Fic: Typical Girls (Part Two)
Part One
Typical Girls Part Two
Gerard went to school at lunchtime like he'd planned. He didn't get any food since he and Chantal had ended up grabbing some lunch before he'd gone in the direction of school and she'd headed off to the rec center to swim. He settled down at his usual table and waited for his friends to arrive.
"Dude, I wish you'd told me you were skipping," Ray said as he sat down, slopping some of his mashed potatoes over the side of his tray and cursing it as he tried to mop it up with his napkin. "Fucking runny potatoes."
"It wasn't intentional," Gerard said. He paused and waited for Bob and Frank to sit down. Mikey only sometimes joined them for lunch - today he was across the room having an intense discussion with that soccer player, the one Gerard didn't like. "I ran into Chantal Claret at the record store."
"The redhead on the swim team?" Frank asked. Gerard nodded.
"And?" Ray said.
"And she kind of knows. You know. About the band thing," Gerard said.
"So," said Bob. "Someone you've never talked to who has only seen you around school made you, and you're thinking Lyn-Z won't notice even though you sit next to her and stare at her during lunch."
"That," Gerard said, "is not the point. And Chantal only figured it out because I forgot to wash off all of the stupid makeup this morning."
"You didn't have practice last night," Ray pointed out.
"Also not the point," Gerard said. "Frank was practicing on me, okay? And the point is, Chantal wants to help."
"You're already in though," Frank said. "And Toro, stop with the judging looks. You're just jealous you wouldn't look hot in eyeliner."
Bob began to snicker.
"Chantal knows Lyn-Z," Gerard said, waving his hand to hide the fact that he wasn’t all that sure exactly how Chantal would help. She’d been convincing, though. "She's already told me I need to be more Joan Jett."
"I could have told you that," Frank mumbled.
"But you didn't," Gerard replied.
"You'd better watch out, she has a way better rack than you," Frank retorted.
"Yeah, but she has a thing for Jimmy," Gerard said.
There was a pause.
"You two talked about boys?" Bob said, amused.
"Did I miss the sleepover?" Frank chimed in.
"It just came up! We also talked about Batman," Gerard said defensively.
"I think it's nice you have someone to have girl talk with," Ray said.
Bob started laughing for real then, and then said at their puzzled looks, "Dude, I hate to break it to you, but girl talk is all we fucking have. You losers."
Frank stuck his tongue out. "Fine, Mr. I'm So Manly Because I Have A Beard, what the fuck kind of guy talk should we be having?"
Bob held up his hands defensively. "Hey, I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. Just, you know, keeping things in perspective."
There was a pause as they each mentally tried to analyze their past conversations.
"Did Jepha and them have manly conversations?" Frank said, referring to the group Bob hung out with before they all graduated or dropped out. Gerard didn't fail to notice that Frank avoided saying Bert's name, just like everyone else. He wondered how long that was going to haunt him.
Bob reflected a moment, stroking his beard. He was the only one of them who hadn't been attached at the hip since the first grade, after all, so they used him as their resident expert in outsider's behavior. "Not really, no."
"Maybe there is no manly," Ray said philosophically. "Maybe we're led to think that we're supposed to talk about football because people in sitcoms do."
"And sex, we totally talk about sex," Frank chimed in.
"So do girls," Bob pointed out. Gerard's stomach dropped and he hoped suddenly that he would never find himself in the midst of a sex conversation with his band, because he would completely lose his cover for sure. Or lose control of other things, he reflected, trying to imagine what his reaction to hearing Lyn-Z talking about anything remotely dirty would be. He suspected his reaction would be male, at the very least.
He found himself gazing at Lyn-Z's table. There appeared to be an argument going on, and Lyn-Z crinkled her nose, grinned, and launched a spoonful of peas at Kitty.
Then Frank hit him on the side of his head and Gerard scowled at him. "What did we say about the creepazoid factor?"
"Keep it to a minimum," Gerard recited.
"Right," Frank said, like Gerard was a first grader in need of a gold star. "Seriously, you guys, we let this go on too long. We're never going to fix him."
"I don't need fixing," Gerard said, then caught himself looking back at Lyn-Z's table out of habit. "Fuck."
"I hear when they fix dogs they stop being such spazes," Ray said.
"And, hey, that would make your cover way easier to maintain in case you ever manage to convince her to make out with you," Bob offered.
"I hate you all," Gerard replied.
*
"Were you a stalker in art class?" Frank asked, sounding as though he was going to lecture Gerard if he answered wrong. They were all gathered in Gerard's basement to watch Flight of the Living Dead, but no one was willing to get up from wherever they'd plopped to make movie-time happen.
"No, Gabe got me and Dewees to help make a piñata," Gerard said. "Justin Timberlake is harder to replicate using paper maché than you'd think."
Ray rolled his eyes. "Dude, Dewees is a maniac."
Frank, Bob and Gerard all gave him a skeptical look. Mikey didn't bother looking up from his phone.
"I mean, I love him and all, but seriously," Ray said. "He has all these plans. And he wants me to help him with them."
"You were all gung-ho about it a couple days ago," Frank pointed out. He tried to roll over on Gerard's bed and only managed to kick Bob instead. Bob glared and Gerard scooted closer to the edge, thinking he should have taken the floor with Mikey.
"That was before I knew that I was going to be Paco," Ray said. "He wants me to grow a mustache."
"Like you could," Frank said, and Gerard was just opening his mouth to point out Frank's failed attempts at facial hair when faintly from upstairs he heard the ringing of the doorbell.
Everyone froze.
"Dude, it's the fucking FBI again," Mikey whispered, eyes wide.
"...is your doorbell the opening of "Hells Bells"?" Bob asked. Gerard gave him his best dude that's not the point look. "What? I've never heard it before!"
"It only ever rings as an ill omen," Gerard said, flailing his hands. "Bill collectors. FBI. Dad's cousin - you know, the cable TV game show host."
"We should hide," Mikey suggested. "I don't want to get interrogated again."
"It's just a doorbell," Bob said, shrugging and getting off the bed. He was out the door and up the stairs before they could stop him.
"Maybe we're overreacting," Ray said. "My doorbell rings all the time."
Mikey raised his eyebrow.
Then Bob reappeared in the doorway with Chantal Claret in tow.
"Wow, nice hole in the ground," she said. "I thought the basement dweller rumor was an exaggeration."
Frank hid his face in his arm. Gerard glared but Frank's shoulders didn't stop shaking with silent laughter. Gerard supposed he should be happy Frank was being subtle.
"Hi," he said. "I didn't know you knew where I lived."
"It was sort of like finding Mockingbird Lane, you know?" she said, looking around and then decisively shoving a pile of crap off the desk chair and settling in it backwards, resting her arms on the back.
"It's not that bad," Mikey said defensively.
Chantal rolled her eyes. "Did I say it was? Was the stained glass in the front door a bunch of bats? That was fucking awesome," she said.
Ray grinned and offered her the bag of pretzels. "If you aren't here to mock, why are you here?"
"To help with the mission?" she said. She turned to Gerard. "I assumed you mentioned our alliance."
"I did," he said. "I didn't quite realize you were gonna go Secret Service with it, though."
"Hon, it's not like you don't need the help," she said.
"I'm doing fine!" he retorted.
"So you've spoken to her how many times?" Chantal asked. "And the time I called her over to you doesn't count."
"You weren't in on the plan then," Gerard shot back.
"My contributions apply retroactively," she said.
"You can't just retcon yourself into the plan," Gerard said.
"But you can just retcon yourself into a girl who isn't a basement dweller?" Chantal said, eyebrow raised.
Gerard sputtered.
"She has a valid point," Bob said.
"So you agree that Gee needs to actually speak to Lyn-Z," Mikey said.
"I had a whole conversation with her!" Gerard protested.
"Definitely," Chantal said over Gerard.
Ray stuffed a handful of pretzels in his mouth and watched the proceedings with interest.
"I think we need to establish a game plan," Bob said.
"Agreed," Chantal said.
"He keeps fucking up without guidelines," Mikey affirmed. "We don't want a repeat of the Black Flag disaster."
"I don't even think they need me," Gerard said, listening to the plans in dismay.
Frank snickered. "That's what you get for starting this whole mission in the first place."
"But the most important thing," Chantal said loudly, drawing Gerard's attention back to the matter at hand, "is making sure that you don't embarrass yourself when you front the band."
"Don't I just sing? Maybe rock out a bit?" Gerard said blankly.
"If you were a boy," Chantal said. "But since you're a girl you have to decide whether you're going to be Kim Gordon or Courtney Love or Susanna Hoffs or Kathleen Hanna or what."
Gerard said slowly, "So, um, I have to decide if I'm awesome or not?"
"No," Chantal said, rolling her eyes. "You have to decide if you're going to use sex or shun it or be a boy or be coy or flirtatious or hardcore or mean or what."
"That seems a little overly complicated," Ray offered.
"I'm just saying," Chantal said. "Gerard, show us what you've got."
Five sets of eyes turned and stared at Gerard.
"Right here?" Gerard said.
"Well, I'm comfy," Chantal said. Ray leaned over and picked up the guitar and began strumming, and after a second Bob grabbed a couple of pencils and added a beat.
Gerard stood up awkwardly, trying to identify the song, and trying even harder to convince himself it was stupid to be nervous in front of his friends. Then he realized Ray was playing "I Hate Myself and Want To Die," and he flipped him off.
"Okay, this one's for real," Ray said, and began strumming. Gerard still felt like he was in a fishbowl, but he tried his best to sing and ignore the faces his friends kept making at him.
When he was done, Chantal declared that his performance had potential. "But we're going to have to work on it. Confidence, babe."
"Whatever," Gerard said. He didn't want to be the center of attention anymore. He could practically feel the mockery coming on, though when he sat back down Mikey just grinned at him and said, "Alicia does not have poor decision making skills."
Gerard stuck his tongue out at him.
"Are we gonna watch the Zombies on a Plane movie or not?" Bob asked.
Frank rolled off the bed and started putting the DVD into the player.
"We are gonna have to work on your moves," Chantal whispered loudly as the movie started. "You don't want Lyn-Z's backbends to outshine you."
"...backbends?" Gerard replied as Mikey, who was hardcore about his aerial zombie attacks, shushed them.
