Preaching to Sinners on the End of the World (2/?) part 2
Title: Preaching to Sinners on the End of the World (2/?) part 2
Author: lalaljay
Pairing: outcast!self-conscious!Frank/popular!Gerard
Rating: Mature/NC-17ish
Warning: Language (if that even counts), Brief conversation about suicide (don't worry I don't kill anyone off), the things NC-17 would have you assume
Disclaimer: I've never bought a group of people because slavery is bad
Summary: A high school AU where I basically decided to turn the cliches into ash. In which Gerard's in the closet and Frank and him begin an unofficial friends with benefits situation that becomes more complicated than either were prepared for
( Chapter 1)
( Part 1)
If Frank ever openly admitted how on edge he was to see Gerard at school the next day, there would be a need for a psychological evaluation. Exactly how they would end up in the same place at the same time was a variable all its own and Frank didn’t care much for that, so he was mainly wondering what would happen, if anything happened. Not what, but if, as he mentally corrected himself for the umpteenth time during his 4th hour class when his thoughts escaped him. He wasn’t naïve enough to assume they’d be chatting up and down the halls or anything, and he wasn’t nearly optimistic enough to think Gerard would address him in front of his amazingly cool, upper class, group of infallibly better and much more publicly appealing legion of friends that could care less about him. But Frank was bitter. He definitely had that emotion in check. Pardon him for being a gentleman, but from Frank’s side of the spectrum, common courtesy was that if someone’s tongue made any contact with another person’s teeth, then after the act, one would be required to acknowledge the contributing party by name at least once in a 12-hour period. Frank was much too classy for this silver platter of bullshit.
The bell for class ending rang, and Frank grabbed his unopened textbook and tried to melt into the flock of people that shuffled to the door. He tried to clear out all the annoying thoughts that clung at his imagination and beckoned for him to enter the never ending story of “Worst Case Scenario” about maybe being the butt of some elaborate joke, because really? There were jokes, there were elaborate jokes, and then there was going out in a hailstorm of fireworks with confetti and back up dancers all to watch someone get posttraumatic stress disorder until they grew up having sex with farm animals because society had scarred them. The issue, paranoia helpfully provided in its grainy and overpowering voice, was that Frank actually didn’t know Gerard well enough to confidently say what he was capable of. He’d known him for a bit over three weeks, and, as much as Frank’s subconscious wanted to act as if talking as if they’d known each other for a while equaled them knowing each other for a while - it didn’t. Also, any guy that watched as many horror movies as Gerard claimed to have watched, but still had the brain capacity to handle Morrissey’s metaphors had all the potential to feed both good and evil.
On way to his locker, Frank felt the oh-too-familiar “accidentally” yet skillfully placed foot kicking at his ankles and sending him to the floor on hands and knees. Originally, he only planned to stay like that for a short second, maybe catch his breath, work up a rational Hate List in order of last name and most recent unprovoked torment as though he were a librarian of rage and passive aggression. Suddenly, another foot (he hoped it was the same person because he was in no mood for this to become a team event) kicked at his ass so hard he lost his balance and fumbled, his face sliding against the linoleum floor.
“Get off your knees, your boyfriend isn’t around.” Then the speaking voice and the voice laughing alongside the former continued down the hall in all their glory of drive by teen bullying.
Frank grabbed at his textbook and backpack before another useless bystander doing absolutely nothing could possibly get the balls to help him. While rubbing at the side of his cheek, Frank looked up to watch the two walk away - but they hadn’t, not yet, because they paused to talk to their good ol’ pal Gerard.
Who had been standing, watching, the entire time.
And did nothing.
He was looking at Frank out of the corner of his eye, mouth still moving along with the conversation and smiling - probably at all the right parts because that was the kind of douche like thing he did; but besides that, he didn’t make anything even almost obvious. If Frank wasn’t trying to see where ‘Way’ would fit in his Hate List while simultaneously hoping to set whatever fragment of a soul Gerard had on fire, he might not have noticed either.
God willing he hoped Gerard was flexible enough to go fuck himself.
