FIC: Third Wheel
Title: Third Wheel
Author: 7iris
Band: MCR
Pairing/Rating: Bob/Frank/Jamia, NC-17
Summary: Bob is the third wheel. Set a few years in the future.
Length:~5,000 words
Disclaimer: I am making this shit up.
A/N: This goes out to Sars over at Tomato Nation, even though she'd probably be faintly horrified by the fact that one of her usage peeves inspired threesome RPS kidfic.
When Jamia got pregnant, Bob was the first person Frank told.
Mostly because Bob was the only other person awake on the bus. He was standing in the kitchen-space, trying to ignore Frank's muffled laughter from the back and debating whether he was hungry enough to eat one of the vegan microwave burritos. The door to the back lounge open, and he turned, and Frank hurled himself into his arms.
Bob went down like a ton of bricks, because he really hadn't been expecting that, and also because Frank had been moving even faster than usual.
Frank sat up and straddled Bob's waist. He was smiling, his face almost incandescent with happiness.
"That was Bob," he said into his cell phone. "I'm going to tell him. Wait, do you want to tell him? No, here, you should totally tell him!"
Frank held the phone to Bob's ear.
"Um, hi," Bob said.
"Hi," Jamia said, laughing.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"No, it's cool-it's not like Frank's going to keep this a secret. I'm pregnant."
"Oh," Bob said. He sat up; it didn't seem like the kind of conversation he should have flat on his back. Frank shifted around and ended up in his lap, and Bob didn't push him off. "That's, wow-Congratulations, you guys. That is awesome."
Bob hadn't thought it was possible, but Frank's smile got even brighter.
::
Jamia didn't come back on tour with them when they got back to the States.
"I have thrown up in the bus bathrooms before, and I am not doing that for the next three months," she said, and everyone completely sympathized with that.
They finished the tour for the fourth album a couple of weeks before Christmas, which meant Frank could be home for the last trimester. The last shows were in Jersey, and Bob stayed there for a week, admiring Jamia's glow and laughing at Frank's giddiness and then getting roped into painting the mural Gerard designed for the nursery.
Gerard sketched it out on the walls and assigned everyone blocks of solid color to paint while he followed after them and did the shading and details.
"I don't remember interior decorating being part of my job description," Bob said, carefully filling in a swirl with Sapphire Sparkle.
"No one ever does," Mikey said.
It turned out really nice, an underwater scene, dreamy and vivid and much less disturbing than Bob had feared. Even the giant squid in the corner looked adorable rather than scary. Jamia got all teary-eyed and hugged them, and then called them assholes for making her cry.
When he got back to Chicago, his apartment seemed strangely quiet and empty, but then, it always did coming off a tour.
::
After the holidays, Frank started calling several times a week to discuss in mind-numbing detail the latest concerns of an expectant father. Or at least that's what Bob assumed he was talking about; mostly he just let Frank ramble on while he defrosted his freezer and watched the Bulls lose, grunting in the appropriate places. It was almost like being on tour again.
In February, Frank called and said the doctor had put Jamia on bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy because of complications. Bob turned the basketball game off and listened. Frank sounded like he was making an effort to keep his voice normal, but Bob could hear the cracks in it.
"Hey," he said, when Frank stopped talking. "You said the doctor's not worried, right? It's going to be fine."
"Right, right," Frank said half-heartedly, and Bob was suddenly conscious of how far apart they really were. "Hey, listen, I gotta, um...Here, talk to Jamia for second, okay?" he said and passed the phone off.
"Hi," Bob said. "How are you?"
"Bored," Jamia said, so he told her about the disaster of a punk band he'd seen the week before.
"Seriously, all that was missing was an electrical fire," he said, and she was still laughing when she hung up.
Bob knew exactly how much bed-rest sucked, so after that, he started calling Jamia every couple of days, if Frank didn't hand the phone over when he called. He didn't see that many hilariously disastrous bands, but told her about random shit that happened during the week, and what he thought was going on in the Korean soap opera he'd accidentally become addicted to. When he had a boring day, he told her stories about Frank from the tours she hadn't been on, the good, embarrassing stories that he'd been saving up for blackmail purposes. It balanced itself out, though, since she told him the embarrassing stories from before he knew them.
Then one day she called him and said, "You have to come back. Frank is suddenly obsessed with home improvement projects. He wants to rent power tools. Someone is going to lose an eye!"
She was laughing a little when she said it, but she sounded like she meant it a little, too, and she didn't argue when Bob said, "Okay."
::
He let Frank hug him at the door, and kissed Jamia's cheek, and talked about the flight and how she was feeling. Frank fluttered around the room, straightening things up and moving things around until Jamia asked him to get her a glass of water.
When he'd left, Jamia said, "Oh my god, you have to get him out of the house. He is driving me crazy."
"Is he hovering?"
"Like a hummingbird on crack."
Bob laughed, and made Frank take him to the third closest record store. Frank only resisted a little, and he made it about two hours before he started fondling his cell phone like he really wanted to make a call. Bob relented at that point and let him go home.
"Yes, I'm still alive," Jamia said when they got back.
Frank shut his mouth and showed her the CDs he'd gotten.
"Hey, where are you staying?" she asked as she flipped through the albums.
"Uh, the Marriott, I guess?" Bob said. He hadn't really planned that far ahead, but he didn't think February was the high season in Jersey.
"No, dude, stay with us!" Frank said.
Bob looked at Jamia, and she smiled. "It's cool. Stay with us."
So he did.
::
In the morning, Frank dragged him into the backyard to talk about his home improvement project.
"I want to build a deck!" he said, and spent ten minutes waving his hands around and describing the design and the fake wood made out of recycled plastic bags that he was going to use.
Bob nodded along and watched his breath freeze in the air.
When he finally wound down, Bob put his hand on the back of Frank's neck and gave him a gentle little shake.
"Frankie," he said, "it's February. In Jersey. There's still snow on the ground." Partly melted, kind of dirty snow, but still.
"So you're saying I should reconsider this plan," Frank said, and Bob snorted.
"Yeah."
Frank's shoulders slumped and all the energy seemed to run out of him, and for a minute he was still under Bob's hand.
"Hey," Bob said, "it's gonna be great, it's gonna be fine," and he wasn't talking about the deck.