Chantal laughed. "Oh, you are in for a treat."
Gerard decided to focus on the zombies then.
*
The next few days passed without incident. Band practice was canceled - Gerard got an annoyed text from Alicia saying 'bastard demon. garage no go. practice next week,' which he got Mikey to translate as Alicia's brother was working on his car - a beat up old Dodge Demon that he was determined would be a street rod - in the garage and, what with the axle of the car being on the floor and all, wasn't going anywhere, so they wouldn't be practicing until he got it in enough working condition to roll out of the way.
Then it was Friday, and Mikey insisted that Gerard come with him to a party at Gabe's.
"You know I'm not--" Gerard protested, but Mikey dragged him along anyway.
It was pretty much immediately clear when they arrived that half the school - and, hell, half the state - was at the party. They trekked past cars haphazardly pulled into the yard and even, creatively, in the barren flowerbeds, and Gerard felt a sinking sort of dread.
"Why are you so dead set on me being here?" he demanded. Mikey had stopped asking Gerard to come with him after the shit that went down last year, and now Gerard had the sinking feeling he was being set up.
Mikey shrugged, and then said, "Oh, I should go. There are people," and melted into the crowd. Gerard stood on his tiptoes, trying to see where his brother had gone, but only caught a glimpse of him talking to that soccer player before a gangly guy in a suit bumped into Gerard and spilled beer on his arm, then apologized profusely in a British accent.
Gerard wiped off his arm with a lavender hoodie that lay abandoned outside the hall closet and moved deeper into the house, trying to find anyone he knew and could talk to. His memories of the previous parties he'd attended were hazy at best, and he was debating whether or not Mikey would seek him out and kill him if he helped himself to a beer when someone grabbed his arm and said, "Boo!"
Gerard nearly jumped out of his skin and then realized Frank was hanging off his arm, grinning and then whacking Gerard lightly on the leg with a tiny duffel bag he was carrying.
"Good, I wasn't sure if Mikey was going to convince you to come or not," Frank said.
"You all have been plotting behind my back, haven't you?" Gerard sighed.
"Yep!" chirped Chantal, pushing past Frank to lean against the wall next to Gerard. Jamia appeared a second later, handing out plastic cups to everyone but Gerard.
"You could have just shared the plan with me," Gerard said.
"But what fun would that have been?" Jamia responded.
Plenty, Gerard thought, but didn't bother to voice it out loud.
"Guess who's here tonight?" Chantal sing-songed. "Lookin' fine and on the prowl?"
Jamia raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, she's wearing chucks, so not so much on the prowl, but you're gonna be!" Chantal amended.
"I am?" Gerard said, but Frank was already shepherding him into the kitchen. Gerard caught the a glimpse of Lyn-Z then, pouring a shot into Steve's cup and laughing. She glanced over. Gerard ducked his head and hurriedly went down the stairs into the basement.
The basement was at least ninety percent less creepy than rumor had led him to believe it would be.
"It's pretty nice down here," he said, glancing around at the rec-room setup.
"Yeah, and the carpet's just the right shade to hide stains," Frank said. "Try not to touch much."
Gerard shrugged, and a minute later Jamia came down the steps, looking around with the same disappointment as Gerard felt. "I thought there would be a stripper pole," she said.
"See?" Gerard said. "Disappointing."
"It's still more of a lair of sin than your basement," Frank said.
"Chuck E. Cheese is more a lair of sin than Gerard's basement," Jamia offered. They snickered and Gerard glared.
Jamia opened the duffel bag and threw something cloth at Gerard. He stretched it out and realized it was a dress. "Put it on," she said.
Gerard had gotten pretty okay with the skirt thing, only... "Um. There are a lot of people up there," he said.
"There are a lot of people a lot of places," Frank said.
"A lot of people who have kicked my ass over the years," Gerard said. "And might, you know, recognize me."
Jamia rolled her eyes. "Put on the fucking dress, Gee. No one up there is sober enough to recognize you. And actually I'm pretty sure I saw Adam Lazzara in one of the Simpson girls' cheerleading uniforms out on the trampoline."
"He might have better legs," Frank affirmed. "And besides, you've totally lost your pants before in front of way more people. This shouldn't be an obstacle."
Frank had a point, though Gerard wanted to point out that then he'd been one of the happily smashed masses and thus hadn't cared much about losing his pants.
But he did have to get used to this already, and what better way to test his anonymity than to wander out around a bunch of assholes and friends alike?
He put on the dress, and after passing Jamia's inspection - she'd actually brought scissors to trim his bangs into slightly more choppy layers - looked at the flight of stairs with trepidation.
"Just go find her and talk to her," Jamia said.
"And don't fuck up," Frank said helpfully, shooing him towards the stairs.
"Aren't you--" Gerard began.
"We'll find you later," Frank promised.
Gerard rolled his eyes and went to the stairs, self-consciously smoothing the skirt of the black dress and making sure it hadn't somehow gotten tucked up in his tights - which were designed to make his legs look like they were covered in fucking spiderwebs, Gerard was totally fucking jealous about how awesome some girl clothes were - and then fiddled with the sleeves of Jamia's beat up denim jacket she'd offered him when he had looked at the dress's lack of sleeves with dismay.
He thought briefly about chickening out, but then heard a muffled sound behind him and both didn't want to walk in on whatever Frank and Jamia had gotten up to in the four damn seconds he'd been out of the room, god, and did want someone to make sounds with himself, so he climbed the stairs.
Really, it couldn't be any more humiliating than the bearsuit incident with Dewees.
He opened the basement door and stuck his head out cautiously, but no one was paying the least fucking bit of mind, so he just walked into the kitchen and looked around. Gabe was leaning up against the sink chatting with William and Travis, and didn't look like he recognized Gee at all when he glanced over. Gerard took this as a win and made his way through to the dining room, where he spotted Dewees doing a shimmy in an unimpressed cheerleader's face, and then into the den, where he caught Mikey's eye.
Mikey shook his head slightly - Gerard could see he was standing with Alicia and they were talking to a few people - so Gerard just kept moving until he reached the sliding glass door to the patio and went out into the chilly night.
After the heat of the house with its too many occupants, the back yard was cold, though it wasn't really any less crowded. A group were attempting to down shots while bouncing on the trampoline, to varying degrees of success and undress, while it looked like another cluster of kids had somehow started a fire in the birdbath.
Gerard was considering either hobo-ing it up with the fire kids - he thought he recognized one or two, though it was hard to tell - or going back inside to find out where Chantal had disappeared to when he heard a soft, "Hey!" coming from the shrubbery.
"Hello?" he said warily into the shrub.
"Ni!" came a reply, then a giggle.
He cautiously bent down and saw through the thin lower branches Lyn-Z tilting her head to the side and smiling at him. She waved her hand, inviting him in, and he awkwardly crawled under the shrub, leaves tugging at his hair that Jamia had so carefully arranged and awkwardly trying to make sure he wasn't flashing anything he shouldn't.
He emerged on the other side and flopped down, twisting to the side and leaning against the side of the house next to Lyn-Z. There was a narrow gap between the shrubs and the house, and he was surprised to see that he had a relatively clear view of the yard from here, as well as the patio.
"This is my super secret clubhouse," Lyn-Z giggled. "No boys allowed!"
She tilted her plastic cup over her mouth but it was empty. "Fuck it all," she said, shaking it disappointedly. A few drops went flying out, landing on Gerard's hand.
"Are you okay?" Gerard said. Lyn-Z hadn't really come across as the type to get wasted at a party hosted by Gabe Saporta, but he admittedly didn't know her that well.
"Dandy," she replied, taking his hand and licking the drops of liquor off it in one quick movement. She dropped his hand immediately, and leaned her head against the side of the house.
Gerard tried to keep his breathing under control and most importantly not freak out, but Lyn-Z had just fucking licked his hand like it was nothing.
"Um," he said, mind blank of everything Chantal and Mikey and Frank and everyone had been drilling into him for days. "You don't look alright."
He was pretty sure that telling her she didn't look alright was on the list of things to not say ever, but Lyn-Z looked sort of stressed even through the haze of alcohol.
"It's nothing. It's stupid," she said. She crinkled her nose. "It's stupidly nothing."
"I'm sorry?" he said. He realized that with the way he was sitting, he was offering anyone who happened to peek under the shrubbery a good view of his undercarriage, so he shifted and ended up with his legs folded to the side, causing him to lean over towards Lyn-Z until their shoulders touched. He nervously fiddled with the hem of his dress and said, "Where's Kitty?"
"Off with... off somewhere," Lyn-Z said, waving a hand around. She sounded deceptively casual. "It doesn't matter."
Oh. The situation clicked into focus. Gerard had no idea what to say, so he just sat there a minute, listening to Lyn-Z breathe.
"It's not like I should even care," Lyn-Z said after a while. "You know, about the stupidly nothing. It's not like... " She waved her hand around, clearly searching for the right way to phrase things. "I already knew, you know?"
Gerard nodded. "Knowing and seeing are two different things," he said.
"Yes! That!" she said. "Man, I fucked up. Am fucked up. Something." She rested her head on his shoulder.
She was wearing dark jeans and a light colored shirt under a dark jacket and her lipstick was some dark shade that made Gerard want to reach out and touch her mouth, just to assure himself it was real. He didn't, instead just said, "It's not like it's your fault or anything. You're awesome."
Lyn-Z laughed into his shoulder, wiggling a little and pressing close and finally mumbling, "Just let me rest here a minute."
"As long as you want," he said. She smiled and closed her eyes and stayed there, breathing steady warm puffs of air onto his sleeve until he could feel the way the denim warmed, and he shifted, awkwardly, enough to be able to wrap his arm around her shoulder so she wouldn't slide face-first into the dirt.
Or his lap, he thought, flushing, and couldn't decide which would be worse.
He watched the party through the lower branches of the shrubs - someone seemed to have found lighter fluid, and there was a loud argument going on at the birdbath about whether vodka or lighter fluid was more flammable, which Gerard thought was a pretty pointless battle. People wandered in and out of the house, and at one point he saw Chantal's bright red hair shining like a beacon from the porch, though she never spotted him in his secret clubhouse.
