When he sat up, Frank came awake with a grunt. He looked slightly confused for a few moments, then he moved, and groaned, "Fuck, my back!"
"Yeah, me too," Gerard said.
Frank turned over, making the swing sway so that Gerard had to grab a hold of Frank's knees to keep from falling back against him. "Did we fall asleep?"
Gerard thought that was kind of obvious. "No, you went to sleep in your bed and I transported you here with my powers," he said then immediately regretted it, because what kind of powers was that, transporting guys to his house in the middle of the night to sleep with him? He blushed. "I meant – "
"God, I just remembered," Frank pushed himself up to sit closer to Gerard, making the swing sway more, "I threw stuff at your window. I'm such an ass. Sorry."
"It's okay." Gerard pulled the blanket up again. It was a bit too cool for pajamas still. Frank tugged at the end of the blanket so Gerard let him have some, and Frank curled up closer.
"Thanks for staying up with me," he said, and rested his head sleepily against Gerard's shoulder.
Gerard tensed. For a few moments they didn't say anything. Everything was quiet. There wasn't even any birdsong. Gerard wasn't breathing. Finally, he swallowed. "We should probably go inside. It's cold out here."
"Mhm?" Frank mumbled sleepily.
Thank fuck for that, Gerard thought.
--
Gerard was used to terrifying things happening to him.
The first time he broke something, the sound had made him feel slightly sick, but he didn't get very scared. They'd been running and he'd slipped on top of the stairs, he'd heard Mikey's choked "oh" and he didn't remember the fall, only the sound. At the hospital he was told that he had a cracked rib and a hairline fracture somewhere - he couldn't remember where, but he had liked how it sounded. Later, he dislocated a finger in a four-against-one fight, and even though it hurt, it was never what he worried about when he went to school.
He'd once been home alone when Mikey had an asthma attack. That had been pretty terrifying.
The first time he jacked off thinking about a guy, he hadn't freaked out. It had been during his first year at the school, he'd been alone in bed, and it wasn't the worst thing that could happen. It wasn't a complete surprise. On some level it had always been guys. He thought Audrey Hepburn looked fantastic, but thinking of her never made him come.
The first time he got hard thinking about Frank, he thought, OK, I'm OK. It was nothing, just a crush. He'd had plenty of crushes. Frank wasn't the first guy in school he'd fantasized about, but he was by far the nicest; he was maybe a bit weird, and he could be too intense in a really annoying way, but he was cute and friendly and Gerard was lonely and horny and Frank's eyes sparkled sometimes like moonlight hitting the ripples of a pond. Well, sometimes.
Gerard wasn't an idiot, he knew what this was about, because most of his crushes had been on people who wouldn't touch him with a fifteen-foot bargepole, but Frank actually seemed to like him and, okay, so Gerard was maybe a bit of an idiot, because he was usually pretty good about not fantasizing when he wasn't rubbing his dick. He hated being in love; it was useless and it hurt, but he knew what to do now. He knew he just had to be smart about it, just had to take control of his feelings and his dumb, teenage heart.
Easy peasy as fucking pie.
--
"Annabelle asked me to prom," Frank said, scratching his neck.
Gerard choked on his sandwich. He felt like he had just been kicked, like his heart had suddenly splintered.
"Wow." Ray made big eyes. "You lucky fuck."
Ray was obviously impressed. He didn't even know what Annabelle looked like, Gerard thought.
"Are you going to go?" he asked, dully.
Frank shrugged. "Maybe. I haven't decided yet. I told her I'd let her know."
"Yeah, you should wait a while, maybe someone better will ask you." Ray looked as if he had a clue about these things.
Frank gave him a look, "Like who?"
"Anyone. That blonde cheerleader you know." Ray gazed longingly over at the field.
Frank shook his head, "I don't even know if I want to go to prom."
"You should go," Gerard said. He was stoically not looking at Frank, but he thought he could feel Frank glance over. "She must really like you, if she asked you."
"If you go with her, do you think you could get your blonde friend to go with me?" Ray asked.