*********************
The final bell ringing wasn’t much of a highlight to the day either, because as Frank stormed off campus (unaccompanied by the usual group of people that walked home), it hit him that it was so. Fucking. Cold. Then Frank started getting mad about that instead of telling himself to be not-mad about the fact Gerard stood and watched what happened all the time. Gerard wasn’t his fucking dad and Frank could stand up for his own fucking self. Frank stuffed his hands deeper into his coat and nuzzled into the collar because he wasn’t mad, it was only that he thought they were friends now, specifically friends that pretended to have a smidgen of concern when the other was knocked on hands and knees like a misbehaving dog. Of course though, fucking Jersey and its stupid biting weather made Frank’s emotions manifest itself into a clear confusion of being angry, even a little nervous that Gerard had said something to one of his apparently much more important friends.
Everything was getting too fast for Frank to catch up to, and if he searched, he might have even partially wished he were back in the days where no one talked to him because there was never any petty high school drama between him and himself alone. Such as in cases of right now, he wasn’t trying to decipher any internal issues about himself directly… all Frank wanted to do was fight hypothermia and his possible dying on the concrete - a simple man of simple tastes was he.
Of course, nothing can ever stay simple, because this was real life and not an episode of Degrassi, because it wouldn’t be Frank’s life if the metal on metal grinding of Gerard’s car wasn’t getting louder behind him.
“You’re going to die out here if you’re walking home,” Gerard said through the lowered passenger window, as if people really began conversations like that.
“Yup.” Frank continued along the sidewalk. He’d rather die than admit the great chance that he’d face his demise less than two miles away from his school. Like, what if they put up a memorial for him by the school, and then people started defacing it all the time as some part of a tradition when they walked off campus. Deface the Funeral sounded terrifying, but it was catchy sounding and becoming an entertaining game was not in Frank’s vision at all.
“Fine, let me rephrase that - can I take you home? Unless besides the cold there’s a specific reason you look so pissed to be talking to me right now.”
“I’m not pissed, I’m trying to walk, and you’re creepily coasting by like you plan to kidnap me anyway so I don’t think you have any room to talk.”
While Frank didn’t have his license yet, he was at least three quarters positive that Gerard speeding up abruptly then doing a sharp turn on the sidewalk to block Frank’s path definitely violated a traffic law or two. Gerard reached over to the passenger side door and pushed it open, almost hitting Frank in the face with the side mirror.
“If I was trying to kidnap anyone I’d be a lot more assertive, now stop pouting and come on all ready.”
And Frank really wanted to stand his ground on the mad-not-mad foundation he was poised atop of, and he also really wanted to see what would happen if he told Gerard to fuck off, but Frank’s soul was catching the common cold and he decided who the hell would get hurt if he accepted a ride home. The self-assured, smug grin that Gerard made when Frank lugged his things in after him into the car took a figurative shit on his pride, so Frank slammed the door shut.
“Your friends are really cool people,” he spoke as levelly as he could while playing with the radio dial. “Next time they knock my shit on the ground can you make sure to give them a pat on the back from me? I want them to know I appreciate them as well.”
Gerard groaned and Frank tried not to glare because, well, what else would he want to talk about? “It wasn’t like I fucking congratulated them for being douchebags, but I can’t exactly swoop in like the Powerpuff Girls every time injustice hits the city of Townsville.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” Frank said, turning the dial sharply. He didn’t need a savior, he was only recently getting into the feeling of having friends (really just friend, with no S), and it was muddling with the thoughts he’d had before that he’d tried - successfully, for the most part - to get out of. Everything was confusing and sensitive; he wasn’t keen on having to deal with sorting it all out already, so he wanted a little assistance.
“Then all’s fine isn’t it? I could never be a Powerpuff Girl anyway, sugar and spice and everything nice sounds like it would taste terrible.”
By complete accident of Frank’s body being much more temperamental than his mouth, Frank’s hand twisted too hard on the radio dial and yanked it from its place. “Oh,” he said mainly to cover the way that he didn’t feel too bad about the mental image of pulling the car to shreds.
“Dude!” Gerard swerved the wheel as he stared down with gaping mouth at the empty place, almost veering them off into a field. “Frank, what the hell!”
