(no subject)
Title: It's All Over My Face
Author: desfinado
Pairing: Frank/Mikey
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 12,219
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me; not making a profit.
Summary: Mikey makes a pretty awesome roommate.
Notes: Set loosely in the fall of 2003, with apologies for any garbled canon. Title from The Smiths. Written for turps33's prompt in no_tags 2011: "Frank/Mikey Roommates", originally posted here. Thank you so much to my spectacular beta anoneknewmoose for all her help!
Part I
"This." Frank waves a hand at the living room and kitchen, stained carpet and bare walls. He grins. "This is where the magic's gonna happen."
Gerard, Ray and Otter follow him inside, poking their heads into the empty bedrooms. Frank watches them while he unbuttons his coat, and decides that he already likes how the place looks with people in it; he can't wait for Mikey to get his ass back here and help make it theirs.
"Are we gonna get fucked up here tonight or what?" Frank drops his jacket in the corner of the living room and rolls his sleeves up to get ready for some box-lifting. "Me and Mikey need to break this shit in!"
"I'm in," Gerard calls from where he's started picking at his teeth in the bathroom mirror. "I stashed a few bottles of Jameson in my parent's garage before we went on tour." Frank nods and points a finger at Ray, who freezes with his head halfway into the fridge.
"Uh." Ray looks shifty and ducks behind the fridge door. There's nothing in there yet. "Didn't we just have a party for your birthday a few weeks ago? My brother, I haven't seen him in-"
"Your brother is invited, Ray. You're not skipping out on this." Frank cuts a line across the room with his finger, stopping in front of Otter.
"Always, dude," Otter says easily, pulling the rim of his baseball cap down. "Where's the lady of the house anyway?"
Frank snickers. "Fucked off as soon as he heard we'd be lifting boxes. He's probably out inviting all of Jersey to the party."
"Awesome," Gerard contributes from the bathroom, "I wanna see all of Jersey in your two-bedroom, Frankie. Sardine that shit."
Otter snorts and follows Ray out the door as they stomp down the wooden staircase to the van. "I bought you delicious, greasy breakfast today, man. You better pull your weight," Frank tells Gerard. Frank's halfway down the staircase before he realizes Gerard isn't following. His voice echoes in the stairwell when he calls back, "I'll let you carry pillows!"
.
The guys leave after lunch, begging off with showers and girlfriends and free dinner at their mom's. Frank has just gotten back from a pizza and booze run and stowed the vodka in the freezer when Mikey shows up to eat.
"Casa del Good Times, man," Frank says as he and Mikey knock the necks of their beer bottles, grinning at each other. There are boxes and duffel bags piled high by the front door and Frank's sweaty from carrying them up the stairs but he's pretty excited to unpack. They've been touring so much this year that Frank's just happy not to be living out of a backpack for a little while.
"My first real place, shit." Mikey grabs a boom box from his room, setting it on the living room floor and plugging in. "I can't believe I made it out of my parent's house before my older brother."
"I can," Frank laughs and pops open the CD deck as soon as Mikey leaves the room, plucking out Meat is Murder and dropping in some At The Drive-In. Mikey makes a sad sound from his bedroom. Frank calls "Vetoed!" over the wail of guitars and they start unpacking.
By five o'clock there are four empties on top of the fridge, a grease-stained pizza box in the kitchen sink, and a small island of shit in the middle of the living room.
"Huh," Mikey says, pushing his glasses up his nose. "That's it?"
The island is comprised of at least six boxes of CDs and tapes, four video game consoles and boxes of games, one television set, two small stacks of comic books, an even-taller stack of movies, five coffee mugs, and assorted cables and guitar straps draped over top.
"I really thought I had more to my name," Frank observes from the kitchen counter, kicking the heels of his Adidas on the cupboard below.
Mikey suddenly spreads both his hands out wide, pausing for a second to say "Oh!" before disappearing down the hall to their rooms.
He reappears with his bass and walks it to the pile. "Aw shit," Frank laughs, hopping off the counter to get his favorite guitar, "how'd we forget that, dude?"
It takes a few moments of struggling against gravity (Mikey crunches Frank's copy of the new Outkast album underfoot-by accident, Frank's ass) until they have their guitar cases leaning against each other over the pile, precariously balanced.
"I've got way more stickers on my case," Frank says, "'cause of how I'm such a vet in the 'biz."
"I don't need stickers when I'm already friends with the bands," Mikey says easily.
They admire their pile for a moment before Frank realizes that they're staring at the most valuable stuff they own and maybe it shouldn't be in the middle of their living room if they're about to have an epic house party.
"Wait!" Mikey fishes a disposable camera out of the backpack he'd dumped by the fridge earlier. "Give me something, Iero," he says from behind the camera. Frank makes a pretty unattractive face but Mikey's smiling when he snaps the photo.
"Y'know, some of these aren't even band stickers," Mikey points out as he hauls Frank's guitar off the pile and into his room. "I'm pretty sure this one's for the Salvation Army. And-" there's a soft noise from down the hall as he puts it on the carpet "-is that a label from a smoothie bottle?"
"You know it," Frank smiles. "Seasoned vet, I told you." He drops to his knees and starts looking through their boxes for a shortlist of CDs for the party.
.
"Another lawn chair!" one of the girls by the front door announces to the room at large when someone new arrives with more donated furniture, and at least five people toast with bottles held high, laughing.
Frank can't walk five steps without someone stopping him to talk. The air is humid and reeks of sweat and spilled beer, Thrice blaring from the stereo just loud enough that people have to shout to hear each other properly. A few guys are shoving each other around while they smoke by the window, there's a very involved game of poker going on at their new kitchen table, and at least three people are sprawled on the floral-print mattress someone dumped in the middle of the living room. It's nice to see so many familiar faces in one place and Frank's feeling good.
"Shit," Frank laughs when people move aside to tuck the new chair under the table, clapping Mikey on the shoulder as he worms past him to get to the vodka in the freezer, "we're gonna be decked out, dude!"
"B-Y-O-Furniture," Mikey agrees, meeting his eyes with a smile for a moment before turning back to the girl he was talking to. Frank recognizes the short red hair: the girl Mikey's been hooking up with on and off the past few months whenever they're in town.
Frank goes to break the seal at some point after midnight. There are some dudes hot-boxing the bathroom, one guy he used to run into at Pipeline and two of his friends, so after Frank's pissed and tucked his dick away, he stays in there with them to catch up.
"Ah, fuck you," Frank laughs when Chaz, sitting on the countertop, kicks at Frank's knees and reminisces about going to see his band play in '96. Frank plucks the joint from his smirking lips and takes a double hit, pausing while he holds it in to sit down on the lid of the toilet seat. "Sector 12 was the shit, man," Frank drawls on an exhale, earthy-sweet smoke curling up in front of his face. "Ahead of our time."
The two dudes in the bathtub ask what Frank's been up to since Pipeline closed down, so he tells them about Pencey and jumping ship to My Chem, touring, how crazy it was that they made it to Europe last spring, while they pass the blunt around.
They brace their laced-up shit-kickers on the rim of Frank's tub and look at him skeptically, like he's just another kid from Jersey talking big about his own band. It doesn't give Frank the itch between his shoulder blades that it used to. Maybe he's just too stoned to care, or maybe he doesn't need to put his fist in a dude's gut to prove that his band is going places; they can just watch and see.
One more joint and two interruptions from people who have to piss later, Frank's smiling to himself, paying more attention to the happy chemical buzz in his bloodstream than the conversation, when one of the guys slaps his own thigh hard, laughing, and Frank looks over. "No fucking way, the kid with the Disney tapes?" he's saying, and Chaz nods back at him, grinning. "Man, I heard he got into some serious shit."
"He's in Frank's band, dude," Chaz says with raised eyebrows, pushing sweaty hair out of his face and pointing at Frank.
Frank grins, "Fuck yeah he is. Mikey Way? He's my roommate too, we moved in today."
Just then Chaz chokes on the hit he was taking, raising his middle finger in the direction of the bathtub when the guys call him a pussy. "Frank-" he says, voice reedy as he emerges from his coughing fit. "Fuck, this is some strong shit. Frank, man, you gotta watch yourself."
Frank frowns. "Why?"
"Remember when he auditioned for Pencey? Like, what-four years ago?"
"Five," Frank says. Shit, he'd almost forgotten Mikey had tried out back then.