::
On Saturday, Alicia and Lindsey and Krista and bunch of Jamia's other girlfriends came over for some kind of girly-activity day. Frank and Bob hung out with the rest of the guys in Gerard's basement, reading comics and playing videogames and doing all the things that, okay, yes, they'd still be doing if the wives were around, but with less making out.
When they got back, the house was quiet and Jamia was asleep, curled up on her side with freshly painted fingernails.
Frank sat down next to her and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Bob looked at the soft expression on Frank's face, and suddenly had no idea what he was doing there.
::
"So, how have you not killed him yet?" Bob asked.
Jamia sighed and patted the enormous curve of her belly. "I'm just not as fast as I used to be."
Bob grinned at her, and she nudged his thigh with her foot.
"What?"
She propped her heel up on his thigh and wiggled her toes at him, giving him a sad look. He couldn't withstand that look on Frank either, the over-the-top puppy dog eyes with real exhaustion underneath. He huffed out a breath and pulled her feet into his lap, digging his thumb into her sole.
She was making pleased noises in the back of her throat when Frank came back with tea.
"Oh, I see-you're turning to Bob for your foot-rub needs, now?"
"Sorry, babe, his hands are bigger than yours."
"It's true," Frank said mournfully, and crawled into bed. He curled himself carefully around Jamia, until she could put her head on his shoulder, then stretched out a little further, to fit the hollow of his foot over the curve of Bob's knee.
"You're not next," Bob said, and he kept his eyes on his own hands.
::
When Jamia went into labor, Frank was actually totally cool. He had one bad moment in the garage, when he grabbed Bob's arms and said, "I am completely unqualified and unprepared for this. What the hell am I doing?"
"Um," Bob said, "I think that's normal."
Frank took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay, good."
Bob drove them to the hospital and Frank sat in the back seat with Jamia, holding her hand and not freaking out at all.
Bob stayed at the hospital until visiting hours were over and the dogs needed to be fed and walked. He fell asleep on the couch in front of the tv and woke up when his phone rang.
"It's a girl," Frank said, sounding dazed but ridiculously happy. "She's fine and Jamia's fine and we're naming her Sophia."
Bob called his own mom the next day; she liked Frank and Jamia and would want to know. He was thinking about the mural in the nursery when he asked, "Mom, what did want the most when you got home from the hospital?"
"A full-time maid," she said promptly, and he laughed. "No, really. I'm not joking."
Bob wasn't going to clean Frank's house, but that was one of the perks of being a rockstar: he could pay someone to clean for him. He had a service come in the day before Jamia got out of the hospital.
"The house is clean," Frank said accusingly, when they walked in the door.
"Yeah," Bob said, suddenly uncertain. "I hired a cleaning lady. Is that okay?"
Jamia took two steps forward and threw her arms around him. "I love you," she said into his shoulder. "Don't ever leave."
::
At the end of the first week, Ray frowned at them and said, "You guys look like zombies."
Frank, sprawled out on the couch with his head in Jamia's lap, grunted.
"You have to feed babies every two to three hours," Bob said. "Their stomachs are the size of ping pong balls at this point. I've been googling this shit."
Ray shook his head. "Seriously: zombies."
Frank and Jamia did kind of look like zombies. Zombies that had been hit by a bus. Jamia was moving slow and careful, and holding herself like something hurt, and Frank was alternating between hovering over her and hovering over Sophie.
One morning, Bob found the dogs milling around anxiously by the door while Frank stood in the kitchen and stared fixedly at the coffee pot. He was wearing a winter coat and slippers and clutching a butter knife. Bob reached around him and turned the coffee pot on.
Frank blinked at him.
"Do you want me to walk the dogs?" Bob asked, because he wasn't sure that Frank wouldn't fall asleep in a snowbank along the way.
"Yes," Frank said, and he looked so pathetically grateful that Bob walked them again in the evening, and the next morning, and the day after that, until the dogs whined outside his room in the mornings instead.
::
Bob's mom called back to tell him she had also really wanted someone to babysit for a couple of hours everyday so she could take a nap.
Bob felt he could probably handle that.
"You don't have to," Frank said, but not like he really meant it.
"Nah, it's cool. You guys are the ones who have to get up at all hours of the night."
Bob reconsidered the cleverness of his plan when he realized he had sole custody of a newborn baby for the next two hours.
He took her to see Frank's mom. He figured Mrs. Iero would be happy to see her, and also would have his back in case of emergency.
After a couple of days, he calmed down and was willing to take her to see people who did not have their own children. He was also wearing a Snugli unironically, but he tried not to think about that too much.
It rained one afternoon, thin and sharp and cold, so Bob took Sophie to the basement instead of going out. They stretched out on the couch and watched Sesame Street and Mr. Roger's reruns until they both fell asleep.
When he woke up, he found someone had tossed a blanket over them. Later, he figured it was Frank, since someone had also written "Sophie's Bitch" across his forehead in permanent marker. He sighed, but his bangs mostly covered it, and besides it was kind of true.
When he turned on his laptop that night, the desktop had been changed to a picture from that afternoon, after the blanket but before the marker, of Sophie sleeping on his chest. It made something tighten up just under his rib-cage, but he ignored it and switched the desktop back to the Backstreet Boys picture Mikey had Photoshopped.
He kept the original image, though.
::
Jamia was feeling better by the second week, which was good, because that was when Frank came down with acute bronchitis.
"It's the stress," Jamia said.
"I know," Bob said absently. "Your kid is going to have the worst immune system ever. Maybe we should just get her a bubble now."
Frank made an obscene gesture in his general direction, and kept coughing.
Bob brought him tea while Jamia was nursing.
"Thanks," Frank said hoarsely, then reached out and grabbed Bob's hand. "Hey, hey, you're gonna stay, right? Ha, that rhymes."
Bob put his hand on Frank's forehead, checking for a fever, and Frank's eyes drifted shut. "Please."
"Yeah," Bob said softly. "I'm staying."
::
Whenever people visited them, they brought food. Bob was really grateful for the freezer full of food the Jersey moms had delivered, since he and Jamia managed to start a small fire in the kitchen while making tea.