A serious downside of Frank’s mistake was that Gerard was trying to show serious upset emotions about what happened, but the broken dial had them forced to listening to some weird pop station that was killing any hope of Frank taking Gerard’s sadness in seriousness. When Gerard dropped his head on the steering wheel and almost murdered them both by nearly hitting a stop sign, the background sound of “What you want is some boombastic, romantic, fantastic lover, Shaggy, Mr. Lover” kind of made the possibility of them dying seem a fun, boombastic adventure.
“My bad, I didn’t mean to… yeah.”
The car rolled to a stop less than a block from Frank’s house.
Taking one hand off the wheel to rub against his face in exasperation, Gerard made a calm expel of breath. “No, no I get it. Ugh damn, okay I’ll tell them to lay off, is that fine? Will that make you not want to break anything else?”
Almost embarrassingly quickly, Frank’s not-mad position was changing to one of actual non-anger, of which he thought distantly he ought to be more ashamed, but he was finding it hard to care. He smiled and looked down at the hand that was playing with the broken button. “Fighting crime, trying to save the world, here they come just in time-”
“The motherfucking Powerpuff girls,” Gerard chimed in, doing jazz hands against the steering wheel.
Frank looked out at the chilled over windshield.“We really are okay then, right?” He wanted to say his mind betrayed him by bringing up that kissing predicament, but it isn’t betrayal when all Frank could think about, when he wasn’t consciously trying not to, was the fact that he wanted to do it again. He didn’t even care if he never knew what it meant nor was “supposed to mean” based on everybody’s ideals, all he wanted was to do.
“Like you said, why wouldn’t we be?” The grip Gerard had on the wheel grew a bit tighter, knuckles a bit whiter, hardly noticeable, but still there.
“Well.” Frank took a deep breath. “Well because I don’t know if it was, or I mean is going to be a onetime thing, I’m just… confused, mainly.”
Gerard shrugged but started up the engine, keeping control of the car’s direction for once. “Doesn’t have to be,” he spoke without looking away from the street ahead, which Frank was fine with since his face more or less lit up red.
“Your friends actually scare the shit out of me though, like I think they all want to kill me.”
“Fuck ‘em then, they don’t control what I choose to do, you know?” the confidence in the sentence dropped to a quieter tone. “If you don’t, I mean, if we don’t tell anyone then it doesn’t matter, right? What they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em.” he smiled hopefully, willing Frank silently to smile along.
Frank did so, as he felt he should have. “I thought for a bit it was a joke, what happened and all.” The pop music on the radio was helpfully not serious enough to keep Frank rattling off all those gloriously paranoid thoughts that kept him awake for an extra hour the night before.
“That’d be a pretty shitty joke though, wouldn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Frank agreed, “That’s why I thought it was happening.”
Gerard slowed his car in Frank’s driveway, his fingers drumming on the wheel in static, panicked beats. “I’m not going to try and humiliate someone for something like that, you know? Even if I wanted to I don’t think I could.”
“Because you’re not an asshole?” Frank provided.
“Yes, because I pride myself on not being an asshole, and because I don’t really get how my kissing you would embarrass you, it doesn’t make any sense. Say… alright. So say I was a polar bear, and I’d left my habitat and attacked your whole family on an ice fishing trip, the EMTs wouldn’t be like “Oh that’s so funny, way to get your ass kicked,” then high five the polar bear.” The most glorious thing was that Gerard seemed focused so hard as if this was a normal analogy. “Now if you were a bad kisser on the other hand, well that’s a completely different whirlwind of opportunities.”
Frank shook his head. “Nope, shut up, I’m only going to pretend I can hear the compliment part of that sentence, sorry.”
“If that were the case, like I’d make a spirit day assembly awarded solely to watching you squirm, school colors and banners and frightened teenage tears,” Gerard zoned out as the internal portrait took form in his mind. Frank didn’t want to know how it looked.
“No spirit assemblies for you, you just said I’m a good kisser.” Frank deserved so many Eagle Scout badges lately, he couldn’t even count.
Gerard turned, and reached out slightly for Frank’s chin. “Yeah, you are. Congratulations.” Frank had been in training all day at school, convincing his body that in case anything happened, he was forbidden from becoming a stupidly giddy little girl, so he calmly kissed Gerard back when he pressed his mouth against his, and he even managed not to become too attached so his mom wouldn't come outside and see them. For a rookie at normality, he thought he was learning pretty quickly. Then again, if the catalyst were kissing Gerard, then yeah, he’d work hard to get it right.