She was joined for a minute by Frank, who asked her something and they both shrugged, so Gerard figured they'd noticed they'd lost him. Neither, he noted, looked particularly hopeful that he'd succeeded. He smiled down at Lyn-Z's hair - it was thick and loose tonight, instead of in the pigtails she wore with great irony to school - and tried not to move much, because he wanted to feel her against his side forever.
He was watching the flutter of her eyes intently - she didn't seem to be sleeping deeply, just lightly catnapping - when she shifted, tilted her head up and opened her eyes.
There was only a few inches between their faces. Gerard's heart was pounding and he could feel suddenly everywhere their bodies were touching as though Lyn-Z were made of pure electricity.
"Thanks," she murmured. She didn't move, just looked at him, up at him, with those parted lips and dark eyes and Gerard wanted nothing more than to just be able to summon the will to move that last few inches and press their lips together.
He couldn't move and didn't want to, so he just watched her - the hazy dreamy way her eyes passed over his face, the way her front tooth suddenly caused an indention on her lower lip, the way she smelled like liquor and something sweet.
The moment stretched and thinned, and if Gerard didn't do something - if Lyn-Z didn't move - he thought they might stay here like this forever, in the tingling nerve-wracking unbearable moment just before a kiss. He thought his nerves might rebel and stop working, that his heart would beat faster and faster until he just keeled over, that he might flick his tongue out and taste her.
And then she looked away, and pulled back slightly, and the possibility of a kiss evaporated, and Gerard was left with a racing heart and spinning mind and tingling nerves all up and down his body.
"I..." she said, digging her fingers into the loosely packed dirt they were sitting on. "I..."
And Gerard remembered that she smelled like liquor because she was fucking smashed, and felt immediately like an asshole. "Want me to get you some water?"
"They might..." Lyn-Z said, then stopped. "No, it's probably safe to go in the kitchen. I'm a big girl."
She crawled through the shrubs, then smiled back at Gerard over her shoulder through her messy curtain of hair. "Thanks. For... Thanks."
Gerard nodded, and followed her back out into the party.
*
Gerard wasn't even really sure how he made it home, because he just kept thinking, "I almost did it. I almost kissed her. She almost kissed me," over and over and suddenly he was standing in front of the door of his house, realizing that he didn't have a key to get inside.
He rang the bell and waited patiently for his mom to let him in, and was in the kitchen accepting her offer of cocoa before he remembered he was wearing a dress and spiderweb tights and his Chucks.
"You're probably wondering..." he started, but his mother just waved a careless hand over her shoulder.
"Darling, I've seen worse." She winked. "Done worse, too."
"Please don't share," he said, slumping down at the kitchen table. She sat a mug of cocoa- his favorite Batman mug, which made him grin - down in front of him, a tiny bit slopping over the side onto the table.
"I'll wait for your wedding toast, then," she said. "Hopefully you'll be as pretty then as you are tonight." And then she pinched his cheek.
"Ma-a!" Gerard whined, leaning to try and dodge a repeat pinch.
"So you had a good night?" she said, settling down across from him with her own cup of coffee, which Gerard eyed jealously before remembering that cocoa was nice, too, with the added bonus of having a layer of melted marshmallow.
He shrugged, then said, "There's this girl."
"Girl?" his mother said, looking skeptical.
Gerard crinkled his nose at her and said, "And she's having problems with her girlfriend, which is what I wanted, but she looked so sad that I don't want that anymore. Only I want to be her girlfriend, so." He shrugged and took a sip of his cocoa.
"Just don't be the one to cause the problem with her girlfriend," his mother said. "I didn't raise no hussies."
They both heard the back door creak open slowly, and from his mother's amused expression Gerard suddenly realized exactly how few of his misadventures had slipped past her unnoticed.
"And speaking of which, you should definitely work harder on your mascara," she continued. "Clumps look cheap, you know."
Mikey froze in the kitchen entryway.
"Good evening, darling," Ma said. "Would you like some cocoa?" Then she took in Mikey's mussed appearance, messed-up hair and misbuckled boots. "Or coffee?"
"That would be good," Mikey said, slumping down at the table. He quirked an eyebrow at Gerard, who raised his mug at him.
"Have a rough night?" she asked, setting Mikey's coffee in front of him. He got the dancing skeletons mug. "Or a good night?"
"Um. Both, I think," Mikey said.
"What, did Alicia say something about me?" Gerard demanded.
"I barely talked to Alicia," Mikey said. It was Gerard's turn to raise an eyebrow. That wasn't what he'd seen, but admittedly he'd spent a lot of the evening distracted.
"Then do I need to be inviting someone new to dinner?" their mother asked.
"Um. Probably not," Mikey said. "Pete kind of kicked me out. Of his car, I mean," he clarified, looking at his coffee. "I think he freaked out."
"Well, clearly he wouldn't know a good thing if it bit him in the ass," their mother said. "Both my boys are catches."
Mikey grinned, and said, "Please don't tell him that, Ma."
"How would I get the chance? Unless you're inviting him over, that is," she said.
"What about Alicia?" Gerard burst out with.
"It's complicated," Mikey said.
"She's my bandmate," Gerard said. "I want to know if she's been dumped."
"No," Mikey said, inspecting his coffee.
Their mother raised an eyebrow. "Michael James, you'd best not be two-timing that girl."
"I'm not," he said, still staring at his coffee.
"Well?" Gerard said.
"She's... we're... Pete's..." Mikey said, fiddling with the handle of his cup.
"I see," Ma said. "That can get messy quick, you know."
"I know," Mikey said.
"Just so you know," she said.
Gerard was slower to catch on, and he just stared at Mikey, a little slack-jawed. Mikey glared at him and said, "Gerard stole your makeup."
"I'm more concerned with which of you was pawing through my underwear drawer," she replied.
"Frank," they both chimed.
"Well, that's a different story," she said. "It's been a while since I've had a cute young boy in my panties."
"I'm going to pretend you never said that," Mikey said.
"And never ever mention that to Frank," Gerard amended. "For the love of god."
Their mother just laughed and took a sip of her coffee, shaking her head at them fondly.
*
The next morning Gerard was woken by Frank launching himself onto his bed and whacking him with a pillow and yelling, "Thanks for inviting me to the sleepover!"
"Oof!" Gerard managed, trying to shield his face from the light and the seemingly endless barrage of pillow. He managed to roll over enough to snag the pillow Mikey had hidden his own head under, jerking it away before Mikey could get a grip on it and doing his best to manage to land a fluffy blow on Frank.
He pretty much failed, as Frank was both fully awake, clearly caffeinated, and had full mobility of his legs, which Gerard, tangled up in the sheets, desperately lacked.
"Fuck off and die," Mikey grumbled sleepily, trying to burrow his face into his arms.
"You asswipes both disappeared last night," Frank said. 'What the hell happened?"
"Nothing," Mikey said, peeking up from his arms. "Please give me my pillow back."
Gerard reluctantly handed back the pillow.
"And you?" Frank said, staring at Gerard. "Did you get up to nothing too?"
"Almost," Gerard said, grinning at the memory. "I almost kissed Lyn-Z."
"Almost being the operative word," Frank said.
"Hey, we had a moment," Gerard said. "A beautiful moment I am not going to sully by retelling."
"She was smashed, he offered her his shoulder, then almost kissed her," Mikey said. "Then he left and came home and had cocoa with Ma."
Frank raised an eyebrow at Gerard, who defensively said, "I talked to her! And she licked my hand!"
"That is progress," Frank said. He flopped down between Gerard and Mikey and said, "What's on the agenda for today?"
"It's Saturday," Mikey said.
"What, no top secret plans?" Frank said.
"You're the one with all the secret plans lately," Gerard pointed out. He managed to disentangle his foot from the sheet and rolled out of bed. By the time he got back from the bathroom, Frank was sitting cross-legged on the bed saying, "So Alicia was down with that?"
"But Pete, apparently, wasn't, so much," Mikey said.
"But he was all over you in the basement!" Frank protested. "Jamia didn't stop talking about it for half the way home."
"Apparently he's all about above the belt action," Mikey said.
Frank paused, opened his mouth, then shut it again. Gerard climbed back on the bed and said, "Yeah, that's what I said."
"So after all that he kicked you out of his car?" Frank said. "Want me to piss in his locker?"
"Yes," said Gerard just as Mikey said, "No!"
"What the hell do you mean, 'no'?" Gerard demanded.
"Then he'd think I cared," Mikey said. He picked at the Star Wars sheets. "I don't want to make a big deal out of it."
"But it is a big deal!" Frank said. "No one insults our Mikey and gets away with it piss free!"
"Damn skippy," Gerard agreed.
"Can't we talk about something else?" Mikey said. "Something that doesn't involve Pete Wentz?"
"How about striking while the iron is hot?" Frank said, looking pointedly at Gerard.
"Pete Wentz is a dick," Gerard said. "I think we should still talk about that."
"Ask Lyn-Z how she is," Mikey said, leaning over and snagging Gerard's phone off the cluttered table next to the bed.
"I don't have her number," Gerard said.
"You're in a band with her," Frank said.
"I really don't think it's a fucking surprise to anyone that I haven't managed to ask her for her number, even with legitimate reason," Gerard said.
Mikey started tapping out a message on Gerard's phone.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Gerard asked, trying to look over Mikey's shoulder. He, well-practiced, hid the screen and kept the phone out of Gerard's reach. "Seriously, you can't just..."
The phone buzzed win an incoming message. Gerard caught a glimpse of Alicia's name on the screen.
"Got her number," Mikey announced. Frank crawled over and sat shoulder-to-shoulder with him as they programed it in - Gerard flopped back and hid his face under the pillow in embarrassment as soon as Frank suggested saving it under 'Sex Goddess' - and only peeked out when Mikey announced, "Okay, we're going to give you one shot."
"Don't fuck up," Frank said sternly.
Gerard stared blankly at the phone, where the cursor was blinking waiting for his words of wisdom to... "Mary Jane Watson? Seriously?"
"You've been pining for seventeen years," Frank said.
"Two months," Gerard said, ignoring Mikey's snort. "And I don't even fucking like Spiderman. I'm not a whiny bitch like Peter Parker."
"Stop stalling," Mikey said.
"Fine," grumbled Gerard. He stared. There were a lot of different words that could be used as a greeting.Hey, hi, yo, holla, hello, bonjour, howdy...