In their defense, it was only a dish towel. Bob flung it into the sink and Jamia flipped the water on and they both jerked their gaze up to the smoke detector. When it didn't go off, they looked at each other, eyes wide and shocked.
They burst out laughing at the same time, leaning on each other, hands pressed over their mouths to keep from waking Frank and Sophie.
"This never happened," Jamia said, when she had caught her breath.
"Right, no," Bob said. "Maybe we should stick with the microwave from now on."
::
At three in the morning, pacing the floor and singing quietly to Sophie to get her to stop fussing and go back to sleep, Bob had the sudden urge to call his mom and tell her how awesome she was.
"Are you singing Christina Aguilera songs to my baby?" Jamia asked quietly, leaning against the doorframe. She'd fallen asleep on the couch downstairs, and Bob hadn't wanted to wake her up when Sophie started crying.
"You wanna make something of it?" Bob asked, shifting Sophie to his other shoulder.
Jamia smiled at him and sat down in the rocking chair. She sang along with him to "Beautiful."
::
By the time Frank was better, they had less than two weeks before the new tour started, leaving out of Jersey, and it wasn't really worth it for Bob to go back to Chicago.
Jamia and Sophie came with them, and Bob was the one who shared their bus.
He didn't remember ever discussing it. Even Brian just rubbed his forehead and said, "Of course I'm managing a band that tours with babies," when they told him.
It wasn't that much different than touring without a baby. Bob felt like he had on the first tour he ever did with My Chem, when just playing one set kicked his ass, but it wasn't like he was missing the wild and crazy rockstar lifestyle.
And everyone was willing to babysit for them.
They did a couple of festivals with Fall Out Boy, which Bob really liked; between the straight-edge vegans and the recovering alcoholics, there were several places he could take Sophie without feeling like he was corrupting a minor. Plus, Fall Out Boy's collective biological clock must have been ticking, because they were always happy to see her.
The language thing was eventually going to be a problem, though.
"Motherfucker," Patrick said, and threw down his controller in disgust.
Sophie was sitting in Joe's lap, solemnly patting the tattoos on his arm, and didn't even look up at that.
"Take your baby and get out of here."
Bob did, because he was magnanimous in victory, and also, it was time for Sophie's nap.
::
Somewhere in Ohio, Bob woke up because Frank was poking him.
"What, asshole?"
"We have to go buy diapers."
Bob exhaled slowly through his nose.
"I told Jamia I'd have somebody get more this afternoon," Frank said, like it explained anything.
"And then you didn't."
"Yeah. But I got the driver to stop at an all-night drugstore. So come on."
Bob's brain must have gone back to sleep momentarily, because the next thing he knew, he was standing in CVS, holding Sophie, who was inclined to fuss but wouldn't actually cry as long as they kept moving.
"Are you sure that's the brand we like?" Frank asked, leaning around him to look at their items.
"Yes," Bob said, and didn't elaborate.
The cashier kept sneaking little disapproving glances at them, until Frank slid his arm around Bob's waist and stuck his hand in the back pocket of Bob's jeans. Then she flushed and dropped her eyes to the register. Bob sighed, but didn't say anything. He'd been hanging out with Gerard for a long time.
Frank leaned in and said grandly, "Nobody disrespects my baby-daddy," on the way out the door, and he kept his hand in Bob's pocket until they got back to the bus.
::
In Denver, they stayed in a hotel. Bob thought it was a little sad how excited he was about clean sheets and a hot shower, but on the other hand: clean sheets and a hot shower.
Bob babysat Sophie while Frank and Jamia went out to shop and have lunch. "We're going to party like rockstars," he said as they left, and Frank snorted.
"Actually, we're going to take a nap," he told Sophie. "It's gonna be awesome."
Sophie fell asleep as soon as he put her in the crib. Frank and Jamia had dropped their bags on one bed, so Bob crawled under the covers of the other one. He barely had time to appreciate the clean sheets before he passed out.
He half-woke when the bed sagged a little.
"Mnfhh?" he mumbled, and Frank whispered, "Tired. Back early."
"Go back to sleep," Jamia said, and he did.
He woke up slowly. Frank had his face pressed up against Bob's shoulder. Jamia was spooned up behind Frank, one arm looped over his waist, fingers tucked inside Bob's waistband, warm against his skin.
In that moment between sleep and consciousness, Bob wanted to roll over into their embrace and go back to sleep. That was when he realized the full extent of his problem.
Fuck, he mouthed, staring up at the ceiling. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
::
Bob made it through the show and back to the room he was sharing with Ray, and spent the rest of the night staring up at a different ceiling, trying to figure out how to get over the stupid crush he had on his best friend and his best friend's wife.
He also spent a little time being impressed with his own denial skills, because Jesus Christ, who basically moved in with a married couple and their new baby for purely platonic reasons?
By morning, Bob had decided on the tactic of strategic withdrawal. By which he meant spending less time around them when they were being all couple-y and domestic.
Half an hour later, he was sitting at the kitchenette table holding Sophie while Jamia stood at the counter and told him a fucking hilarious story about the new girl who was teching for Thursday and one of the merch guys.
"She actually made him cry. It was awesome."
Bob was still laughing when the bus door opened and Frank bounded in, carrying a tray of Starbucks cups. He dropped the drinks in front of Bob and leaned over to kiss Sophie's forehead, one hand braced on Bob's shoulder. When he pulled back, he kissed the top of Bob's head, then wandered over to the counter to kiss Jamia, soft and easy, on the mouth.
Fuck, Bob thought again.
::
It was harder than he was expecting.
Somewhere along the way, Frank had stopped jumping on him at unexpected moments, either to conserve energy or because there was a one in three chance that Bob would be holding Sophie. Frank had just replaced the jumping with lower-impact cuddling. When Sophie threw up on Bob, Frank let him have the last blueberry Pop Tart.
Jamia iced his wrists after every show and shoved her feet under Bob's thigh when they watched movies, because her toes got cold.
Bob wasn't really sure when any of this had started.
::
Frank jumped on the couch and squirmed around until his head was in Bob's lap. Bob kept reading his magazine.
"Bob!" Frank said. "Bob Bob Bob!"
Bob grunted.
"Are you avoiding us?"
"Yes. I am nowhere near you right now."