( Chapter 3)
Author: lalaljay
Pairing: outcast!self-conscious!Frank/popular!Gerard
Rating: Mature/NC-17ish
Warning: Language (if that even counts), Brief conversation about suicide (don't worry I don't kill anyone off), the things NC-17 would have you assume
Disclaimer: I've never bought a group of people because slavery is bad
Summary: A high school AU where I basically decided to turn the cliches into ash. In which Gerard's in the closet and Frank and him begin an unofficial friends with benefits situation that becomes more complicated than either were prepared for
( Chapter 1)
( Part 1)
If Frank ever openly admitted how on edge he was to see Gerard at school the next day, there would be a need for a psychological evaluation. Exactly how they would end up in the same place at the same time was a variable all its own and Frank didn’t care much for that, so he was mainly wondering what would happen, if anything happened. Not what, but if, as he mentally corrected himself for the umpteenth time during his 4th hour class when his thoughts escaped him. He wasn’t naïve enough to assume they’d be chatting up and down the halls or anything, and he wasn’t nearly optimistic enough to think Gerard would address him in front of his amazingly cool, upper class, group of infallibly better and much more publicly appealing legion of friends that could care less about him. But Frank was bitter. He definitely had that emotion in check. Pardon him for being a gentleman, but from Frank’s side of the spectrum, common courtesy was that if someone’s tongue made any contact with another person’s teeth, then after the act, one would be required to acknowledge the contributing party by name at least once in a 12-hour period. Frank was much too classy for this silver platter of bullshit.
The bell for class ending rang, and Frank grabbed his unopened textbook and tried to melt into the flock of people that shuffled to the door. He tried to clear out all the annoying thoughts that clung at his imagination and beckoned for him to enter the never ending story of “Worst Case Scenario” about maybe being the butt of some elaborate joke, because really? There were jokes, there were elaborate jokes, and then there was going out in a hailstorm of fireworks with confetti and back up dancers all to watch someone get posttraumatic stress disorder until they grew up having sex with farm animals because society had scarred them. The issue, paranoia helpfully provided in its grainy and overpowering voice, was that Frank actually didn’t know Gerard well enough to confidently say what he was capable of. He’d known him for a bit over three weeks, and, as much as Frank’s subconscious wanted to act as if talking as if they’d known each other for a while equaled them knowing each other for a while - it didn’t. Also, any guy that watched as many horror movies as Gerard claimed to have watched, but still had the brain capacity to handle Morrissey’s metaphors had all the potential to feed both good and evil.
On way to his locker, Frank felt the oh-too-familiar “accidentally” yet skillfully placed foot kicking at his ankles and sending him to the floor on hands and knees. Originally, he only planned to stay like that for a short second, maybe catch his breath, work up a rational Hate List in order of last name and most recent unprovoked torment as though he were a librarian of rage and passive aggression. Suddenly, another foot (he hoped it was the same person because he was in no mood for this to become a team event) kicked at his ass so hard he lost his balance and fumbled, his face sliding against the linoleum floor.
“Get off your knees, your boyfriend isn’t around.” Then the speaking voice and the voice laughing alongside the former continued down the hall in all their glory of drive by teen bullying.
Frank grabbed at his textbook and backpack before another useless bystander doing absolutely nothing could possibly get the balls to help him. While rubbing at the side of his cheek, Frank looked up to watch the two walk away - but they hadn’t, not yet, because they paused to talk to their good ol’ pal Gerard.
Who had been standing, watching, the entire time.
And did nothing.
He was looking at Frank out of the corner of his eye, mouth still moving along with the conversation and smiling - probably at all the right parts because that was the kind of douche like thing he did; but besides that, he didn’t make anything even almost obvious. If Frank wasn’t trying to see where ‘Way’ would fit in his Hate List while simultaneously hoping to set whatever fragment of a soul Gerard had on fire, he might not have noticed either.
God willing he hoped Gerard was flexible enough to go fuck himself.