"Five, yeah." Chaz waves his hands around in the hazy air for a second. "Dude, he had the biggest fucking hard-on for you!" The guys in the tub burst out laughing, "No way!" and "Aw, fuck, for real?"
"What?" Frank blinks and rubs a hand up and down the back of his head, over the buzzed hair there. He has no idea how long he's been in here or how much he's smoked. He's feeling kind of fucked up. "Mikey?"
"Yeah dude," Chaz says, "remember Sam? With the leopard tattoo? We were dating, she and Mikey were tight back then. He was so into you he totally puked at her house before the audition."
"I-" Frank shakes his head. He feels kind of offended on Mikey's behalf. Or something. "No, man, fucking…" he swallows, closes his eyes to find the words, "Mikey's the straightest fuckin' arrow I know, seriously."
"Whatever, dude." Chaz grins. "Just be careful he doesn't jump you in the middle of the night." He makes some kind of groping gesture and it sets the other dudes off laughing again.
Frank stands up abruptly, kind of pissed off, but then remembers he's at his own party and he's trying this thing where he doesn't punch smug assholes in the face anymore.
"… the fuck ever," Frank mutters instead and ignores the chorus of "Oo-oh" from the fucking leather peanut gallery in his bathtub while he jiggles the doorknob open and spills back out into the hallway.
"Whoa, Frankie," Ray says as Frank bumps into his chest. His eyes are kind of unfocused, sweaty pieces of hair sticking to his forehead. "Killer party!"
Frank gets the bathroom door closed behind him and takes a deep breath of the relatively fresh air, licking his lips. "Yeah," he says absently, but he can't help grinning when Ray plants a big clammy hand on Frank's forehead and runs it down his face. "You're messed up, dude," Frank giggles as Ray's fingers catch on the neck of Frank's t-shirt and drag it down a bit.
"I know, right? Shiiiiiit." Ray laughs and then he's slipping down the wall and accidentally tickling Frank's ribs and Frank goes down with him, laughing along.
.
Living with Mikey Way is kind of like what Frank imagines dorms at college would have been like, if he hadn't lived at home: they eat a lot of instant noodles, go home to do laundry, stay up way too late playing Zelda, brag about the shits they take, and hang socks on their doorknobs when they're getting laid.
The awesome thing about living with Mikey Way in their own apartment, though, is that no one gives them crap for being messy, and they're old enough to fill their own fridge with booze. Also they're in a fucking band and don't have to go to class. That part is especially awesome.
Whenever they go out Frank helps Mikey with his stupid pointy fake mohawk, Mikey's limp hair in one hand while he blow-dries it up with the other. "The new Blur album isn't complete shit," Mikey'll say from between his shoulders, bent over and braced on the kitchen counter, and Frank will tell him that yes, it really is, as he smears hair gel on Mikey's neck, making him laugh.
Sometimes Frank makes the mistake of eating scrambled eggs or a grilled cheese or whatever the fuck else his stomach has decided it won't digest that week, and Mikey will turn up Die Hard real loud on their TV and they'll shout lines at each other through the bathroom door until Frank's better.
They argue over track listings for mix CDs, kneeling on the carpet in front of the shitty computer Frank's dad leant him. They host a couple of poker nights (and more than one D&D session that lasts until five in the morning). And whenever Frank needs a record from an obscure band, or a new pair of shoes after he loses his at a show, or they get high and decide they have to own a bread-maker, Mikey will smile knowingly from under his stringy bangs. "I know a guy who knows a guy," he'll say, cross-legged on the mattress in the middle of their living room or tipping back in one of the plastic lawn chairs in their kitchen, "who can get us that."
Sometimes Frank thinks about 1998, about Mikey's audition and what Chaz said, and can't remember much aside from Mikey's spotty skin and skinny legs and how Frank fucked up his elbow spinning into a stack of speakers that night. Frank feels kind of bad that he can't remember more. He wonders if it's something Mikey remembers really well.
"What?" Mikey asks around a mouthful of Chef Boyardee, when he catches Frank staring at him.
"Your face," Frank answers absently, and gets a few bony toes in his side for his trouble.
.
They play a show in Passaic that month and, apart from one night in New York, they've been off tour for nearly six weeks. It feels like a homecoming, in a way.
"Look at that fucking line!" Frank announces to the rest of the guys, slamming his hands against the van window as they pull up at the venue. It feels strange to be playing a show on a full night of sleep, for once; Frank's got energy to spare.
It's fucking cold out, so Frank wraps his denim jacket around himself tightly as he tumbles out after Otter slides the door open. He hugs and fist-bumps old friends in line, warm puffs of air between them as they laugh. It's awesome to see so many people who've been coming out to their shows since the start.
"Next spring, probably," Frank is telling a girl he met backstage a few months ago, "that's when we're hoping the record'll be done, anyway. Who fucking knows!" Frank looks down the line, spots Mikey's tangled hair-Mikey did it himself tonight, their bathroom reeks of hairspray now-and Ray's head rising and falling in the crowd as they talk to people. He sees Gerard and Otter smoking with the bouncer and it feels good, like Frank's got a place he belongs. His cheeks already hurt from smiling so much.
Frank's strung tight backstage, pacing in the hallway and rubbing his hands back and forth over the buzzed-short crown of his scalp while Mikey and Ray chill and talk about a mutual friend they saw outside. Frank knows he's being exactly the kind of twitchy motherfucker that Gerard can't handle when he's nervous before a show, but he can't help it.
When he gets sick of cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders, Frank comes up behind Mikey and grinds his fists into the meaty part of his back for a little while just to do something, blue t-shirt bunching under his knuckles. Mikey bears it patiently and keeps talking, only raising a finger to push his glasses up when they're jolted down his nose.
"How do you live with this spaz?" Ray asks eventually, laughing as he peers over Mikey's shoulder.
Mikey shrugs but Frank sees the way his ear moves back, knows that it means Mikey's smiling. "Because he loves me," Frank says magnanimously, crowding Mikey with a bear hug from behind.
"Erk," Mikey says when Frank squeezes, but laughs a little when Frank hops up on his toes to plant a dry kiss against Mikey's jaw. "I'm only in it for the free meals," Mikey says to Ray in a stage whisper, "I don't think he's realized that I haven't bought any groceries yet." Frank tries to tickle Mikey from behind but nearly gets an elbow in his face before he darts out of the way, light on his toes, grinning.
The venue is perfect, fucking perfect, audience tight up against the stage as Gerard hunches his shoulders and screams the beginning of Skylines at them. Frank loves it here because he knows every inch of the stage, knows what it's like under his shoes, his knees, his cheek. He knows the sticky floor of the pit, too, has been on that side of the room more times than he can count.
Frank trips on a cable during Sorrows and only catches himself with a rush of adrenaline as he twists at the last second and lands on his back. He's up almost immediately and his eyes are open but he's not really seeing anything, lurching around in time with the driving chorus. He can never stay still during this song; if he didn't have a guitar to hold onto he'd be throwing his head back and his elbows out, spinning in the pit, screaming hard into people's faces as they passed him by.
He finishes the song sharing the mic with Gerard, throat hoarse, and staggers backwards in the sudden quiet as the ring of Ray's guitar dies out and the crowd screams back at them. Gerard grips Frank's shoulder hard for a second before shoving him away, a kind of pat on the back, and Frank turns to meet Ray and Otter's eyes with a big shit-eating grin.
Spaz, Mikey mouths at him with a small smile, legs spread and feet planted firmly in the same spot they've been since the start of the set. Frank sticks his tongue out just as he slams into the opening chords of Honey and bends double with the force of the down-stroke. When he whips his head back up, Mikey's eyes are still on him but his face is kind of hard to read, teeth in his bottom lip.
Frank's mouth is suddenly watering and he turns to spit at the empty side of the stage. He plants a shoe on his amp, braces himself with a bent knee, and bangs his head in time with every person in the room.
.
The night doesn't end when they stumble off the stage on jelly legs with stupid smiles on their faces, sweat-soaked t-shirts sticking to their skin. They shoot the shit with the crowd for the next hour or so and Frank runs into a couple of friends from college, the rare few he met who weren't total douchebags.
He hasn't seen them since he dropped out, and it feels pretty awesome to show that them that this is what he does for a living. They don't talk down to him-good for you-the way so many people do when they actually mean get a real job. Frank walks with them to the merch table and gets them some free CDs.
