Love: The Package Deal, Part 1
Title: Love: The Package Deal
Band: My Chemical Romance
Pairing: Frank/Gerard, Frank/Gerard/Lyn-Z, implied Frank/Gerard/Lyn-Z/Jamia
Word Count: 29,596
Rating/Warnings: Adult: Threesome sex, rimming, lots of miscommunication
Author Notes:Thanks to phineasjones and olivia_circe for beta and quite a bit of cheerleading.
Summary: Gerard gets a special kind of amnesia. Frank gets to reexamine his idea of acceptable relationship structures. Lots of people fail to communicate effectively, but they all sure remember how to kiss.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Bonus Tracks/Enhanced Content
Fanart:
Fanart by blondiusmaximus
Fanmix:
Fanmix by dagdalorijane
Unofficial bonus fanmix:
Brand New Start by olivia_circe
Gerard has a previously unknown allergic reaction to something he eats during lunch and Mikey and Frank rush him to the emergency room. He's blotchy and not breathing right and Frank's never been more scared, even though, when he thinks about it, he's seen Gerard in what were possibly worse situations, though neither of them realized it because they were so trashed. Frank spends a rough couple of hours on the phone, in a private room, talking to Lyn-Z, who's on tour with MSI in Brussels where it's 4 in the morning; to Ray who's home visiting with his Mom; to Bob in Chicago; to Jamia; and to Brian, who shows up at the hospital in time to listen to the doctors tell them that Gerard's resting, but he'll be fine, they can take him home when he wakes up and here's a list of all the things he shouldn't eat until they can get him in for a full round of tests.
When they’re back at Mikey and Alicia’s, Mikey goes to make coffee and Frank sits with Gerard on the couch and they put on Friday the 13th, the first one, and Gerard, who seems dazed, leans into Frank's shoulder. "I feel fine, really, I'm fine," Gerard says, and then he tips his head back and it's a clear invitation and Frank leans down and kisses him, because, Christ, he was scared. Frank's going for a quick kiss, a reassuring press of lips, but Gerard opens his mouth and Frank wraps his hand around the back of Gerard's neck and it's a little more than just reassurance. Frank pulls back to see if he can figure out what exactly it is from Gerard's expression, which is a blissful smile.
"Gee," Frank says, his hand stroking the nape of Gerard's neck. Gerard bites his bottom lip like a fucking flirt.
"I'm fine," he practically purrs, and Frank can’t believe he’s doing this now, because Mikey is just in the other room, and besides, they haven't done this offstage since - well. So Frank thinks Gerard has to be fucking with him, until Gerard says, "This couch is nice. Are we at your house? I'm sorry, I must be really drunk." And that's when Frank starts to panic.
The doctors are baffled, though they don't say that. They keep saying things like "unusual reaction" that make Frank want to punch them out, because they don't understand. They don't fucking understand how bad this is. This isn't supposed to happen to Gerard. Not Gerard. Why couldn't it have been any of them? Why couldn't it have been Frank? He would have happily taken this one for Gerard, to spare him. Gerard asking him for a beer echoes in his head. It's the thing that freaks him out more than anything, more than the idea of four years of Gerard’s memory gone. It's the fact that Gerard was a different person, lost, broken, drinking and puking every night, unsettled, heart-broken, scared. And he worked through that, he worked his ass off to get through it, to make his life what it is now. Gerard has accomplished so much and life kicks him in the fucking balls and brings him back to one of the places where he was at his worst, and Frank wants to break the first thing he can get his hands on.
The doctors begin the, “What's the last thing you remember" process, with help from Mikey and Alicia, while Frank paces on the other side of the room. Gerard treats it as a game and starts listing off random things he remembers, like the last television show he thinks he watched, the last show they played, the last time he did laundry. It takes all of them wracking their brains to figure out the last thing Gerard remembers, which seems to be a gig they played in Connecticut, and a fight he had with Bert.
Bert, Frank thinks, is the last name he wants to hear. Not now, not ever again honestly, although lately Gerard had been good about mentioning Bert without totally getting down on himself, or not mentioning Bert at all, which is better. It isn’t just Bert, though Frank never really liked the guy. But if they’ve gone back in time in Gerard’s head, it means they’ve gone back to a time when Bert was around, when he was on Gerard’s mind, when Gerard was thinking that he only knew how to screw up relationships.
“You and Bert aren’t talking right now,” Frank says, and then quickly looks at the floor, silently begging that they don’t have to talk about Bert any more than that.
The doctor takes Mikey and Alicia out into the hall, and, at Alicia’s raised eyebrows, Frank follows. The doctor says, in a stern voice that Franks thinks sounds disapproving, "This isn't how memory works." There’s a long pause where they’re all waiting to see if the doctor’s going to say anything more, but he just looks baffled.
Mikey finally says, "It's how Gerard works,” and Frank thinks he’s kind of right. Gerard has experienced trauma and reverted, not to another time that was more comfortable and safer, but to a time where things were out of control. Gerard matches like with like, and something in his body went out of his control and his brain went right along with it, casting about for the first thing that must have felt like not being able to breathe. It makes total sense to Frank, and when he looks at Mikey, Mikey’s clearly thinking the same thing.
The doctor looks at both of them like they’re crazy, and spends the rest of the conversation directing his comments and questions to Alicia.
When they go back in, Frank feels like they have a better sense of what’s going on, but trying to tell Gerard is something else.
"Listen, seriously, are you guys fucking with me?” Gerard says, once again trying to get up from the hospital bed. He’s been asking them, in various ways, if they’re fucking with him, for five straight minutes, and nothing they say seems to convince him that they’re not. “Because you know I don't think this sort of thing is funny. I mean, ok, maybe it could be funny. You must have gone to a lot of work, but...." Gerard stops, and Frank thinks, thank god, he’s catching on, until he realizes Gerard is staring at Frank's arms. "You got new tattoos," Gerard says quietly. "I saw you yesterday, and you didn't have those." He reaches for Frank's arm, stops before he touches Frank's skin. He looks up into Frank's eyes for a long moment and Frank isn’t' sure what Gerard sees, Frank's terror, the sadness, the fear, but Gerard goes sort of limp and sits back on the hospital bed.
"Mikey?" Gerard says, looking up at his brother, and Mikey nods. Gerard doesn't say anything more until the doctor comes back in and then Gerard takes it in stride, asking questions about his diagnosis, what he should and shouldn't do, agreeing to tests that would normally have made him freak out.
Frank offers to make all the phone calls, to everyone except to Gerard’s mom, which Mikey insists on putting off for as long as possible, because Frank doesn’t really know what else to do. Gerard sitting calmly in the hospital is a special kind of nightmare for Frank, because it's Gerard surrendering, Gerard submitting, and even if it’s for his own good in this case, Frank has considered way too many nightmare scenarios where Gerard drank himself nearly to death, or overdosed, or got so scared and far inside himself that not even Mikey could get him out.
Instead of panicking, Frank focuses on the fact that Gerard noticed his tattoos. Frank's not even sure he remembers his tattoos from that long ago, except maybe that his right arm was nearly bare. Gerard's fingers had lingered over a Jamia tattoo on the inside of Frank's wrist. It doesn't mean anything, Frank thinks, except that one was obviously new. It doesn't mean anything that Gerard focused on that one.
"An MRI, Gee, and a CAT scan, good job. You didn't even flinch when the doctor took your blood," Mikey says, as they’re leaving the hospital. Gerard asks pretty nicely, when he’s discharged, if he can leave in a wheelchair, and they let him. Frank and Alicia each push a side of Gerard’s wheelchair. They’re supposed to bring him to a neurologist in two days. The doctors will call with test results. Frank thinks it sounds like the parody of bad date, giving out your number to someone and knowing they're never gonna call, or, worse, they'll call and say the same things they said before, the things that mean nothing. Gerard shakes his head, like he's trying not to remember the tests, or that he was in the hospital at all.
"You want a coffee?" Frank asks.
Gerard looks at Frank strangely, and says, "Ok," like he’s not really sure.
And ok, Frank thinks, that’s weird. Sure, Gerard didn't always drink coffee like breathing, but Frank has gotten so used to it, to spotting Starbucks, to sensing when Gerard might have a craving. It was just what you did with Gerard. He gives so much of himself that he needs someone to watch over him. He needs lots of people. He needs his brother and he needs Lyn-Z and he needs his band. Gerard needs them all because he won’t ask, he won't remember that it isn't a favor he is asking, it isn’t a hardship. It isn't anything at all for Frank to give and give and give to Gerard. Frank had been sure that, after a day like this, Gerard would want coffee.
"What's my favorite coffee?" Gerard says. "I don't remember, you'll have to order for me, Frankie. Starbucks doesn’t have liquor shots, right?" He's making a joke, but Frank's chest tightens.
Inside the Starbucks, the air is full of espresso and sweet syrup. Frank catches his breath in line. He wonders if when they wake up tomorrow, Gerard will be ok, if he'll be back to his normal self. If something can trigger it, like always happens on TV, Gerard's first sip of Starbucks coffee. Maybe when he kisses Lyn-Z. If Gerard's wife can bring his memory back, Frank isn't going to begrudge either of them their marriage.
And that makes him laugh hysterically while the barista is making his order, because Gerard has fucking forgotten he's married and none of them have remembered to tell him. The barista gives Frank a shifty look, and he smiles at her, trying to pull himself together. He takes the coffees in a tray back outside, and hands them out. Alicia is on her cell, Mikey and Gerard are talking about when Mikey got LASIK.
Gerard is half-way through his second cigarette, takes a last drag, takes a sip of coffee, and leans over and kisses Frank. Frank feels the world stop, Gerard's mouth hot from the coffee, tasting like cigarettes and so damn familiar and when Gerard pulls back, he's grinning. He takes a long sip of his coffee, and doesn't notice the way Mikey and Alicia are staring at Frank. Frank doesn’t meet their eyes, because he’s not sure he wants to know whether they think it’s good or bad. Frank lights a cigarette, and Gerard and Mikey pick back up and they start walking to the car. Alicia hangs up her phone, falls back to walk with Frank.
"That was Lyn-Z. Her flight gets in an hour," Alicia says. Frank looks at Gerard’s heels in front of him as they walk.
"I'll go pick her up," Frank offers.
Alicia shakes her head. "No," she says. "I'll go. You go back to the house with Mikey and Gee."
Frank nods. He can feel that Alicia wants to say something and he really wishes she'd just come out with it. Frank realizes he's holding his breath.
"Listen,” she says, and then hesitates and finally comes out, with, “is everything ok?”