"Is 'hey' too forceful?" Gerard said. "Like, what if she thinks I'm being all angry, like, 'hey, you'?"
"Okay, you just lost texting privileges," Frank announced, plucking the phone out of Gerard's hand. He handed it to Mikey, and Gerard watched helplessly as Mikey texted hey its gee and hit send.
Gerard stared at the phone like it was going to start shooting off laser beams.
"She's probably not even up yet, if she was as smashed as you said," Mikey said.
The phone buzzed.
"I definitely didn't think it would be that quick," Frank said.
"It could be someone else," Gerard said, staring at the phone like it held the secrets of the universe.
Mikey rolled his eyes and picked up the phone. "Lyn-Z says hey," he said, then sent, u ok today?
"What if she likes proper spelling?" Gerard said. "You just ruined everything!"
"It's like he took classes in how to be a goober," Frank whispered, awed, to Mikey.
"Like you weren't a train wreck when you and Jamia were getting together," Gerard grumbled.
"Yeah, but most seventh graders are," Mikey said.
Frank punched him in the arm. "We haven't been together since the seventh grade, okay."
"It was the eighth grade," Gerard corrected. "Remember, you held hands at the dance and your mom was there taking pictures and cooing about the wedding."
"Fucker, I'm gonna tell Lyn-Z that you like porn tits and assmunching," Frank said. "Gimme the phone."
Gerard made a protesting sound while Mikey rolled his eyes. Then the phone buzzed again. alive. sry i split.
Mikey raised an eyebrow, and Gerard reached over and grabbed the phone. sok. i left too.
Frank and Mikey were watching him like fucking hawks. The phone buzzed again almost immediately, and Gerard was almost afraid to look. y?
He paused, and then, before he could change his mind, pecked out, cuz u werent there.
The phone sat motionless in his hand for several long minutes, and then Frank said, "Hey, let's go check out the record store."
"Yeah," Mikey agreed quickly.
Gerard stared at the phone some more, and then reluctantly began poking around in the piles of laundry for pants.
*
He knew that they were only there to distract him from the phone that was sitting silently in his pocket, which meant that Gerard should have been sullen and brooding, but Mikey'd had a worse night than he had and it wasn't like there was much Lyn-Z could say to that text, especially not in the condition he figured she was probably in, so once they arrived at the record store he actually found himself having fun digging through the bins and cheering Mikey up by taunting him with Rick Springfield albums.
Bob showed up after a little while, and Frank launched himself at him, insisting Bob carry him piggyback through the aisles while Frank attempted to swat at the various bits of band merch that dangled from the ceiling. Mikey was eyeing the door like he was afraid Pete would come in.
Gerard's pocket buzzed. He flailed a little, trying to get the phone out of his pocket, and then stared at the screen.
It was from Alicia and said, practice tonight.
He was going to have to be face-to-face with Lyn-Z tonight, as Gee, after almost kissing her the night before then basically confirming it via text message this morning. Things were going to go so badly. He would probably do something unbelievably humiliating.
Not to mention the fact that Lyn-Z might say something to him involving the word 'friends,' which, okay, was better than what he had with her now, but just the thought of her face that close to his last night made his stomach tie up in the good kind of knots, and he would do pretty much anything to get to actually kiss her.
Including, he realized glumly, going to practice where Kitty would be sitting at her drums smiling and Lyn-Z would be there, and fuck, it was going to be awkward and weird.
Bob appeared beside him, having lost Frank somewhere, and Gerard said, "It's going to be so fucking awkward and weird."
"So's your face," Bob replied, then, "What are we talking about?"
"Band practice," Gerard clarified. "Lyn-Z and Kitty both there after everything that happened last night." Bob looked blank so Gerard filled him in. "And now I'm going to show up and be a tool and they're all going to make fun of me behind my back."
Bob shrugged. "Then don't be a tool."
Like it was that easy, Gerard thought darkly. Like he could just waltz into practice and somehow not be a tool, just because he'd decided not to. Maybe that shit worked for Bob, but it wouldn't for Gerard. He said as much, and Bob cuffed him on the back of the head and told him to toughen up because Lyn-Z didn't seem like the kind of girl who went for pansies.
"Plus," Bob added, "your constant trips into pitiful-land are kind of annoying."
That, Gerard supposed, might be true.
"Have any of you heard from Ray today?" Bob said.
"No," Gerard replied, realizing for the first time Ray hadn't actually been at the party last night. Bob either, but then, Bob had a tendency to skip parties like that. Gerard suspected he went and hung out with his old group of friends on those nights, but that was still a tender subject so he never asked.
Bob called Frank over and asked him the same thing.
"Ray said he was going to be doing something with Dewees," Frank replied.
"Is Dewees really planning something that epic?" Bob asked. Dewees' previous attempts to sabotage the pep rallies had usually involved him following the cheerleaders out in a knockoff cheerleading uniform and attempting to cheer along until one of the coaches pulled him away, or trying to pay off the marching band to play "Iron Man" instead of the fight song, except the only currency he’d offered were lap dances performed by Dewees himself, and the marching band had surprisingly not taken him up on the offer.
“Who the fuck knows,” Frank said. "He's apparently sworn Ray to secrecy."
"And Ray's actually keeping his mouth shut?" Gerard asked. In his experience Ray could be plied with TV spoilers and cupcakes.
“It’s fuckin’ weird,” Frank agreed.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in a blur. They finally found Ray and then were forced by every rule of friendship to make fun of him forever because of the fact that his hair was now shorter on one side than the other, giving him the illusion of being a dandelion puff that had only been halfway blown away.
"My mom did it, okay," Ray kept protesting, but they all figured it had to do with whatever misadventure he was getting up to with Dewees. They filled him in on the various situations the Ways had gotten into, and Ray shook his head at them, something which made them laugh at him even more.
It was time to get ready for practice before Gerard was really ready, and he'd almost - almost - forgotten the texts to Lyn-Z as he pulled on the knee socks decorated with frightened black cats that Bob had gifted him with.
He heard the upstairs door slam, and he glanced at the clock. He was going to be late, but if Mikey was home then he had to go see him. He attempted to run up the stairs, but his boots' low heel, even though it was sturdily wide, threw him surprisingly off balance and instead he ended up creeping up the stairs and almost staggering down the hall into Mikey's room.
"Damn, I almost twisted my ankle," he bitched, glaring at his shoes and then at Mikey, who was standing next to his stereo, a Smiths CD in hand, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Having troubles?" Mikey said, putting the CD in the player and hitting play casually, like Gerard couldn't tell which song he wanted to skip to. Gerard solved the problem by going over and skipping to "I Want the One I Can't Have," and flicking Mikey's arm.
"Seriously, Mikey, you're better off without him," he said, though even he knew how empty his words were. He pushed his hair out of his face, then quickly checked in the mirror to make sure that he hadn't smeared his painstakingly applied eye makeup too badly.
"Uh-huh," Mikey said.
"Too bad you've already made your move," Gerard continued. "Because I am totally willing to share my eyeliner and skirts, and that is not an offer I make to just anyone."
This time Mikey did snort.
"I'll be back later, okay?" Gerard said. "And don't spend the night listening to number six on repeat."
"I was just going to listen to it all on repeat," Mikey said, flopping on his bed.
"At least you have Alicia," Gerard pointed out.
Mikey gave him a crooked smile. "Yeah."
"I am so fucking late," Gerard said, "Lyn-Z is going to think I freaked out."
"She isn't," Mikey told him, and motioned for him to go. "I'm okay. Really."
"Pete Wentz is an idiot," Gerard said.
Mikey rolled his eyes and flipped him off, and Gerard left. He spent the walk to Alicia's perfecting the art of walking in his boots - turned out that ass-wiggling served an important function, who knew - which allowed him to mostly keep his mind of the impending drama of seeing Lyn-Z face to face for the first time since their almost-kiss.
It was hard to believe that had been less than twenty-four hours ago.
"Looks like our songbird's finally decided to show up," Alicia snapped when he walked into the garage. Kitty and Lyn-Z both looked relieved.
"Sorry?" he said. He hadn't thought he was that late.
"Don't fucking make us wait around for you again," Alicia said, picking up her guitar, then turning to glare when Lyn-Z and Kitty didn't immediately move into band formation. "Well?"
Gerard awkwardly pulled his guitar strap over his head and took position at the mic. They practiced in a circle, so he was staring at Kitty. She shrugged at him, and cut her eyes to Alicia, who was angrily twisting at the tuning pegs on her guitar.
"Are you okay?" Gerard asked. He'd been so focused on his brother and his own drama that he hadn't really thought about the fact that Alicia was totally just as involved in the Wentz mess as Mikey was.
"Fine," Alicia gritted out. "I just want to fucking play, okay?"
"Let's start with "Me and Little Andy”," Lyn-Z quickly suggested. Her pigtails were crooked and she wasn't wearing the red lipstick she tended to wear when playing - it made her feel badass, she'd explained during the first practice when she noticed him looking - but she looked like she was in better spirits than Alicia, at the very least.
Gerard tried to remember the words and managed to not flinch when Alicia hit a particular screeching note on her very first strum. She glared at her guitar like it was to blame and kept playing, improving somewhat but still sounding as though she was taking a lot of aggression out.
He tried to strum as inoffensively as he could, and Kitty seemed to be hitting her drums half-heartedly until Lyn-Z glared at her - Gerard had no fucking clue what was going on with them today, especially in light of last night - and then Kitty started pounding away, leaving Gerard to try to fill in vocals on the most aggressive rendition of a Dolly song ever.
Well, he thought, at least they were getting the punk part down, even though he was a little worried that Alicia was going to break a string soon. Or maybe all of them. Or her pick. She was not treating her instrument with respect, like Ray kept insisting that Gerard do.
He did his best to sing along, internally flinching as he hit sour notes and his voice cracked, but no one seemed too bothered by his performance. Halfway through Lyn-Z met his eye and winked, and he only forgot a few of the words.
He wasn't sure how he made it through the next half hour of cycling through the four songs they'd been working on, each taking a more and more hardcore edge as even Gerard started using the music as an outlet for the frustration he was feeling, and by the time they all put down their instruments and made their way to the couch along one wall of the garage, surrounded by broken bicycles and boxes of holiday decorations, they were sounding - well, not really competent, but really fucking aggressive and kind of awesome.
