble--"
"They aren't going to fire you, you practically are the store," Gerard interrupts, but he pushes himself up out of the chair. The windchime rattles again when he bumps open the door with his hip.
He has to hunch down over the cigarette to get it lit, because a breeze has kicked up while he's been inside. Gerard gets it going, though, and sucks in the first lungful of smoke gratefully. He was getting twitchy.
Gerard alternates between his coffee and his cigarette until he's smoked the cigarette down to the filter. It's cool outside, almost chilly, the kind of weather Gerard likes best, so he stays outside and lights another one.
"I didn't know he smoked. Hey, give me one," Frank says. Gerard hacks and chokes; his eyes are watering when he looks over, and Frank and Mikey are blurry.
Gerard croaks out, "Hell no, you're fourteen."
"Dude, who cares?" Frank says, and makes an impatient motion with his hand.
It's a compelling argument, even if Gerard supposedly hates Frank's guts, and Gerard hands one over. "You're only getting one," Gerard warns Frank, and gives him his lighter. "Enjoy it."
"He's always an asshole about his cigarettes," Mikey tells Frank. Gerard sticks his tongue out at Mikey, and Frank laughs. His laugh startles Gerard into smiling at him, and Frank smiles back, big and happy. Gerard ducks his head down and tucks his hair behind his ears.
Mikey says, "Gross." Gerard feels himself flushing a bright pink. He's a dirty old man, a dirty, dirty old man. When he glances up, though, Frank looks like he’s blushing too, and Mikey is giving Gerard a really weird look. Gerard has no idea what's going on.
"Ray and Matt are inside," Gerard offers, stupidly.
Mikey goes to open the door, and Frank says, "I'm just going to finish smoking." The sentence sounds a little weird. Gerard feels awkward, like he's missing something. Mikey knows how much he hates that. He glares at Mikey, but Mikey just rolls his eyes. The windchimes clack again when Mikey hauls the door open, and then Frank and Gerard are alone. Gerard smokes faster. He really doesn't want to get arrested for being a pedophile; what if the police are mindreaders? That would be pretty cool, obviously, but Gerard would also be in jail.
"I didn't know you smoked," Frank repeats. Gerard sneaks a look over at him, and Frank is looking up at him. His cigarette is hanging out of the side of his mouth, like Frank is an experienced smoker. It's kind of hot. Gerard is kind of going to hell.
"I didn't know you did, either," Gerard says. He sounds like a fucking idiot, he thinks, and looks away. "Whatever, I do."
"Me too," Frank points out. They smoke next to each other in awkward silence, until Gerard finally flicks his butt away. He turns to Frank, and Frank takes one last drag before he throws his as well. "So," Frank says.
"Inside?" Gerard says, his voice all high-pitched and stupid-sounding. He rushes over to the door before Frank can answer and hauls it open.
"Fucking finally," Ray says, before Gerard even gets all the way inside.
"What?" Gerard asks. He hunches up his shoulders and shuffles over to stand by the counter.
Ray shrugs. "Nothing, man, it's just that I wanted someone who'll actually fucking talk in here." Mikey frowns at Ray. Matt doesn't look up from his magazine; he doesn't even bother to take his hand off the page when he flips Ray the bird.
"What did you want to talk about?" Gerard asks, and Ray shrugs. "I can't talk if I don't have anything to talk about."
"Shut up, yes you can," Ray says. "You do it all the time."
"That is such a lie." Maybe if they're talking about comics or art or music or booze or D&D or cigarettes or cute boys, then Gerard could talk. Gerard talks about important things, is the thing, and then he talks a lot. He doesn't talk about nothing.
"I don't talk that much, anyway," Gerard says, after a second, because he actually doesn't. He doesn't know how Mikey got the Silent Brother reputation. "Like, today I spent a while not talking, you know, earlier? Before you came in from the back, okay, and then when you were sorting the rock section -- completely wrong, by the way, half the bands you filed under Sweden aren't even from, like, the Netherlands -- I didn't say anything for, like, an hour. Right? I think it was at least an hour."
"It was ten minutes," Matt says dryly.
"Oh," Gerard says.
Frank laughs. "What are you laughing at, chunk-style?" Gerard asks, stung.
"Don't call me chunk-style," Frank says. He’s got his fists balled up, and he’s slowly turning bright red. Gerard would maybe apologize, but Frank adds, "Fat-ass."
Gerard can totally feel his mouth drop open. None of them say anything. Ray and Matt just look away when Gerard glances at them, and even Mikey doesn't speak up. It's not their fault, though; they can’t jump to his defense, because what Frank said is true. It's fucking embarrassing, but it’s true. Gerard presses his lips together and hunches his shoulders.