“Yeah,” Frank says, forcing a smile.
"Ok," is all Alicia says, and then she skips forward, kisses Mikey, takes the keys, and takes off to her car.
Mikey sticks the list of forbidden foods on the refrigerator, and Gerard starts to protest when he reads it. "Hey, I like peanut butter!" he says.
Mikey just looks at Gerard and says, "This is serious," and Gerard nods.
Mikey sits down at the computer and starts opening up tab after tab of YouTube videos. Frank listens to his phone messages, two from Ray, one from Bob, two from Schechter, and then calls everyone back. He doesn’t have a lot of information, mostly he just says that they’re waiting for Lyn-Z to come back, and Mikey grabs the phone when Frank is talking to Bob and starts asking Bob questions about what he remembers from when he first joined the band. Frank wanders off when it seems like Mikey and Bob won’t be finished anytime soon, and he finds Gerard with his face pressed up against the window.
“What are you looking at?” Frank asks. Gerard turns his face so he’s looking at Frank, but his cheek is still pressed against the glass of the window pane.
“The outside,” Gerard says and shrugs. “The window feels good.”
“Do you have a fever?”
“Are you gonna feel my forehead, Frankie?” Gerard asks, and Frank just shakes his head, because yeah, he was just about to, but no, he’s sure not going to now. With Gerard giving him that smile, with his head titled back and his neck bared for Frank, it would be a completely different kind of gesture, and Frank, knows when Gerard is inviting him to cross a line, and when it’s better to say no.
When Frank doesn’t say anything, Gerard says, “So, Bert…”
“What about Bert?” Frank says, when he really wants to say, “Shut the fuck up about Bert.” He’s trying to be cautious with Gerard, not pick a fight.
“Bert and I had a fight,” Gerard says plainly.
“Yeah, you had a fight. And you don’t talk anymore.” Frank casts about for something to do with his hands, settles on tugging his jeans up. Frank watches as Gerard’s eyes go to Frank’s waist.
“So no one called him.”
“No,” Frank says, harshly.
“Ok, good,” Gerard says, and turns and presses his forehead back against the window pane, leaving Frank looking at the curls of hair at the back of Gerard’s neck, wanting to touch them, and having to force himself to walk away, find Mikey and get his goddamn phone back.
Maybe twenty minutes later, which Frank has spent avoiding Gerard and helping Mikey quietly remove all of the alcohol in house, Lyn-Z comes in behind Alicia, walks into the living room and Gerard looks up from his inspection of Mikey’s DVD collection. "Hey," he says. "Lyn-Z, right?" He stands up and shakes her hand. "What...uh, what are you doing here?"
To her credit, she barely flinches. Her eyes are calm and she says, "I came here to see if your memory was back."
"Uh, no," Gerard says, and his smile is earnest, but confused.
"Well," she says, and then nods. "So, listen, a year ago, we started seeing each other, and then a few months ago, we got married, right at the end of your tour. At Christmas, we bought a house. I'm gonna go back there, drop my stuff off, get a change of clothes. You want to come with me? We'll come right back to Mikey's after?"
It's all carefully measured, and Frank has a new respect for Lyn-Z.
Gerard nods, but he's not looking at anyone. Lyn-Z kisses Mikey, Alicia, hugs Frank, and then she says, "Ok, whenever you're ready," to Gerard. He nods again, gets up and hugs his brother, Alicia steps back and smiles because Gerard isn't sure what to do. He smiles back at her gratefully. Gerard usually would have kissed her cheek, or pulled her hoodie up over her head, or told her to treat his brother right. It’s obvious that this Gerard isn't really sure who she is.
Finally, Gerard comes over to Frank. He looks like he’s about to lean in for a hug, but then Gerard reaches up and touches Frank's cheek, gently, and it's incredibly tender and also transparently intimate and it makes Frank's mouth go dry. "I'll be back soon, Frankie," he says, like he's comforting Frank when he's really comforting himself. He trails his fingers down over Frank's lips and Frank kisses them, then looks up at Lyn-Z, who's watching, curious, calm. Frank looks back at Gerard, who looks genuinely frightened.
"Call if you need anything, Gee, ok?” Frank says, and he’s not sure it’s enough, “We'll see you soon." Frank watches as Gerard pulls the door shut behind him, and follows Lyn-Z out to the car.
"He's freaking," Mikey says once Gerard is gone. “And I smell like fucking rubbing alcohol because I spilled some of it on me.”
“He wouldn’t drink that, would he?” Frank asks, but then he remembers Gerard raiding everyone’s suitcases, opening everything with a cap and sniffing it, evaluating the potential for the contents to give him a high.
He goes into Mikey’s bathroom, locks the door, and splashes water on his face. He leaves the tap running, closes his eyes and thinks of Gerard, of Gerard kissing him, Gerard touching his face, tracing his lips like that. When he comes out, Alicia has made him a pop-tart.
"Here," she says, and gives it to him and walks away. Frank really likes Alicia. He follows her, because he wants to ask her something.
"Alicia, would it be all right if I stayed? "
"Don't even think of leaving until Gerard gets back here, ok?" she says. Frank nods. He really, really likes Alicia. "Go play Guitar Hero with Mikey. And let him win at least once. His brother's got amnesia."
Frank plays an hour of Guitar Hero with Mikey and when they still haven’t heard from Gerard or Lyn-Z, he goes upstairs to Mikey and Alicia's spare room, where there's a dresser, a futon, and a computer, and an exercise bike that it looks like neither of them has ever used. He sits on the futon, kicks off his sneakers, and takes out his phone. He looks at it a long time, and then he calls Jamia.
She doesn’t answer, and so he leaves a message. He's not even really sure what he says, sort of rambles through the story, about how they went back to the hospital, how Gerard has lost his memory, that Lyn-Z is home, and that he's going to stay at Mikey and Alicia's a little longer, and she's welcome to come over if she wants. He lies down on the futon, and closes his eyes.
His phone wakes him. He thinks it's Jamia calling him back and he answers before he even opens his eyes. "Hon?" he says.
"Frankie?"
It's Gerard, and he's whispering. Frank sits up, shakes his head to clear it. "Gee? Is everything ok?"
"Besides the fact that I'm in a house that's supposed to be mine with a woman who's supposedly my wife? I don't know, not really, I guess." Gerard's voice is tight. "She's in the bathroom right now. I feel like I'm sneaking around, but apparently I'm in my bedroom. I wrote a comic book, Frankie, why didn't you tell me?"
Frank isn't even sure what to say. Gerard is sneaking away from Lyn-Z to call him while she's in the bathroom. "I'm sorry, Gee, I'm used to you remembering your comic book, you fucking talked about it constantly."
"I mean, a comic book," Gerard says, and Frank laughs, because it’s kind of ridiculous that Gerard could not remember Umbrella Academy. "Listen, I hear the water running, I'd better go. I think we're coming back to Mikey's anyway, so, see you soon."
It's the most bizarre conversation. Frank sighs and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, so hard he sees spots. The door creaks.
"Are you lurking, Mikeyway?" Frank says.
"Did my brother just call you?" Mikey says, nudging the door open with his toes and then leaning in the doorframe.
Frank nods. "It was strange. It was like he was hiding from Lyn-Z."
Mikey nods and says, "Imagine if I came in here and told you were married to Amanda Palmer."
"From the Dresden Dolls? I'd tell you to fuck off."
"And what if Amanda showed up here, picked you up and took you to a house that had all her shit and all your shit and your fucking family pictures on the wall."
Mikey's always been the smart one.
"Go back to sleep," Mikey says. "I'll wake you when he gets here."
Frank does go back to sleep, thinking about what it would be like to wake up and have gone back four years. When he wakes up, someone's sitting down on the futon. It's Lyn-Z. Her hand is resting on his ankle, and as soon as she notices he’s awake, she pulls it back into her lap.
"Hey, sorry to wake you," she says. "I was still formulating my thoughts, I thought you were a heavier sleeper than that." She pulls her hair back into a ponytail, folds her legs up under her. "Are you awake enough to hear a proposition?"
Frank nods. He won't ask where Gerard is. He won't ask. He can sit here and talk to Lyn-Z and know Gerard is ok with his brother.
"So," she says. "I think Gerard should stay at the house, and I think you should come stay with us. I don't think he wants to stay with someone who's essentially a stranger to him, but I think he should be in his own house, even if he doesn't remember it. And I know he remembers you." There's something in the look Lyn-Z is giving him that makes Frank uncomfortable. He doesn’t understand why being alone with her suddenly makes him feel like he’s been cornered.
"Let me talk to Jamia," Frank says. He's already made the decision, though.
“Let's try it for a few days. He can always come back and stay with Mikey.” She reaches over and squeezes Frank's knee. Their eyes lock for a second and they both look away. "Thanks," she says, like Frank's just held the door open for her, instead of agreed to consider moving in with her and her husband, who doesn't remember her. Frank's knee tingles where she's touched it.
He tries Jamia again, and then realizes, stupidly, that she left for Seattle this afternoon and she’s probably still on the plane, and he hangs up before the voice mail picks up. Jamia calls him back a second later.
"I forgot you weren’t home, hon, I'm sorry,” he says instead of hello.
"Don’t fucking hang up like that," she says fondly. "That's what happens in horror movies, you start dialing but the monster gets you just before the other person picks up."
"Do you hear any monster breathing?"
"I don't know, you could be the monster, pretending to be Frank."
Frank laughs. "Isn't that what I usually am? How's Seattle?"
"The street team here's awesome," she says. "First class, seriously. How's Gerard?" she says the last part quietly.
"Ok, I guess. I mean, he went over to the house with Lyn-Z and he's really freaked. He called me while he was over there."
"You've always been his touchstone," Jamia says and Frank considers the word. Touchstone. He'd never really thought of that. “And, think about it, you're the only one who hasn't really changed. Mikey's got a wife and a house. But you're still you. Gerard recognizes you."
"Yeah," Frank says, and then takes a deep breath and says, "Is this a good time to ask you something? I wanted to stay with Gerard and Lyn-Z for a little while.”
"Of course,” Jamia says. “I’ll be in Seattle until Wednesday anyway. I’ll come over once my flight gets in."
"Ok," he says, and tells her he loves her, and hangs up.