"I'll need a dart-gun." Frank laughed.
Gerard spent that Friday night in a drunken stupor on the floor in his room, angry more than upset, because it was fucking unfair that Annabelle could ask Frank to prom and Gerard couldn't; it was the injustice that tore at him more than anything, because even if he had been able to ask Frank, he couldn't anyway, because he was such a loser fuck, and he was annoyed rather than upset; it was tears of frustration that leaked onto his hands and down on the page, bleeding the lines and colors.
--
Somehow his car crash feelings for Frank made him brave and slightly reckless. At lunch, when the big burly section leader of the drumline knocked into him, instead of hastily grabbing what he could of his food and shrinking away, Gerard turned and said, "Watch where you're going, fucking bitch," just as the guy said, "Oops. Sorry."
Whatever. He didn't care. He sat down, feeling high.
"This is Bob," Ray said that afternoon, "The guy I've been telling you about. He's the section leader of the drumline."
"Hi." Bob held out a hand, one eyebrow cocked, and Gerard decided never to be brave and reckless until he stopped being so fucking stupid.
****
Pete thought, fuck it. That night he waited until he heard his parents leave for his brother's game, then he waited some more, just in case, and then he locked himself in their bathroom. His parents' bathroom was roomy and smelled of his mom's perfume, which she put on even to attend junior high basketball games, and Pete opened the cabinet and pulled out her makeup bag, putting it on the edge of the counter.
Fuck it. He was curious about a lot of things, and this wasn't even the worst.
It was quite a large bag. Sometimes Pete had a feeling that his mom wore more makeup than most women and that she fixed her hair more and took greater care to match her earrings to her dress, but he wasn't sure that it meant anything, because it might be for a lot of reasons, it might just be because of the part of town they lived in or maybe it made her feel good, or at least better.
He checked that the door was locked again. Then he threw a glance at himself in the mirror. This was so stupid.
His mom had a few different shades of lipstick, and he picked a deep scarlet color, because it made him think of horror movies and women in velvet dresses, but it turned out to be kind of ridiculous-looking, and he tried to wipe it off with a tissue only to discover that the color really clung. Then he bent over the sink and outlined his eyes with a dark brown eyeliner pencil. Studying the result, he thought that the colour almost disappeared in contrast with his eyes, so he searched the bag again and found a black pen lying discarded at the bottom that he applied in thicker lines, then smudged with his fingers, then added more, then smudged some more. Then he stared at himself in the mirror.
For some reason he had thought that makeup would make him look like a chick, but staring back at him from the mirror was the same slight, pale kid with accentuated, big eyes and his mouth red and desperate. He bent closer, touched the glass with black-stained fingers and studied his eyes. It was strange; he was surprised how much he liked it. He looked hardcore, less naked, less hurt, clandestine and seductive. He hadn't even liked looking at himself for months.
He pushed his jeans down and jerked off, watching in the bathroom mirror.
--
He went over to Mikey's house a few days later. Their house was imposing and dingy; Pete waited until it got dark, then parked his car by the side of the main road and crossed the back of the lawn, quickly walking around to buzz the front door.
Gerard opened. He looked surprised.
"Hi," Pete said, uncomfortably, "Um, is Mikey here?"
"Yeah." A few seconds passed before Gerard turned and hollered, "Mikey!"
Mikey came bounding down the stairs and he didn't look very surprised when he saw Pete. "Hi," he said.
"Hi, uh," Pete suddenly wished he'd phoned first, but at the time it had felt like too much of a commitment and he'd been worried that Mikey would ask for his number in return, "I just thought, if you're not busy maybe I could check out some of your albums, like we talked about." He readjusted his bag, nervously fingered the clasp, "I. I brought my ipod and – "
"Sure," Mikey said and Gerard stepped back to let him in.
Standing in the small hallway, Pete suddenly felt like the posterboy for normal. Gerard had on a black hoodie with a gruesome horror design on the front, and his hair was messy and long, and Pete couldn't be sure, but he thought Gerard seemed buzzed - there was something about his eyes. Mikey's hair was sticking out from under some kind of knitted hat.