"That was kind of awesome," Kitty announced, pulling a lawn chair out of the pile of junk to one side of the couch and settling down on it. Gerard flopped on the middle cushion of the couch more out of habit than thinking, and it was only when Lyn-Z casually dropped down on the cushion beside him that he realized that she was going to be all up against him when he was pretty gross and sweaty.
Alicia looked pretty boneless when she took the other side, leaning her head against the back of the couch and staring at the ceiling. "Sorry I'm bitchy today," she said. "It hasn't been a good day."
Lyn-Z leaned over Gerard - he sucked in his belly and tried to convince himself that breathing wasn't the most difficult thing in the universe to do - and patted Alicia on the hand. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Alicia said, then, after a pause, "Boys. Stupid, stupid boys and their stupid, stupid brains."
"You and Mikey have a fight?" Kitty asked.
Alicia paused. "No."
Lyn-Z raised her eyebrow. She moved so that she was sitting sideways on the couch, back to the arm of it and legs splayed in a way that made Gerard extremely conscious of where his hands were.
"It's complicated," Alicia said. "Um. Remember Pete?"
And that was the first time Gerard realized that Alicia herself had history with Pete Wentz.
"You can't cheat on Mikey!" Lyn-Z protested. "Where will we get our DVDs then?"
Alicia glared. "No one's cheating. Not really. Um. It doesn't count, anyway."
Gerard kept his mouth firmly shut.
"What the hell does that mean?" Kitty demanded. Gerard thought she was a fine one to get indignant about cheating, but again, he kept his mouth shut.
"It means... I've been talking to Pete, and, um, so has Mikey," Alicia said. "And last night something that wasn't talking happened, but it got complicated and now Pete and Mikey aren't talking, and Pete isn't talking to me, either."
"You talk too much," Lyn-Z judged. "And what the hell does complicated mean? Did Mikey get jealous or did you?"
"Neither," Alicia said. "Pete kind of freaked out."
Gerard felt like he'd had this conversation a lot lately, but it was only now that Lyn-Z's knee was bumped up against his bare thigh - their bare skin was touching where the hole in the knee of her jeans was, and it was all that he could fucking do to keep from giving away the whole ruse right here and now, focusing intently on his brother's sex life in an attempt to keep his mind off anything pertaining to his own - that he thought about what was going to happen if Lyn-Z found out that he wasn't a girl.
He'd be in the same boat as Pete fucking Wentz, and that was the last thing Gerard wanted.
He fiddled with a loose thread on the hem of his skirt as he said, "Maybe he just needs a little time to process things."
Lyn-Z shifted her weight and her knee pressed harder into his thigh, so he looked directly at Alicia and tried to not think about Lyn-Z's knees, not the scratch mark on one or the way it would feel to have them pressed against him from another angle. Her hand was casually resting just inches away from his and he refused to think of how little movement it would take to touch her fingertips.
Alicia was biting her lip. "I don't know. What if Pete's really, like, not gay enough? It might break Mikey's heart and I'm not prepared to deal with that."
Kitty shrugged. "If he can't love all of Mikey, then he's not worth it."
Beside him, Lyn-Z bit her fingernail. "Yeah, but maybe that's not his fault, you know?"
Kitty was looking at Lyn-Z in a way that told Gerard this comment was just thinly veiling an old conversation between them.
Alicia seemed too preoccupied with her own issues to notice. "He really likes Mikey, though. He smiles when he talks about him." She paused, like she was debating sharing, but then went for it. "It's nice, you know, talking to someone who feels the same way you do about someone else."
"You aren't jealous?" Lyn-Z asked.
Alicia shrugged. "I think they're the same way about me, so, not really. Not jealous enough to want this to not happen."
"But if Pete freaks out again..." Kitty said, then bit her lip. "I mean, that'd fuck with the dynamic, if he's weirded out by Mikey being a guy."
"I'm trying not to pry," Lyn-Z said, "but where did Pete freak out, exactly?"
Alicia thought a second and then said, "He was okay with everything up until... Basically, as long as he didn't come in contact with a dick that wasn't his," Alicia said. She didn't seem too willing to share the nitty gritty details of her failed threesome, a fact Gerard was somewhat grateful for, even though he'd already gotten the gist from Mikey himself.
"So he was down with things so long as he could pretend Mikey was a girl?" Lyn-Z asked. Gerard thought she didn't sound like she disapproved of Pete, but he realized he was probably projecting.
"I mean, he wasn't pretending Mikey was a girl," Alicia said. "I think he just... he just managed to not think about what he was doing until he had the evidence right there in his hand, and then it was too much."
"But if he lo-likes Mikey," Lyn-Z said, "then maybe he just needs to get used to the idea."
"But if he can't," Kitty said, looking at Lyn-Z, "then what?"
Alicia looked lost. "I don't know," she said quietly.
Gerard felt like he should say something. "Just give him a little time. Maybe they’ll come around."
Lyn-Z nodded.
"I hope so," Alicia said, but then scrunched her nose up at Gerard. "But what do you know, Gee, it's not like you've met them. They're stubborn bastards, the both of them."
"Sounds like you're meant for each other," Lyn-Z offered, and Gerard couldn't help grinning at her. She grinned back, and Gerard realized only a few seconds too late that he was being a goofball and stopped grinning at her like a loon. He saw Kitty roll her eyes and hoped that he hadn't been too obvious.
Alicia was grumbling - something, Gerard missed the first half of it because Lyn-Z smiled at him, seriously - and Kitty offered to buy her a coffee "with as fancy a name as you want, and caramel and whipped cream and if that cute boy's there we can probably convince him to add sprinkles, too."
"You coming?" Alicia asked, but Gerard shook his head. He should get back to Mikey.
"Come on, Lyn-Z," Kitty said, and Lyn-Z said, "I'm just gonna head home. I still haven't written that stupid English paper."
Kitty shrugged and said, "Your loss," and escorted Alicia out, who was already on her phone. Probably reading all the things Mikey had sent her during the past hour, Gerard reckoned, and hoped Mikey hadn't gotten stuck listening to "How Soon Is Now," because then it would take him all night to get him to believe that no, all hope was not gone, and he hadn't waited too long.
Then he realized he was standing alone in Alicia's garage with Lyn-Z, who was picking at the hole in her jeans nervously.
"Uh," he said, shifting nervously and almost losing his footing because of his damn boots.
Lyn-Z half-smiled and said, "Hey, you should walk with me."
"Okay," he said, never mind that would be his answer to anything Lyn-Z suggested, up to and including covering himself with honey and streaking through a bear den.
Part Three | Return to Title Page
Typical Girls Part Two
Gerard went to school at lunchtime like he'd planned. He didn't get any food since he and Chantal had ended up grabbing some lunch before he'd gone in the direction of school and she'd headed off to the rec center to swim. He settled down at his usual table and waited for his friends to arrive.
"Dude, I wish you'd told me you were skipping," Ray said as he sat down, slopping some of his mashed potatoes over the side of his tray and cursing it as he tried to mop it up with his napkin. "Fucking runny potatoes."
"It wasn't intentional," Gerard said. He paused and waited for Bob and Frank to sit down. Mikey only sometimes joined them for lunch - today he was across the room having an intense discussion with that soccer player, the one Gerard didn't like. "I ran into Chantal Claret at the record store."
"The redhead on the swim team?" Frank asked. Gerard nodded.
"And?" Ray said.
"And she kind of knows. You know. About the band thing," Gerard said.
"So," said Bob. "Someone you've never talked to who has only seen you around school made you, and you're thinking Lyn-Z won't notice even though you sit next to her and stare at her during lunch."
"That," Gerard said, "is not the point. And Chantal only figured it out because I forgot to wash off all of the stupid makeup this morning."
"You didn't have practice last night," Ray pointed out.
"Also not the point," Gerard said. "Frank was practicing on me, okay? And the point is, Chantal wants to help."
"You're already in though," Frank said. "And Toro, stop with the judging looks. You're just jealous you wouldn't look hot in eyeliner."
Bob began to snicker.
"Chantal knows Lyn-Z," Gerard said, waving his hand to hide the fact that he wasn’t all that sure exactly how Chantal would help. She’d been convincing, though. "She's already told me I need to be more Joan Jett."
"I could have told you that," Frank mumbled.
"But you didn't," Gerard replied.
"You'd better watch out, she has a way better rack than you," Frank retorted.
"Yeah, but she has a thing for Jimmy," Gerard said.
There was a pause.
"You two talked about boys?" Bob said, amused.
"Did I miss the sleepover?" Frank chimed in.
"It just came up! We also talked about Batman," Gerard said defensively.
"I think it's nice you have someone to have girl talk with," Ray said.
Bob started laughing for real then, and then said at their puzzled looks, "Dude, I hate to break it to you, but girl talk is all we fucking have. You losers."
Frank stuck his tongue out. "Fine, Mr. I'm So Manly Because I Have A Beard, what the fuck kind of guy talk should we be having?"
Bob held up his hands defensively. "Hey, I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. Just, you know, keeping things in perspective."
There was a pause as they each mentally tried to analyze their past conversations.
"Did Jepha and them have manly conversations?" Frank said, referring to the group Bob hung out with before they all graduated or dropped out. Gerard didn't fail to notice that Frank avoided saying Bert's name, just like everyone else. He wondered how long that was going to haunt him.
Bob reflected a moment, stroking his beard. He was the only one of them who hadn't been attached at the hip since the first grade, after all, so they used him as their resident expert in outsider's behavior. "Not really, no."
"Maybe there is no manly," Ray said philosophically. "Maybe we're led to think that we're supposed to talk about football because people in sitcoms do."
"And sex, we totally talk about sex," Frank chimed in.
"So do girls," Bob pointed out. Gerard's stomach dropped and he hoped suddenly that he would never find himself in the midst of a sex conversation with his band, because he would completely lose his cover for sure. Or lose control of other things, he reflected, trying to imagine what his reaction to hearing Lyn-Z talking about anything remotely dirty would be. He suspected his reaction would be male, at the very least.
He found himself gazing at Lyn-Z's table. There appeared to be an argument going on, and Lyn-Z crinkled her nose, grinned, and launched a spoonful of peas at Kitty.
Then Frank hit him on the side of his head and Gerard scowled at him. "What did we say about the creepazoid factor?"