*********************
The final bell ringing wasn’t much of a highlight to the day either, because as Frank stormed off campus (unaccompanied by the usual group of people that walked home), it hit him that it was so. Fucking. Cold. Then Frank started getting mad about that instead of telling himself to be not-mad about the fact Gerard stood and watched what happened all the time. Gerard wasn’t his fucking dad and Frank could stand up for his own fucking self. Frank stuffed his hands deeper into his coat and nuzzled into the collar because he wasn’t mad, it was only that he thought they were friends now, specifically friends that pretended to have a smidgen of concern when the other was knocked on hands and knees like a misbehaving dog. Of course though, fucking Jersey and its stupid biting weather made Frank’s emotions manifest itself into a clear confusion of being angry, even a little nervous that Gerard had said something to one of his apparently much more important friends.
Everything was getting too fast for Frank to catch up to, and if he searched, he might have even partially wished he were back in the days where no one talked to him because there was never any petty high school drama between him and himself alone. Such as in cases of right now, he wasn’t trying to decipher any internal issues about himself directly… all Frank wanted to do was fight hypothermia and his possible dying on the concrete - a simple man of simple tastes was he.
Of course, nothing can ever stay simple, because this was real life and not an episode of Degrassi, because it wouldn’t be Frank’s life if the metal on metal grinding of Gerard’s car wasn’t getting louder behind him.
“You’re going to die out here if you’re walking home,” Gerard said through the lowered passenger window, as if people really began conversations like that.
“Yup.” Frank continued along the sidewalk. He’d rather die than admit the great chance that he’d face his demise less than two miles away from his school. Like, what if they put up a memorial for him by the school, and then people started defacing it all the time as some part of a tradition when they walked off campus. Deface the Funeral sounded terrifying, but it was catchy sounding and becoming an entertaining game was not in Frank’s vision at all.
“Fine, let me rephrase that - can I take you home? Unless besides the cold there’s a specific reason you look so pissed to be talking to me right now.”
“I’m not pissed, I’m trying to walk, and you’re creepily coasting by like you plan to kidnap me anyway so I don’t think you have any room to talk.”
While Frank didn’t have his license yet, he was at least three quarters positive that Gerard speeding up abruptly then doing a sharp turn on the sidewalk to block Frank’s path definitely violated a traffic law or two. Gerard reached over to the passenger side door and pushed it open, almost hitting Frank in the face with the side mirror.
“If I was trying to kidnap anyone I’d be a lot more assertive, now stop pouting and come on all ready.”
And Frank really wanted to stand his ground on the mad-not-mad foundation he was poised atop of, and he also really wanted to see what would happen if he told Gerard to fuck off, but Frank’s soul was catching the common cold and he decided who the hell would get hurt if he accepted a ride home. The self-assured, smug grin that Gerard made when Frank lugged his things in after him into the car took a figurative shit on his pride, so Frank slammed the door shut.
“Your friends are really cool people,” he spoke as levelly as he could while playing with the radio dial. “Next time they knock my shit on the ground can you make sure to give them a pat on the back from me? I want them to know I appreciate them as well.”
Gerard groaned and Frank tried not to glare because, well, what else would he want to talk about? “It wasn’t like I fucking congratulated them for being douchebags, but I can’t exactly swoop in like the Powerpuff Girls every time injustice hits the city of Townsville.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” Frank said, turning the dial sharply. He didn’t need a savior, he was only recently getting into the feeling of having friends (really just friend, with no S), and it was muddling with the thoughts he’d had before that he’d tried - successfully, for the most part - to get out of. Everything was confusing and sensitive; he wasn’t keen on having to deal with sorting it all out already, so he wanted a little assistance.
“Then all’s fine isn’t it? I could never be a Powerpuff Girl anyway, sugar and spice and everything nice sounds like it would taste terrible.”
By complete accident of Frank’s body being much more temperamental than his mouth, Frank’s hand twisted too hard on the radio dial and yanked it from its place. “Oh,” he said mainly to cover the way that he didn’t feel too bad about the mental image of pulling the car to shreds.
“Dude!” Gerard swerved the wheel as he stared down with gaping mouth at the empty place, almost veering them off into a field. “Frank, what the hell!”
A serious downside of Frank’s mistake was that Gerard was trying to show serious upset emotions about what happened, but the broken dial had them forced to listening to some weird pop station that was killing any hope of Frank taking Gerard’s sadness in seriousness. When Gerard dropped his head on the steering wheel and almost murdered them both by nearly hitting a stop sign, the background sound of “What you want is some boombastic, romantic, fantastic lover, Shaggy, Mr. Lover” kind of made the possibility of them dying seem a fun, boombastic adventure.