He took off his jacket and hung it over an antique chair in the hallway. "You're sure you're not busy?"
Mikey shrugged. "I was just eating. Come on." He gestured at Pete to follow him up the stairs as Gerard went back into the kitchen without another word. Pete threw a quick glance after him as he went past. The kitchen was sort of insane, it was full of heavy, mismatched furniture, and what must be Gerard's art stuff spread out all over a large table. He didn't see any booze.
The staircase was old and rickety and Mikey's room was the second down a dark hallway. Heavy music was blaring from a stereo in his room, and Pete put his bag on the floor and looked around. There was a bed, a dresser, and a desk. It was sort of untidy, but not really messy. A plate with a half-eaten microwave pizza was sitting on the edge of the unmade bed.
Mikey was already kneeling by the huge stack of CDs spread out on the floor by the stereo. "Do you know what you want?"
--
Half an hour later, Pete was still sifting through CDs as the neat pile next to him grew. They were sitting on the floor with their backs against Mikey's bed. The door was closed, the music was still playing, and Mikey was doing occasional commentary on the albums. "It's okay, not as good as the first one, but if you have enough free space, take it."
Pete thought he probably wouldn't be allowed to keep some of these albums if his parents ever heard them, because almost everyone had an "explicit" warning on them. Glancing over, he figured Mikey didn't have the same problem. Mikey had turned the sound on the stereo down, but only slightly.
"Where's your computer?" he asked, when he'd finished putting together the pile he wanted.
"It's in Gee's room," Mikey said.
Oh, Pete thought.
He followed Mikey out of the room as Mikey stopped on the top of the stairs, and shouted, "I'm using the computer," even though he wasn't really shouting; his voice seemed to always have the same low dullness to it, and Pete wasn't sure how Gerard even heard him. The stereo was still booming and he thought he'd seen headphones on the kitchen table next to the paints.
"Okay," Gerard's voice came from downstairs. "Don't kill my game."
The room next to Mikey's was larger and messier. There were clothes slung over the back of the chair by the desk, drawings stacked next to the computer, books and CDs and more clothes spread out on the floor. The blinds were pulled and there was a bouquet of dried black flowers, a skull and a freaky looking insect cased in glass on the dresser. Pete glanced around.
"Your brother likes weird stuff," he said.
"Yeah." Mikey sat down by the desk, not even bothering to move Gerard's rumpled shirt and school tie that were lying on the chair. Pete's mom would have had a fit.
The computer was already on and Pete had time to see that the desktop background was of Audrey Hepburn or Katherine Hepburn or Liza Minelli or someone, and he thought that at least it was a pretty girl in a tight dress. It could have been worse. Going by Gerard's reputation, it could have been a half-naked man, clenching. Pete would have made his excuses quickly.
The cord for the iPod was already plugged in, and Pete felt slightly awkward when the screen popped up to show just how empty it was at the moment. He was quite obviously not a great music fan, and he just hoped Mikey wouldn't read anything into it.
"Not all of these are on here," Mikey said, "So it might take some time."
While Mikey painstakingly went through all of his choices, Pete got a little bored. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and looked out at the dusky sky through the gap in the blinds, thinking that soccer practice would be over by now.
He couldn't help wondering what people at school would say if they knew he was there. The weekend before he'd spent fifteen minutes lying on the hood of a car listening to every conceivable joke you could crack about the Way brothers, although mainly about Gerard, because so far Mikey seemed to be flying under the radar a bit. He was quiet and didn't stand out much, unless you looked right at him, when he stood out a lot.
One good thing was that no one in school seemed to particularly think that Mikey was gay, even though someone said they'd seen him and Gerard walking down the street one night and that Mikey'd had his arm around Gerard, or maybe he'd been holding his hand, or they'd been wearing faggot clothes, or something like that, which was only the beginning of what made them the best targets at school. They were also poorer than Pete's friends and they had freakshow hair.