Gerard is quiet in the car on the way over to Lyn-Z’s, and Frank thinks maybe he's going to fall asleep. Gerard is terrible about sleeping during drives. He's not the person you want to bring on a road trip, because he'll be all excited, talk about the games you're gonna play, 20 Questions and the license plate game and then immediately drop his chin to his shoulder, or tuck his head into his hoodie and fall asleep. It's different on the bus - it has to be different on the bus, you get used to the feel of wheels under your world. Frank thinks it's pretty reasonable, though, today - Gerard has had an exhausting day of things he usually hates - a visit to the doctor, tests, and everyone over-focusing all of their attention on him. And now they're on the way to Lyn-Z's, and Frank's shoulders are tense from trying to anticipate Gerard's reaction, trying to figure out what he's feeling.
Gerard's forehead is pressed against the window, and he's slumped in the seat. Frank thinks of Gerard in the early morning, after a show, pressed against the window in the seats in the kitchenette, not really seeming to pay attention and then launching into something, someone he'd seen in the audience, something smart Mikey had said, something in a comic book, the random observations that he wanted to share, and how so many of the moments made Frank wonder what it was really like in Gerard's head, with the littlest things he noticed, the small details he picked up, the tiniest things to which he attached significance, the strangest things Gerard focused on.
Gerard wasn't watching out the window. He was probably staring at the lock, wondering how it worked, wondering who designed it, who decided what it should look like. He probably wasn't thinking about the car at all, thinking about a melody in his head and when he'd have the quiet time to work it out. He was probably living in the middle of one of his fantasy worlds that he sometimes told Frank about late at night when they were both stuck almost but not quite asleep in the dark of the bus or an unfamiliar hotel bed. Worlds where they were all special, where people flew and floated and had magic in their blood and where everything they did had a story, it all meant something and it all followed a pattern. Worlds where he felt safe, where he felt normal.
"Do you want to drive?" Frank asks, because sometimes that makes things easier. Sometimes it’s easier to sit behind the wheel, to be in charge of the travel. Because he thinks it might be easier if Gerard was doing something and Frank could sit and look out the window, watch the road fly by.
"I don't know the way," Gerard says, and it’s sad, and true, and neither of them says anything the rest of the drive.
Frank can’t get to sleep, probably because of how long he spent napping this afternoon, but he thinks it has more to do with the strangeness of the house, with the bizarre, unsettled feeling he gets from sleeping in the guest room of Gerard and Lyn-Z’s house. He listens to the sound of the heat clicking on, listens to the creak down the hall that tells him someone else is up, too. After a few moments of quiet, when Frank almost is starting to fall asleep, he hears the door, and before he can turn around, get himself up from the futon where he wasn't quite awake and wasn't quite asleep, Gerard is next to him, lifting up Frank's shirt, licking up his spine.
"Jesus," Frank breathes out, and then, "Gerard, this isn't - "
He stops when Gerard climbs up on his legs, further pressing Frank on his stomach on the futon, and bites the middle of Frank's back. Frank moans, he can't fucking help it. Gerard’s teeth tickle and hurt all at once and it feels incredible, and he's not thinking, he can’t possibly think with Gerard touching him like this, with Gerard’s mouth all over him. He says, "Gerard," and it comes out as a whisper instead of a protest.
Finally, he manages the willpower to turn over, dislodging Gerard, which it turns out is actually worse, because then Frank is on his back and Gerard is on top of him. Gerard's smile is a little manic, and he's already sliding his hands up and under Frank's shirt, pressing his mouth to the tattoos on Frank's stomach, when he asks, "Can we do this, Frankie?"
"Yes," Frank breathes out, and it's not what he meant to say at all. Gerard doesn't wait, just undoes Frank's jeans, hikes them down to his thighs and takes Frank's cock in his mouth. Frank bites down hard on his fist to stop from crying out, because Jesus Christ, it feels so good. Gerard feels so good and they haven’t done this in forever, and it’s so, so wrong and Frank just lets go and doesn’t give a shit what’s right and what’s wrong, everything’s so fucked up, and it’s been so long since Gerard even touched him, since he had Gerard’s full attention like this that Frank just can’t refuse. Gerard is sloppy and urgent and making needy sounds and Frank doesn’t even last. He comes hard, without even giving Gerard a chance to pull off and Gerard just swallows it down and Frank thinks, immediately, “Shit,” because this is totally and absolutely the last thing that he should have let happen. Gerard wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, smearing come across it and it’s obscene and Frank pulls at Gerard’s collar, pulls him close and sucks hard on his neck. Gerard groans, “Frankie,” and this isn’t the way it usually worked. Gerard sucked him off, or Frank sucked Gerard off, or, a couple of times, they brought each other off frantically with hands and skin and friction. This is somehow a lot more deliberate. Gerard asked permission, and Frank gave it, and now Frank’s about to wrap his hand around Gerard’s cock and he doesn’t want to rush. He wants to make it slow, wants to hear Gerard beg.
So he unzips Gerard’s pants, shoves them down, and then, his voice catching, tells Gerard to take them all the way off. Gerard does, without hesitation, scrambling back onto the futon, naked below the waist, and Frank tells him to get on his back and spread his legs. He delights at the way Gerard’s eyes go wide. Frank sucks on his finger, presses it behind Gerard’s balls, then drags it slowly toward the crack of Gerard’s ass. It’s just spit and so Frank wants to go slow, not go too far but Gerard is whimpering and Frank presses in, just a little bit, and Gerard fucking pushes back down against Frank’s finger. Frank wraps his other hand around Gerard’s cock, tugs tightly and hisses, “Slow down,” and Gerard breathes out, relaxes his hips slightly, lets his knees drop out. “Slow,” Frank says, a little softer, and makes a fist around Gerard’s cock, sliding up and down. Gerard arches up a little, into Frank’s hand and Frank slides his finger a little deeper, almost until his knuckle. Gerard throws his head back and makes a strangled noise. It crosses his mind that Lyn-Z might hear them, might come in to check on him, but Frank doesn’t really believe it, not enough to stop. He finds a rhythm, slow enough that his wrists start to ache but there’s sweat across Gerard’s temples and he can see the tendons in Gerard’s neck and he’s just waiting for Gerard to say it, just once, and when Gerard chokes out, “Please, Frankie, please,” and Frank pushes a little further, tugs a little faster, does just what it takes to bring Gerard over the edge, Gerard’s back arches, his breathing gets ragged, saying Frank’s name too many times.
Frank kisses Gerard’s jaw, kisses his mouth while Gerard still gasps for breath, and then says, lips against Gerard’s forehead, “I’ll be right back,” and goes into the bathroom.
Frank doesn’t want to turn on the light, so he runs the faucet and grabs the first washcloth he can find, squatting in the dark, soaps up his hands and wets the washcloth and then walks, quiet as possible, back into the guest room. He shuts the door behind him but before it’s closed, he knows Gerard is already gone, leaving the blankets on the futon messed up, the room smelling of sex, and Frank, empty, exhausted. He lies down and falls asleep with the wet washcloth still in his hands.
Brian shows up with coffee and donuts at 8 in the morning, and Lyn-Z is the only one actually awake. Frank has been laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, not really asleep anymore but trying to hold on to the blankness of the day. He hears Schechter - the man's voice is like trigger now, to be on his best behavior, to be on time, to get things done - and Frank hurries up and pulls on a clean-t-shirt and jeans and brushes his teeth. When he gets downstairs, Brian is sitting at the table, a chocolate frosted donut in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
"Morning," Brian says, like it's normal for him to be here, and that's what makes Frank want to grab Brian and fucking squeeze him hard, because Brian makes everything normal. He makes Gerard losing his fucking memory feel like business as usual. Frank could tell Brian about what happened last night, about how Frank hasn’t seen Gerard since he fucking ran off last night, and Brian would just nod and offer helpful suggestions or possibly lean over and smack Frank right across the face, and either way, Frank knows that Brian would be giving him what he needs.
Frank nods, pours some coffee, looks to Lyn-Z to see where the sugar is. She opens up a cabinet, and Frank can fucking feel Schechter watching them. His instincts tell him Schechter is boss, and Schechter is around to see things they don't, to manage them. They never set limits on it, never said, "Ok, only manage us while we're on tour," and Brian has certainly taken up the charge.
He and Lyn-Z have obviously already had their conversation, and Frank forgets that Brian doesn't manage her, but his influence is the same, because Lyn-Z excuses herself to call her band and her manager, and she takes her cell phone and goes outside, grabbing a jacket.
"So," Brian says, as Frank reaches for a donut. 'What the hell are you doing?" Frank freezes at the tone. He meets Brian's eyes and they say, Go get your coffee, eat a donut, sit down. Frank does, and waits for Brian to talk, because if Frank knows anything, it's that you don't answer a Schechter question before he's done asking it. Frank takes two sips of his coffee and eats a whole donut before Brian says, "No, seriously, what the hell are you doing? Why'd you stay here last night? Did you forget you live, like, fifteen fucking minutes away?"
It’s like Brian knows. Like he was dialed right in, like his rumored psychic connection with Gerard extended even further than anyone expected. "Lyn-Z asked me," Frank says.
"I know what Lyn-Z's idea was, what do you think she and I were talking about before you got your lazy ass out of bed, the weather?" Brian pulls at his chin like he does when he's impatient. Frank knows it's not a good sign, and so he tries to be as straightforward as possible.
"Gerard needs me."
Brian nods, sits back, takes another donut.
"And you know what that means?"
"Fuck you, Schechter, you're not my therapist." It's the wrong thing to say and Frank knows it, but he can't help himself.
"Look, I am just trying to watch out for this band, a band, I might remind you, who actively seeks out disaster despite my constant efforts to protect them. I was there, four years ago, Frank. I was woken up nightly at ungodly hours by phone calls from Gerard four years ago, and I don't mean the ones where he asked me to come pick him up because he was drunk somewhere."
Frank stares at Brian. He never knew that. "I shouldn’t need to tell you this, but be careful with him. And be careful with yourself," Brian says, interrupting Frank’s train of thought. He stands up quickly, gets a new cup and fills it with coffee. "I'm bringing this up to Gerard. I'm thinking of waking him up with a call for sound check, you think that'll freak him out?" Brian says, with an evil grin, and then is disappearing up the stairs.
Frank thinks that if Brian really is giving him what he needs, then right now Frank needs to have the shit scared out of him. Brian’s tone was easy, and Frank loves and fears Brian’s ability to see right into a situation and take it apart. Frank thinks about Brian’s stark disapproval of Frank staying here, of the questions he asked Frank without really waiting for an answer. Lyn-Z comes back in, before Frank can get lost trying to figure out what Brian thinks is so wrong about what he’s doing. Frank is suddenly, completely glad he didn’t have a chance to tell Brian about last night.