Of the group from Frank's old school, the two chicks and one of the guys who came from upstate are too wasted to drive home, so Frank gets them a ride back to his and Mikey's place in the band's van. He kind of likes having a place to offer up for people to crash at, a place that's not just the back seat or his mom's basement.
They sit around the living room smoking a few bowls and eating from a couple of battered bags of Cheetos that Frank found under a seat in the van. Mikey settles down in the corner and smokes with them, smiling quietly through their catch-up conversation about shitty cafeteria food and bullshit professors. He doesn't really meet their eyes much but Frank knows his body language, knows it's not a big deal.
Frank takes a piss and when he gets back his friends are ripping on Mikey for staying in the exact same spot on stage all night. Frank hesitates, frowning, but Mikey's smiling that little smile that means he's having a good time.
"Epic stage fright," Mikey says, eyes in his lap where he's fingering a green plastic lighter. "I'm a deer in fucking headlights every time, you should see when they have to carry me offstage." Frank's friends laugh and Frank joins them, sitting back down on the floor.
"We were gonna just take a cardboard cut-out of him to Europe," Frank explains, cracking his knuckles, "save ourselves an airplane ticket. But we couldn't leave the fucker behind."
Mikey suddenly looks up for the first time since they got the bong out, meets Frank's eyes with a smile that shows a little teeth, and out of nowhere Frank's cheeks get hot.
"Where the fuck did those Cheetos go?" Frank asks, cutting his gaze to someone else.
Eventually one of Frank's friends starts to pass out propped up against the wall, so they decide to call it a night. He offers his bed to one of the girls and Mikey follows suit for the other one and her boyfriend. He and Frank only move enough to hit the light switch and grab the funky-smelling blanket from behind the TV before they collapse back on the mattress in their living room.
"Oh god," Frank moans, wiggling around a bit just to feel all his body parts intact, "what a fucking show, huh?"
"Mmm," Mikey agrees and tries to spread-eagle it, nailing Frank in the face, "totally awesome."
"Motherfucker," Frank says. He bites at Mikey's hand until he pulls it back and rolls away onto his side. "Pillows?"
"Ungh," Mikey replies, tossing his glasses a few feet away before groping around for a hoodie that he passes to Frank.
"Thanks, man." Frank balls it under his head and collapses onto his back. It's only then, with the high of the show worn off, that he feels the ache in his knees, the bruise forming on his back where he hit the stage. It feels good to not be moving anymore.
He thinks Mikey's already passed out and is focused loosely on the soft noise of cars passing by on the wet street outside when Mikey suddenly says, "We dropped out of college a year ago last month."
Frank startles at the noise, shaking the mattress slightly, and blinks up at the dark ceiling. "Yeah." He sucks his lip ring into his mouth, pops it back out again. "Shit, a year ago. My family was so fucking pissed."
Mikey snorts lightly, "'Least they weren't losing two sons to a shitty punk band."
Frank rolls his eyes, bumps the back of Mikey's ankle with his socked foot. "Don't even, you had Elena all over that shit."
Mikey hums in agreement. "Fuck, can you believe that was only last year? We've toured the country since then. We've been to Amsterdam." He laughs to himself. "We nearly lost Ray to Amsterdam."
Frank giggles too, remembering the passport shit-show that spring, and lets out a big sigh, smiling into the darkness. "This is for real, Mikey Way. For real for real."
Mikey rolls onto his back and looks over at Frank, eyes huge without his glasses on.
"What?" Frank feels kind of weird under Mikey's gaze and shoves at his shoulder half-heartedly. "I'm just, like, having a moment. Okay?"
Mikey pushes his hair out of his own face. "I have a lot of moments, dude. I get it."
They smile at each other in the dark for a minute before Mikey pulls the blanket back up and Frank suddenly gets a whiff of stale sweat and hair product, screwing his face up at the smell. "Aw, dude, you fucking reek. Did you change when we got home?"
Mikey squeezes his eyes shut while he smiles one of his biggest, stupidest, middle-of-the-night smiles and says "Nope!" brightly before tucking the blanket up around his ears.
"Asshole," Frank mutters, but there's not much feeling behind it.
The last thing Frank thinks before he passes out is that Mikey didn't bring that red-headed girl home, even though Frank saw them talking at the show. It strikes Frank that he never found out her name, even though he ate his Count Chocula across the kitchen table from her a few times.
.
It's a pale sort of dawn light outside when Frank wakes up and has to piss. He rolls out from under the blanket and stumbles into the bathroom, eyes still mostly closed while he does his thing.
He stops when he gets back to the living room to lift his hands up over his head and stretch, scratching at his stomach where his belt dug in and left marks in his sleep. He falls heavily down onto his knees on the mattress and only remembers Mikey's there when the lump under the blanket bounces slightly.
"Shit," Frank whispers and freezes, holds his breath, but Mikey doesn't move. His hair's all fucked up and he's half on his back, arm across his own chest and mouth slightly open.
Mikey looks so young, so different without his glasses on. His arm's kind of soft-looking where it's flung across his chest and he's got a patch under his chin where he forgot to shave. It has that look like it'd be rough, maybe prickly.
Frank blinks.
He totally just thought about kissing Mikey Way's neck.
Frank digs the heels of his hands into his eyes for a minute and takes a deep breath. He breathes evenly, watching lights dance behind his eyelids, and thinks about pushing Mikey's broad shoulders down into the mattress and grabbing the pale skin of his hips where his girl-jeans have slipped down, feeling the jut of Mikey's hipbones under his palms. And-well.
Frank drops his hands into his lap and looks hopelessly down at his actual roommate, the line of his jaw, eyelashes dark against his pale skin, long fingers splayed out across his own belly. Frank would totally hit that, holy shit.
Frank bounces up onto his feet, sucking in a breath. He's smiling, which is fucking stupid, it's ass-o'clock in the morning and he's got the beginnings of a hangover and he's never been into a dude before and it should be scary or stupid but it's just-it's Mikey. It doesn't feel anything but good. Frank stares down at Mikey for a few more moments, at the way the sharp and soft lines of his body seem to take a different shape when Frank thinks about fitting himself along them.
There's no fucking way Frank's going to go back to sleep now, so he steps into his sneakers, pulls on a hoodie, and grabs the Discman that's sitting on top of the TV before slipping out the door. It's dead out on the street, too early for commuters and too late for kids stumbling home from the bar. It's overcast and everything's wet from the rain the night before, cold enough for Frank to put his hood up and dig his hands in his pockets.
Frank pulls the plastic headphones on and flips through the mix CD as he thinks about 1998, wonders what Mikey imagined them doing, how Mikey saw the lines of Frank's body and thought yeah. Want that.
He's ten minutes into his walk when a shitty song from the new Blur album comes on the CD. Frank's thumb hovers instinctively over the "next" button in his pocket, but he smiles and doesn't press it this time, sneakers hitting the pavement, left-right.
.
"Living with Mikey Way is like taking one for the team," Frank says into the phone as he suffers through another afternoon kicked off his own computer so that Mikey can stalk his one million MySpace friends or whatever. Frank is still in his room and when Mikey gives him the finger without turning around, he can see the shifting muscles of Mikey's back through his t-shirt.
"Eh," Frank responds when Gerard asks if Mikey's making out with someone in a bed that's not his. Again. "He's making out, like, electronically. With everyone on the internet." Gerard laughs and Frank elaborates: "He's totally slipping the tongue to this chick with a uni-brow, I can see it from here. Did you know your brother was into cybersex?"
"It's not a uni-brow, it's make-up," Mikey says and Frank is already laughing as Gerard tells him about the time their parents banned Mikey from the computer because they accidentally saw an e-mail with some pretty explicit photos attached.
"How's writing going?" Frank asks after a while, idly working his bare toes through the slats on the back of the lawn chair at his desk to dig into the bare skin at the base of Mikey's spine.
Mikey bats his toes away but Frank comes back as soon as Mikey's hand is curled over the mouse again. "Yeah?" Frank asks around a smile while Gerard explains lovers making deals with the Devil.
"Shit!" Frank laughs when Mikey finally grabs Frank's foot and yanks hard, so Frank loses his balance and falls on his back on the mattress. Mikey climbs on top, bony knees digging in to all of Frank's soft parts as he grabs Frank's forearm. Gerard sighs like he always does when he thinks people aren't paying enough attention to him. "No! Gerard, I can't-" Frank tries to get his arm back, laughing, but he's still holding the phone in one hand.