"Oh my god, are you going to cry?" Frank says, and that's the last straw.
"Fuck no," Gerard says. Maybe his eyes are stinging, but he's not a baby, he's not going to cry. "I just-- you know what? Fuck you. I have to go, I'll see you guys later." He shoves past Frank and out the door, already digging his cigarettes back out of his pocket.
Gerard smokes three cigarettes, buys another iced coffee, drinks it, and then almost throws up behind a dumpster because that much nicotine and caffeine disagrees with his stomach. When he's finished heaving, then Gerard cries, because his life sucks and everyone thinks he's fat and he just puked and he wants to die. He figures crying is allowed, under the circumstances.
---
Gerard spends that night drinking vodka, smoking cigarettes, and squeezing the blackheads on his nose. By the time Mikey comes home, Gerard sounds like he ran his throat over a cheese grater, his mouth tastes like that one time when he drank bongwater, and he looks like a first-stage zombie.
Mikey doesn't say anything. He sits down on his bed. Gerard looks at him.
"You have a bruise on your face," Gerard observes.
"Yeah," Mikey says, and smiles, a little lop-sided. "Frank punches kind of hard."
"You fought Frank?"
Mikey rolls his eyes, then brings his hand up to touch his cheek, like rolling his eyes hurt. "He called you fat," Mikey says.
"It was my fault," Gerard says, and Mikey shrugs. "Sorry," Gerard adds, and Mikey shrugs again. Gerard holds out the vodka, and Mikey gets up and takes it. He drains it before his ass hits the bed again. There was only about an inch left, though, and Gerard figures Mikey deserves it, if he's been fighting for Gerard's honor. Mikey caps the bottle and throws it on top of the laundry pile.
"He shouldn't have called you fat," Mikey says, finally. He leans back on his elbows and kicks his feet over the carpet.
Gerard bites his lip and ducks his head. "Because you're not," Mikey says impatiently.
"I am," Gerard says, and he can hear the whine in his voice, but he can't help it. "Nobody even said anything--"
"We were surprised," Mikey interrupts. "I mean, you called him fat first."
Gerard tugs on his hair. "He pissed me off. He's always laughing at me," he says.
"We don't?" Mikey says, genuinely, like it's an honest question.
That kind of stings, but Gerard probably deserves it. "Yeah, I guess," Gerard says. He pulls on his hair again, smoothing one lock of it into a flat, greasy ribbon around his finger. He presses his lips together, trying to think of what else to say. He rubs his thumb over the shiny surface of his hair and sighs.
"You're such a dick," Mikey says. Gerard gives up on figuring out what to say. He shrugs and makes an apologetic face at Mikey. Mikey just rolls his eyes again.
---
Maybe Gerard actually hates weekends. He inevitably screws up and pisses off his friends, and then he's got at least a whole extra day where all he can do about it is work himself into a worried frenzy.
Gerard hunches forward on the toilet. He's holding his stomach, and hunching forward squashes his arms uncomfortably between his fat stomach and his girly thighs. Gerard groans.
"Do you seriously have the shits from worrying about Ray and Matt?" Mikey yells.
Gerard flips him the bird, even though he closed the door to the bathroom this time and Mikey can't see him. "Fuck you!" he adds, though, because Gerard needs Mikey to understand how he feels.
"Ray's going to be all, 'I think it was really mean of Frank, blah blah, you should totally go mutually apologize and hold hands and skip off into the sunset blah blah I'm a girl,' and Matt's going to be all, 'It's cool. Do you think Jane will date me, if I ask nice?'"
Gerard snorts. His ass sounds a weak echo of the sentiment, and Gerard groans again.
"How did Mom raise one awesome kid and one weirdo shitter?" Mikey asks. His voice is quieter; he's probably sitting next to the bathroom door now.
"I don't know," Gerard says, just loud enough that Mikey can probably hear him. "How did she raise one skinny one and one fat one?"
There's a thump against the door, either Mikey's head or his hand. "You are not fat," Mikey says fiercely. "Don't make me beat you up for lying about my brother."
"Shut up. I am your brother," Gerard says.
"I don't care, fuck you," Mikey says. "I'll beat you up anyway. And then I'll beat myself up for beating up my brother."
Gerard starts giggling, and he can hear Mikey start up his stupid heh heh heh on the other side of the door. Gerard's giggles make him fart, and the two of them crack up laughing.
Gerard loves his stupid skinny brother.