"No, I mean, me and Jamia. Together. I dunno-it seems like you don't hang out with us as much anymore."
Bob hesitated, and Frank sat up and batted the magazine away.
"Dude, really? What the fuck?"
Bob gave a little half-shrug and told him something that was close to the truth. "I don't want to be the third wheel, you know?"
Frank eyed him suspiciously. "Well, quit it," he said, and flopped back down again.
::
They had a hotel again in Vancouver, and six hours before they even had to think about sound check.
Bob and Jamia were watching Transformers 2, propped up by a giant pile of pillows, when Frank came back without Sophie.
"Don't look at me like that-she's with Mikey and Gerard," he said, and climbed into bed with them.
He settled himself against Bob's other side, and Jamia put her head back down on Bob's shoulder. It was warm and comfortable and Bob decided that the end of the movie was a reasonable time to leave.
"So," Frank said, "the doctor says we can have sex any time we want."
Or he could leave sooner.
Jamia snorted. "Subtle, babe."
"And on that note-" Bob leaned forward to get up, and Jamia scrambled up.
"No, wait," she said, and swung one knee over his legs to sit on his thighs.
Bob automatically put his hands on her hips to steady her. Frank hadn't moved, still pressed up against his side.
"Okay," she said, "listen, you're our third wheel."
"Okay..." Bob trusted her not to sit on his lap and try to hurt his feelings, but he didn't know where she was going with this.
"But people get that expression wrong all the time. It's not third wheel, it's fifth wheel. A fifth wheel is totally useless, but a third wheel isn't. It can make things more stable."
"Like on a tricycle," Frank said helpfully.
"You're our third wheel. You make us better, more stable."
"That's-thanks, guys, that's really sweet. I love you, too," Bob said, and, fuck, it was true, even if he didn't mean it the way they did.
But Jamia was rolling her eyes.
"You're our third wheel, and we want to have sex with you," Frank said. "It's not a perfect metaphor, okay?"
Bob was still stuck on the sex part. "So," he said, trying to keep his voice light and even, like they could all just laugh this off, "your seduction strategy was to correct my grammar?"
"Yes. Well, and this," Jamia said, and took off her shirt.
Bob's breath kind of stuttered in his throat.
"Nice, huh?" Frank whispered in his ear.
Jamia arched her back just a little, all soft skin and lush curves in a lacy blue bra. "I've gone up a whole cup size. I had to buy this bra special."
Bob brought his gaze back up to her eyes, and Jamia cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, slow and thorough and just a little bit dirty. She was smiling and a little flushed when she leaned back. She shifted her gaze to Frank and Bob turned his head to follow it.
Frank leaned in and kissed him, fast but just as thorough, and he was smiling too when he sat back.
Jamia leaned in to kiss him again, and Frank wrapped one hand around the back of Bob's neck and stroked the other down Jamia's back.
Jamia ground down against him and Bob shifted, getting a knee under him so he could roll them, tumbling her back into Frank's arms. Frank slid his arms around her waist and dipped his head to kiss her shoulder.
Bob hesitated with his fingers on the front clasp of her bra, looking up at both of them.
"C'mon," Jamia said, low and rough.
"C'mon," Frank said, like it was a dare.
Bob popped the clasp.
Frank helped her pull the bra off, tossing it aside. Bob brushed his palms over her breasts, careful and delicate, almost no pressure at all, and she hissed in a breath.
He kissed her mouth, a quick press of lips, then the hollow of her throat, and her breastbone. He kissed a line down the center of her body, stripping off her pajama pants as he went.
He pressed his mouth to her clit and she gasped and shoved her hips up.
She gave a breathy little laugh and said, "Fuck, I've kinda missed the lip ring."
Bob spread her legs a little further, tracing circles on her inner thighs with his thumbs. She wasn't wet, but he was a patient man.
Jamia threaded her fingers through his hair, tugging a little as he ate her out. Frank slipped his hands between her legs, holding her steady, holding her open for Bob's tongue.
When Bob looked up at them, they were kissing.
When he eased a finger inside her, he looked up again to gauge her expression. Her head had fallen back against Frank's shoulder, and Frank was watching him, eyes dark and rapt. Bob licked his lips and Frank copied the gesture automatically.
Bob dropped his head, flicking his tongue over her clit and fingering her with tiny, careful movements until she came, cursing and breathless.
Frank grabbed his shoulder, pulling him up to kiss him, deep and messy.
"Wanna blow you," Frank said against his mouth, and Bob's dick jumped at the thought.
"Yeah, yeah," he said, and let Frank push him over onto his back, his head next to Jamia's hip.
Frank squirmed carefully out from behind Jamia, and then less carefully yanked Bob's sweatpants and boxers down to his knees.
Frank went for it without hesitation. He was sloppy and enthusiastic, and better at sucking cock than Bob would have expected.
"Fuck," he said, and Jamia smirked down at him, smug and satisfied. She petted his hair, and twined their fingers together so Bob could have something to hold onto.
"You can come in his mouth," she said, and Frank made a humming sound of agreement around Bob's dick, and they pushed him over the edge.
He had his eyes on Jamia's face when he came, watching her watch Frank.
Frank brushed his mouth across Bob's, then knelt up to kiss Jamia. She took her hand off of Bob's head to fumble with Frank's zipper, and Frank helped, until she could reach in and pull his cock out.
Bob blinked as she started stroking, coming down from his own orgasm. His fingers still tangled up with hers, and he brought their hands up to his mouth, sliding his tongue over their palms until they were slick. He eased himself up until he was sitting, pressed up close to Jamia so they could both get their hands on Frank's cock.
"Oh, shit," Frank gasped out. "Not gonna last-"
Bob squeezed the base of Frank's cock, gave him one long pull while Jamia palmed the head, and Frank came with a thin wail, dropping his head forward to rest where Bob and Jamia's shoulders touched.
Jamia stroked his back gently, and turned her head to kiss Bob, soft and almost chaste.
"So, hey," Frank said, a little muffled against their skin, "you know what the best part of sex in hotel rooms is?"
"Room service," Bob said promptly.
"No-well, hmmm..." Frank considered.
Jamia jerked her chin towards the other bed. "No wet spots."
"Genius."
::
The next day, Frank started his campaign to have Sophie's first word be Bob.