"Keep it to a minimum," Gerard recited.
"Right," Frank said, like Gerard was a first grader in need of a gold star. "Seriously, you guys, we let this go on too long. We're never going to fix him."
"I don't need fixing," Gerard said, then caught himself looking back at Lyn-Z's table out of habit. "Fuck."
"I hear when they fix dogs they stop being such spazes," Ray said.
"And, hey, that would make your cover way easier to maintain in case you ever manage to convince her to make out with you," Bob offered.
"I hate you all," Gerard replied.
*
"Were you a stalker in art class?" Frank asked, sounding as though he was going to lecture Gerard if he answered wrong. They were all gathered in Gerard's basement to watch Flight of the Living Dead, but no one was willing to get up from wherever they'd plopped to make movie-time happen.
"No, Gabe got me and Dewees to help make a piñata," Gerard said. "Justin Timberlake is harder to replicate using paper maché than you'd think."
Ray rolled his eyes. "Dude, Dewees is a maniac."
Frank, Bob and Gerard all gave him a skeptical look. Mikey didn't bother looking up from his phone.
"I mean, I love him and all, but seriously," Ray said. "He has all these plans. And he wants me to help him with them."
"You were all gung-ho about it a couple days ago," Frank pointed out. He tried to roll over on Gerard's bed and only managed to kick Bob instead. Bob glared and Gerard scooted closer to the edge, thinking he should have taken the floor with Mikey.
"That was before I knew that I was going to be Paco," Ray said. "He wants me to grow a mustache."
"Like you could," Frank said, and Gerard was just opening his mouth to point out Frank's failed attempts at facial hair when faintly from upstairs he heard the ringing of the doorbell.
Everyone froze.
"Dude, it's the fucking FBI again," Mikey whispered, eyes wide.
"...is your doorbell the opening of "Hells Bells"?" Bob asked. Gerard gave him his best dude that's not the point look. "What? I've never heard it before!"
"It only ever rings as an ill omen," Gerard said, flailing his hands. "Bill collectors. FBI. Dad's cousin - you know, the cable TV game show host."
"We should hide," Mikey suggested. "I don't want to get interrogated again."
"It's just a doorbell," Bob said, shrugging and getting off the bed. He was out the door and up the stairs before they could stop him.
"Maybe we're overreacting," Ray said. "My doorbell rings all the time."
Mikey raised his eyebrow.
Then Bob reappeared in the doorway with Chantal Claret in tow.
"Wow, nice hole in the ground," she said. "I thought the basement dweller rumor was an exaggeration."
Frank hid his face in his arm. Gerard glared but Frank's shoulders didn't stop shaking with silent laughter. Gerard supposed he should be happy Frank was being subtle.
"Hi," he said. "I didn't know you knew where I lived."
"It was sort of like finding Mockingbird Lane, you know?" she said, looking around and then decisively shoving a pile of crap off the desk chair and settling in it backwards, resting her arms on the back.
"It's not that bad," Mikey said defensively.
Chantal rolled her eyes. "Did I say it was? Was the stained glass in the front door a bunch of bats? That was fucking awesome," she said.
Ray grinned and offered her the bag of pretzels. "If you aren't here to mock, why are you here?"
"To help with the mission?" she said. She turned to Gerard. "I assumed you mentioned our alliance."
"I did," he said. "I didn't quite realize you were gonna go Secret Service with it, though."
"Hon, it's not like you don't need the help," she said.
"I'm doing fine!" he retorted.
"So you've spoken to her how many times?" Chantal asked. "And the time I called her over to you doesn't count."
"You weren't in on the plan then," Gerard shot back.
"My contributions apply retroactively," she said.
"You can't just retcon yourself into the plan," Gerard said.
"But you can just retcon yourself into a girl who isn't a basement dweller?" Chantal said, eyebrow raised.
Gerard sputtered.
"She has a valid point," Bob said.
"So you agree that Gee needs to actually speak to Lyn-Z," Mikey said.
"I had a whole conversation with her!" Gerard protested.
"Definitely," Chantal said over Gerard.
Ray stuffed a handful of pretzels in his mouth and watched the proceedings with interest.
"I think we need to establish a game plan," Bob said.
"Agreed," Chantal said.
"He keeps fucking up without guidelines," Mikey affirmed. "We don't want a repeat of the Black Flag disaster."
"I don't even think they need me," Gerard said, listening to the plans in dismay.
Frank snickered. "That's what you get for starting this whole mission in the first place."
"But the most important thing," Chantal said loudly, drawing Gerard's attention back to the matter at hand, "is making sure that you don't embarrass yourself when you front the band."
"Don't I just sing? Maybe rock out a bit?" Gerard said blankly.
"If you were a boy," Chantal said. "But since you're a girl you have to decide whether you're going to be Kim Gordon or Courtney Love or Susanna Hoffs or Kathleen Hanna or what."
Gerard said slowly, "So, um, I have to decide if I'm awesome or not?"
"No," Chantal said, rolling her eyes. "You have to decide if you're going to use sex or shun it or be a boy or be coy or flirtatious or hardcore or mean or what."
"That seems a little overly complicated," Ray offered.
"I'm just saying," Chantal said. "Gerard, show us what you've got."
Five sets of eyes turned and stared at Gerard.
"Right here?" Gerard said.
"Well, I'm comfy," Chantal said. Ray leaned over and picked up the guitar and began strumming, and after a second Bob grabbed a couple of pencils and added a beat.
Gerard stood up awkwardly, trying to identify the song, and trying even harder to convince himself it was stupid to be nervous in front of his friends. Then he realized Ray was playing "I Hate Myself and Want To Die," and he flipped him off.
"Okay, this one's for real," Ray said, and began strumming. Gerard still felt like he was in a fishbowl, but he tried his best to sing and ignore the faces his friends kept making at him.
When he was done, Chantal declared that his performance had potential. "But we're going to have to work on it. Confidence, babe."
"Whatever," Gerard said. He didn't want to be the center of attention anymore. He could practically feel the mockery coming on, though when he sat back down Mikey just grinned at him and said, "Alicia does not have poor decision making skills."
Gerard stuck his tongue out at him.
"Are we gonna watch the Zombies on a Plane movie or not?" Bob asked.
Frank rolled off the bed and started putting the DVD into the player.
"We are gonna have to work on your moves," Chantal whispered loudly as the movie started. "You don't want Lyn-Z's backbends to outshine you."
"...backbends?" Gerard replied as Mikey, who was hardcore about his aerial zombie attacks, shushed them.
Chantal laughed. "Oh, you are in for a treat."
Gerard decided to focus on the zombies then.
*
The next few days passed without incident. Band practice was canceled - Gerard got an annoyed text from Alicia saying 'bastard demon. garage no go. practice next week,' which he got Mikey to translate as Alicia's brother was working on his car - a beat up old Dodge Demon that he was determined would be a street rod - in the garage and, what with the axle of the car being on the floor and all, wasn't going anywhere, so they wouldn't be practicing until he got it in enough working condition to roll out of the way.
Then it was Friday, and Mikey insisted that Gerard come with him to a party at Gabe's.
"You know I'm not--" Gerard protested, but Mikey dragged him along anyway.
It was pretty much immediately clear when they arrived that half the school - and, hell, half the state - was at the party. They trekked past cars haphazardly pulled into the yard and even, creatively, in the barren flowerbeds, and Gerard felt a sinking sort of dread.
"Why are you so dead set on me being here?" he demanded. Mikey had stopped asking Gerard to come with him after the shit that went down last year, and now Gerard had the sinking feeling he was being set up.
Mikey shrugged, and then said, "Oh, I should go. There are people," and melted into the crowd. Gerard stood on his tiptoes, trying to see where his brother had gone, but only caught a glimpse of him talking to that soccer player before a gangly guy in a suit bumped into Gerard and spilled beer on his arm, then apologized profusely in a British accent.
Gerard wiped off his arm with a lavender hoodie that lay abandoned outside the hall closet and moved deeper into the house, trying to find anyone he knew and could talk to. His memories of the previous parties he'd attended were hazy at best, and he was debating whether or not Mikey would seek him out and kill him if he helped himself to a beer when someone grabbed his arm and said, "Boo!"
Gerard nearly jumped out of his skin and then realized Frank was hanging off his arm, grinning and then whacking Gerard lightly on the leg with a tiny duffel bag he was carrying.
"Good, I wasn't sure if Mikey was going to convince you to come or not," Frank said.
"You all have been plotting behind my back, haven't you?" Gerard sighed.
"Yep!" chirped Chantal, pushing past Frank to lean against the wall next to Gerard. Jamia appeared a second later, handing out plastic cups to everyone but Gerard.
"You could have just shared the plan with me," Gerard said.
"But what fun would that have been?" Jamia responded.
Plenty, Gerard thought, but didn't bother to voice it out loud.
"Guess who's here tonight?" Chantal sing-songed. "Lookin' fine and on the prowl?"
Jamia raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, she's wearing chucks, so not so much on the prowl, but you're gonna be!" Chantal amended.
"I am?" Gerard said, but Frank was already shepherding him into the kitchen. Gerard caught the a glimpse of Lyn-Z then, pouring a shot into Steve's cup and laughing. She glanced over. Gerard ducked his head and hurriedly went down the stairs into the basement.
The basement was at least ninety percent less creepy than rumor had led him to believe it would be.
"It's pretty nice down here," he said, glancing around at the rec-room setup.
"Yeah, and the carpet's just the right shade to hide stains," Frank said. "Try not to touch much."
Gerard shrugged, and a minute later Jamia came down the steps, looking around with the same disappointment as Gerard felt. "I thought there would be a stripper pole," she said.
"See?" Gerard said. "Disappointing."
"It's still more of a lair of sin than your basement," Frank said.
"Chuck E. Cheese is more a lair of sin than Gerard's basement," Jamia offered. They snickered and Gerard glared.
Jamia opened the duffel bag and threw something cloth at Gerard. He stretched it out and realized it was a dress. "Put it on," she said.
Gerard had gotten pretty okay with the skirt thing, only... "Um. There are a lot of people up there," he said.
"There are a lot of people a lot of places," Frank said.
"A lot of people who have kicked my ass over the years," Gerard said. "And might, you know, recognize me."