---
"You know, I think Frank was really mean," Ray says, when Gerard apologizes to him during math. "But you said that he was chunky, which is pretty mean, too."
"Yeah," Gerard says, "Yeah, I know that was mean. I feel bad."
"You should apologize," Ray says earnestly. "You know? Because I'm sure neither of you really meant it. You two should be friends. I think you would have fun together, if you hung out and, like, talked. He plays the guitar!"
Gerard is really lucky that Mikey isn't there, or he might not be able to control his urge to laugh. "You're right," he says, and Ray grins at him, big and dorky. Ray is way too nice to be friends with Gerard.
Gerard turns around in his seat to apologize to Matt, but Matt cuts him off.
"I really don’t care," Matt says. "Hey, do you think I should get this snare?" He holds up the magazine he's reading, folded back to show a page full of drums. "It’s got flames on the sides," Matt informs them.
Gerard says, "I don't know, man, a snare. Do you really need a new one?" Gerard is the best actor of all time; he sounds normal, not like he's about to start cackling.
"Mr. Way, I am not afraid to fail you again," Ms. Mirkin says, and Gerard swivels back around to the front of the room.
"Sorry," he says, and she goes back to logs, or trees, or whatever it is she's talking about.
---
So Gerard spent Sunday shitting himself for nothing, really. Gerard refuses to tell Mikey that, though, because Mikey's a dickhead when he turns out to be right.
The person Gerard is still worried about is Frank. Frank is in school -- Ray said that they saw him earlier in the day -- but Gerard can't seem to find him. Gerard even goes back to the locker where he first met Frank and knocks, but no one answers.
Then Mikey comes down to lunch by himself.
"Frank said he wanted to eat up in the cafeteria," Mikey says, when Matt asks.
Gerard, Ray, and Matt just blink at him. No one tries lunch in the art room and then goes back to the cafeteria. "I didn't think I hurt his feelings that bad," Gerard says, finally.
"He's pissed at me, too," Mikey says. "I slapped him kind of hard."
"And you bit him in the armpit," Matt adds. "That was harsh."
"Yeah," Mikey says. "He punched me real bad, though." He pulls up his shirt to show the bruise on his side. It's purple, and pretty big, way worse than the little one on Mikey’s face. Gerard isn’t impressed, since punching isn't cool and since Mikey is his little brother. He’s maybe a little something, though. Not impressed, but something that feels like he’s impressed. Frank can defend himself from the bullies, but he doesn’t most of the time, and that’s-- something. Interesting.
Maybe “interested” is the word.
Gerard looks down at his sandwich. He sighs, and drops it on top of his sketchbook. "I'm going to go up there," he says. Everyone turns their surprised expressions towards him. "I feel bad," Gerard explains, "I need to apologize, or whatever. Make friends."
Ray beams at him. Matt shrugs. Mikey gives him an unreadable look, and says, "You'd better have back-up."
Gerard rolls his eyes -- like Mikey the slap-fairy is going to be any help -- but he waits for Mikey to get his stuff before he leaves.
The cafeteria is fucking scary place, is the thing. Gerard hates it up there. It's this big room full of carved wood, and it looks like it’s a billion years old. Worst of all, it’s usually filled with people, and people are assholes. Individual persons might be kind of interesting and nice, but people are dicks, and Gerard avoids them as often as he can.
Gerard pauses at the entrance to the cafeteria and takes a deep breath. Frank is sitting at one of the circular tables near the windows, within Gerard’s line of sight, but he’s all the way across the room. The table Frank is at isn't empty -- there are a bunch of other guys sitting around it -- but Frank doesn't seem like he's talking to anyone at the moment. Gerard should just walk right over there.
"What if people think I'm gay?" Gerard whispers to Mikey.
Mikey whispers, "You are."
"But what if people think it?"
"Then they'll be right." Mikey looks perplexed by the conversation, like Gerard is the one who isn't making any sense.
"I hate you," Gerard tells Mikey seriously. "So, so much."
Mikey gives him a little push, and Gerard stumbles forward, into the cafeteria. Gerard feels like a character in the movies -- the awkward girl, or Frankenstein -- like everyone must be staring at him. Gerard keeps his head down and shuffles around the tables, dodging bookbags and sprawled out feet until he gets to Frank's table. He can see Frank's Vans, and the way his uniform slacks are shredded at the bottom. Gerard takes a deep breath.
"I'm sorry," Frank says. Gerard jerks his head up, startled, and meets Frank's eyes. Frank looks pissed-off, but then he repeats, "I'm sorry, okay?"
"For what?" Gerard asks, bewildered.