Author: 7iris
Band: MCR
Pairing/Rating: Bob/Frank/Jamia, NC-17
Summary: Bob is the third wheel. Set a few years in the future.
Length:~5,000 words
Disclaimer: I am making this shit up.
A/N: This goes out to Sars over at Tomato Nation, even though she'd probably be faintly horrified by the fact that one of her usage peeves inspired threesome RPS kidfic.
When Jamia got pregnant, Bob was the first person Frank told.
Mostly because Bob was the only other person awake on the bus. He was standing in the kitchen-space, trying to ignore Frank's muffled laughter from the back and debating whether he was hungry enough to eat one of the vegan microwave burritos. The door to the back lounge open, and he turned, and Frank hurled himself into his arms.
Bob went down like a ton of bricks, because he really hadn't been expecting that, and also because Frank had been moving even faster than usual.
Frank sat up and straddled Bob's waist. He was smiling, his face almost incandescent with happiness.
"That was Bob," he said into his cell phone. "I'm going to tell him. Wait, do you want to tell him? No, here, you should totally tell him!"
Frank held the phone to Bob's ear.
"Um, hi," Bob said.
"Hi," Jamia said, laughing.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"No, it's cool-it's not like Frank's going to keep this a secret. I'm pregnant."
"Oh," Bob said. He sat up; it didn't seem like the kind of conversation he should have flat on his back. Frank shifted around and ended up in his lap, and Bob didn't push him off. "That's, wow-Congratulations, you guys. That is awesome."
Bob hadn't thought it was possible, but Frank's smile got even brighter.
::
Jamia didn't come back on tour with them when they got back to the States.
"I have thrown up in the bus bathrooms before, and I am not doing that for the next three months," she said, and everyone completely sympathized with that.
They finished the tour for the fourth album a couple of weeks before Christmas, which meant Frank could be home for the last trimester. The last shows were in Jersey, and Bob stayed there for a week, admiring Jamia's glow and laughing at Frank's giddiness and then getting roped into painting the mural Gerard designed for the nursery.
Gerard sketched it out on the walls and assigned everyone blocks of solid color to paint while he followed after them and did the shading and details.
"I don't remember interior decorating being part of my job description," Bob said, carefully filling in a swirl with Sapphire Sparkle.
"No one ever does," Mikey said.
It turned out really nice, an underwater scene, dreamy and vivid and much less disturbing than Bob had feared. Even the giant squid in the corner looked adorable rather than scary. Jamia got all teary-eyed and hugged them, and then called them assholes for making her cry.
When he got back to Chicago, his apartment seemed strangely quiet and empty, but then, it always did coming off a tour.
::
After the holidays, Frank started calling several times a week to discuss in mind-numbing detail the latest concerns of an expectant father. Or at least that's what Bob assumed he was talking about; mostly he just let Frank ramble on while he defrosted his freezer and watched the Bulls lose, grunting in the appropriate places. It was almost like being on tour again.
In February, Frank called and said the doctor had put Jamia on bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy because of complications. Bob turned the basketball game off and listened. Frank sounded like he was making an effort to keep his voice normal, but Bob could hear the cracks in it.
"Hey," he said, when Frank stopped talking. "You said the doctor's not worried, right? It's going to be fine."
"Right, right," Frank said half-heartedly, and Bob was suddenly conscious of how far apart they really were. "Hey, listen, I gotta, um...Here, talk to Jamia for second, okay?" he said and passed the phone off.
"Hi," Bob said. "How are you?"
"Bored," Jamia said, so he told her about the disaster of a punk band he'd seen the week before.
"Seriously, all that was missing was an electrical fire," he said, and she was still laughing when she hung up.
Bob knew exactly how much bed-rest sucked, so after that, he started calling Jamia every couple of days, if Frank didn't hand the phone over when he called. He didn't see that many hilariously disastrous bands, but told her about random shit that happened during the week, and what he thought was going on in the Korean soap opera he'd accidentally become addicted to. When he had a boring day, he told her stories about Frank from the tours she hadn't been on, the good, embarrassing stories that he'd been saving up for blackmail purposes. It balanced itself out, though, since she told him the embarrassing stories from before he knew them.
Then one day she called him and said, "You have to come back. Frank is suddenly obsessed with home improvement projects. He wants to rent power tools. Someone is going to lose an eye!"
She was laughing a little when she said it, but she sounded like she meant it a little, too, and she didn't argue when Bob said, "Okay."
::
He let Frank hug him at the door, and kissed Jamia's cheek, and talked about the flight and how she was feeling. Frank fluttered around the room, straightening things up and moving things around until Jamia asked him to get her a glass of water.
When he'd left, Jamia said, "Oh my god, you have to get him out of the house. He is driving me crazy."
"Is he hovering?"
"Like a hummingbird on crack."
Bob laughed, and made Frank take him to the third closest record store. Frank only resisted a little, and he made it about two hours before he started fondling his cell phone like he really wanted to make a call. Bob relented at that point and let him go home.
"Yes, I'm still alive," Jamia said when they got back.
Frank shut his mouth and showed her the CDs he'd gotten.
"Hey, where are you staying?" she asked as she flipped through the albums.
"Uh, the Marriott, I guess?" Bob said. He hadn't really planned that far ahead, but he didn't think February was the high season in Jersey.
"No, dude, stay with us!" Frank said.
Bob looked at Jamia, and she smiled. "It's cool. Stay with us."
So he did.
::
In the morning, Frank dragged him into the backyard to talk about his home improvement project.
"I want to build a deck!" he said, and spent ten minutes waving his hands around and describing the design and the fake wood made out of recycled plastic bags that he was going to use.
Bob nodded along and watched his breath freeze in the air.
When he finally wound down, Bob put his hand on the back of Frank's neck and gave him a gentle little shake.
"Frankie," he said, "it's February. In Jersey. There's still snow on the ground." Partly melted, kind of dirty snow, but still.
"So you're saying I should reconsider this plan," Frank said, and Bob snorted.
"Yeah."
Frank's shoulders slumped and all the energy seemed to run out of him, and for a minute he was still under Bob's hand.
"Hey," Bob said, "it's gonna be great, it's gonna be fine," and he wasn't talking about the deck.