"Oh fuck!" Frank drops the phone and kicks out when Mikey gives him an Indian sunburn, sharp flare of pain at the twist of his skin, lifting his hips off the bed until he tips Mikey over. Frank punches randomly at Mikey's scrawny arms and kind of eyes up where his too-small t-shirt stretches across his chest and pinches in at the armpit. Frank thinks about how much he'd miss tits if he was with Mikey, but the heat of Mikey's thighs tangled up with his and the giggle Mikey's got going on feel pretty good.
Frank meets Mikey's gaze, tries to ignore Gerard's long-suffering voice coming from somewhere in the folds of his bed sheets, and makes what he hopes is an if you kissed me right now I would totally let you face at his roommate.
Mikey rolls off and passes him the phone, so Frank thinks maybe he needs to work on his faces.
.
It's only a few weeks before Christmas, and that means it's less than a month before they fly to L.A. to start recording the new album. It feels kind of surreal and far away to Frank, cross-legged on his living room floor while the five of them dick around with new song ideas.
Frank's been plucking out notes, trying to follow along with the melody that Gerard's singing with gibberish not-yet-lyrics. Ray's boxers are sticking out of the top of his pants as he leans over his amp, fiddling with the feedback, while Otter sits at one of their wobbly lawn chairs and bangs his sticks idly off a lone snare drum between his knees.
Frank looks over to the kitchen where Mikey is stirring sugar into the coffee he's been carefully preparing for the last five minutes. He's still got his bass slung over his shoulder and when he leans forward to pick the mug up, the neck of his bass swings forward, knocking the entire cup into the sink before Mikey can curl his fingers around the handle.
"Oh," Mikey says sadly. Frank snorts.
"Bel-ieve," Gerard sings, on his back on the living room mattress, and frowns up at the ceiling. "Sle-eve?"
"Guys, I don't think L.A. is gonna be able to handle us," Otter says as he raps his sticks on the rim of his snare.
"Yeah," Gerard says, rolling over onto his stomach and sighing. "I need to go work on these more. Somewhere I can surround myself with lots of pictures of blood."
Frank smiles down at his guitar, picking at his D string. Fuck yeah, this is his band.
After Gerard and Otter leave, Ray hangs around a little bit to practice what they've been calling Gerard's 'pissed-off teenager song'. The lyrics are still in progress but it scratches an itch for all of them, kind of like closing the book on a chapter of their lives while spitting a big fuck you into its face at the same time.
Ray's solo for the song is killer, and Frank kind of forgets the chords he's supposed to be playing, hand stilling on the neck of his guitar while Ray closes his eyes and plays. He's banging his head a bit, biting his lip, and the way he bends the notes makes Frank's skin tingle. He never gets tired of watching Ray Toro shred his face off.
Frank's been thinking about Mikey's Pencey audition a lot lately. Watching Ray now, he thinks about My Chem shows he went to before he joined, about how he had to elbow kids out of his way constantly to keep a clear view of Ray, because Frank wanted to see just where his fingers landed on his guitar, to see if some of that would maybe rub off on Frank.
Frank blinks and looks over to where Mikey's fiddling away at his bass, unplugged, next to him. Mikey looks up at him and smiles, the line of his jaw softening and his eyes warm. Frank's face heats up and he closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the wall as his stomach clenches just trying to imagine Mikey feeling that way about Frank, eighteen and awkward on his own guitar. Damn.
Frank thinks blushing constantly has got to give this guy some idea that Frank wants him to make a move, already. Fuck.
"Good call, I'm pretty tired too," Ray says, and Frank opens his eyes to see him slipping his guitar into its case, smiling. "But it is pretty awesome not having someone's sleeping parents upstairs telling us to keep it down when we practice here."
"Only this princess, if he passes out on us," Mikey says, poking Frank in the stomach with his bass.
"Now why," Frank asks, wrapping his fingers around the neck of Mikey's bass and grinning, "would you go and fuck up your tuning like that?" He laughs and ignores Mikey's protests as he grabs randomly at the tuning pegs, twisting them in different directions.
"And I'll just leave my tuner right here?" Ray rolls his eyes, setting it down on the floor in front of them before propping the door open with his foot and hoisting his guitar and amp through it. "'Night!" he calls behind himself and Mikey and Frank echo it, giggling, as the door swings shut.
Frank feels warm and happy, likes that at the end of the day when everyone's gone home, he's here on the beer-stained carpet next to Mikey.
"Can you actually do it by ear?" He asks after a few minutes of watching Mikey pluck at the strings, turning the tuning pegs back and forth.
"Nah, just trying to look cool," Mikey admits before giving up and settling back against the wall. He stretches his legs out in front of him, toes turned in.
Frank strums an A chord, tinny with his guitar unplugged. It's quiet in their apartment, just the faint noise of a television coming from an apartment somewhere above them, the ticking of the radiator, and the hum of their fridge.
"Do you remember when you tried out for Pencey?" Frank asks, ignoring the heat prickling across his neck as he casually slides the chord up a few frets, turns it into an A-sharp.
Mikey huffs a little laugh, ducking his head down under his hair. "Yeah. Shit, dude, that was ages ago."
Frank hums in agreement, watches the way the little muscles in Mikey's forearm work while he plucks out some kind of a walking bass line, fingers stretched wide and making the tendons in his hands stand out in relief.
"I saw Chaz at our party. Remember him, he dated Sam? Used to hang out at Pipeline at lot?" Mikey doesn't say anything. Frank plays a shitty harmonic scale and stops with an exhale, closing his fingers over the strings and looking down at their feet. "He reminded me about it, I'd totally forgotten."
Mikey's still silent beside him and Frank thinks shit, that was too obvious, and forces a small laugh. "God, I was such a fucking poser then," he smiles into his lap. "Thought I was seriously hot shit because I went to more shows than the kid sitting next to me in chem class. What the fuck."
They both laugh softly that that. "Not to mention all the baggy t-shirts," Frank adds.
Mikey wiggles his toes in his grey socks. "Gerard went through the same phase, dude."
Frank remembers why he did it, and the feeling isn't a fantastic one. "Felt like I could hide what a fat-ass I was," he says with a dry laugh. "Thought throwing punches could do the same, too."
Mikey's quiet for a moment and Frank turns his head along the wall to look at him. He's got a few spots on his chin and his carefully-sprayed-up hair obscures his right eye, and Frank thinks yeah, okay, we all have our own shit.
"I thought you were cool," Mikey tells his feet. "You didn't take anybody's crap, even though you were the only kid in that group still in high school. Like you weren't ashamed, or whatever." Frank watches Mikey's face as he says it, and it makes his stomach flip over. Frank swallows.
Mikey looks up at him when Frank doesn't say anything, and Frank tries not to make any funny expressions or drop his gaze to Mikey's lips, just thinks I know you wanted me I know you wanted me I know you wanted me at Mikey's face like if he thinks it loud enough, Mikey'll hear.
Mikey's eyes slip down to Frank's mouth for a fraction of a section and Frank sucks in a breath, fingertips digging into the strings of his guitar, Yes, now, do it, but Mikey stands up quickly and pulls the strap of his bass over his shoulder, dropping it onto the mattress.
"I'm fucking wiped, dude," Mikey says and doesn't meet Frank's eyes when Frank frowns. "'Night?"
"Yeah, okay... 'night."
Frank sits in the living room for a while, looking at Mikey's bass on the mattress in front of him. He should maybe take a fucking hint already, but he's never been very good at that. He tries and he tries until things go his way or he gets knocked on his ass; either way he knows where he stands.
Frank doesn't move until Mikey's finished brushing his teeth, until he hears the creak of Mikey's bedsprings shifting under his weight and it's quiet except for Frank's breath. He thinks about just saying it, just putting it out there: I know you were into me, dude. He thinks about spreading his arms wide in front of Mikey's surprised face, looking up at him, saying here I fucking am and waiting.
Waiting.
Frank tongues his lip ring and sides his fingers down the neck of his guitar, and somewhere between the second and the twelfth fret, he realizes that he's waiting for Mikey to make a move. That audition was five fucking years ago, why would Mikey decide to make his move now?
Frank needs to get his shit in gear.