"Calling you a name," Frank says, and stabs at his bowl full of rice with his spoon.
"I called you a name first," Gerard says. He's kind of pissed, because Frank stole his thunder. "I'm sorry," he says lamely, and kicks weakly at Frank's shoe. Now he just sounds like a copy-cat.
Frank apparently isn't going to say anything back, either.
"Okay, cool," Gerard finally says. "You should come eat downstairs tomorrow, or whatever. If you want."
"I want to be in your campaign if I come downstairs," Frank says. He sits back in his chair and folds his arms, but he doesn't look up at Gerard. "I want to be a warrior elf."
"Okay," Gerard says, "Okay, you can be a warrior elf. I'll draw your character tonight, if you-- I mean, I don't know what you’ll want on your character sheet, but--"
"I could come over to your house tonight and work on it with you," Frank offers.
Gerard really needs to leave the room; he can see stupid James Turner leaving the food line, and stupid James Turner always “accidentally” bumps into Gerard. Gerard says, "Okay, Mikey and me will wait for you after school. At the front steps, okay," real fast, and rushes back out of the room.
Mikey has been peeping around the edge of the doorway, waiting for Gerard. He follows in Gerard's wake when Gerard hustles back towards the art room. "What did he say?" Mikey asks.
"He's coming over tonight," Gerard says, and it finally hits him. "Oh my god, he's coming over tonight," he repeats.
Of course Mikey just fucking laughs at him. Dick.
---
Their school follows a two-week rotating block schedule that makes no sense whatsoever. Their schedule is color coded. Every year, when the schedule is mailed to their house, Gerard's mother says, "I don't know why they have to make everything so complicated." She's the one paying for a school with complications, Gerard always thinks, but he's the one who didn't want to go to public school, so he keeps that to himself.
Gerard's mom always buys Gerard a binder with clear plastic covering and makes him put a copy of his schedule on both sides. She used to get calls about Gerard's "class attendance issues." Most of the time that Gerard missed his classes, it really was because he got confused; he’s a lot better now about remembering where he’s supposed to be and when. Still, even with the double-sided color-coded schedules, Gerard has to write down his classes for the day on his arm if he wants to actually show up in the right places at the right times.
Gerard stops at the side of the hallway to draw a line through French on his arm, and when he glances up he sees Frank, maybe five feet away. It's a small school, it makes sense that Gerard would see him again before the end of the day. Gerard still feels awkward. He's going to pretend he didn't see Frank, but Frank yells, "Hey, Gerard!"
"What?" Gerard says, because there’s no need to yell when they’re five feet away from each other.
Frank blunders through a bunch of juniors to say, "Where am I meeting you again?"
"Oh, um. Mikey and me usually meet at the front steps to walk home." Gerard pulls his sleeve back and checks his class schedule; he's got a smiley face at the bottom, near the crease of his elbow. He says, "But I've got art last today. If I don't show up, Mikey'll know to come get me."
Frank says, "Okay, okay." He's kind of bouncy, like he's excited about something.
"Did something cool happen?" Gerard asks.
"No," Frank says. He looks at Gerard like Gerard's nuts. Really, what. "Okay, bye!" Frank chirps.
Gerard says “Bye,” and drags his ass to his next class.
---
It's all Gerard can do to suffer through physics, with art waiting for him in last period. When the minute hand finally oozes over to the twelve, Gerard's off like a shot, ignoring his teacher's last comments. Gerard's already down the hall before the next person gets out the door. His shoes squeak on the linoleum, and his bag bangs heavily against his ass. Gerard pulls the strap of his bag tight and runs up the hallway to the art rooms; he makes it all the way to Fack’s room without seeing anyone, and it’s worth being short of breath.
The art room actually feels better than the rest of the school. It's like there are more windows, or there's more air, or something. Gerard wouldn't put it past Mr. Fackenthal to have figured something out, like a machine that pumps more air in to just that room.
"Hey, Fack," Gerard calls, after he gets his breathing back in order.
Mr. Fackenthal looks up from his big drafting table in the corner and waves. His mustache curves up and his eyes disappear when he smiles, and he looks like the happy monsters he doodles on Gerard's portfolios at the end of the year. Gerard grins, even though it makes him look stupid, and waves back. Then he dumps his bag on the big table and goes to drag his drawing board out from the storage slots.
"Outside today?" Mr. Fackenthal says, and Gerard nods. "Don't smoke on school property."
"Okay," Gerard says. He grabs his bag again, shoulders open the fire exit door, and jogs down the steps into the back parking lot of the school.