Lyn-Z asks where Brian’s gone, but she barely has a chance to get the question out before they hear Gerard shout, "Jesus fucking Christ, Schechter, I knew you were a fucking psycho from the very first moment I set eyes on you. Sound check. I’m gonna kill you, and I’ll enjoy it."
Brian has brought several binders worth of news clippings, magazine articles, merch, set lists, tour schedules with him for a show and tell. "Did you keep a fucking scrapbook?" Frank asks.
Brian shoots him a withering look. "The label does have a librarian, you asshole." Gerard dives into it, like it's a toy box.
"This is like, going through someone's attic." Gerard seems calm this morning, after his outburst at Brian, and Frank wonders if it isn't the presence of Brian, giving legitimacy to a morning pawing through the archives of his own life, like it's entirely normal.
Gerard hesitates over the photo shoots the most, and Frank thinks he understands why. They never look like themselves in the photo shoots - there’s always some angle, some story the photographer is telling that has nothing to do with the mood of their subject, nothing to do with their subject at all. Gerard looks at them all with skepticism, like he doesn't recognize himself.
Gerard reads over an article, looks up at Brian and says, "You're clean?"
And there's Brian's weakness: Gerard, always Gerard. Brian stumbles and mumbles out, “Yeah, couple years back. You got clean and showed me what I needed to do," and there's so much in that sentence, so much in the way Brian is holding himself, the long story of Gerard saving his own life then saving Brian's, and Gerard doesn't remember. Gerard puts the article down, and Brian actually looks shaken. He goes to get more coffee, and Frank follows.
"That's fucking freaky," Brian says. "I mean, he really has no idea."
"Yeah," Frank says, and then, because he’s not sure what else to say, "Fucking Gerard."
Brian cracks up and claps a hand on Frank’s back.
Frank pretty much successfully avoids Gerard for the rest of the day, between talking with Brian about what’s going on with Gerard, carefully leaving out the exact reason he’s avoiding Gerard, passing the phone back and forth and arguing with Bob about whether or not he ought to miss his cousin’s wedding and fly in from Chicago (“Shut up, asshole, I’d fucking expect all of you to come here if I’d lost my memory.”) and taking a ridiculously long shower. Brian instructs Lyn-Z to put on Mozart when Gerard starts getting freaked out.
“It’ll make him fall asleep, like taking a fucking baby for a car ride. Two minutes in, he’s fast asleep.”
“So you’re saying we ought to lay him down for a nap?” Lyn-Z says. She can’t keep the smile from her face. Frank had never known that about the Mozart, but he takes the moment to grab his keys and go out to the car.
Frank needs to go home and get some things if he’s going to stay over for more than one night, which he kind of thinks is the plan. Jamia’s in Seattle until tomorrow, and when Frank pulls into the driveway, and his is the only car there, he already feels the quiet of the house, the heat turned down, the kitchen sink empty, everything quiet.
He pulls out a suitcase from where it never quite got put away, and starts throwing jeans and t-shirts and socks and underwear into it. He packs some things from the bathroom, a book, a couple of CDs, and then he just kind of stops and stands there in the middle of his bedroom. He’s packing for a vacation, except he’s not really going far and he’s not really sure what he’s going to do and he really wishes Jamia were here because she’d know what to pack, what to do. He could probably even tell her about what happened with Gerard last night, how he felt good about it, even now, how he felt guilty and happy. Jamia understood him when he got confused like this.
Jamia’s always had a different understanding about how relationships worked. She’d been in a few relationships before she and Frank had gotten together. She lived with a couple - a man and a woman - for about a year, and she dated this one guy on and off who was also dating a few other people. He’s heard Jamia correct people about the difference between polyamory and open relationships, but the idea of how it all works still escapes him.
He thinks it’s the real reason that what he’d done before, with Gerard, was ok. He’d tell Jamia about it, on the phone on the quiet bus, or when she’d meet up with them on the road. Not the details, it wasn’t like that, but he’d tell her like it was part of the answer to the question of how Gerard was doing. It made him feel closer to Jamia, that he could tell her about where he was vulnerable, that his weak spot was Gerard and that she understood it never meant that he didn’t love her. It made him love her more, the more he opened up. Frank had thought what was going on was just about friendship, that it was just about Gerard. It was Gerard, and he always, always made exceptions for Gerard. It didn’t mean anything about his relationship with his girlfriend.
He doesn’t stay at the house long, because it’s empty and he feels bad turning on all the lights, and so he calls Jamia as he wanders around in the dark and tells her about Brian’s visit, about the effect that Brian had on Gerard, and Gerard on Brian.
“Do you think he and Gerard ever - ” Frank says and he stops, because he’s not really sure he wants to talk about Gerard like that.
“Ever what, sweetie?” Jamia asks.
“I don’t know why I said that,” Frank mumbles.
“Ok,” Jamia says, “But did you mean you wonder if they ever slept together? You should ask.”
“I’m not asking either of them that,” Frank says quickly.
“Ok,” Jamia says, backing off. “Ok, fine, but it’s not a bad question. And it’s not strange that you’re thinking about it now, because you’re trying to remember what four years ago was like for Gerard. It’s not unreasonable at all to think that about Brian.”
Frank gets a creeping feeling of discomfort. “I don’t want to know that shit about my band.”
“Ok,” Jamia says, and Frank can tell he’s being a little too intense. “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t wait for you to come home. I hate the phone sometimes.”
“I know you do, Frankie, I know you do,” Jamia says, and it makes Frank smile into the receiver, even if she can’t see it.
When Frank gets back, Gerard is reading Umbrella Academy again with an expression of shock and anxiety on his face, and Lyn-Z is accepting an invitation to go over to Mikey and Alicia’s for dinner.
“Did you get everything you need?’ Lyn-Z says, as Frank hauls his suitcase up the front stairs.
“I forgot my toothbrush,” Frank says, just realizing, picturing it lying on the bathroom counter.
“It’s ok, I’m sure we have a spare,” Lyn-Z says, and Frank wonders how people remember to do things like that, keep spare toothbrushes around for unexpected guests.
Frank follows Lyn-Z upstairs, where she opens up the linen closet, and pulls out a spare toothbrush, still in its plastic case.
“I hope you like purple,” she says as she hands it to him.
“Thanks,” Frank says.
Lyn-Z steps closer and Frank thinks she’s about to tell him a secret about the toothbrush, but says, quietly, “Gerard asked me if we had anything to drink, while you were gone. I offered him water.” She says it with a smirk, but Frank can tell she’s not really amused.
“And what did he say?” Frank asks.
“He was polite about it, but he wanted something else.” Lyn-Z is standing with her arms crossed, her foot holding the door of the linen closet open, and Frank thinks he might as well be looking at a brick wall. “He obviously waited until you were gone.”
“Yeah, he’ll ask me soon enough,” Frank says. Lyn-Z’s eyes narrow, but she doesn’t say anything. “Thanks for the toothbrush.”
“No problem,” she says, and Frank waits, because it seems like she wants to say something else, but then they’re just staring at each other across the hallway. Frank smiles and ducks his head, and finally opens the toothbrush package.
“It’s nice,” he says.
“We only have the best here. Let me know if you need toothpaste, too,” she says, before heading back downstairs.
Frank tosses his suitcase into the guest bedroom, and stands there, thinking about what happened last night, about the way Gerard moved, the way his eyes closed and his mouth opened and the way he felt under Frank’s hands. He’s managed not to look at Gerard for almost the entire day, since the morning when Brian was there, and it’s not until they’re in the car that their eyes finally meet, Lyn-Z driving, Gerard in the front and Frank in the back. Frank catches Gerard’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and Gerard smiles and Frank’s heart speeds up. Gerard reaches his arm all the way back behind the passenger seat, his fingers wiggling near the foot well, near Frank’s ankles. Frank reaches down and catches Gerard’s fingers in his and squeezes.
Alicia and Mikey are handling it extremely well, despite the fact that Gerard doesn't remember his little brother is married, and he still thinks Alicia is a tech he can barely remember. Alicia makes Gerard coffee the way he likes it and kisses his forehead and cuddles Bunny Marie in her arms and Frank is selfishly, desperately glad that Gerard still remembers him.
At dinner, Gerard sits next to Frank, across from Lyn-Z and it’s almost normal. Frank’s eating his pizza and following the conversation and it’s almost, almost normal, except that Mikey is telling a story about Warped that Gerard ought to remember, and Gerard is sort of blankly staring at his pizza. At one point, Frank startles when he feels Gerard’s fingers on his forearm. Gerard is tracing one of the tattoos - one of the ones he doesn’t remember - with his fingers. Frank watches Gerard’s fingers moving over his skin, and then he watches Gerard’s face, his mouth caught in a frown, his eyes focused on the pattern his fingers are traveling, as if underneath Frank’s skin is some answer Gerard is searching for. Suddenly, Gerard looks up and meets Frank’s eyes, and pulls his hand back slowly. He smiles at Frank, but it’s filled with uncertainty, and Frank grabs Gerard’s hand in his own and squeezes, and Frank sighs as Gerard visibly relaxes, and then turns his attention back to his dinner plate. Frank reaches for his water and takes a sip and then realizes Mikey is staring at him. Alicia is elbowing Mikey and asking him to pass her another slice of pizza but Mikey’s eyes are locked on Frank, and then on Gerard. Frank looks over at Lyn-Z, who is adding dressing to her salad. She smiles at Frank and looks back at her dinner plate and Frank can’t tell if she didn’t notice what happened, or if she’s pretending it didn’t. Either way, Frank wishes Mikey would stop staring at them.
Mikey corners him later, as Lyn-Z and Gerard are getting into the car.
“Look, I know,” Frank says before Mikey can get a question out. “I know.”
“I was just gonna ask if you wanted me to talk to Gerard,” Mikey says calmly. “And explain.”
Frank doesn’t have to ask what Mikey means. “It’s fine. He’s confused. I don’t mind.”
Mikey’s eyebrows go way up.
“I mean, I don’t mind explaining.” Frank says, but, shit, he’s already said it and it’s clear which one’s the truth.
“Uh huh,” is all Mikey says, and then, after a minute, “Has he tried to get you to give him anything to drink?”
Frank shakes his head. “Not me, at least. Lyn-Z said he asked when I was home this afternoon, but it wasn’t aggressive.”
“Not yet,” Mikey says softly.
“Maybe it won’t happen,” Frank says, but Mikey just stares back at him and he knows it’s a fool’s hope. “I should get going,” Frank says, and he leans back in the doorway to say goodbye to Alicia. Mikey waves at him as he’s getting into the car, and Frank rests his hand on his arm, covering the tattoo Gerard had touched, and closes his eyes as Lyn-Z drives off.
