Fluffy Fluff
Chapter 1: The Highway
When did they start driving? Frank could barely remember. Was it Thursday? It could have been Thursday. It could have been forever and he wouldn’t have cared. He liked the way the afternoon light of the summer was streaming through the window and would be for at least the next few hours. He lay with his legs stretched out across the seat, his head resting in Bob’s lap and his worn-out old Converse low-tops resting on the black dashboard in front of him that was radiating from the heat of the day.
They had driven past the “Welcome to New Jersey: The Garden State” sign an hour or so back. Frank thought the fact that Jersey was called the Garden State was possibly the biggest oxymoron of all time. The skyline was nothing but pollution and smog and orange and yellow, all blended together with black puffs that factories were expelling into the sky. You couldn’t open your windows for fear of the heat, and, according to some people, the smell. Jersey-born, Frank was immune to it, but he had to admit that when he returned home from anywhere he could smell the difference. The sun was still shining that certain way that it only does on particularly hazy afternoons, growing up in the summer in the armpit of America with nothing but a Marlboro hanging out of the corner of your mouth and your friends to guide you. Frank didn’t think he’d seen a blue sky in Jersey in years. He thought it was beautiful.
He had grown up near the highway and he loved the grimy streets and the smog and he loved the way that he could always hear the sounds of a thousand cars and trains and people from his window at night when he left it open because air conditioning was too expensive. It was hard for him not to associate the highway with Jersey summers. Frank had always loved the highway, the way it seemed to stretch on forever if you looked at it right. He could remember the times he would find himself walking along the highway after leaving a party or a show or a movie early by himself to walk and think. Sometimes Bob was the only one who would walk with him, the lights blinding them, the sounds of the strip malls hollowing out their ears, the smell burning their throats, all ugly and overused. It still amazed him that so concentrated a place could hold so much emotion for him and so much of his past.
Frank turned his head from his reminiscing to look at the reason he was driving to begin with: the blonde man sitting in the driver’s seat, resting one hand on the wheel and the other on Frank’s chest. Bob Bryar. He was Frank’s best friend, his soul mate, and something even more. They had spent so many summer nights spilling their souls to one another, so many hours talking and thinking and analyzing everything and everyone around them. Throughout their emotionally charged teenage years, ever since they were 13, they’d been loving and fighting and hating, but they’d always managed to find their way back to each other. Frank always figured it was because he and Bob belonged to and with each other, and both of them were too stubborn to have it any other way.
He remembered the worst fight they ever had, when Frank was 16 and Bob was 17. He couldn’t even remember why; the reason was so insignificant, and yet they were separated for 3 months. And he could remember the sad night in November when he was just about to give up and a familiar face appeared at his door. He opened the door and found himself breaking down; Bob let himself in and they talked all night until Frank fell asleep on his floor and later when he woke up in his bed, the covers were all tucked around him and Bob was watching him sleep, holding him like he was the only thing in the world that mattered. He remembered when he was 18 and Bob was 19 and had finally saved enough money to buy a car and he made sure it had bench seats just so that Frank would be able to rest his head in Bob’s lap while he was driving, like he was doing now.
He remembered that afternoon last July when it was raining like it was never going to stop, and he passed the time in Bob’s room, playing Bob songs that he had finally realized were all for him. And then Bob took him by surprise and kissed him, full on the mouth and with so much passion that Frank felt it would have been unfair not to kiss back. It didn’t help that the way they were holding each other made Frank never want to let go.
And Frank just ran. He ran out of Bob’s apartment and never looked back. All he could do was run, he’d been running his whole life, running away from what he and Bob could have always been, what they would have always been if it hadn’t been for this fear of Frank’s. It wasn’t that he was unsure about his sexuality; he knew he was gay, but there was something about his relationship with Bob that absolutely scared the shit out of him. It scared him how much he needed him, how he knew he wouldn’t be able to go on if anything happened to Bob. He’d always thought of himself as an independent person and yet he knew that he would be nothing without Bob to take care of him.
After that he’d built a new life, built a new circle of people around him to protect him from the sadness that threatened to consume him every day. He was changed, he was scarred, he thought he had finally lost Bob for good and it killed him. And Frank remembered, with a strange kind of elated sadness, the night in January, 6 months later, when Bob called him and apologized for everything that had happened. And strangely enough, they were friends again simply because they needed each other so badly that nothing else mattered.
So many memories were flooding his mind, yet he let them go before they could force him to feel anything other than what he was feeling now: euphoric. Sometimes he could look back to the times when they had really, truly hated each other and remember the horrible things that they’d said and done and feel sick to his stomach. The only thing he could do was remember now, remember how just the other night Bob had taken his face in his big warm hands, tilted it up to look at him and said, “We’re going to get it right this time.”
Now it was June, and he and Bob had gotten into Bob’s old car with the intention of going on a sort of “road trip”, driving on the highway to nowhere in particular until they found where they were going. They were at a place in their relationship where Frank was unsure as to what they would do next, if they would ever be able to love each other properly without getting hurt. Frank wondered if Bob had ruined him in a way. He’d had chances at other relationships but had always managed to end them badly, sometimes before they began. Frank and Bob were a single package He was the little one, the talkative one, the materialistic one, the shallow one with no visible emotions, but who was still the most emotional one. Bob was big and serious and quiet around most people. They balanced each other out perfectly, but for some reason (maybe the fact that he might lose Bob for good if their relationship failed) Frank was too scared to ever make a move.
And besides, the life the Frank had built when he thought he had lost Bob for good wasn’t going to disappear. He’d made ties that he would feel guilty about losing, promises he would feel guilty about breaking. To top it all off, he had a boyfriend, Gerard Way. Gerard was attractive and smart and everything Frank had always wanted, but he wasn’t Bob. And it wasn’t as if Bob hadn’t been with other people as well.
Bob’s bright blue eyes were focused on the road ahead but Frank was able to tell that Bob was thinking about the same things as he was. He assumed they would pull over soon to sleep or buy coffee and cigarettes, but for now, they would just have to keep driving.