Gerard is doing a series of architectural portraits right now, for one of the required assignments for Mr. Fackenthal’s advanced drawing class. It would be kind of boring, except that he and Mr. Fackenthal talked, and Mr. Fackenthal said that Gerard could draw in ghostly students standing at the windows and on the roof when he was done. It's like Mr. Fackenthal knew that that would make Gerard want to get the angles and shadows just right, so that the ghosts will look real.
Gerard hunkers down in the same spot he always draws from, by the hedge that lines the boundary of the parking lot, and squints down at the paper. The rough outline of the school is already there, a sketchy skeleton of a building. Gerard checks the angle of the roof, and he starts to draw.
---
"Hey, Gerard."
Gerard jerks, startled, and then has to pause to blink. His face feels kind of hot, and his stomach feels weird. He squeezes his eyes shut, and opens them again. Mikey waits, his hands shoved in his pockets. Frank is jittering around next to him.
"Fuck, sorry," Gerard says, scrambling up. "Mr. Fackenthal must have forgotten to yell for me."
"Or yelled for you and you didn't listen," Mikey says.
"Or that," Gerard admits. He vaguely remembers Mr. Fackenthal leaning out and saying something to him, now that he thinks about it. "Sorry, shit, did you wait forever?"
"Forever," Frank says, and swoons against Mikey.
Mikey snickers. "Half an hour. Frank said you had art, so I figured you were drawing," he says.
"Sorry," Gerard repeats. Mikey rolls his eyes. "Shut up, I am. Okay. Shit, that means the school is locked. Goddammit." Gerard picks up his drawing board and pencil case. His bag is too small for half of his textbooks -- part of the reason why Gerard picked it out -- and he's got his books for English in there already. There's no way his pencils are fitting in there. Gerard tries to squeeze the case into his jacket pocket, but that doesn't work, either.
"I can carry the board," Frank offers.
"No. I mean, I can manage," Gerard says. Frank folds his arms and glares at Gerard. Gerard throws up his hands, nearly flinging his pencil case into the hedge. "Or you can carry it, whatever," he says, and holds out the board.
Frank takes it. He looks at the drawing on top for a beat, says, "Cool," and then swings it next to his side. Frank's really pretty short, Gerard realizes, even for a fourteen year-old; the bottom of the board almost brushes the ground.
"Can we go, then?" Frank asks.
Gerard realizes he's just been staring at Frank. "Yeah!" Gerard says, too brightly, and picks up his bag. He is a horrible person. Horrible.
Mikey rolls his eyes, but Gerard just pointedly ignores him.
"You're a pretty good artist," Frank says to Gerard, when they get to the end of the block.
"Mr. Fackenthal says that if I really push myself, I could go to art school," Gerard says, "But I don't think he's right. Except Mr. Fackenthal says--"
"'Mr. Fackenthal says,'" Mikey mimics, in his squeakiest voice, and Frank laughs.
Gerard punches Mikey in the shoulder, and Mikey giggles. "Screw you," Gerard says, but he's not too pissed; Mikey always does that, and it's maybe sort of kind of true. "So whatever, I mean, thanks," Gerard says to Frank. "And thanks for carrying my board, too. If it's annoying, or whatever--"
"I'll leave it at the side of the road, totally," Frank says. Gerard is startled into laughing and looking over at Frank again. Frank grins. He's really pretty when he grins, actually.
Mikey says, "Gross," drawing out the s sound. Gerard looks away, embarrassed. His brother's such a fucking dicksmack.
"Shut up," Frank says.
When Gerard looks back, Frank's glaring at Mikey. It's kind of sweet, like he's trying to be Gerard's protector or something. Gerard really hopes Frank doesn't know what he's protecting, though. Frank probably wouldn't approve of an old fatso perving on him.
"I'm just saying," Mikey says, but then he doesn't say whatever it was he was supposedly saying.
"Okay, fine," Frank says, stubbornly. "You said it, now shut up."
Gerard is confused. They walk the rest of the way home in silence.
---
"Do you want some cookies?" Mikey asks, when they get in the house. Frank shakes his head, and Mikey shrugs. "I'm going to get some. Gerard, you want any?"
Gerard feels like he should say that he's on a diet, just for appearance's sake, but. Well. He's not. "Two," he says. They're small cookies, anyway.
"Can I have a juice or something?" Frank asks.
Mikey says, "I think we have orange."
"Didn't we use that up with the, y'know?" Gerard asks.
"Maybe," Mikey allows. "Vodka and orange is the best," he tells Frank.
"Mikey!" Gerard says, horrified.