“My bad, I didn’t mean to… yeah.”
The car rolled to a stop less than a block from Frank’s house.
Taking one hand off the wheel to rub against his face in exasperation, Gerard made a calm expel of breath. “No, no I get it. Ugh damn, okay I’ll tell them to lay off, is that fine? Will that make you not want to break anything else?”
Almost embarrassingly quickly, Frank’s not-mad position was changing to one of actual non-anger, of which he thought distantly he ought to be more ashamed, but he was finding it hard to care. He smiled and looked down at the hand that was playing with the broken button. “Fighting crime, trying to save the world, here they come just in time-”
“The motherfucking Powerpuff girls,” Gerard chimed in, doing jazz hands against the steering wheel.
Frank looked out at the chilled over windshield.“We really are okay then, right?” He wanted to say his mind betrayed him by bringing up that kissing predicament, but it isn’t betrayal when all Frank could think about, when he wasn’t consciously trying not to, was the fact that he wanted to do it again. He didn’t even care if he never knew what it meant nor was “supposed to mean” based on everybody’s ideals, all he wanted was to do.
“Like you said, why wouldn’t we be?” The grip Gerard had on the wheel grew a bit tighter, knuckles a bit whiter, hardly noticeable, but still there.
“Well.” Frank took a deep breath. “Well because I don’t know if it was, or I mean is going to be a onetime thing, I’m just… confused, mainly.”
Gerard shrugged but started up the engine, keeping control of the car’s direction for once. “Doesn’t have to be,” he spoke without looking away from the street ahead, which Frank was fine with since his face more or less lit up red.
“Your friends actually scare the shit out of me though, like I think they all want to kill me.”
“Fuck ‘em then, they don’t control what I choose to do, you know?” the confidence in the sentence dropped to a quieter tone. “If you don’t, I mean, if we don’t tell anyone then it doesn’t matter, right? What they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em.” he smiled hopefully, willing Frank silently to smile along.
Frank did so, as he felt he should have. “I thought for a bit it was a joke, what happened and all.” The pop music on the radio was helpfully not serious enough to keep Frank rattling off all those gloriously paranoid thoughts that kept him awake for an extra hour the night before.
“That’d be a pretty shitty joke though, wouldn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Frank agreed, “That’s why I thought it was happening.”
Gerard slowed his car in Frank’s driveway, his fingers drumming on the wheel in static, panicked beats. “I’m not going to try and humiliate someone for something like that, you know? Even if I wanted to I don’t think I could.”
“Because you’re not an asshole?” Frank provided.
“Yes, because I pride myself on not being an asshole, and because I don’t really get how my kissing you would embarrass you, it doesn’t make any sense. Say… alright. So say I was a polar bear, and I’d left my habitat and attacked your whole family on an ice fishing trip, the EMTs wouldn’t be like “Oh that’s so funny, way to get your ass kicked,” then high five the polar bear.” The most glorious thing was that Gerard seemed focused so hard as if this was a normal analogy. “Now if you were a bad kisser on the other hand, well that’s a completely different whirlwind of opportunities.”
Frank shook his head. “Nope, shut up, I’m only going to pretend I can hear the compliment part of that sentence, sorry.”
“If that were the case, like I’d make a spirit day assembly awarded solely to watching you squirm, school colors and banners and frightened teenage tears,” Gerard zoned out as the internal portrait took form in his mind. Frank didn’t want to know how it looked.
“No spirit assemblies for you, you just said I’m a good kisser.” Frank deserved so many Eagle Scout badges lately, he couldn’t even count.
Gerard turned, and reached out slightly for Frank’s chin. “Yeah, you are. Congratulations.” Frank had been in training all day at school, convincing his body that in case anything happened, he was forbidden from becoming a stupidly giddy little girl, so he calmly kissed Gerard back when he pressed his mouth against his, and he even managed not to become too attached so his mom wouldn't come outside and see them. For a rookie at normality, he thought he was learning pretty quickly. Then again, if the catalyst were kissing Gerard, then yeah, he’d work hard to get it right.
( Chapter 3)