Part 2
Band: My Chemical Romance
Pairing: Frank/Gerard, Frank/Gerard/Lyn-Z, implied Frank/Gerard/Lyn-Z/Jamia
Word Count: 29,596
Rating/Warnings: Adult: Threesome sex, rimming, lots of miscommunication
Author Notes:Thanks to phineasjones and olivia_circe for beta and quite a bit of cheerleading.
Summary: Gerard gets a special kind of amnesia. Frank gets to reexamine his idea of acceptable relationship structures. Lots of people fail to communicate effectively, but they all sure remember how to kiss.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Bonus Tracks/Enhanced Content
Fanart:
Fanart by blondiusmaximus
Fanmix:
Fanmix by dagdalorijane
Unofficial bonus fanmix:
Brand New Start by olivia_circe
Gerard has a previously unknown allergic reaction to something he eats during lunch and Mikey and Frank rush him to the emergency room. He's blotchy and not breathing right and Frank's never been more scared, even though, when he thinks about it, he's seen Gerard in what were possibly worse situations, though neither of them realized it because they were so trashed. Frank spends a rough couple of hours on the phone, in a private room, talking to Lyn-Z, who's on tour with MSI in Brussels where it's 4 in the morning; to Ray who's home visiting with his Mom; to Bob in Chicago; to Jamia; and to Brian, who shows up at the hospital in time to listen to the doctors tell them that Gerard's resting, but he'll be fine, they can take him home when he wakes up and here's a list of all the things he shouldn't eat until they can get him in for a full round of tests.
When they’re back at Mikey and Alicia’s, Mikey goes to make coffee and Frank sits with Gerard on the couch and they put on Friday the 13th, the first one, and Gerard, who seems dazed, leans into Frank's shoulder. "I feel fine, really, I'm fine," Gerard says, and then he tips his head back and it's a clear invitation and Frank leans down and kisses him, because, Christ, he was scared. Frank's going for a quick kiss, a reassuring press of lips, but Gerard opens his mouth and Frank wraps his hand around the back of Gerard's neck and it's a little more than just reassurance. Frank pulls back to see if he can figure out what exactly it is from Gerard's expression, which is a blissful smile.
"Gee," Frank says, his hand stroking the nape of Gerard's neck. Gerard bites his bottom lip like a fucking flirt.
"I'm fine," he practically purrs, and Frank can’t believe he’s doing this now, because Mikey is just in the other room, and besides, they haven't done this offstage since - well. So Frank thinks Gerard has to be fucking with him, until Gerard says, "This couch is nice. Are we at your house? I'm sorry, I must be really drunk." And that's when Frank starts to panic.
The doctors are baffled, though they don't say that. They keep saying things like "unusual reaction" that make Frank want to punch them out, because they don't understand. They don't fucking understand how bad this is. This isn't supposed to happen to Gerard. Not Gerard. Why couldn't it have been any of them? Why couldn't it have been Frank? He would have happily taken this one for Gerard, to spare him. Gerard asking him for a beer echoes in his head. It's the thing that freaks him out more than anything, more than the idea of four years of Gerard’s memory gone. It's the fact that Gerard was a different person, lost, broken, drinking and puking every night, unsettled, heart-broken, scared. And he worked through that, he worked his ass off to get through it, to make his life what it is now. Gerard has accomplished so much and life kicks him in the fucking balls and brings him back to one of the places where he was at his worst, and Frank wants to break the first thing he can get his hands on.
The doctors begin the, “What's the last thing you remember" process, with help from Mikey and Alicia, while Frank paces on the other side of the room. Gerard treats it as a game and starts listing off random things he remembers, like the last television show he thinks he watched, the last show they played, the last time he did laundry. It takes all of them wracking their brains to figure out the last thing Gerard remembers, which seems to be a gig they played in Connecticut, and a fight he had with Bert.
Bert, Frank thinks, is the last name he wants to hear. Not now, not ever again honestly, although lately Gerard had been good about mentioning Bert without totally getting down on himself, or not mentioning Bert at all, which is better. It isn’t just Bert, though Frank never really liked the guy. But if they’ve gone back in time in Gerard’s head, it means they’ve gone back to a time when Bert was around, when he was on Gerard’s mind, when Gerard was thinking that he only knew how to screw up relationships.
“You and Bert aren’t talking right now,” Frank says, and then quickly looks at the floor, silently begging that they don’t have to talk about Bert any more than that.
The doctor takes Mikey and Alicia out into the hall, and, at Alicia’s raised eyebrows, Frank follows. The doctor says, in a stern voice that Franks thinks sounds disapproving, "This isn't how memory works." There’s a long pause where they’re all waiting to see if the doctor’s going to say anything more, but he just looks baffled.
Mikey finally says, "It's how Gerard works,” and Frank thinks he’s kind of right. Gerard has experienced trauma and reverted, not to another time that was more comfortable and safer, but to a time where things were out of control. Gerard matches like with like, and something in his body went out of his control and his brain went right along with it, casting about for the first thing that must have felt like not being able to breathe. It makes total sense to Frank, and when he looks at Mikey, Mikey’s clearly thinking the same thing.
The doctor looks at both of them like they’re crazy, and spends the rest of the conversation directing his comments and questions to Alicia.
When they go back in, Frank feels like they have a better sense of what’s going on, but trying to tell Gerard is something else.
"Listen, seriously, are you guys fucking with me?” Gerard says, once again trying to get up from the hospital bed. He’s been asking them, in various ways, if they’re fucking with him, for five straight minutes, and nothing they say seems to convince him that they’re not. “Because you know I don't think this sort of thing is funny. I mean, ok, maybe it could be funny. You must have gone to a lot of work, but...." Gerard stops, and Frank thinks, thank god, he’s catching on, until he realizes Gerard is staring at Frank's arms. "You got new tattoos," Gerard says quietly. "I saw you yesterday, and you didn't have those." He reaches for Frank's arm, stops before he touches Frank's skin. He looks up into Frank's eyes for a long moment and Frank isn’t' sure what Gerard sees, Frank's terror, the sadness, the fear, but Gerard goes sort of limp and sits back on the hospital bed.
"Mikey?" Gerard says, looking up at his brother, and Mikey nods. Gerard doesn't say anything more until the doctor comes back in and then Gerard takes it in stride, asking questions about his diagnosis, what he should and shouldn't do, agreeing to tests that would normally have made him freak out.
Frank offers to make all the phone calls, to everyone except to Gerard’s mom, which Mikey insists on putting off for as long as possible, because Frank doesn’t really know what else to do. Gerard sitting calmly in the hospital is a special kind of nightmare for Frank, because it's Gerard surrendering, Gerard submitting, and even if it’s for his own good in this case, Frank has considered way too many nightmare scenarios where Gerard drank himself nearly to death, or overdosed, or got so scared and far inside himself that not even Mikey could get him out.
Instead of panicking, Frank focuses on the fact that Gerard noticed his tattoos. Frank's not even sure he remembers his tattoos from that long ago, except maybe that his right arm was nearly bare. Gerard's fingers had lingered over a Jamia tattoo on the inside of Frank's wrist. It doesn't mean anything, Frank thinks, except that one was obviously new. It doesn't mean anything that Gerard focused on that one.
"An MRI, Gee, and a CAT scan, good job. You didn't even flinch when the doctor took your blood," Mikey says, as they’re leaving the hospital. Gerard asks pretty nicely, when he’s discharged, if he can leave in a wheelchair, and they let him. Frank and Alicia each push a side of Gerard’s wheelchair. They’re supposed to bring him to a neurologist in two days. The doctors will call with test results. Frank thinks it sounds like the parody of bad date, giving out your number to someone and knowing they're never gonna call, or, worse, they'll call and say the same things they said before, the things that mean nothing. Gerard shakes his head, like he's trying not to remember the tests, or that he was in the hospital at all.
"You want a coffee?" Frank asks.
Gerard looks at Frank strangely, and says, "Ok," like he’s not really sure.
And ok, Frank thinks, that’s weird. Sure, Gerard didn't always drink coffee like breathing, but Frank has gotten so used to it, to spotting Starbucks, to sensing when Gerard might have a craving. It was just what you did with Gerard. He gives so much of himself that he needs someone to watch over him. He needs lots of people. He needs his brother and he needs Lyn-Z and he needs his band. Gerard needs them all because he won’t ask, he won't remember that it isn't a favor he is asking, it isn’t a hardship. It isn't anything at all for Frank to give and give and give to Gerard. Frank had been sure that, after a day like this, Gerard would want coffee.
"What's my favorite coffee?" Gerard says. "I don't remember, you'll have to order for me, Frankie. Starbucks doesn’t have liquor shots, right?" He's making a joke, but Frank's chest tightens.
Inside the Starbucks, the air is full of espresso and sweet syrup. Frank catches his breath in line. He wonders if when they wake up tomorrow, Gerard will be ok, if he'll be back to his normal self. If something can trigger it, like always happens on TV, Gerard's first sip of Starbucks coffee. Maybe when he kisses Lyn-Z. If Gerard's wife can bring his memory back, Frank isn't going to begrudge either of them their marriage.
And that makes him laugh hysterically while the barista is making his order, because Gerard has fucking forgotten he's married and none of them have remembered to tell him. The barista gives Frank a shifty look, and he smiles at her, trying to pull himself together. He takes the coffees in a tray back outside, and hands them out. Alicia is on her cell, Mikey and Gerard are talking about when Mikey got LASIK.
Gerard is half-way through his second cigarette, takes a last drag, takes a sip of coffee, and leans over and kisses Frank. Frank feels the world stop, Gerard's mouth hot from the coffee, tasting like cigarettes and so damn familiar and when Gerard pulls back, he's grinning. He takes a long sip of his coffee, and doesn't notice the way Mikey and Alicia are staring at Frank. Frank doesn’t meet their eyes, because he’s not sure he wants to know whether they think it’s good or bad. Frank lights a cigarette, and Gerard and Mikey pick back up and they start walking to the car. Alicia hangs up her phone, falls back to walk with Frank.
"That was Lyn-Z. Her flight gets in an hour," Alicia says. Frank looks at Gerard’s heels in front of him as they walk.
"I'll go pick her up," Frank offers.
Alicia shakes her head. "No," she says. "I'll go. You go back to the house with Mikey and Gee."
Frank nods. He can feel that Alicia wants to say something and he really wishes she'd just come out with it. Frank realizes he's holding his breath.
"Listen,” she says, and then hesitates and finally comes out, with, “is everything ok?”
“Yeah,” Frank says, forcing a smile.