"What?"
"He's fourteen!"
"So am I!" Mikey says.
"So is he," Frank agrees, like his input is necessary.
Gerard sighs, exasperated. "You're a Way, you're already-- whatever, weird," he says to Mikey. "He's really fourteen."
"Shut up," Frank says, drawing himself up. "I'm almost fifteen. And I've been drunk before."
"Sure you have," Gerard says, smiling in spite of himself.
"I have," Frank says. "I bet I've done lots of things you haven't done."
It's a weirdly tense moment. Gerard feels cornered, like he’s in an argument that’s mostly happening over his head. Gerard doesn't know how to figure it out, though, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. He just shrugs and says, "Whatever," and leaves it at that. Frank gives Gerard a hard look, but he doesn't add anything else.
"I'll get Sprite, if we don't have any orange juice," Mikey sighs, finally.
"Okay," Gerard says. "Make it four cookies."
"They are pretty small," Mikey agrees.
Frank and Gerard thump down the narrow stairs to the basement while Mikey goes and gets the drinks and cookies. Gerard makes a half-assed attempt at neatening up -- he throws his blanket back over the bed and kicks some of the mess under his desk -- but Frank still looks a little weirded out by the room. Gerard figures that can't really be avoided, though. It's theirs.
Frank sets down Gerard's drawing board carefully in the corner, then stands there and looks around. Gerard sits down on his bed and plays with his hair. It's kind of awkward, Gerard thinks. That's par for the course with Gerard's life, too, but that doesn't mean Gerard has to like it.
"You draw a lot," Frank observes.
Gerard nods, then adds, "Yeah."
Frank looks at Gerard and smiles. "I meant it, though, you're a good artist. Your stuff looks like… stuff."
Gerard laughs, quietly. Frank grins at him again. His grin makes Gerard want to tell him things. This is extremely unfortunate, given the limited number of things that Gerard can tell Frank.
"I really like Mr. Fackenthal," Gerard offers, instead of god you're pretty do me right now you hot manchild. "He's a really cool guy."
"He freaks me out," Frank says. "It's his mustache, I can't tell what his mouth is doing."
"It wiggles around when he's mad," Gerard says. Frank giggles, and covers his mouth with his hand like he's embarrassed by it. "And it does a little parenthesis when he's smiling," Gerard adds, to see if he can get Frank to laugh again. Gerard wags his finger in a curve over his top lip, demonstrating the parenthesis. Frank obligingly giggles and slaps his hand over his mouth again. Gerard grins, satisfied.
Frank drops his hand, after a beat, and says, "Mikey told me Fack really likes you."
Gerard shrugs. "I hope he does. I really like him. I mean," Gerard continues, when Frank seems like he's listening, "Fack's the best, you know, he like, he talks to me about my stuff like-- I don't know, like I meant to do all the stuff that I did? Like, he'll point out a random line and be like, 'why did you choose purple here?' And I'm like, 'Uh… 'cause I picked up the purple marker first?' But I can't say that to Fack, obviously, so I have to come up with a reason. And then the next time I draw, I'm thinking about, 'hey, I can't use purple there, I don't have a good reason.' You know?" Frank nods seriously, and Gerard realizes he's been rambling. "Sorry, I like-- sorry, blah blah, you know."
"It's cool," Frank says. He looks back up at the drawings Gerard has tacked up on the wall. "It's like, it’s the good part about school for you."
"Yeah. It's-- Fack makes me feel like a normal person, I guess," Gerard says.
Thankfully, Mikey comes in right then and saves Gerard from his own random freak show declarations.
Gerard puts all of his attention on the cookies, and on digging out the handle of vodka he managed to get. By the time he looks back up Mikey and Frank are distracted by making dumb jokes, back in Beavis and Butthead mode.
Gerard thinks: fourteen. Fourteen.
---
Gerard changes in the bathroom, even though Mikey teases him and Frank swears he won't look. It's not as big a deal as Mikey makes about it, really. Gerard just hates having people look at him when he's naked, or even nearly naked.
"Gerard is horribly disfigured," Mikey tells Frank, like Gerard can't hear him through the bathroom door.
"I am," Gerard yells. "My legs are uglier than Mikey!" Which makes no sense, but he can hear Mikey sputtering and Frank cracking up, so Gerard is still pleased with himself.
When he emerges, though, Mikey is mixing Frank a drink.
"I still feel weird about that," Gerard says, pointing. Mikey rolls his eyes, and Gerard rolls his right back. "He's too young!" Gerard insists.