Part II
Author: desfinado
Pairing: Frank/Mikey
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 12,219
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me; not making a profit.
Summary: Mikey makes a pretty awesome roommate.
Notes: Set loosely in the fall of 2003, with apologies for any garbled canon. Title from The Smiths. Written for turps33's prompt in no_tags 2011: "Frank/Mikey Roommates", originally posted here. Thank you so much to my spectacular beta anoneknewmoose for all her help!
Part I
"This." Frank waves a hand at the living room and kitchen, stained carpet and bare walls. He grins. "This is where the magic's gonna happen."
Gerard, Ray and Otter follow him inside, poking their heads into the empty bedrooms. Frank watches them while he unbuttons his coat, and decides that he already likes how the place looks with people in it; he can't wait for Mikey to get his ass back here and help make it theirs.
"Are we gonna get fucked up here tonight or what?" Frank drops his jacket in the corner of the living room and rolls his sleeves up to get ready for some box-lifting. "Me and Mikey need to break this shit in!"
"I'm in," Gerard calls from where he's started picking at his teeth in the bathroom mirror. "I stashed a few bottles of Jameson in my parent's garage before we went on tour." Frank nods and points a finger at Ray, who freezes with his head halfway into the fridge.
"Uh." Ray looks shifty and ducks behind the fridge door. There's nothing in there yet. "Didn't we just have a party for your birthday a few weeks ago? My brother, I haven't seen him in-"
"Your brother is invited, Ray. You're not skipping out on this." Frank cuts a line across the room with his finger, stopping in front of Otter.
"Always, dude," Otter says easily, pulling the rim of his baseball cap down. "Where's the lady of the house anyway?"
Frank snickers. "Fucked off as soon as he heard we'd be lifting boxes. He's probably out inviting all of Jersey to the party."
"Awesome," Gerard contributes from the bathroom, "I wanna see all of Jersey in your two-bedroom, Frankie. Sardine that shit."
Otter snorts and follows Ray out the door as they stomp down the wooden staircase to the van. "I bought you delicious, greasy breakfast today, man. You better pull your weight," Frank tells Gerard. Frank's halfway down the staircase before he realizes Gerard isn't following. His voice echoes in the stairwell when he calls back, "I'll let you carry pillows!"
.
The guys leave after lunch, begging off with showers and girlfriends and free dinner at their mom's. Frank has just gotten back from a pizza and booze run and stowed the vodka in the freezer when Mikey shows up to eat.
"Casa del Good Times, man," Frank says as he and Mikey knock the necks of their beer bottles, grinning at each other. There are boxes and duffel bags piled high by the front door and Frank's sweaty from carrying them up the stairs but he's pretty excited to unpack. They've been touring so much this year that Frank's just happy not to be living out of a backpack for a little while.
"My first real place, shit." Mikey grabs a boom box from his room, setting it on the living room floor and plugging in. "I can't believe I made it out of my parent's house before my older brother."
"I can," Frank laughs and pops open the CD deck as soon as Mikey leaves the room, plucking out Meat is Murder and dropping in some At The Drive-In. Mikey makes a sad sound from his bedroom. Frank calls "Vetoed!" over the wail of guitars and they start unpacking.
By five o'clock there are four empties on top of the fridge, a grease-stained pizza box in the kitchen sink, and a small island of shit in the middle of the living room.
"Huh," Mikey says, pushing his glasses up his nose. "That's it?"
The island is comprised of at least six boxes of CDs and tapes, four video game consoles and boxes of games, one television set, two small stacks of comic books, an even-taller stack of movies, five coffee mugs, and assorted cables and guitar straps draped over top.
"I really thought I had more to my name," Frank observes from the kitchen counter, kicking the heels of his Adidas on the cupboard below.
Mikey suddenly spreads both his hands out wide, pausing for a second to say "Oh!" before disappearing down the hall to their rooms.
He reappears with his bass and walks it to the pile. "Aw shit," Frank laughs, hopping off the counter to get his favorite guitar, "how'd we forget that, dude?"
It takes a few moments of struggling against gravity (Mikey crunches Frank's copy of the new Outkast album underfoot-by accident, Frank's ass) until they have their guitar cases leaning against each other over the pile, precariously balanced.
"I've got way more stickers on my case," Frank says, "'cause of how I'm such a vet in the 'biz."
"I don't need stickers when I'm already friends with the bands," Mikey says easily.
They admire their pile for a moment before Frank realizes that they're staring at the most valuable stuff they own and maybe it shouldn't be in the middle of their living room if they're about to have an epic house party.
"Wait!" Mikey fishes a disposable camera out of the backpack he'd dumped by the fridge earlier. "Give me something, Iero," he says from behind the camera. Frank makes a pretty unattractive face but Mikey's smiling when he snaps the photo.
"Y'know, some of these aren't even band stickers," Mikey points out as he hauls Frank's guitar off the pile and into his room. "I'm pretty sure this one's for the Salvation Army. And-" there's a soft noise from down the hall as he puts it on the carpet "-is that a label from a smoothie bottle?"
"You know it," Frank smiles. "Seasoned vet, I told you." He drops to his knees and starts looking through their boxes for a shortlist of CDs for the party.
.
"Another lawn chair!" one of the girls by the front door announces to the room at large when someone new arrives with more donated furniture, and at least five people toast with bottles held high, laughing.
Frank can't walk five steps without someone stopping him to talk. The air is humid and reeks of sweat and spilled beer, Thrice blaring from the stereo just loud enough that people have to shout to hear each other properly. A few guys are shoving each other around while they smoke by the window, there's a very involved game of poker going on at their new kitchen table, and at least three people are sprawled on the floral-print mattress someone dumped in the middle of the living room. It's nice to see so many familiar faces in one place and Frank's feeling good.
"Shit," Frank laughs when people move aside to tuck the new chair under the table, clapping Mikey on the shoulder as he worms past him to get to the vodka in the freezer, "we're gonna be decked out, dude!"
"B-Y-O-Furniture," Mikey agrees, meeting his eyes with a smile for a moment before turning back to the girl he was talking to. Frank recognizes the short red hair: the girl Mikey's been hooking up with on and off the past few months whenever they're in town.
Frank goes to break the seal at some point after midnight. There are some dudes hot-boxing the bathroom, one guy he used to run into at Pipeline and two of his friends, so after Frank's pissed and tucked his dick away, he stays in there with them to catch up.
"Ah, fuck you," Frank laughs when Chaz, sitting on the countertop, kicks at Frank's knees and reminisces about going to see his band play in '96. Frank plucks the joint from his smirking lips and takes a double hit, pausing while he holds it in to sit down on the lid of the toilet seat. "Sector 12 was the shit, man," Frank drawls on an exhale, earthy-sweet smoke curling up in front of his face. "Ahead of our time."
The two dudes in the bathtub ask what Frank's been up to since Pipeline closed down, so he tells them about Pencey and jumping ship to My Chem, touring, how crazy it was that they made it to Europe last spring, while they pass the blunt around.
They brace their laced-up shit-kickers on the rim of Frank's tub and look at him skeptically, like he's just another kid from Jersey talking big about his own band. It doesn't give Frank the itch between his shoulder blades that it used to. Maybe he's just too stoned to care, or maybe he doesn't need to put his fist in a dude's gut to prove that his band is going places; they can just watch and see.
One more joint and two interruptions from people who have to piss later, Frank's smiling to himself, paying more attention to the happy chemical buzz in his bloodstream than the conversation, when one of the guys slaps his own thigh hard, laughing, and Frank looks over. "No fucking way, the kid with the Disney tapes?" he's saying, and Chaz nods back at him, grinning. "Man, I heard he got into some serious shit."
"He's in Frank's band, dude," Chaz says with raised eyebrows, pushing sweaty hair out of his face and pointing at Frank.
Frank grins, "Fuck yeah he is. Mikey Way? He's my roommate too, we moved in today."
Just then Chaz chokes on the hit he was taking, raising his middle finger in the direction of the bathtub when the guys call him a pussy. "Frank-" he says, voice reedy as he emerges from his coughing fit. "Fuck, this is some strong shit. Frank, man, you gotta watch yourself."
Frank frowns. "Why?"
"Remember when he auditioned for Pencey? Like, what-four years ago?"
"Five," Frank says. Shit, he'd almost forgotten Mikey had tried out back then.