"Ok," is all Alicia says, and then she skips forward, kisses Mikey, takes the keys, and takes off to her car.
Mikey sticks the list of forbidden foods on the refrigerator, and Gerard starts to protest when he reads it. "Hey, I like peanut butter!" he says.
Mikey just looks at Gerard and says, "This is serious," and Gerard nods.
Mikey sits down at the computer and starts opening up tab after tab of YouTube videos. Frank listens to his phone messages, two from Ray, one from Bob, two from Schechter, and then calls everyone back. He doesn’t have a lot of information, mostly he just says that they’re waiting for Lyn-Z to come back, and Mikey grabs the phone when Frank is talking to Bob and starts asking Bob questions about what he remembers from when he first joined the band. Frank wanders off when it seems like Mikey and Bob won’t be finished anytime soon, and he finds Gerard with his face pressed up against the window.
“What are you looking at?” Frank asks. Gerard turns his face so he’s looking at Frank, but his cheek is still pressed against the glass of the window pane.
“The outside,” Gerard says and shrugs. “The window feels good.”
“Do you have a fever?”
“Are you gonna feel my forehead, Frankie?” Gerard asks, and Frank just shakes his head, because yeah, he was just about to, but no, he’s sure not going to now. With Gerard giving him that smile, with his head titled back and his neck bared for Frank, it would be a completely different kind of gesture, and Frank, knows when Gerard is inviting him to cross a line, and when it’s better to say no.
When Frank doesn’t say anything, Gerard says, “So, Bert…”
“What about Bert?” Frank says, when he really wants to say, “Shut the fuck up about Bert.” He’s trying to be cautious with Gerard, not pick a fight.
“Bert and I had a fight,” Gerard says plainly.
“Yeah, you had a fight. And you don’t talk anymore.” Frank casts about for something to do with his hands, settles on tugging his jeans up. Frank watches as Gerard’s eyes go to Frank’s waist.
“So no one called him.”
“No,” Frank says, harshly.
“Ok, good,” Gerard says, and turns and presses his forehead back against the window pane, leaving Frank looking at the curls of hair at the back of Gerard’s neck, wanting to touch them, and having to force himself to walk away, find Mikey and get his goddamn phone back.
Maybe twenty minutes later, which Frank has spent avoiding Gerard and helping Mikey quietly remove all of the alcohol in house, Lyn-Z comes in behind Alicia, walks into the living room and Gerard looks up from his inspection of Mikey’s DVD collection. "Hey," he says. "Lyn-Z, right?" He stands up and shakes her hand. "What...uh, what are you doing here?"
To her credit, she barely flinches. Her eyes are calm and she says, "I came here to see if your memory was back."
"Uh, no," Gerard says, and his smile is earnest, but confused.
"Well," she says, and then nods. "So, listen, a year ago, we started seeing each other, and then a few months ago, we got married, right at the end of your tour. At Christmas, we bought a house. I'm gonna go back there, drop my stuff off, get a change of clothes. You want to come with me? We'll come right back to Mikey's after?"
It's all carefully measured, and Frank has a new respect for Lyn-Z.
Gerard nods, but he's not looking at anyone. Lyn-Z kisses Mikey, Alicia, hugs Frank, and then she says, "Ok, whenever you're ready," to Gerard. He nods again, gets up and hugs his brother, Alicia steps back and smiles because Gerard isn't sure what to do. He smiles back at her gratefully. Gerard usually would have kissed her cheek, or pulled her hoodie up over her head, or told her to treat his brother right. It’s obvious that this Gerard isn't really sure who she is.
Finally, Gerard comes over to Frank. He looks like he’s about to lean in for a hug, but then Gerard reaches up and touches Frank's cheek, gently, and it's incredibly tender and also transparently intimate and it makes Frank's mouth go dry. "I'll be back soon, Frankie," he says, like he's comforting Frank when he's really comforting himself. He trails his fingers down over Frank's lips and Frank kisses them, then looks up at Lyn-Z, who's watching, curious, calm. Frank looks back at Gerard, who looks genuinely frightened.
"Call if you need anything, Gee, ok?” Frank says, and he’s not sure it’s enough, “We'll see you soon." Frank watches as Gerard pulls the door shut behind him, and follows Lyn-Z out to the car.
"He's freaking," Mikey says once Gerard is gone. “And I smell like fucking rubbing alcohol because I spilled some of it on me.”
“He wouldn’t drink that, would he?” Frank asks, but then he remembers Gerard raiding everyone’s suitcases, opening everything with a cap and sniffing it, evaluating the potential for the contents to give him a high.
He goes into Mikey’s bathroom, locks the door, and splashes water on his face. He leaves the tap running, closes his eyes and thinks of Gerard, of Gerard kissing him, Gerard touching his face, tracing his lips like that. When he comes out, Alicia has made him a pop-tart.
"Here," she says, and gives it to him and walks away. Frank really likes Alicia. He follows her, because he wants to ask her something.
"Alicia, would it be all right if I stayed? "
"Don't even think of leaving until Gerard gets back here, ok?" she says. Frank nods. He really, really likes Alicia. "Go play Guitar Hero with Mikey. And let him win at least once. His brother's got amnesia."
Frank plays an hour of Guitar Hero with Mikey and when they still haven’t heard from Gerard or Lyn-Z, he goes upstairs to Mikey and Alicia's spare room, where there's a dresser, a futon, and a computer, and an exercise bike that it looks like neither of them has ever used. He sits on the futon, kicks off his sneakers, and takes out his phone. He looks at it a long time, and then he calls Jamia.
She doesn’t answer, and so he leaves a message. He's not even really sure what he says, sort of rambles through the story, about how they went back to the hospital, how Gerard has lost his memory, that Lyn-Z is home, and that he's going to stay at Mikey and Alicia's a little longer, and she's welcome to come over if she wants. He lies down on the futon, and closes his eyes.
His phone wakes him. He thinks it's Jamia calling him back and he answers before he even opens his eyes. "Hon?" he says.
"Frankie?"
It's Gerard, and he's whispering. Frank sits up, shakes his head to clear it. "Gee? Is everything ok?"
"Besides the fact that I'm in a house that's supposed to be mine with a woman who's supposedly my wife? I don't know, not really, I guess." Gerard's voice is tight. "She's in the bathroom right now. I feel like I'm sneaking around, but apparently I'm in my bedroom. I wrote a comic book, Frankie, why didn't you tell me?"
Frank isn't even sure what to say. Gerard is sneaking away from Lyn-Z to call him while she's in the bathroom. "I'm sorry, Gee, I'm used to you remembering your comic book, you fucking talked about it constantly."
"I mean, a comic book," Gerard says, and Frank laughs, because it’s kind of ridiculous that Gerard could not remember Umbrella Academy. "Listen, I hear the water running, I'd better go. I think we're coming back to Mikey's anyway, so, see you soon."
It's the most bizarre conversation. Frank sighs and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, so hard he sees spots. The door creaks.
"Are you lurking, Mikeyway?" Frank says.
"Did my brother just call you?" Mikey says, nudging the door open with his toes and then leaning in the doorframe.
Frank nods. "It was strange. It was like he was hiding from Lyn-Z."
Mikey nods and says, "Imagine if I came in here and told you were married to Amanda Palmer."
"From the Dresden Dolls? I'd tell you to fuck off."
"And what if Amanda showed up here, picked you up and took you to a house that had all her shit and all your shit and your fucking family pictures on the wall."
Mikey's always been the smart one.
"Go back to sleep," Mikey says. "I'll wake you when he gets here."
Frank does go back to sleep, thinking about what it would be like to wake up and have gone back four years. When he wakes up, someone's sitting down on the futon. It's Lyn-Z. Her hand is resting on his ankle, and as soon as she notices he’s awake, she pulls it back into her lap.
"Hey, sorry to wake you," she says. "I was still formulating my thoughts, I thought you were a heavier sleeper than that." She pulls her hair back into a ponytail, folds her legs up under her. "Are you awake enough to hear a proposition?"
Frank nods. He won't ask where Gerard is. He won't ask. He can sit here and talk to Lyn-Z and know Gerard is ok with his brother.
"So," she says. "I think Gerard should stay at the house, and I think you should come stay with us. I don't think he wants to stay with someone who's essentially a stranger to him, but I think he should be in his own house, even if he doesn't remember it. And I know he remembers you." There's something in the look Lyn-Z is giving him that makes Frank uncomfortable. He doesn’t understand why being alone with her suddenly makes him feel like he’s been cornered.
"Let me talk to Jamia," Frank says. He's already made the decision, though.
“Let's try it for a few days. He can always come back and stay with Mikey.” She reaches over and squeezes Frank's knee. Their eyes lock for a second and they both look away. "Thanks," she says, like Frank's just held the door open for her, instead of agreed to consider moving in with her and her husband, who doesn't remember her. Frank's knee tingles where she's touched it.
He tries Jamia again, and then realizes, stupidly, that she left for Seattle this afternoon and she’s probably still on the plane, and he hangs up before the voice mail picks up. Jamia calls him back a second later.
"I forgot you weren’t home, hon, I'm sorry,” he says instead of hello.
"Don’t fucking hang up like that," she says fondly. "That's what happens in horror movies, you start dialing but the monster gets you just before the other person picks up."
"Do you hear any monster breathing?"
"I don't know, you could be the monster, pretending to be Frank."
Frank laughs. "Isn't that what I usually am? How's Seattle?"
"The street team here's awesome," she says. "First class, seriously. How's Gerard?" she says the last part quietly.
"Ok, I guess. I mean, he went over to the house with Lyn-Z and he's really freaked. He called me while he was over there."
"You've always been his touchstone," Jamia says and Frank considers the word. Touchstone. He'd never really thought of that. “And, think about it, you're the only one who hasn't really changed. Mikey's got a wife and a house. But you're still you. Gerard recognizes you."
"Yeah," Frank says, and then takes a deep breath and says, "Is this a good time to ask you something? I wanted to stay with Gerard and Lyn-Z for a little while.”
"Of course,” Jamia says. “I’ll be in Seattle until Wednesday anyway. I’ll come over once my flight gets in."
"Ok," he says, and tells her he loves her, and hangs up.