Jamia rolled her eyes. "Put on the fucking dress, Gee. No one up there is sober enough to recognize you. And actually I'm pretty sure I saw Adam Lazzara in one of the Simpson girls' cheerleading uniforms out on the trampoline."
"He might have better legs," Frank affirmed. "And besides, you've totally lost your pants before in front of way more people. This shouldn't be an obstacle."
Frank had a point, though Gerard wanted to point out that then he'd been one of the happily smashed masses and thus hadn't cared much about losing his pants.
But he did have to get used to this already, and what better way to test his anonymity than to wander out around a bunch of assholes and friends alike?
He put on the dress, and after passing Jamia's inspection - she'd actually brought scissors to trim his bangs into slightly more choppy layers - looked at the flight of stairs with trepidation.
"Just go find her and talk to her," Jamia said.
"And don't fuck up," Frank said helpfully, shooing him towards the stairs.
"Aren't you--" Gerard began.
"We'll find you later," Frank promised.
Gerard rolled his eyes and went to the stairs, self-consciously smoothing the skirt of the black dress and making sure it hadn't somehow gotten tucked up in his tights - which were designed to make his legs look like they were covered in fucking spiderwebs, Gerard was totally fucking jealous about how awesome some girl clothes were - and then fiddled with the sleeves of Jamia's beat up denim jacket she'd offered him when he had looked at the dress's lack of sleeves with dismay.
He thought briefly about chickening out, but then heard a muffled sound behind him and both didn't want to walk in on whatever Frank and Jamia had gotten up to in the four damn seconds he'd been out of the room, god, and did want someone to make sounds with himself, so he climbed the stairs.
Really, it couldn't be any more humiliating than the bearsuit incident with Dewees.
He opened the basement door and stuck his head out cautiously, but no one was paying the least fucking bit of mind, so he just walked into the kitchen and looked around. Gabe was leaning up against the sink chatting with William and Travis, and didn't look like he recognized Gee at all when he glanced over. Gerard took this as a win and made his way through to the dining room, where he spotted Dewees doing a shimmy in an unimpressed cheerleader's face, and then into the den, where he caught Mikey's eye.
Mikey shook his head slightly - Gerard could see he was standing with Alicia and they were talking to a few people - so Gerard just kept moving until he reached the sliding glass door to the patio and went out into the chilly night.
After the heat of the house with its too many occupants, the back yard was cold, though it wasn't really any less crowded. A group were attempting to down shots while bouncing on the trampoline, to varying degrees of success and undress, while it looked like another cluster of kids had somehow started a fire in the birdbath.
Gerard was considering either hobo-ing it up with the fire kids - he thought he recognized one or two, though it was hard to tell - or going back inside to find out where Chantal had disappeared to when he heard a soft, "Hey!" coming from the shrubbery.
"Hello?" he said warily into the shrub.
"Ni!" came a reply, then a giggle.
He cautiously bent down and saw through the thin lower branches Lyn-Z tilting her head to the side and smiling at him. She waved her hand, inviting him in, and he awkwardly crawled under the shrub, leaves tugging at his hair that Jamia had so carefully arranged and awkwardly trying to make sure he wasn't flashing anything he shouldn't.
He emerged on the other side and flopped down, twisting to the side and leaning against the side of the house next to Lyn-Z. There was a narrow gap between the shrubs and the house, and he was surprised to see that he had a relatively clear view of the yard from here, as well as the patio.
"This is my super secret clubhouse," Lyn-Z giggled. "No boys allowed!"
She tilted her plastic cup over her mouth but it was empty. "Fuck it all," she said, shaking it disappointedly. A few drops went flying out, landing on Gerard's hand.
"Are you okay?" Gerard said. Lyn-Z hadn't really come across as the type to get wasted at a party hosted by Gabe Saporta, but he admittedly didn't know her that well.
"Dandy," she replied, taking his hand and licking the drops of liquor off it in one quick movement. She dropped his hand immediately, and leaned her head against the side of the house.
Gerard tried to keep his breathing under control and most importantly not freak out, but Lyn-Z had just fucking licked his hand like it was nothing.
"Um," he said, mind blank of everything Chantal and Mikey and Frank and everyone had been drilling into him for days. "You don't look alright."
He was pretty sure that telling her she didn't look alright was on the list of things to not say ever, but Lyn-Z looked sort of stressed even through the haze of alcohol.
"It's nothing. It's stupid," she said. She crinkled her nose. "It's stupidly nothing."
"I'm sorry?" he said. He realized that with the way he was sitting, he was offering anyone who happened to peek under the shrubbery a good view of his undercarriage, so he shifted and ended up with his legs folded to the side, causing him to lean over towards Lyn-Z until their shoulders touched. He nervously fiddled with the hem of his dress and said, "Where's Kitty?"
"Off with... off somewhere," Lyn-Z said, waving a hand around. She sounded deceptively casual. "It doesn't matter."
Oh. The situation clicked into focus. Gerard had no idea what to say, so he just sat there a minute, listening to Lyn-Z breathe.
"It's not like I should even care," Lyn-Z said after a while. "You know, about the stupidly nothing. It's not like... " She waved her hand around, clearly searching for the right way to phrase things. "I already knew, you know?"
Gerard nodded. "Knowing and seeing are two different things," he said.
"Yes! That!" she said. "Man, I fucked up. Am fucked up. Something." She rested her head on his shoulder.
She was wearing dark jeans and a light colored shirt under a dark jacket and her lipstick was some dark shade that made Gerard want to reach out and touch her mouth, just to assure himself it was real. He didn't, instead just said, "It's not like it's your fault or anything. You're awesome."
Lyn-Z laughed into his shoulder, wiggling a little and pressing close and finally mumbling, "Just let me rest here a minute."
"As long as you want," he said. She smiled and closed her eyes and stayed there, breathing steady warm puffs of air onto his sleeve until he could feel the way the denim warmed, and he shifted, awkwardly, enough to be able to wrap his arm around her shoulder so she wouldn't slide face-first into the dirt.
Or his lap, he thought, flushing, and couldn't decide which would be worse.
He watched the party through the lower branches of the shrubs - someone seemed to have found lighter fluid, and there was a loud argument going on at the birdbath about whether vodka or lighter fluid was more flammable, which Gerard thought was a pretty pointless battle. People wandered in and out of the house, and at one point he saw Chantal's bright red hair shining like a beacon from the porch, though she never spotted him in his secret clubhouse.
She was joined for a minute by Frank, who asked her something and they both shrugged, so Gerard figured they'd noticed they'd lost him. Neither, he noted, looked particularly hopeful that he'd succeeded. He smiled down at Lyn-Z's hair - it was thick and loose tonight, instead of in the pigtails she wore with great irony to school - and tried not to move much, because he wanted to feel her against his side forever.
He was watching the flutter of her eyes intently - she didn't seem to be sleeping deeply, just lightly catnapping - when she shifted, tilted her head up and opened her eyes.
There was only a few inches between their faces. Gerard's heart was pounding and he could feel suddenly everywhere their bodies were touching as though Lyn-Z were made of pure electricity.
"Thanks," she murmured. She didn't move, just looked at him, up at him, with those parted lips and dark eyes and Gerard wanted nothing more than to just be able to summon the will to move that last few inches and press their lips together.
He couldn't move and didn't want to, so he just watched her - the hazy dreamy way her eyes passed over his face, the way her front tooth suddenly caused an indention on her lower lip, the way she smelled like liquor and something sweet.
The moment stretched and thinned, and if Gerard didn't do something - if Lyn-Z didn't move - he thought they might stay here like this forever, in the tingling nerve-wracking unbearable moment just before a kiss. He thought his nerves might rebel and stop working, that his heart would beat faster and faster until he just keeled over, that he might flick his tongue out and taste her.
And then she looked away, and pulled back slightly, and the possibility of a kiss evaporated, and Gerard was left with a racing heart and spinning mind and tingling nerves all up and down his body.
"I..." she said, digging her fingers into the loosely packed dirt they were sitting on. "I..."
And Gerard remembered that she smelled like liquor because she was fucking smashed, and felt immediately like an asshole. "Want me to get you some water?"
"They might..." Lyn-Z said, then stopped. "No, it's probably safe to go in the kitchen. I'm a big girl."
She crawled through the shrubs, then smiled back at Gerard over her shoulder through her messy curtain of hair. "Thanks. For... Thanks."
Gerard nodded, and followed her back out into the party.
*
Gerard wasn't even really sure how he made it home, because he just kept thinking, "I almost did it. I almost kissed her. She almost kissed me," over and over and suddenly he was standing in front of the door of his house, realizing that he didn't have a key to get inside.
He rang the bell and waited patiently for his mom to let him in, and was in the kitchen accepting her offer of cocoa before he remembered he was wearing a dress and spiderweb tights and his Chucks.
"You're probably wondering..." he started, but his mother just waved a careless hand over her shoulder.
"Darling, I've seen worse." She winked. "Done worse, too."
"Please don't share," he said, slumping down at the kitchen table. She sat a mug of cocoa- his favorite Batman mug, which made him grin - down in front of him, a tiny bit slopping over the side onto the table.
"I'll wait for your wedding toast, then," she said. "Hopefully you'll be as pretty then as you are tonight." And then she pinched his cheek.
"Ma-a!" Gerard whined, leaning to try and dodge a repeat pinch.
"So you had a good night?" she said, settling down across from him with her own cup of coffee, which Gerard eyed jealously before remembering that cocoa was nice, too, with the added bonus of having a layer of melted marshmallow.
He shrugged, then said, "There's this girl."
"Girl?" his mother said, looking skeptical.
Gerard crinkled his nose at her and said, "And she's having problems with her girlfriend, which is what I wanted, but she looked so sad that I don't want that anymore. Only I want to be her girlfriend, so." He shrugged and took a sip of his cocoa.
"Just don't be the one to cause the problem with her girlfriend," his mother said. "I didn't raise no hussies."
They both heard the back door creak open slowly, and from his mother's amused expression Gerard suddenly realized exactly how few of his misadventures had slipped past her unnoticed.
"And speaking of which, you should definitely work harder on your mascara," she continued. "Clumps look cheap, you know."
Mikey froze in the kitchen entryway.
"Good evening, darling," Ma said. "Would you like some cocoa?" Then she took in Mikey's mussed appearance, messed-up hair and misbuckled boots. "Or coffee?"