"Five, yeah." Chaz waves his hands around in the hazy air for a second. "Dude, he had the biggest fucking hard-on for you!" The guys in the tub burst out laughing, "No way!" and "Aw, fuck, for real?"
"What?" Frank blinks and rubs a hand up and down the back of his head, over the buzzed hair there. He has no idea how long he's been in here or how much he's smoked. He's feeling kind of fucked up. "Mikey?"
"Yeah dude," Chaz says, "remember Sam? With the leopard tattoo? We were dating, she and Mikey were tight back then. He was so into you he totally puked at her house before the audition."
"I-" Frank shakes his head. He feels kind of offended on Mikey's behalf. Or something. "No, man, fucking…" he swallows, closes his eyes to find the words, "Mikey's the straightest fuckin' arrow I know, seriously."
"Whatever, dude." Chaz grins. "Just be careful he doesn't jump you in the middle of the night." He makes some kind of groping gesture and it sets the other dudes off laughing again.
Frank stands up abruptly, kind of pissed off, but then remembers he's at his own party and he's trying this thing where he doesn't punch smug assholes in the face anymore.
"… the fuck ever," Frank mutters instead and ignores the chorus of "Oo-oh" from the fucking leather peanut gallery in his bathtub while he jiggles the doorknob open and spills back out into the hallway.
"Whoa, Frankie," Ray says as Frank bumps into his chest. His eyes are kind of unfocused, sweaty pieces of hair sticking to his forehead. "Killer party!"
Frank gets the bathroom door closed behind him and takes a deep breath of the relatively fresh air, licking his lips. "Yeah," he says absently, but he can't help grinning when Ray plants a big clammy hand on Frank's forehead and runs it down his face. "You're messed up, dude," Frank giggles as Ray's fingers catch on the neck of Frank's t-shirt and drag it down a bit.
"I know, right? Shiiiiiit." Ray laughs and then he's slipping down the wall and accidentally tickling Frank's ribs and Frank goes down with him, laughing along.
.
Living with Mikey Way is kind of like what Frank imagines dorms at college would have been like, if he hadn't lived at home: they eat a lot of instant noodles, go home to do laundry, stay up way too late playing Zelda, brag about the shits they take, and hang socks on their doorknobs when they're getting laid.
The awesome thing about living with Mikey Way in their own apartment, though, is that no one gives them crap for being messy, and they're old enough to fill their own fridge with booze. Also they're in a fucking band and don't have to go to class. That part is especially awesome.
Whenever they go out Frank helps Mikey with his stupid pointy fake mohawk, Mikey's limp hair in one hand while he blow-dries it up with the other. "The new Blur album isn't complete shit," Mikey'll say from between his shoulders, bent over and braced on the kitchen counter, and Frank will tell him that yes, it really is, as he smears hair gel on Mikey's neck, making him laugh.
Sometimes Frank makes the mistake of eating scrambled eggs or a grilled cheese or whatever the fuck else his stomach has decided it won't digest that week, and Mikey will turn up Die Hard real loud on their TV and they'll shout lines at each other through the bathroom door until Frank's better.
They argue over track listings for mix CDs, kneeling on the carpet in front of the shitty computer Frank's dad leant him. They host a couple of poker nights (and more than one D&D session that lasts until five in the morning). And whenever Frank needs a record from an obscure band, or a new pair of shoes after he loses his at a show, or they get high and decide they have to own a bread-maker, Mikey will smile knowingly from under his stringy bangs. "I know a guy who knows a guy," he'll say, cross-legged on the mattress in the middle of their living room or tipping back in one of the plastic lawn chairs in their kitchen, "who can get us that."
Sometimes Frank thinks about 1998, about Mikey's audition and what Chaz said, and can't remember much aside from Mikey's spotty skin and skinny legs and how Frank fucked up his elbow spinning into a stack of speakers that night. Frank feels kind of bad that he can't remember more. He wonders if it's something Mikey remembers really well.
"What?" Mikey asks around a mouthful of Chef Boyardee, when he catches Frank staring at him.
"Your face," Frank answers absently, and gets a few bony toes in his side for his trouble.
.
They play a show in Passaic that month and, apart from one night in New York, they've been off tour for nearly six weeks. It feels like a homecoming, in a way.
"Look at that fucking line!" Frank announces to the rest of the guys, slamming his hands against the van window as they pull up at the venue. It feels strange to be playing a show on a full night of sleep, for once; Frank's got energy to spare.
It's fucking cold out, so Frank wraps his denim jacket around himself tightly as he tumbles out after Otter slides the door open. He hugs and fist-bumps old friends in line, warm puffs of air between them as they laugh. It's awesome to see so many people who've been coming out to their shows since the start.
"Next spring, probably," Frank is telling a girl he met backstage a few months ago, "that's when we're hoping the record'll be done, anyway. Who fucking knows!" Frank looks down the line, spots Mikey's tangled hair-Mikey did it himself tonight, their bathroom reeks of hairspray now-and Ray's head rising and falling in the crowd as they talk to people. He sees Gerard and Otter smoking with the bouncer and it feels good, like Frank's got a place he belongs. His cheeks already hurt from smiling so much.
Frank's strung tight backstage, pacing in the hallway and rubbing his hands back and forth over the buzzed-short crown of his scalp while Mikey and Ray chill and talk about a mutual friend they saw outside. Frank knows he's being exactly the kind of twitchy motherfucker that Gerard can't handle when he's nervous before a show, but he can't help it.
When he gets sick of cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders, Frank comes up behind Mikey and grinds his fists into the meaty part of his back for a little while just to do something, blue t-shirt bunching under his knuckles. Mikey bears it patiently and keeps talking, only raising a finger to push his glasses up when they're jolted down his nose.
"How do you live with this spaz?" Ray asks eventually, laughing as he peers over Mikey's shoulder.
Mikey shrugs but Frank sees the way his ear moves back, knows that it means Mikey's smiling. "Because he loves me," Frank says magnanimously, crowding Mikey with a bear hug from behind.
"Erk," Mikey says when Frank squeezes, but laughs a little when Frank hops up on his toes to plant a dry kiss against Mikey's jaw. "I'm only in it for the free meals," Mikey says to Ray in a stage whisper, "I don't think he's realized that I haven't bought any groceries yet." Frank tries to tickle Mikey from behind but nearly gets an elbow in his face before he darts out of the way, light on his toes, grinning.
The venue is perfect, fucking perfect, audience tight up against the stage as Gerard hunches his shoulders and screams the beginning of Skylines at them. Frank loves it here because he knows every inch of the stage, knows what it's like under his shoes, his knees, his cheek. He knows the sticky floor of the pit, too, has been on that side of the room more times than he can count.
Frank trips on a cable during Sorrows and only catches himself with a rush of adrenaline as he twists at the last second and lands on his back. He's up almost immediately and his eyes are open but he's not really seeing anything, lurching around in time with the driving chorus. He can never stay still during this song; if he didn't have a guitar to hold onto he'd be throwing his head back and his elbows out, spinning in the pit, screaming hard into people's faces as they passed him by.
He finishes the song sharing the mic with Gerard, throat hoarse, and staggers backwards in the sudden quiet as the ring of Ray's guitar dies out and the crowd screams back at them. Gerard grips Frank's shoulder hard for a second before shoving him away, a kind of pat on the back, and Frank turns to meet Ray and Otter's eyes with a big shit-eating grin.
Spaz, Mikey mouths at him with a small smile, legs spread and feet planted firmly in the same spot they've been since the start of the set. Frank sticks his tongue out just as he slams into the opening chords of Honey and bends double with the force of the down-stroke. When he whips his head back up, Mikey's eyes are still on him but his face is kind of hard to read, teeth in his bottom lip.
Frank's mouth is suddenly watering and he turns to spit at the empty side of the stage. He plants a shoe on his amp, braces himself with a bent knee, and bangs his head in time with every person in the room.
.
The night doesn't end when they stumble off the stage on jelly legs with stupid smiles on their faces, sweat-soaked t-shirts sticking to their skin. They shoot the shit with the crowd for the next hour or so and Frank runs into a couple of friends from college, the rare few he met who weren't total douchebags.
He hasn't seen them since he dropped out, and it feels pretty awesome to show that them that this is what he does for a living. They don't talk down to him-good for you-the way so many people do when they actually mean get a real job. Frank walks with them to the merch table and gets them some free CDs.