Looking around the room again, he noticed that there were a lot of comics in the bookshelf, and that you could kind of tell that Gerard liked to draw, because there were colorful posters on the walls, and pictures from magazines and books strewn across the room. The bed was sort of big, he was sitting at the corner of the mattress, the sheets were twisted around the duvet. He suddenly wondered if Gerard had any porn in there. Most guys Pete knew had some kind of porn or at least trusty jerk-off material, and he couldn't help wondering what Gerard's was. Pete had two magazines that were both quite insanely hardcore, because his parents had put restrictions on his internet usage and even though he would have been happy with Hustler, he'd taken what he'd been able to get a hold of.
"Do you want both of these?" Mikey asked, and Pete jumped.
"Sure," he said, even though he had no idea what Mikey was talking about. He decided he should probably stop thinking about porn, so he tried to come up with something else to say, and settled on "um, so how's the croquet team doing?"
Mikey threw a somewhat surprised look at him over his shoulder. "Um, okay."
"Do you have any games coming up?"
"No." Mikey turned back to the computer, "We don't compete or anything. We just play."
Pete frowned. The only other teams that didn't compete for the school was, like, freshman trampolining or some other non-sport that people did just to get the credits. Even the girl's Ultimate team had participated in some tournament - there had been a big party afterwards, which, Pete reminded himself, Mikey more than likely hadn't gone to. Pete had gotten quite far with Sophie Brooks and had chatted to Andy Hurley's hot cousin for almost ten minutes, which was a big deal. He couldn't really remember what they had talked about, though.
"It's full," Mikey said.
"Okay, thanks." Pete got up from Gerard's bed and Mikey unplugged his iPod, handing it back to him. There was a moment when Pete wanted to say something, but he wasn't exactly sure what.
Mikey's expression didn't change. He nodded at the door. "Wanna go back to my room?"
"Okay."
Once back in Mikey's room, Pete picked up his bag, put the iPod in it, zipped it up, hesitated, then put it back on the floor again.
He looked at the clock on the stereo. He really should be thinking about getting home. On the other hand, he had missed both practice and dinner already, so it wouldn't really matter what time he came home.
He sat down on the floor while Mikey put the CDs on the desk. The room was a bit stuffy and he noticed a DVD on the floor next to his foot, but when he picked it up he saw that it wasn't a movie but some kind of instruction tape. He looked over at Mikey, slightly surprised. "You play bass?"
When Mikey saw what Pete was looking at, he shrugged. "Sort of. Not really."
"Is that what you're going to be doing in the, uh – the band with your brother and those guys?"
Mikey must have noticed Pete's tone, because he turned back to the dresser and mumbled, "Yeah, they need a bassist."
Pete watched his slim back under the tight, black t-shirt, and thought he had probably pissed Mikey off, but to be fair the croquet team couldn't even get it together to actually play a game and he was currently holding a How To Play Bass Guitar instruction tape.
"Have you ever played before?" he asked.
Mikey shrugged. "No, but it's not like it's hard to learn. Anyone can do it." When he turned around again, he was holding a small plastic bag tightly clasped in his hand. He went over to crack open a window, turned the volume up on the stereo, and sat back down next to Pete on the floor. "Do you mind?" he asked.
Pete shook his head. "No. Sure. No." He had never been high, but he took the joint when Mikey offered. It hurt when he inhaled, so he probably wasn't doing it right, and he thought about how fucking angry the soccer coach would be if he saw him.
--
Half an hour later, Pete was sprawled on the floor, giggling hysterically at the piece of hair sticking out on the side of Mikey's head, like a wayward horn. "Your hair – it's so fucking – " Mikey was sitting cross-legged next to him, and his hair was hysterical. He couldn't think of a good enough description for how incredibly weird it was, so he just touched it instead, trying to flatten it back to his ear.
Mikey ducked his head. "Don't," he said, and Pete realized that Mikey actually liked his hair this way, that he actually took care to look this weird. He giggled even more.
"You look like that thing from the Addams Family. Is that the look you're going for?"
Mikey smiled a little. He seemed to be pretty okay with people making fun of him. Pete had a sudden urge to take off his glasses and see what he looked like without them.