Gerard is quiet in the car on the way over to Lyn-Z’s, and Frank thinks maybe he's going to fall asleep. Gerard is terrible about sleeping during drives. He's not the person you want to bring on a road trip, because he'll be all excited, talk about the games you're gonna play, 20 Questions and the license plate game and then immediately drop his chin to his shoulder, or tuck his head into his hoodie and fall asleep. It's different on the bus - it has to be different on the bus, you get used to the feel of wheels under your world. Frank thinks it's pretty reasonable, though, today - Gerard has had an exhausting day of things he usually hates - a visit to the doctor, tests, and everyone over-focusing all of their attention on him. And now they're on the way to Lyn-Z's, and Frank's shoulders are tense from trying to anticipate Gerard's reaction, trying to figure out what he's feeling.
Gerard's forehead is pressed against the window, and he's slumped in the seat. Frank thinks of Gerard in the early morning, after a show, pressed against the window in the seats in the kitchenette, not really seeming to pay attention and then launching into something, someone he'd seen in the audience, something smart Mikey had said, something in a comic book, the random observations that he wanted to share, and how so many of the moments made Frank wonder what it was really like in Gerard's head, with the littlest things he noticed, the small details he picked up, the tiniest things to which he attached significance, the strangest things Gerard focused on.
Gerard wasn't watching out the window. He was probably staring at the lock, wondering how it worked, wondering who designed it, who decided what it should look like. He probably wasn't thinking about the car at all, thinking about a melody in his head and when he'd have the quiet time to work it out. He was probably living in the middle of one of his fantasy worlds that he sometimes told Frank about late at night when they were both stuck almost but not quite asleep in the dark of the bus or an unfamiliar hotel bed. Worlds where they were all special, where people flew and floated and had magic in their blood and where everything they did had a story, it all meant something and it all followed a pattern. Worlds where he felt safe, where he felt normal.
"Do you want to drive?" Frank asks, because sometimes that makes things easier. Sometimes it’s easier to sit behind the wheel, to be in charge of the travel. Because he thinks it might be easier if Gerard was doing something and Frank could sit and look out the window, watch the road fly by.
"I don't know the way," Gerard says, and it’s sad, and true, and neither of them says anything the rest of the drive.
Frank can’t get to sleep, probably because of how long he spent napping this afternoon, but he thinks it has more to do with the strangeness of the house, with the bizarre, unsettled feeling he gets from sleeping in the guest room of Gerard and Lyn-Z’s house. He listens to the sound of the heat clicking on, listens to the creak down the hall that tells him someone else is up, too. After a few moments of quiet, when Frank almost is starting to fall asleep, he hears the door, and before he can turn around, get himself up from the futon where he wasn't quite awake and wasn't quite asleep, Gerard is next to him, lifting up Frank's shirt, licking up his spine.
"Jesus," Frank breathes out, and then, "Gerard, this isn't - "
He stops when Gerard climbs up on his legs, further pressing Frank on his stomach on the futon, and bites the middle of Frank's back. Frank moans, he can't fucking help it. Gerard’s teeth tickle and hurt all at once and it feels incredible, and he's not thinking, he can’t possibly think with Gerard touching him like this, with Gerard’s mouth all over him. He says, "Gerard," and it comes out as a whisper instead of a protest.
Finally, he manages the willpower to turn over, dislodging Gerard, which it turns out is actually worse, because then Frank is on his back and Gerard is on top of him. Gerard's smile is a little manic, and he's already sliding his hands up and under Frank's shirt, pressing his mouth to the tattoos on Frank's stomach, when he asks, "Can we do this, Frankie?"
"Yes," Frank breathes out, and it's not what he meant to say at all. Gerard doesn't wait, just undoes Frank's jeans, hikes them down to his thighs and takes Frank's cock in his mouth. Frank bites down hard on his fist to stop from crying out, because Jesus Christ, it feels so good. Gerard feels so good and they haven’t done this in forever, and it’s so, so wrong and Frank just lets go and doesn’t give a shit what’s right and what’s wrong, everything’s so fucked up, and it’s been so long since Gerard even touched him, since he had Gerard’s full attention like this that Frank just can’t refuse. Gerard is sloppy and urgent and making needy sounds and Frank doesn’t even last. He comes hard, without even giving Gerard a chance to pull off and Gerard just swallows it down and Frank thinks, immediately, “Shit,” because this is totally and absolutely the last thing that he should have let happen. Gerard wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, smearing come across it and it’s obscene and Frank pulls at Gerard’s collar, pulls him close and sucks hard on his neck. Gerard groans, “Frankie,” and this isn’t the way it usually worked. Gerard sucked him off, or Frank sucked Gerard off, or, a couple of times, they brought each other off frantically with hands and skin and friction. This is somehow a lot more deliberate. Gerard asked permission, and Frank gave it, and now Frank’s about to wrap his hand around Gerard’s cock and he doesn’t want to rush. He wants to make it slow, wants to hear Gerard beg.
So he unzips Gerard’s pants, shoves them down, and then, his voice catching, tells Gerard to take them all the way off. Gerard does, without hesitation, scrambling back onto the futon, naked below the waist, and Frank tells him to get on his back and spread his legs. He delights at the way Gerard’s eyes go wide. Frank sucks on his finger, presses it behind Gerard’s balls, then drags it slowly toward the crack of Gerard’s ass. It’s just spit and so Frank wants to go slow, not go too far but Gerard is whimpering and Frank presses in, just a little bit, and Gerard fucking pushes back down against Frank’s finger. Frank wraps his other hand around Gerard’s cock, tugs tightly and hisses, “Slow down,” and Gerard breathes out, relaxes his hips slightly, lets his knees drop out. “Slow,” Frank says, a little softer, and makes a fist around Gerard’s cock, sliding up and down. Gerard arches up a little, into Frank’s hand and Frank slides his finger a little deeper, almost until his knuckle. Gerard throws his head back and makes a strangled noise. It crosses his mind that Lyn-Z might hear them, might come in to check on him, but Frank doesn’t really believe it, not enough to stop. He finds a rhythm, slow enough that his wrists start to ache but there’s sweat across Gerard’s temples and he can see the tendons in Gerard’s neck and he’s just waiting for Gerard to say it, just once, and when Gerard chokes out, “Please, Frankie, please,” and Frank pushes a little further, tugs a little faster, does just what it takes to bring Gerard over the edge, Gerard’s back arches, his breathing gets ragged, saying Frank’s name too many times.
Frank kisses Gerard’s jaw, kisses his mouth while Gerard still gasps for breath, and then says, lips against Gerard’s forehead, “I’ll be right back,” and goes into the bathroom.
Frank doesn’t want to turn on the light, so he runs the faucet and grabs the first washcloth he can find, squatting in the dark, soaps up his hands and wets the washcloth and then walks, quiet as possible, back into the guest room. He shuts the door behind him but before it’s closed, he knows Gerard is already gone, leaving the blankets on the futon messed up, the room smelling of sex, and Frank, empty, exhausted. He lies down and falls asleep with the wet washcloth still in his hands.
Brian shows up with coffee and donuts at 8 in the morning, and Lyn-Z is the only one actually awake. Frank has been laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, not really asleep anymore but trying to hold on to the blankness of the day. He hears Schechter - the man's voice is like trigger now, to be on his best behavior, to be on time, to get things done - and Frank hurries up and pulls on a clean-t-shirt and jeans and brushes his teeth. When he gets downstairs, Brian is sitting at the table, a chocolate frosted donut in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
"Morning," Brian says, like it's normal for him to be here, and that's what makes Frank want to grab Brian and fucking squeeze him hard, because Brian makes everything normal. He makes Gerard losing his fucking memory feel like business as usual. Frank could tell Brian about what happened last night, about how Frank hasn’t seen Gerard since he fucking ran off last night, and Brian would just nod and offer helpful suggestions or possibly lean over and smack Frank right across the face, and either way, Frank knows that Brian would be giving him what he needs.
Frank nods, pours some coffee, looks to Lyn-Z to see where the sugar is. She opens up a cabinet, and Frank can fucking feel Schechter watching them. His instincts tell him Schechter is boss, and Schechter is around to see things they don't, to manage them. They never set limits on it, never said, "Ok, only manage us while we're on tour," and Brian has certainly taken up the charge.
He and Lyn-Z have obviously already had their conversation, and Frank forgets that Brian doesn't manage her, but his influence is the same, because Lyn-Z excuses herself to call her band and her manager, and she takes her cell phone and goes outside, grabbing a jacket.
"So," Brian says, as Frank reaches for a donut. 'What the hell are you doing?" Frank freezes at the tone. He meets Brian's eyes and they say, Go get your coffee, eat a donut, sit down. Frank does, and waits for Brian to talk, because if Frank knows anything, it's that you don't answer a Schechter question before he's done asking it. Frank takes two sips of his coffee and eats a whole donut before Brian says, "No, seriously, what the hell are you doing? Why'd you stay here last night? Did you forget you live, like, fifteen fucking minutes away?"
It’s like Brian knows. Like he was dialed right in, like his rumored psychic connection with Gerard extended even further than anyone expected. "Lyn-Z asked me," Frank says.
"I know what Lyn-Z's idea was, what do you think she and I were talking about before you got your lazy ass out of bed, the weather?" Brian pulls at his chin like he does when he's impatient. Frank knows it's not a good sign, and so he tries to be as straightforward as possible.
"Gerard needs me."
Brian nods, sits back, takes another donut.
"And you know what that means?"
"Fuck you, Schechter, you're not my therapist." It's the wrong thing to say and Frank knows it, but he can't help himself.
"Look, I am just trying to watch out for this band, a band, I might remind you, who actively seeks out disaster despite my constant efforts to protect them. I was there, four years ago, Frank. I was woken up nightly at ungodly hours by phone calls from Gerard four years ago, and I don't mean the ones where he asked me to come pick him up because he was drunk somewhere."
Frank stares at Brian. He never knew that. "I shouldn’t need to tell you this, but be careful with him. And be careful with yourself," Brian says, interrupting Frank’s train of thought. He stands up quickly, gets a new cup and fills it with coffee. "I'm bringing this up to Gerard. I'm thinking of waking him up with a call for sound check, you think that'll freak him out?" Brian says, with an evil grin, and then is disappearing up the stairs.
Frank thinks that if Brian really is giving him what he needs, then right now Frank needs to have the shit scared out of him. Brian’s tone was easy, and Frank loves and fears Brian’s ability to see right into a situation and take it apart. Frank thinks about Brian’s stark disapproval of Frank staying here, of the questions he asked Frank without really waiting for an answer. Lyn-Z comes back in, before Frank can get lost trying to figure out what Brian thinks is so wrong about what he’s doing. Frank is suddenly, completely glad he didn’t have a chance to tell Brian about last night.
Lyn-Z asks where Brian’s gone, but she barely has a chance to get the question out before they hear Gerard shout, "Jesus fucking Christ, Schechter, I knew you were a fucking psycho from the very first moment I set eyes on you. Sound check. I’m gonna kill you, and I’ll enjoy it."