::
On Saturday, Alicia and Lindsey and Krista and bunch of Jamia's other girlfriends came over for some kind of girly-activity day. Frank and Bob hung out with the rest of the guys in Gerard's basement, reading comics and playing videogames and doing all the things that, okay, yes, they'd still be doing if the wives were around, but with less making out.
When they got back, the house was quiet and Jamia was asleep, curled up on her side with freshly painted fingernails.
Frank sat down next to her and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Bob looked at the soft expression on Frank's face, and suddenly had no idea what he was doing there.
::
"So, how have you not killed him yet?" Bob asked.
Jamia sighed and patted the enormous curve of her belly. "I'm just not as fast as I used to be."
Bob grinned at her, and she nudged his thigh with her foot.
"What?"
She propped her heel up on his thigh and wiggled her toes at him, giving him a sad look. He couldn't withstand that look on Frank either, the over-the-top puppy dog eyes with real exhaustion underneath. He huffed out a breath and pulled her feet into his lap, digging his thumb into her sole.
She was making pleased noises in the back of her throat when Frank came back with tea.
"Oh, I see-you're turning to Bob for your foot-rub needs, now?"
"Sorry, babe, his hands are bigger than yours."
"It's true," Frank said mournfully, and crawled into bed. He curled himself carefully around Jamia, until she could put her head on his shoulder, then stretched out a little further, to fit the hollow of his foot over the curve of Bob's knee.
"You're not next," Bob said, and he kept his eyes on his own hands.
::
When Jamia went into labor, Frank was actually totally cool. He had one bad moment in the garage, when he grabbed Bob's arms and said, "I am completely unqualified and unprepared for this. What the hell am I doing?"
"Um," Bob said, "I think that's normal."
Frank took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay, good."
Bob drove them to the hospital and Frank sat in the back seat with Jamia, holding her hand and not freaking out at all.
Bob stayed at the hospital until visiting hours were over and the dogs needed to be fed and walked. He fell asleep on the couch in front of the tv and woke up when his phone rang.
"It's a girl," Frank said, sounding dazed but ridiculously happy. "She's fine and Jamia's fine and we're naming her Sophia."
Bob called his own mom the next day; she liked Frank and Jamia and would want to know. He was thinking about the mural in the nursery when he asked, "Mom, what did want the most when you got home from the hospital?"
"A full-time maid," she said promptly, and he laughed. "No, really. I'm not joking."
Bob wasn't going to clean Frank's house, but that was one of the perks of being a rockstar: he could pay someone to clean for him. He had a service come in the day before Jamia got out of the hospital.
"The house is clean," Frank said accusingly, when they walked in the door.
"Yeah," Bob said, suddenly uncertain. "I hired a cleaning lady. Is that okay?"
Jamia took two steps forward and threw her arms around him. "I love you," she said into his shoulder. "Don't ever leave."
::
At the end of the first week, Ray frowned at them and said, "You guys look like zombies."
Frank, sprawled out on the couch with his head in Jamia's lap, grunted.
"You have to feed babies every two to three hours," Bob said. "Their stomachs are the size of ping pong balls at this point. I've been googling this shit."
Ray shook his head. "Seriously: zombies."
Frank and Jamia did kind of look like zombies. Zombies that had been hit by a bus. Jamia was moving slow and careful, and holding herself like something hurt, and Frank was alternating between hovering over her and hovering over Sophie.
One morning, Bob found the dogs milling around anxiously by the door while Frank stood in the kitchen and stared fixedly at the coffee pot. He was wearing a winter coat and slippers and clutching a butter knife. Bob reached around him and turned the coffee pot on.
Frank blinked at him.
"Do you want me to walk the dogs?" Bob asked, because he wasn't sure that Frank wouldn't fall asleep in a snowbank along the way.
"Yes," Frank said, and he looked so pathetically grateful that Bob walked them again in the evening, and the next morning, and the day after that, until the dogs whined outside his room in the mornings instead.
::
Bob's mom called back to tell him she had also really wanted someone to babysit for a couple of hours everyday so she could take a nap.
Bob felt he could probably handle that.
"You don't have to," Frank said, but not like he really meant it.
"Nah, it's cool. You guys are the ones who have to get up at all hours of the night."
Bob reconsidered the cleverness of his plan when he realized he had sole custody of a newborn baby for the next two hours.
He took her to see Frank's mom. He figured Mrs. Iero would be happy to see her, and also would have his back in case of emergency.
After a couple of days, he calmed down and was willing to take her to see people who did not have their own children. He was also wearing a Snugli unironically, but he tried not to think about that too much.
It rained one afternoon, thin and sharp and cold, so Bob took Sophie to the basement instead of going out. They stretched out on the couch and watched Sesame Street and Mr. Roger's reruns until they both fell asleep.
When he woke up, he found someone had tossed a blanket over them. Later, he figured it was Frank, since someone had also written "Sophie's Bitch" across his forehead in permanent marker. He sighed, but his bangs mostly covered it, and besides it was kind of true.
When he turned on his laptop that night, the desktop had been changed to a picture from that afternoon, after the blanket but before the marker, of Sophie sleeping on his chest. It made something tighten up just under his rib-cage, but he ignored it and switched the desktop back to the Backstreet Boys picture Mikey had Photoshopped.
He kept the original image, though.
::
Jamia was feeling better by the second week, which was good, because that was when Frank came down with acute bronchitis.
"It's the stress," Jamia said.
"I know," Bob said absently. "Your kid is going to have the worst immune system ever. Maybe we should just get her a bubble now."
Frank made an obscene gesture in his general direction, and kept coughing.
Bob brought him tea while Jamia was nursing.
"Thanks," Frank said hoarsely, then reached out and grabbed Bob's hand. "Hey, hey, you're gonna stay, right? Ha, that rhymes."
Bob put his hand on Frank's forehead, checking for a fever, and Frank's eyes drifted shut. "Please."
"Yeah," Bob said softly. "I'm staying."
::
Whenever people visited them, they brought food. Bob was really grateful for the freezer full of food the Jersey moms had delivered, since he and Jamia managed to start a small fire in the kitchen while making tea.