"Your parents don't mind that you dye your hair and stuff?"
Mikey shrugged. "No, not really, but I don't. It looks okay on Gee, but I think I'd look weird."
Pete suddenly wondered if Gerard was still in the kitchen or if he was in the room next door, and whether he was still drunk. They were sitting side by side and their knees were touching, and the pot was making him feel brave and maybe a little stupid. "Is your brother gay?" He really wanted to know.
Mikey scratched his knee. "Dunno."
"Have you ever seen him kiss a guy?"
"No."
Pete felt suddenly sincere. "Look, I know he's your brother, but if he's really queer, you shouldn't – someone said they saw you, like, holding hands in public."
Mikey shrugged. "I was probably just helping him get home."
"Yeah, but you're just a freshman. When he leaves next year you'll have his reputation."
"He slept on the road once."
They were quiet. The music was blissfully loud and heavy, and Pete thought of the pot swirling in his blood stream; he could feel it, he thought he would probably be able to see it too if he stared at his wrists hard enough.
"I – I don't have a problem if you're gay," he said finally, a short, desperate burst of words that came out all wrong, "I mean, if your brother's gay." He cringed.
"Okay," Mikey said.
Pete was high, but not enough to explain what the fuck he was doing. He felt slightly dizzy, like he was running a fever. There was a part of him that didn't understand how Mikey could even believe that this was real. A soccer star came to his room and started talking about kissing, how could Mikey not think that it was a setup, and Pete was suddenly afraid that the answer was him, that there was something about him that made it plausible that he would be sitting there, getting high to emo music and thinking about kissing Gerard Way's kid brother.
--
The next day the soccer coach shouted at him because he missed a practice, and he called Pete's parents, so when he came home, they shouted at him too. He was grounded for the rest of the week and had to come straight home after practice, but he just couldn't care. He nodded in all the right places and apologized and said of course it wouldn't happen again, no, sir, and then he locked himself in the bathroom, touching his mouth.
It wasn't a big deal, not really. It wasn't like he had been drinking or knocked some girl up. All he had done was wear eyeliner, take the night off, and smoke pot with one of the Way brothers.
He felt slightly hysterical laughter pressing to come out.
--
Andy Hurley was the only one of Pete's friends who never talked about soccer. They had been friends since forever. Andy was only a freshman, but he was okay. He had a cousin who everyone lusted after - even Andy had a crush on her and he was very sad that he couldn't ask her out, what with them being related and all. He was kind of funny. Pete always had a good time when they hung out.
They were sitting in Andy's back yard, playing with his dog. Technically Pete was still grounded, but his mom and dad could be kind of pushovers and Andy was considered a good influence.
"It's all part of the Eastern philosophy, like the Kama Sutra and all that sort of thing. Have you ever seen pictures from that?"
Andy had been doing martial arts all spring, because he was always trying out new things, even though none of it ever stuck, and at the moment he was trying to live by some ninja warrior code that Pete didn't really care about enough to get.
Andy's favorite topic was sex. He had never touched a girl's breasts, so he was very interested in the whole thing, and Pete didn't tell him what he often thought: that it wasn't as big a deal as advertised.
He raised an eyebrow, "I thought you did Kung Fu stuff?"
"Yeah, I mean," Andy stood up, "the Kama Sutra is only part of that whole philosophy. I'll show you a few moves."
"Not from the Kama Sutra, right?"
Andy rolled his eyes. He pulled his shirt over his head as Pete stood up too.
They went out to the middle of the lawn. "Okay, you want to stand like this, and make sure you have a good balance and know where your point of gravity is."
Pete grinned and took a position in front of him on the grass. "Just tell me if I hurt you."
They wrestled a little. Andy's only real move was to get a grip on Pete's neck and kick his knee until Pete keeled over.
"That's not a martial arts move," Pete sputtered when he got up again, brushing grass from his knees, "That's just dirty."
"Got you down, though," Andy said.
"Well, I could knock you out, no problem, but I thought we were supposed to be honorable and stuff."
"Okay, fine, let's just go again."