Of the group from Frank's old school, the two chicks and one of the guys who came from upstate are too wasted to drive home, so Frank gets them a ride back to his and Mikey's place in the band's van. He kind of likes having a place to offer up for people to crash at, a place that's not just the back seat or his mom's basement.
They sit around the living room smoking a few bowls and eating from a couple of battered bags of Cheetos that Frank found under a seat in the van. Mikey settles down in the corner and smokes with them, smiling quietly through their catch-up conversation about shitty cafeteria food and bullshit professors. He doesn't really meet their eyes much but Frank knows his body language, knows it's not a big deal.
Frank takes a piss and when he gets back his friends are ripping on Mikey for staying in the exact same spot on stage all night. Frank hesitates, frowning, but Mikey's smiling that little smile that means he's having a good time.
"Epic stage fright," Mikey says, eyes in his lap where he's fingering a green plastic lighter. "I'm a deer in fucking headlights every time, you should see when they have to carry me offstage." Frank's friends laugh and Frank joins them, sitting back down on the floor.
"We were gonna just take a cardboard cut-out of him to Europe," Frank explains, cracking his knuckles, "save ourselves an airplane ticket. But we couldn't leave the fucker behind."
Mikey suddenly looks up for the first time since they got the bong out, meets Frank's eyes with a smile that shows a little teeth, and out of nowhere Frank's cheeks get hot.
"Where the fuck did those Cheetos go?" Frank asks, cutting his gaze to someone else.
Eventually one of Frank's friends starts to pass out propped up against the wall, so they decide to call it a night. He offers his bed to one of the girls and Mikey follows suit for the other one and her boyfriend. He and Frank only move enough to hit the light switch and grab the funky-smelling blanket from behind the TV before they collapse back on the mattress in their living room.
"Oh god," Frank moans, wiggling around a bit just to feel all his body parts intact, "what a fucking show, huh?"
"Mmm," Mikey agrees and tries to spread-eagle it, nailing Frank in the face, "totally awesome."
"Motherfucker," Frank says. He bites at Mikey's hand until he pulls it back and rolls away onto his side. "Pillows?"
"Ungh," Mikey replies, tossing his glasses a few feet away before groping around for a hoodie that he passes to Frank.
"Thanks, man." Frank balls it under his head and collapses onto his back. It's only then, with the high of the show worn off, that he feels the ache in his knees, the bruise forming on his back where he hit the stage. It feels good to not be moving anymore.
He thinks Mikey's already passed out and is focused loosely on the soft noise of cars passing by on the wet street outside when Mikey suddenly says, "We dropped out of college a year ago last month."
Frank startles at the noise, shaking the mattress slightly, and blinks up at the dark ceiling. "Yeah." He sucks his lip ring into his mouth, pops it back out again. "Shit, a year ago. My family was so fucking pissed."
Mikey snorts lightly, "'Least they weren't losing two sons to a shitty punk band."
Frank rolls his eyes, bumps the back of Mikey's ankle with his socked foot. "Don't even, you had Elena all over that shit."
Mikey hums in agreement. "Fuck, can you believe that was only last year? We've toured the country since then. We've been to Amsterdam." He laughs to himself. "We nearly lost Ray to Amsterdam."
Frank giggles too, remembering the passport shit-show that spring, and lets out a big sigh, smiling into the darkness. "This is for real, Mikey Way. For real for real."
Mikey rolls onto his back and looks over at Frank, eyes huge without his glasses on.
"What?" Frank feels kind of weird under Mikey's gaze and shoves at his shoulder half-heartedly. "I'm just, like, having a moment. Okay?"
Mikey pushes his hair out of his own face. "I have a lot of moments, dude. I get it."
They smile at each other in the dark for a minute before Mikey pulls the blanket back up and Frank suddenly gets a whiff of stale sweat and hair product, screwing his face up at the smell. "Aw, dude, you fucking reek. Did you change when we got home?"
Mikey squeezes his eyes shut while he smiles one of his biggest, stupidest, middle-of-the-night smiles and says "Nope!" brightly before tucking the blanket up around his ears.
"Asshole," Frank mutters, but there's not much feeling behind it.
The last thing Frank thinks before he passes out is that Mikey didn't bring that red-headed girl home, even though Frank saw them talking at the show. It strikes Frank that he never found out her name, even though he ate his Count Chocula across the kitchen table from her a few times.
.
It's a pale sort of dawn light outside when Frank wakes up and has to piss. He rolls out from under the blanket and stumbles into the bathroom, eyes still mostly closed while he does his thing.
He stops when he gets back to the living room to lift his hands up over his head and stretch, scratching at his stomach where his belt dug in and left marks in his sleep. He falls heavily down onto his knees on the mattress and only remembers Mikey's there when the lump under the blanket bounces slightly.
"Shit," Frank whispers and freezes, holds his breath, but Mikey doesn't move. His hair's all fucked up and he's half on his back, arm across his own chest and mouth slightly open.
Mikey looks so young, so different without his glasses on. His arm's kind of soft-looking where it's flung across his chest and he's got a patch under his chin where he forgot to shave. It has that look like it'd be rough, maybe prickly.
Frank blinks.
He totally just thought about kissing Mikey Way's neck.
Frank digs the heels of his hands into his eyes for a minute and takes a deep breath. He breathes evenly, watching lights dance behind his eyelids, and thinks about pushing Mikey's broad shoulders down into the mattress and grabbing the pale skin of his hips where his girl-jeans have slipped down, feeling the jut of Mikey's hipbones under his palms. And-well.
Frank drops his hands into his lap and looks hopelessly down at his actual roommate, the line of his jaw, eyelashes dark against his pale skin, long fingers splayed out across his own belly. Frank would totally hit that, holy shit.
Frank bounces up onto his feet, sucking in a breath. He's smiling, which is fucking stupid, it's ass-o'clock in the morning and he's got the beginnings of a hangover and he's never been into a dude before and it should be scary or stupid but it's just-it's Mikey. It doesn't feel anything but good. Frank stares down at Mikey for a few more moments, at the way the sharp and soft lines of his body seem to take a different shape when Frank thinks about fitting himself along them.
There's no fucking way Frank's going to go back to sleep now, so he steps into his sneakers, pulls on a hoodie, and grabs the Discman that's sitting on top of the TV before slipping out the door. It's dead out on the street, too early for commuters and too late for kids stumbling home from the bar. It's overcast and everything's wet from the rain the night before, cold enough for Frank to put his hood up and dig his hands in his pockets.
Frank pulls the plastic headphones on and flips through the mix CD as he thinks about 1998, wonders what Mikey imagined them doing, how Mikey saw the lines of Frank's body and thought yeah. Want that.
He's ten minutes into his walk when a shitty song from the new Blur album comes on the CD. Frank's thumb hovers instinctively over the "next" button in his pocket, but he smiles and doesn't press it this time, sneakers hitting the pavement, left-right.
.
"Living with Mikey Way is like taking one for the team," Frank says into the phone as he suffers through another afternoon kicked off his own computer so that Mikey can stalk his one million MySpace friends or whatever. Frank is still in his room and when Mikey gives him the finger without turning around, he can see the shifting muscles of Mikey's back through his t-shirt.
"Eh," Frank responds when Gerard asks if Mikey's making out with someone in a bed that's not his. Again. "He's making out, like, electronically. With everyone on the internet." Gerard laughs and Frank elaborates: "He's totally slipping the tongue to this chick with a uni-brow, I can see it from here. Did you know your brother was into cybersex?"
"It's not a uni-brow, it's make-up," Mikey says and Frank is already laughing as Gerard tells him about the time their parents banned Mikey from the computer because they accidentally saw an e-mail with some pretty explicit photos attached.
"How's writing going?" Frank asks after a while, idly working his bare toes through the slats on the back of the lawn chair at his desk to dig into the bare skin at the base of Mikey's spine.
Mikey bats his toes away but Frank comes back as soon as Mikey's hand is curled over the mouse again. "Yeah?" Frank asks around a smile while Gerard explains lovers making deals with the Devil.
"Shit!" Frank laughs when Mikey finally grabs Frank's foot and yanks hard, so Frank loses his balance and falls on his back on the mattress. Mikey climbs on top, bony knees digging in to all of Frank's soft parts as he grabs Frank's forearm. Gerard sighs like he always does when he thinks people aren't paying enough attention to him. "No! Gerard, I can't-" Frank tries to get his arm back, laughing, but he's still holding the phone in one hand.