In their defense, it was only a dish towel. Bob flung it into the sink and Jamia flipped the water on and they both jerked their gaze up to the smoke detector. When it didn't go off, they looked at each other, eyes wide and shocked.
They burst out laughing at the same time, leaning on each other, hands pressed over their mouths to keep from waking Frank and Sophie.
"This never happened," Jamia said, when she had caught her breath.
"Right, no," Bob said. "Maybe we should stick with the microwave from now on."
::
At three in the morning, pacing the floor and singing quietly to Sophie to get her to stop fussing and go back to sleep, Bob had the sudden urge to call his mom and tell her how awesome she was.
"Are you singing Christina Aguilera songs to my baby?" Jamia asked quietly, leaning against the doorframe. She'd fallen asleep on the couch downstairs, and Bob hadn't wanted to wake her up when Sophie started crying.
"You wanna make something of it?" Bob asked, shifting Sophie to his other shoulder.
Jamia smiled at him and sat down in the rocking chair. She sang along with him to "Beautiful."
::
By the time Frank was better, they had less than two weeks before the new tour started, leaving out of Jersey, and it wasn't really worth it for Bob to go back to Chicago.
Jamia and Sophie came with them, and Bob was the one who shared their bus.
He didn't remember ever discussing it. Even Brian just rubbed his forehead and said, "Of course I'm managing a band that tours with babies," when they told him.
It wasn't that much different than touring without a baby. Bob felt like he had on the first tour he ever did with My Chem, when just playing one set kicked his ass, but it wasn't like he was missing the wild and crazy rockstar lifestyle.
And everyone was willing to babysit for them.
They did a couple of festivals with Fall Out Boy, which Bob really liked; between the straight-edge vegans and the recovering alcoholics, there were several places he could take Sophie without feeling like he was corrupting a minor. Plus, Fall Out Boy's collective biological clock must have been ticking, because they were always happy to see her.
The language thing was eventually going to be a problem, though.
"Motherfucker," Patrick said, and threw down his controller in disgust.
Sophie was sitting in Joe's lap, solemnly patting the tattoos on his arm, and didn't even look up at that.
"Take your baby and get out of here."
Bob did, because he was magnanimous in victory, and also, it was time for Sophie's nap.
::
Somewhere in Ohio, Bob woke up because Frank was poking him.
"What, asshole?"
"We have to go buy diapers."
Bob exhaled slowly through his nose.
"I told Jamia I'd have somebody get more this afternoon," Frank said, like it explained anything.
"And then you didn't."
"Yeah. But I got the driver to stop at an all-night drugstore. So come on."
Bob's brain must have gone back to sleep momentarily, because the next thing he knew, he was standing in CVS, holding Sophie, who was inclined to fuss but wouldn't actually cry as long as they kept moving.
"Are you sure that's the brand we like?" Frank asked, leaning around him to look at their items.
"Yes," Bob said, and didn't elaborate.
The cashier kept sneaking little disapproving glances at them, until Frank slid his arm around Bob's waist and stuck his hand in the back pocket of Bob's jeans. Then she flushed and dropped her eyes to the register. Bob sighed, but didn't say anything. He'd been hanging out with Gerard for a long time.
Frank leaned in and said grandly, "Nobody disrespects my baby-daddy," on the way out the door, and he kept his hand in Bob's pocket until they got back to the bus.
::
In Denver, they stayed in a hotel. Bob thought it was a little sad how excited he was about clean sheets and a hot shower, but on the other hand: clean sheets and a hot shower.
Bob babysat Sophie while Frank and Jamia went out to shop and have lunch. "We're going to party like rockstars," he said as they left, and Frank snorted.
"Actually, we're going to take a nap," he told Sophie. "It's gonna be awesome."
Sophie fell asleep as soon as he put her in the crib. Frank and Jamia had dropped their bags on one bed, so Bob crawled under the covers of the other one. He barely had time to appreciate the clean sheets before he passed out.
He half-woke when the bed sagged a little.
"Mnfhh?" he mumbled, and Frank whispered, "Tired. Back early."
"Go back to sleep," Jamia said, and he did.
He woke up slowly. Frank had his face pressed up against Bob's shoulder. Jamia was spooned up behind Frank, one arm looped over his waist, fingers tucked inside Bob's waistband, warm against his skin.
In that moment between sleep and consciousness, Bob wanted to roll over into their embrace and go back to sleep. That was when he realized the full extent of his problem.
Fuck, he mouthed, staring up at the ceiling. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
::
Bob made it through the show and back to the room he was sharing with Ray, and spent the rest of the night staring up at a different ceiling, trying to figure out how to get over the stupid crush he had on his best friend and his best friend's wife.
He also spent a little time being impressed with his own denial skills, because Jesus Christ, who basically moved in with a married couple and their new baby for purely platonic reasons?
By morning, Bob had decided on the tactic of strategic withdrawal. By which he meant spending less time around them when they were being all couple-y and domestic.
Half an hour later, he was sitting at the kitchenette table holding Sophie while Jamia stood at the counter and told him a fucking hilarious story about the new girl who was teching for Thursday and one of the merch guys.
"She actually made him cry. It was awesome."
Bob was still laughing when the bus door opened and Frank bounded in, carrying a tray of Starbucks cups. He dropped the drinks in front of Bob and leaned over to kiss Sophie's forehead, one hand braced on Bob's shoulder. When he pulled back, he kissed the top of Bob's head, then wandered over to the counter to kiss Jamia, soft and easy, on the mouth.
Fuck, Bob thought again.
::
It was harder than he was expecting.
Somewhere along the way, Frank had stopped jumping on him at unexpected moments, either to conserve energy or because there was a one in three chance that Bob would be holding Sophie. Frank had just replaced the jumping with lower-impact cuddling. When Sophie threw up on Bob, Frank let him have the last blueberry Pop Tart.
Jamia iced his wrists after every show and shoved her feet under Bob's thigh when they watched movies, because her toes got cold.
Bob wasn't really sure when any of this had started.
::
Frank jumped on the couch and squirmed around until his head was in Bob's lap. Bob kept reading his magazine.
"Bob!" Frank said. "Bob Bob Bob!"
Bob grunted.
"Are you avoiding us?"
"Yes. I am nowhere near you right now."