Brian has brought several binders worth of news clippings, magazine articles, merch, set lists, tour schedules with him for a show and tell. "Did you keep a fucking scrapbook?" Frank asks.
Brian shoots him a withering look. "The label does have a librarian, you asshole." Gerard dives into it, like it's a toy box.
"This is like, going through someone's attic." Gerard seems calm this morning, after his outburst at Brian, and Frank wonders if it isn't the presence of Brian, giving legitimacy to a morning pawing through the archives of his own life, like it's entirely normal.
Gerard hesitates over the photo shoots the most, and Frank thinks he understands why. They never look like themselves in the photo shoots - there’s always some angle, some story the photographer is telling that has nothing to do with the mood of their subject, nothing to do with their subject at all. Gerard looks at them all with skepticism, like he doesn't recognize himself.
Gerard reads over an article, looks up at Brian and says, "You're clean?"
And there's Brian's weakness: Gerard, always Gerard. Brian stumbles and mumbles out, “Yeah, couple years back. You got clean and showed me what I needed to do," and there's so much in that sentence, so much in the way Brian is holding himself, the long story of Gerard saving his own life then saving Brian's, and Gerard doesn't remember. Gerard puts the article down, and Brian actually looks shaken. He goes to get more coffee, and Frank follows.
"That's fucking freaky," Brian says. "I mean, he really has no idea."
"Yeah," Frank says, and then, because he’s not sure what else to say, "Fucking Gerard."
Brian cracks up and claps a hand on Frank’s back.
Frank pretty much successfully avoids Gerard for the rest of the day, between talking with Brian about what’s going on with Gerard, carefully leaving out the exact reason he’s avoiding Gerard, passing the phone back and forth and arguing with Bob about whether or not he ought to miss his cousin’s wedding and fly in from Chicago (“Shut up, asshole, I’d fucking expect all of you to come here if I’d lost my memory.”) and taking a ridiculously long shower. Brian instructs Lyn-Z to put on Mozart when Gerard starts getting freaked out.
“It’ll make him fall asleep, like taking a fucking baby for a car ride. Two minutes in, he’s fast asleep.”
“So you’re saying we ought to lay him down for a nap?” Lyn-Z says. She can’t keep the smile from her face. Frank had never known that about the Mozart, but he takes the moment to grab his keys and go out to the car.
Frank needs to go home and get some things if he’s going to stay over for more than one night, which he kind of thinks is the plan. Jamia’s in Seattle until tomorrow, and when Frank pulls into the driveway, and his is the only car there, he already feels the quiet of the house, the heat turned down, the kitchen sink empty, everything quiet.
He pulls out a suitcase from where it never quite got put away, and starts throwing jeans and t-shirts and socks and underwear into it. He packs some things from the bathroom, a book, a couple of CDs, and then he just kind of stops and stands there in the middle of his bedroom. He’s packing for a vacation, except he’s not really going far and he’s not really sure what he’s going to do and he really wishes Jamia were here because she’d know what to pack, what to do. He could probably even tell her about what happened with Gerard last night, how he felt good about it, even now, how he felt guilty and happy. Jamia understood him when he got confused like this.
Jamia’s always had a different understanding about how relationships worked. She’d been in a few relationships before she and Frank had gotten together. She lived with a couple - a man and a woman - for about a year, and she dated this one guy on and off who was also dating a few other people. He’s heard Jamia correct people about the difference between polyamory and open relationships, but the idea of how it all works still escapes him.
He thinks it’s the real reason that what he’d done before, with Gerard, was ok. He’d tell Jamia about it, on the phone on the quiet bus, or when she’d meet up with them on the road. Not the details, it wasn’t like that, but he’d tell her like it was part of the answer to the question of how Gerard was doing. It made him feel closer to Jamia, that he could tell her about where he was vulnerable, that his weak spot was Gerard and that she understood it never meant that he didn’t love her. It made him love her more, the more he opened up. Frank had thought what was going on was just about friendship, that it was just about Gerard. It was Gerard, and he always, always made exceptions for Gerard. It didn’t mean anything about his relationship with his girlfriend.
He doesn’t stay at the house long, because it’s empty and he feels bad turning on all the lights, and so he calls Jamia as he wanders around in the dark and tells her about Brian’s visit, about the effect that Brian had on Gerard, and Gerard on Brian.
“Do you think he and Gerard ever - ” Frank says and he stops, because he’s not really sure he wants to talk about Gerard like that.
“Ever what, sweetie?” Jamia asks.
“I don’t know why I said that,” Frank mumbles.
“Ok,” Jamia says, “But did you mean you wonder if they ever slept together? You should ask.”
“I’m not asking either of them that,” Frank says quickly.
“Ok,” Jamia says, backing off. “Ok, fine, but it’s not a bad question. And it’s not strange that you’re thinking about it now, because you’re trying to remember what four years ago was like for Gerard. It’s not unreasonable at all to think that about Brian.”
Frank gets a creeping feeling of discomfort. “I don’t want to know that shit about my band.”
“Ok,” Jamia says, and Frank can tell he’s being a little too intense. “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t wait for you to come home. I hate the phone sometimes.”
“I know you do, Frankie, I know you do,” Jamia says, and it makes Frank smile into the receiver, even if she can’t see it.
When Frank gets back, Gerard is reading Umbrella Academy again with an expression of shock and anxiety on his face, and Lyn-Z is accepting an invitation to go over to Mikey and Alicia’s for dinner.
“Did you get everything you need?’ Lyn-Z says, as Frank hauls his suitcase up the front stairs.
“I forgot my toothbrush,” Frank says, just realizing, picturing it lying on the bathroom counter.
“It’s ok, I’m sure we have a spare,” Lyn-Z says, and Frank wonders how people remember to do things like that, keep spare toothbrushes around for unexpected guests.
Frank follows Lyn-Z upstairs, where she opens up the linen closet, and pulls out a spare toothbrush, still in its plastic case.
“I hope you like purple,” she says as she hands it to him.
“Thanks,” Frank says.
Lyn-Z steps closer and Frank thinks she’s about to tell him a secret about the toothbrush, but says, quietly, “Gerard asked me if we had anything to drink, while you were gone. I offered him water.” She says it with a smirk, but Frank can tell she’s not really amused.
“And what did he say?” Frank asks.
“He was polite about it, but he wanted something else.” Lyn-Z is standing with her arms crossed, her foot holding the door of the linen closet open, and Frank thinks he might as well be looking at a brick wall. “He obviously waited until you were gone.”
“Yeah, he’ll ask me soon enough,” Frank says. Lyn-Z’s eyes narrow, but she doesn’t say anything. “Thanks for the toothbrush.”
“No problem,” she says, and Frank waits, because it seems like she wants to say something else, but then they’re just staring at each other across the hallway. Frank smiles and ducks his head, and finally opens the toothbrush package.
“It’s nice,” he says.
“We only have the best here. Let me know if you need toothpaste, too,” she says, before heading back downstairs.
Frank tosses his suitcase into the guest bedroom, and stands there, thinking about what happened last night, about the way Gerard moved, the way his eyes closed and his mouth opened and the way he felt under Frank’s hands. He’s managed not to look at Gerard for almost the entire day, since the morning when Brian was there, and it’s not until they’re in the car that their eyes finally meet, Lyn-Z driving, Gerard in the front and Frank in the back. Frank catches Gerard’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and Gerard smiles and Frank’s heart speeds up. Gerard reaches his arm all the way back behind the passenger seat, his fingers wiggling near the foot well, near Frank’s ankles. Frank reaches down and catches Gerard’s fingers in his and squeezes.
Alicia and Mikey are handling it extremely well, despite the fact that Gerard doesn't remember his little brother is married, and he still thinks Alicia is a tech he can barely remember. Alicia makes Gerard coffee the way he likes it and kisses his forehead and cuddles Bunny Marie in her arms and Frank is selfishly, desperately glad that Gerard still remembers him.
At dinner, Gerard sits next to Frank, across from Lyn-Z and it’s almost normal. Frank’s eating his pizza and following the conversation and it’s almost, almost normal, except that Mikey is telling a story about Warped that Gerard ought to remember, and Gerard is sort of blankly staring at his pizza. At one point, Frank startles when he feels Gerard’s fingers on his forearm. Gerard is tracing one of the tattoos - one of the ones he doesn’t remember - with his fingers. Frank watches Gerard’s fingers moving over his skin, and then he watches Gerard’s face, his mouth caught in a frown, his eyes focused on the pattern his fingers are traveling, as if underneath Frank’s skin is some answer Gerard is searching for. Suddenly, Gerard looks up and meets Frank’s eyes, and pulls his hand back slowly. He smiles at Frank, but it’s filled with uncertainty, and Frank grabs Gerard’s hand in his own and squeezes, and Frank sighs as Gerard visibly relaxes, and then turns his attention back to his dinner plate. Frank reaches for his water and takes a sip and then realizes Mikey is staring at him. Alicia is elbowing Mikey and asking him to pass her another slice of pizza but Mikey’s eyes are locked on Frank, and then on Gerard. Frank looks over at Lyn-Z, who is adding dressing to her salad. She smiles at Frank and looks back at her dinner plate and Frank can’t tell if she didn’t notice what happened, or if she’s pretending it didn’t. Either way, Frank wishes Mikey would stop staring at them.
Mikey corners him later, as Lyn-Z and Gerard are getting into the car.
“Look, I know,” Frank says before Mikey can get a question out. “I know.”
“I was just gonna ask if you wanted me to talk to Gerard,” Mikey says calmly. “And explain.”
Frank doesn’t have to ask what Mikey means. “It’s fine. He’s confused. I don’t mind.”
Mikey’s eyebrows go way up.
“I mean, I don’t mind explaining.” Frank says, but, shit, he’s already said it and it’s clear which one’s the truth.
“Uh huh,” is all Mikey says, and then, after a minute, “Has he tried to get you to give him anything to drink?”
Frank shakes his head. “Not me, at least. Lyn-Z said he asked when I was home this afternoon, but it wasn’t aggressive.”
“Not yet,” Mikey says softly.
“Maybe it won’t happen,” Frank says, but Mikey just stares back at him and he knows it’s a fool’s hope. “I should get going,” Frank says, and he leans back in the doorway to say goodbye to Alicia. Mikey waves at him as he’s getting into the car, and Frank rests his hand on his arm, covering the tattoo Gerard had touched, and closes his eyes as Lyn-Z drives off.
Part 2