"Oh fuck!" Frank drops the phone and kicks out when Mikey gives him an Indian sunburn, sharp flare of pain at the twist of his skin, lifting his hips off the bed until he tips Mikey over. Frank punches randomly at Mikey's scrawny arms and kind of eyes up where his too-small t-shirt stretches across his chest and pinches in at the armpit. Frank thinks about how much he'd miss tits if he was with Mikey, but the heat of Mikey's thighs tangled up with his and the giggle Mikey's got going on feel pretty good.
Frank meets Mikey's gaze, tries to ignore Gerard's long-suffering voice coming from somewhere in the folds of his bed sheets, and makes what he hopes is an if you kissed me right now I would totally let you face at his roommate.
Mikey rolls off and passes him the phone, so Frank thinks maybe he needs to work on his faces.
.
It's only a few weeks before Christmas, and that means it's less than a month before they fly to L.A. to start recording the new album. It feels kind of surreal and far away to Frank, cross-legged on his living room floor while the five of them dick around with new song ideas.
Frank's been plucking out notes, trying to follow along with the melody that Gerard's singing with gibberish not-yet-lyrics. Ray's boxers are sticking out of the top of his pants as he leans over his amp, fiddling with the feedback, while Otter sits at one of their wobbly lawn chairs and bangs his sticks idly off a lone snare drum between his knees.
Frank looks over to the kitchen where Mikey is stirring sugar into the coffee he's been carefully preparing for the last five minutes. He's still got his bass slung over his shoulder and when he leans forward to pick the mug up, the neck of his bass swings forward, knocking the entire cup into the sink before Mikey can curl his fingers around the handle.
"Oh," Mikey says sadly. Frank snorts.
"Bel-ieve," Gerard sings, on his back on the living room mattress, and frowns up at the ceiling. "Sle-eve?"
"Guys, I don't think L.A. is gonna be able to handle us," Otter says as he raps his sticks on the rim of his snare.
"Yeah," Gerard says, rolling over onto his stomach and sighing. "I need to go work on these more. Somewhere I can surround myself with lots of pictures of blood."
Frank smiles down at his guitar, picking at his D string. Fuck yeah, this is his band.
After Gerard and Otter leave, Ray hangs around a little bit to practice what they've been calling Gerard's 'pissed-off teenager song'. The lyrics are still in progress but it scratches an itch for all of them, kind of like closing the book on a chapter of their lives while spitting a big fuck you into its face at the same time.
Ray's solo for the song is killer, and Frank kind of forgets the chords he's supposed to be playing, hand stilling on the neck of his guitar while Ray closes his eyes and plays. He's banging his head a bit, biting his lip, and the way he bends the notes makes Frank's skin tingle. He never gets tired of watching Ray Toro shred his face off.
Frank's been thinking about Mikey's Pencey audition a lot lately. Watching Ray now, he thinks about My Chem shows he went to before he joined, about how he had to elbow kids out of his way constantly to keep a clear view of Ray, because Frank wanted to see just where his fingers landed on his guitar, to see if some of that would maybe rub off on Frank.
Frank blinks and looks over to where Mikey's fiddling away at his bass, unplugged, next to him. Mikey looks up at him and smiles, the line of his jaw softening and his eyes warm. Frank's face heats up and he closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the wall as his stomach clenches just trying to imagine Mikey feeling that way about Frank, eighteen and awkward on his own guitar. Damn.
Frank thinks blushing constantly has got to give this guy some idea that Frank wants him to make a move, already. Fuck.
"Good call, I'm pretty tired too," Ray says, and Frank opens his eyes to see him slipping his guitar into its case, smiling. "But it is pretty awesome not having someone's sleeping parents upstairs telling us to keep it down when we practice here."
"Only this princess, if he passes out on us," Mikey says, poking Frank in the stomach with his bass.
"Now why," Frank asks, wrapping his fingers around the neck of Mikey's bass and grinning, "would you go and fuck up your tuning like that?" He laughs and ignores Mikey's protests as he grabs randomly at the tuning pegs, twisting them in different directions.
"And I'll just leave my tuner right here?" Ray rolls his eyes, setting it down on the floor in front of them before propping the door open with his foot and hoisting his guitar and amp through it. "'Night!" he calls behind himself and Mikey and Frank echo it, giggling, as the door swings shut.
Frank feels warm and happy, likes that at the end of the day when everyone's gone home, he's here on the beer-stained carpet next to Mikey.
"Can you actually do it by ear?" He asks after a few minutes of watching Mikey pluck at the strings, turning the tuning pegs back and forth.
"Nah, just trying to look cool," Mikey admits before giving up and settling back against the wall. He stretches his legs out in front of him, toes turned in.
Frank strums an A chord, tinny with his guitar unplugged. It's quiet in their apartment, just the faint noise of a television coming from an apartment somewhere above them, the ticking of the radiator, and the hum of their fridge.
"Do you remember when you tried out for Pencey?" Frank asks, ignoring the heat prickling across his neck as he casually slides the chord up a few frets, turns it into an A-sharp.
Mikey huffs a little laugh, ducking his head down under his hair. "Yeah. Shit, dude, that was ages ago."
Frank hums in agreement, watches the way the little muscles in Mikey's forearm work while he plucks out some kind of a walking bass line, fingers stretched wide and making the tendons in his hands stand out in relief.
"I saw Chaz at our party. Remember him, he dated Sam? Used to hang out at Pipeline at lot?" Mikey doesn't say anything. Frank plays a shitty harmonic scale and stops with an exhale, closing his fingers over the strings and looking down at their feet. "He reminded me about it, I'd totally forgotten."
Mikey's still silent beside him and Frank thinks shit, that was too obvious, and forces a small laugh. "God, I was such a fucking poser then," he smiles into his lap. "Thought I was seriously hot shit because I went to more shows than the kid sitting next to me in chem class. What the fuck."
They both laugh softly that that. "Not to mention all the baggy t-shirts," Frank adds.
Mikey wiggles his toes in his grey socks. "Gerard went through the same phase, dude."
Frank remembers why he did it, and the feeling isn't a fantastic one. "Felt like I could hide what a fat-ass I was," he says with a dry laugh. "Thought throwing punches could do the same, too."
Mikey's quiet for a moment and Frank turns his head along the wall to look at him. He's got a few spots on his chin and his carefully-sprayed-up hair obscures his right eye, and Frank thinks yeah, okay, we all have our own shit.
"I thought you were cool," Mikey tells his feet. "You didn't take anybody's crap, even though you were the only kid in that group still in high school. Like you weren't ashamed, or whatever." Frank watches Mikey's face as he says it, and it makes his stomach flip over. Frank swallows.
Mikey looks up at him when Frank doesn't say anything, and Frank tries not to make any funny expressions or drop his gaze to Mikey's lips, just thinks I know you wanted me I know you wanted me I know you wanted me at Mikey's face like if he thinks it loud enough, Mikey'll hear.
Mikey's eyes slip down to Frank's mouth for a fraction of a section and Frank sucks in a breath, fingertips digging into the strings of his guitar, Yes, now, do it, but Mikey stands up quickly and pulls the strap of his bass over his shoulder, dropping it onto the mattress.
"I'm fucking wiped, dude," Mikey says and doesn't meet Frank's eyes when Frank frowns. "'Night?"
"Yeah, okay... 'night."
Frank sits in the living room for a while, looking at Mikey's bass on the mattress in front of him. He should maybe take a fucking hint already, but he's never been very good at that. He tries and he tries until things go his way or he gets knocked on his ass; either way he knows where he stands.
Frank doesn't move until Mikey's finished brushing his teeth, until he hears the creak of Mikey's bedsprings shifting under his weight and it's quiet except for Frank's breath. He thinks about just saying it, just putting it out there: I know you were into me, dude. He thinks about spreading his arms wide in front of Mikey's surprised face, looking up at him, saying here I fucking am and waiting.
Waiting.
Frank tongues his lip ring and sides his fingers down the neck of his guitar, and somewhere between the second and the twelfth fret, he realizes that he's waiting for Mikey to make a move. That audition was five fucking years ago, why would Mikey decide to make his move now?
Frank needs to get his shit in gear.
Part II