"Whatever," Mikey says. He hands Frank his cup, and Frank takes a sip, looking at Gerard from under his eyelashes. It is both disturbingly hot and kidlike. Gerard is going to hell.
"Fine," Gerard says. "Fine, whatever, just don't drive or anything."
Frank coughs a little on his second sip, but he keeps it down, and he nods at Mikey. "It's good," he says. Gerard is unwillingly impressed; Mikey kind of overdoes it on the liquor when he mixes.
Mikey passes Gerard a cup next. Gerard takes a big mouthful of it, letting the vodka scratch the itch in the back of his throat before he swallows. "Thanks," he tells Mikey, and Mikey looks up from pouring his own drink to smile at him.
Gerard thinks that they're going to sit around and talk, maybe that Frank and Mikey will talk about school. Then Mikey puts his earbuds in, turns his mp3 player on, and opens his math book.
"Do you have schoolwork to do, too?" Gerard asks. He feels weirdly fatherly for asking, until Frank shakes his head, and his hair falls in his eyes. Then Gerard feels like a pedophile. Again.
Frank says, "I did most of it during lunch."
"Sorry," Gerard says, because he's technically the reason why Frank had nothing to do during lunch. Well, him and Mikey, but Mikey never remembers to apologize.
"No big," Frank says. "Make me a warrior elf, c'mon."
Gerard has to play the hardass mod a couple of times while they make up the sheet -- not even cute boys get a pass on unstoppable Awe, not in Gerard's game -- but mostly Frank just tells Gerard what he's thinking and lets Gerard do the filling-in.
Frank gets a little more giggly as he sips his drink, but he doesn't pass out or need to throw up, like Gerard was expecting. Gerard relaxes a little bit. He drinks his own drink, and gets Mikey to make him a second one. By the time they're almost done the sheet, Gerard is just tipsy enough to relax about his early-onset pedophilia.
Which means that it's also a little harder to do the math than usual. "Two," Gerard says carefully, "Right?" Not that he's good at math to begin with.
Frank squints at the sheet. "No," he says, "I think you mean four." He takes Gerard's pencil out of his hand, and fixes it.
"Thanks," Gerard says. His hand is kind of tingling where Frank touched it. He looks away from Frank's stupid pretty face and pulls over his sketchbook. "Okay, now shut up," he says.
"Jerk," Frank says, but not like he's mad, and Gerard gives him a quick smile before he turns his attention back to the book.
Gerard sketches out a quick basic frame for the character, then starts filling it in. Frank is quiet, which Gerard wasn't expecting; he just watches Gerard draw, biting his lip like what Gerard's doing is something he has to concentrate on.
"Black hair, right?" Gerard says, and does a rough outline of Frank's unruly hair. He looks over, and Frank's frowning.
"Don't you think it should look a little less like me?" Frank asks. "He's supposed to be an elf."
"I think that's a good argument for him looking more like you," Gerard says. He didn't think before he said it, and for once that turns out okay; Frank's expression goes surprised, then pleased.
"You think?" he says. Gerard nods, and Frank says, "Oh. Okay."
Gerard sketches a little bit longer, taking brief breaks for sips of his drink, and when he's got a basic idea done he turns it towards Frank. Frank touches the edges of the sketchpad, like he's touching a photograph. "It's so awesome," he says. Gerard can actually feel his skin flush. He’s so fucking stupid, Jesus.
"I'll color it later," Gerard promises. "And then you have to play with us, because we made you a sheet and everything."
"Yeah, I really want to try playing," Frank says earnestly, looking up at Gerard.
They're maybe a little too close, Gerard thinks. He tries to shift his weight back, but they’ve moved at some point, somehow, and his back bumps into the side of his bed. Gerard tips his head back against the side of his mattress. He considers Frank, since Frank is still looking at the portrait. Frank is gay like Gerard, but not quite like Gerard, better than Gerard. Frank had to have come out in middle school, if he’s already the gay kid in his freshman year of high school; he’s already head of the gay-straight alliance, after all. Gerard has no idea what it would feel like, what he would be like if he were that sure of himself.
"How did you know you were gay?" Gerard asks. Then he closes his eyes and fervently prays for death. Or a better brain-to-mouth filter.
Frank just snickers, though. Gerard opens one eye. Frank is smiling at him. Gerard cautiously opens the other. "Sorry," Gerard says, "I just wondered--"
"No, it's fine," Frank says. "Everyone asks me that. I mean." He stops and plays with the leg of his uniform slacks, pinching the pleat between his fingers. "I guess it's like asking how you knew you were straight," Frank says. "I didn't-- it's not like when I was little I didn't chase girls around and try to kiss them, or whatever. I did that, is the thing, but. I don't know. I didn't do it like the other boys did it." He shrugs uncomfortably. "I don't know."