They went another round. Pete was too amused to really be able to win, and he ended up on his knees again.
"Okay, I'll let you have this round." He pushed at Andy's shoulder. Andy's glasses were a little crocked.
They sat down again. A few minutes later, Pete asked, "So do you know Mikey Way? He's in your class."
Andy was putting on his shirt again and toeing on his sandals. He shrugged. "A little bit. He plays croquet, I think. I bought a bootleg DVD from him once. He can get pretty much anything."
Pete looked up at that. "Really?" he said.
"Yeah. Let me know if you want something, I'll hook you up with him."
"Thanks." Pete scratched Betsy's neck, and thought about how Andy, with his glasses and half-naked wrestling and incestuous crushes, was walking a pretty fine line when it came to popularity, but he had somehow ended up on the right side, while Mikey had ended up on the other. "What movie did you get from him?
Andy suddenly looked a little sheepish. "Just a Disney import."
Pete burst out laughing. "You bought a bootleg Disney movie?"
"For my cousin. She really wanted it and it wasn't available here."
"Sure." Pete held up a hand, grinning, "Let's go with that excuse."
"Fuck off." Andy flopped back down again.
Pete started to think about what movies he wanted to buy from Mikey. He thought maybe he'd give him a call later, just to put an order in. Then he realized how eager he felt, and wondered if he was having some sort of delayed drugs psychosis from the pot, because what the hell?
"They're kind of weird, those two," he mumbled, as if to make up for his thoughts.
Andy shaded his eyes and looked over. "Who? Mikey?"
Pete nodded, "Yeah."
Andy scoffed, "Sure, but it doesn't matter. Shit like that is only about one thing anyway. As long as they don't have money, they'll always be freaks. I bet Mikey needs to sell DVDs, he's not just doing it to seem cool or to buy drugs and shit." He closed his eyes, put his Ray Bans back on, "I respect that."
Pete thought that Andy was definitely wrong about one of those things, but he couldn't tell him, because then he would have to explain how he knew, and also, he kind of liked this side of Andy. It was sort of true what he was saying, and he wasn't judging them in the way most of Pete's friends would.
He was suddenly glad they'd stayed friends through Andy's surfer phase.
--
His parents discovered about the makeup and it was the first time he had ever been slapped. It was the shock of it, the humiliation, more than the fact that it stung and that it was his mom. He was sent up to his room and took the stairs two steps at a time, just wanting to get away. As soon as he closed the door, he put a hand over his mouth and started to cry.
It had been so much worse than he had imagined. It felt like something eternally private had just been made public, like he might as well have been naked down in the living room while they confronted him. The unfairness of it ate at him. He hadn't done anything wrong. It wasn't like he put on makeup every day, so he wasn't an expert at hiding it, and, okay, he'd shoplifted an eyeliner pen at the mall earlier in the week, but they didn't even know about that - that wasn't what they were so upset about.
He sat down and started writing a short blog post, but he couldn't concentrate. He needed to get out of there, out of the house, his room, the neighborhood, his own head too, if he could. Luckily, he knew how to do that.
He turned off the computer and the lights, and sat in the dark until the house was quiet. Then he opened the door and tiptoed across the hall to his parents' bathroom.
He had discovered about the sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medicine accidentally on purpose. He wasn't stupid – he'd gone in there to search for something interesting or illegal, and once he knew the names, he had googled them to find out what they did. One night when his feelings were crashing like waves, he'd snuck out of his room and into their bathroom and he'd taken two, but had only swallowed one. It had helped a little, but mostly he just liked the idea of it, that he could lie down and let it dissolve in his bloodstream and just work. He had taken the other one when he thought the first should have started wearing off. He thought he was probably the only teenager who stole downers and actually followed the instructions on the packet, but he didn't want to kill himself, he just wanted to feel a little less.
The pill stuck to his tongue and the roof of his mouth before he managed to swallow it down. He closed the medicine cabinet again and snuck back into his room and crawled out of the bedroom window. It was easy. He had always been such a good kid, his parents weren't very weathered.
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