"No, I mean, me and Jamia. Together. I dunno-it seems like you don't hang out with us as much anymore."
Bob hesitated, and Frank sat up and batted the magazine away.
"Dude, really? What the fuck?"
Bob gave a little half-shrug and told him something that was close to the truth. "I don't want to be the third wheel, you know?"
Frank eyed him suspiciously. "Well, quit it," he said, and flopped back down again.
::
They had a hotel again in Vancouver, and six hours before they even had to think about sound check.
Bob and Jamia were watching Transformers 2, propped up by a giant pile of pillows, when Frank came back without Sophie.
"Don't look at me like that-she's with Mikey and Gerard," he said, and climbed into bed with them.
He settled himself against Bob's other side, and Jamia put her head back down on Bob's shoulder. It was warm and comfortable and Bob decided that the end of the movie was a reasonable time to leave.
"So," Frank said, "the doctor says we can have sex any time we want."
Or he could leave sooner.
Jamia snorted. "Subtle, babe."
"And on that note-" Bob leaned forward to get up, and Jamia scrambled up.
"No, wait," she said, and swung one knee over his legs to sit on his thighs.
Bob automatically put his hands on her hips to steady her. Frank hadn't moved, still pressed up against his side.
"Okay," she said, "listen, you're our third wheel."
"Okay..." Bob trusted her not to sit on his lap and try to hurt his feelings, but he didn't know where she was going with this.
"But people get that expression wrong all the time. It's not third wheel, it's fifth wheel. A fifth wheel is totally useless, but a third wheel isn't. It can make things more stable."
"Like on a tricycle," Frank said helpfully.
"You're our third wheel. You make us better, more stable."
"That's-thanks, guys, that's really sweet. I love you, too," Bob said, and, fuck, it was true, even if he didn't mean it the way they did.
But Jamia was rolling her eyes.
"You're our third wheel, and we want to have sex with you," Frank said. "It's not a perfect metaphor, okay?"
Bob was still stuck on the sex part. "So," he said, trying to keep his voice light and even, like they could all just laugh this off, "your seduction strategy was to correct my grammar?"
"Yes. Well, and this," Jamia said, and took off her shirt.
Bob's breath kind of stuttered in his throat.
"Nice, huh?" Frank whispered in his ear.
Jamia arched her back just a little, all soft skin and lush curves in a lacy blue bra. "I've gone up a whole cup size. I had to buy this bra special."
Bob brought his gaze back up to her eyes, and Jamia cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, slow and thorough and just a little bit dirty. She was smiling and a little flushed when she leaned back. She shifted her gaze to Frank and Bob turned his head to follow it.
Frank leaned in and kissed him, fast but just as thorough, and he was smiling too when he sat back.
Jamia leaned in to kiss him again, and Frank wrapped one hand around the back of Bob's neck and stroked the other down Jamia's back.
Jamia ground down against him and Bob shifted, getting a knee under him so he could roll them, tumbling her back into Frank's arms. Frank slid his arms around her waist and dipped his head to kiss her shoulder.
Bob hesitated with his fingers on the front clasp of her bra, looking up at both of them.
"C'mon," Jamia said, low and rough.
"C'mon," Frank said, like it was a dare.
Bob popped the clasp.
Frank helped her pull the bra off, tossing it aside. Bob brushed his palms over her breasts, careful and delicate, almost no pressure at all, and she hissed in a breath.
He kissed her mouth, a quick press of lips, then the hollow of her throat, and her breastbone. He kissed a line down the center of her body, stripping off her pajama pants as he went.
He pressed his mouth to her clit and she gasped and shoved her hips up.
She gave a breathy little laugh and said, "Fuck, I've kinda missed the lip ring."
Bob spread her legs a little further, tracing circles on her inner thighs with his thumbs. She wasn't wet, but he was a patient man.
Jamia threaded her fingers through his hair, tugging a little as he ate her out. Frank slipped his hands between her legs, holding her steady, holding her open for Bob's tongue.
When Bob looked up at them, they were kissing.
When he eased a finger inside her, he looked up again to gauge her expression. Her head had fallen back against Frank's shoulder, and Frank was watching him, eyes dark and rapt. Bob licked his lips and Frank copied the gesture automatically.
Bob dropped his head, flicking his tongue over her clit and fingering her with tiny, careful movements until she came, cursing and breathless.
Frank grabbed his shoulder, pulling him up to kiss him, deep and messy.
"Wanna blow you," Frank said against his mouth, and Bob's dick jumped at the thought.
"Yeah, yeah," he said, and let Frank push him over onto his back, his head next to Jamia's hip.
Frank squirmed carefully out from behind Jamia, and then less carefully yanked Bob's sweatpants and boxers down to his knees.
Frank went for it without hesitation. He was sloppy and enthusiastic, and better at sucking cock than Bob would have expected.
"Fuck," he said, and Jamia smirked down at him, smug and satisfied. She petted his hair, and twined their fingers together so Bob could have something to hold onto.
"You can come in his mouth," she said, and Frank made a humming sound of agreement around Bob's dick, and they pushed him over the edge.
He had his eyes on Jamia's face when he came, watching her watch Frank.
Frank brushed his mouth across Bob's, then knelt up to kiss Jamia. She took her hand off of Bob's head to fumble with Frank's zipper, and Frank helped, until she could reach in and pull his cock out.
Bob blinked as she started stroking, coming down from his own orgasm. His fingers still tangled up with hers, and he brought their hands up to his mouth, sliding his tongue over their palms until they were slick. He eased himself up until he was sitting, pressed up close to Jamia so they could both get their hands on Frank's cock.
"Oh, shit," Frank gasped out. "Not gonna last-"
Bob squeezed the base of Frank's cock, gave him one long pull while Jamia palmed the head, and Frank came with a thin wail, dropping his head forward to rest where Bob and Jamia's shoulders touched.
Jamia stroked his back gently, and turned her head to kiss Bob, soft and almost chaste.
"So, hey," Frank said, a little muffled against their skin, "you know what the best part of sex in hotel rooms is?"
"Room service," Bob said promptly.
"No-well, hmmm..." Frank considered.
Jamia jerked her chin towards the other bed. "No wet spots."
"Genius."
::
The next day, Frank started his campaign to have Sophie's first word be Bob.