"No, I get it," Gerard says. "I get it."
Frank looks down at the picture of his character, chewing his lip. He jerks his head up and blurts, “I'm pretty sure it was when I was twelve," like he’s saying something embarrassing. "Summer camp. I saw my two counselors kissing."
"Boy counselors?" Gerard says, dumbfounded.
Frank laughs, folding forward with his giggles. "Yeah! Of course. Which, I saw it and I was like, 'Oh.'" Frank mimics his younger self's expression, with wide eyes and lips in a pinched pink circle. Gerard looks away. "I mean, I sort of knew before that, but that's how I really knew, when I was sure I was gay. Anyway, how did you?" Frank asks. Gerard glances back.
"How did I what?" Gerard asks, after an awkward pause. He didn't think anyone could tell by looking at him.
"How did you know you were straight?" Frank clarifies. “If I told you about mine, you have to tell me.”
Gerard should probably lie. He swallows, instead, trying to get the sticky feeling in his throat to go away. It's stupid, because he’s sure Frank won't beat him up -- even more sure than when he told Mikey and Ray and Matt -- but he's still weirdly nervous about saying something. Probably because it'll make his dirty old man thoughts obvious as hell, and then Frank will stop hanging out with them, and Mikey will be mad. Gerard swallows again. The pause is officially long and awkward.
"Oh," Frank says, like Gerard actually said what he’s thinking.
"Yeah," Gerard says. "I didn't ever know. That, I mean. What you said. I didn't know that I was straight. Ever."
"So you're not straight," Frank says. It feels like he's leaned closer.
Gerard mumbles, "No. I mean, I'm not."
Frank's eyes keep jerking up to Gerard's eyes and down to his mouth, like he's watching a tennis match on Gerard's face. Gerard touches Frank's cheek to get him to stop -- seriously, it's kind of distracting -- and Frank jerks a breath in.
"Are you--" Gerard starts, and then doesn't know what he wants to say. Frank's eyes linger on his for a long moment.
"Can I kiss you?" Frank asks. His breath smells like sugar and alcohol, almost cloyingly sweet.
"I shouldn't," Gerard says. He leaves his hand on Frank's cheek, though, and when Frank leans forward he doesn't shift away.
Frank's lips just barely press against his at first. Gerard's used to sloppy drunken makeout sessions; he doesn't kiss people without tongue all that often. It's nice, actually.
Frank pulls back and looks at Gerard. "Is it okay?" he asks. Gerard should shake his head, maybe even push Frank away. But Frank's eyes are so pretty -- watchful, like Gerard is something worth watching -- and Gerard doesn't push or shake his head. He leans forward and kisses Frank back, his mouth slightly open. Gerard slides his fingers into Frank's hair, and he tugs Frank with him as he leans back. Frank takes the opportunity to push his tongue into Gerard's mouth, and Gerard's eyes flutter closed.
In the movies, the actors always look like they're totally spaced out on each other, just thinking of one thing, but for Gerard it's like his brain goes into overdrive. There's a part going fourteen omigod fourteen and a part going I think I've forgotten how to do this fuck fuck fuck and another part going wow, fuck, he is really good at this, jesus christ and then another part, which is unfortunately taking precedent, going boner boner BONER.
Frank's hard, too, Gerard thinks, because he's pretty sure that's Frank's dick pressed against his leg. Which is good, it's a sign that Frank has at least gone past puberty and oh god that's a bad thought shit.
Gerard yanks his head back, smushing it back against the side of his mattress. "No, wait, we have to stop," he says.
"What?" Frank asks, irritably. Frank is really, really hot right now. His mouth is shiny, his uniform shirt is rumpled, and his hair is everywhere. Gerard did all that to him. Gerard did that to him when his puberty could have been in question. Gerard is going to hell.
"Fuck," Gerard says, "No, we have to stop. You are fourteen." He checks over Frank's shoulder, but Mikey hasn't heard them or looked up. Thank fucking God for mp3 players.
"Are you fucking serious?" Frank says, but at least he sits back enough that Gerard can worm away from him. "You've got to be fucking shitting me," Frank says, "come on."
"You sound like a child when you whine," Gerard tells him, kind of nastily. Frank flips him off with both hands. "I'm going to go get myself something to eat," Gerard says. Frank continues to hold up his middle fingers. Gerard adds, "Very mature," but he flips Frank off before he closes the door.
---
part two