"That would be good," Mikey said, slumping down at the table. He quirked an eyebrow at Gerard, who raised his mug at him.
"Have a rough night?" she asked, setting Mikey's coffee in front of him. He got the dancing skeletons mug. "Or a good night?"
"Um. Both, I think," Mikey said.
"What, did Alicia say something about me?" Gerard demanded.
"I barely talked to Alicia," Mikey said. It was Gerard's turn to raise an eyebrow. That wasn't what he'd seen, but admittedly he'd spent a lot of the evening distracted.
"Then do I need to be inviting someone new to dinner?" their mother asked.
"Um. Probably not," Mikey said. "Pete kind of kicked me out. Of his car, I mean," he clarified, looking at his coffee. "I think he freaked out."
"Well, clearly he wouldn't know a good thing if it bit him in the ass," their mother said. "Both my boys are catches."
Mikey grinned, and said, "Please don't tell him that, Ma."
"How would I get the chance? Unless you're inviting him over, that is," she said.
"What about Alicia?" Gerard burst out with.
"It's complicated," Mikey said.
"She's my bandmate," Gerard said. "I want to know if she's been dumped."
"No," Mikey said, inspecting his coffee.
Their mother raised an eyebrow. "Michael James, you'd best not be two-timing that girl."
"I'm not," he said, still staring at his coffee.
"Well?" Gerard said.
"She's... we're... Pete's..." Mikey said, fiddling with the handle of his cup.
"I see," Ma said. "That can get messy quick, you know."
"I know," Mikey said.
"Just so you know," she said.
Gerard was slower to catch on, and he just stared at Mikey, a little slack-jawed. Mikey glared at him and said, "Gerard stole your makeup."
"I'm more concerned with which of you was pawing through my underwear drawer," she replied.
"Frank," they both chimed.
"Well, that's a different story," she said. "It's been a while since I've had a cute young boy in my panties."
"I'm going to pretend you never said that," Mikey said.
"And never ever mention that to Frank," Gerard amended. "For the love of god."
Their mother just laughed and took a sip of her coffee, shaking her head at them fondly.
*
The next morning Gerard was woken by Frank launching himself onto his bed and whacking him with a pillow and yelling, "Thanks for inviting me to the sleepover!"
"Oof!" Gerard managed, trying to shield his face from the light and the seemingly endless barrage of pillow. He managed to roll over enough to snag the pillow Mikey had hidden his own head under, jerking it away before Mikey could get a grip on it and doing his best to manage to land a fluffy blow on Frank.
He pretty much failed, as Frank was both fully awake, clearly caffeinated, and had full mobility of his legs, which Gerard, tangled up in the sheets, desperately lacked.
"Fuck off and die," Mikey grumbled sleepily, trying to burrow his face into his arms.
"You asswipes both disappeared last night," Frank said. 'What the hell happened?"
"Nothing," Mikey said, peeking up from his arms. "Please give me my pillow back."
Gerard reluctantly handed back the pillow.
"And you?" Frank said, staring at Gerard. "Did you get up to nothing too?"
"Almost," Gerard said, grinning at the memory. "I almost kissed Lyn-Z."
"Almost being the operative word," Frank said.
"Hey, we had a moment," Gerard said. "A beautiful moment I am not going to sully by retelling."
"She was smashed, he offered her his shoulder, then almost kissed her," Mikey said. "Then he left and came home and had cocoa with Ma."
Frank raised an eyebrow at Gerard, who defensively said, "I talked to her! And she licked my hand!"
"That is progress," Frank said. He flopped down between Gerard and Mikey and said, "What's on the agenda for today?"
"It's Saturday," Mikey said.
"What, no top secret plans?" Frank said.
"You're the one with all the secret plans lately," Gerard pointed out. He managed to disentangle his foot from the sheet and rolled out of bed. By the time he got back from the bathroom, Frank was sitting cross-legged on the bed saying, "So Alicia was down with that?"
"But Pete, apparently, wasn't, so much," Mikey said.
"But he was all over you in the basement!" Frank protested. "Jamia didn't stop talking about it for half the way home."
"Apparently he's all about above the belt action," Mikey said.
Frank paused, opened his mouth, then shut it again. Gerard climbed back on the bed and said, "Yeah, that's what I said."
"So after all that he kicked you out of his car?" Frank said. "Want me to piss in his locker?"
"Yes," said Gerard just as Mikey said, "No!"
"What the hell do you mean, 'no'?" Gerard demanded.
"Then he'd think I cared," Mikey said. He picked at the Star Wars sheets. "I don't want to make a big deal out of it."
"But it is a big deal!" Frank said. "No one insults our Mikey and gets away with it piss free!"
"Damn skippy," Gerard agreed.
"Can't we talk about something else?" Mikey said. "Something that doesn't involve Pete Wentz?"
"How about striking while the iron is hot?" Frank said, looking pointedly at Gerard.
"Pete Wentz is a dick," Gerard said. "I think we should still talk about that."
"Ask Lyn-Z how she is," Mikey said, leaning over and snagging Gerard's phone off the cluttered table next to the bed.
"I don't have her number," Gerard said.
"You're in a band with her," Frank said.
"I really don't think it's a fucking surprise to anyone that I haven't managed to ask her for her number, even with legitimate reason," Gerard said.
Mikey started tapping out a message on Gerard's phone.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Gerard asked, trying to look over Mikey's shoulder. He, well-practiced, hid the screen and kept the phone out of Gerard's reach. "Seriously, you can't just..."
The phone buzzed win an incoming message. Gerard caught a glimpse of Alicia's name on the screen.
"Got her number," Mikey announced. Frank crawled over and sat shoulder-to-shoulder with him as they programed it in - Gerard flopped back and hid his face under the pillow in embarrassment as soon as Frank suggested saving it under 'Sex Goddess' - and only peeked out when Mikey announced, "Okay, we're going to give you one shot."
"Don't fuck up," Frank said sternly.
Gerard stared blankly at the phone, where the cursor was blinking waiting for his words of wisdom to... "Mary Jane Watson? Seriously?"
"You've been pining for seventeen years," Frank said.
"Two months," Gerard said, ignoring Mikey's snort. "And I don't even fucking like Spiderman. I'm not a whiny bitch like Peter Parker."
"Stop stalling," Mikey said.
"Fine," grumbled Gerard. He stared. There were a lot of different words that could be used as a greeting.Hey, hi, yo, holla, hello, bonjour, howdy...
"Is 'hey' too forceful?" Gerard said. "Like, what if she thinks I'm being all angry, like, 'hey, you'?"
"Okay, you just lost texting privileges," Frank announced, plucking the phone out of Gerard's hand. He handed it to Mikey, and Gerard watched helplessly as Mikey texted hey its gee and hit send.
Gerard stared at the phone like it was going to start shooting off laser beams.
"She's probably not even up yet, if she was as smashed as you said," Mikey said.
The phone buzzed.
"I definitely didn't think it would be that quick," Frank said.
"It could be someone else," Gerard said, staring at the phone like it held the secrets of the universe.
Mikey rolled his eyes and picked up the phone. "Lyn-Z says hey," he said, then sent, u ok today?
"What if she likes proper spelling?" Gerard said. "You just ruined everything!"
"It's like he took classes in how to be a goober," Frank whispered, awed, to Mikey.
"Like you weren't a train wreck when you and Jamia were getting together," Gerard grumbled.
"Yeah, but most seventh graders are," Mikey said.
Frank punched him in the arm. "We haven't been together since the seventh grade, okay."
"It was the eighth grade," Gerard corrected. "Remember, you held hands at the dance and your mom was there taking pictures and cooing about the wedding."
"Fucker, I'm gonna tell Lyn-Z that you like porn tits and assmunching," Frank said. "Gimme the phone."
Gerard made a protesting sound while Mikey rolled his eyes. Then the phone buzzed again. alive. sry i split.
Mikey raised an eyebrow, and Gerard reached over and grabbed the phone. sok. i left too.
Frank and Mikey were watching him like fucking hawks. The phone buzzed again almost immediately, and Gerard was almost afraid to look. y?
He paused, and then, before he could change his mind, pecked out, cuz u werent there.
The phone sat motionless in his hand for several long minutes, and then Frank said, "Hey, let's go check out the record store."
"Yeah," Mikey agreed quickly.
Gerard stared at the phone some more, and then reluctantly began poking around in the piles of laundry for pants.
*
He knew that they were only there to distract him from the phone that was sitting silently in his pocket, which meant that Gerard should have been sullen and brooding, but Mikey'd had a worse night than he had and it wasn't like there was much Lyn-Z could say to that text, especially not in the condition he figured she was probably in, so once they arrived at the record store he actually found himself having fun digging through the bins and cheering Mikey up by taunting him with Rick Springfield albums.
Bob showed up after a little while, and Frank launched himself at him, insisting Bob carry him piggyback through the aisles while Frank attempted to swat at the various bits of band merch that dangled from the ceiling. Mikey was eyeing the door like he was afraid Pete would come in.
Gerard's pocket buzzed. He flailed a little, trying to get the phone out of his pocket, and then stared at the screen.
It was from Alicia and said, practice tonight.
He was going to have to be face-to-face with Lyn-Z tonight, as Gee, after almost kissing her the night before then basically confirming it via text message this morning. Things were going to go so badly. He would probably do something unbelievably humiliating.
Not to mention the fact that Lyn-Z might say something to him involving the word 'friends,' which, okay, was better than what he had with her now, but just the thought of her face that close to his last night made his stomach tie up in the good kind of knots, and he would do pretty much anything to get to actually kiss her.
Including, he realized glumly, going to practice where Kitty would be sitting at her drums smiling and Lyn-Z would be there, and fuck, it was going to be awkward and weird.
Bob appeared beside him, having lost Frank somewhere, and Gerard said, "It's going to be so fucking awkward and weird."
"So's your face," Bob replied, then, "What are we talking about?"
"Band practice," Gerard clarified. "Lyn-Z and Kitty both there after everything that happened last night." Bob looked blank so Gerard filled him in. "And now I'm going to show up and be a tool and they're all going to make fun of me behind my back."
Bob shrugged. "Then don't be a tool."
Like it was that easy, Gerard thought darkly. Like he could just waltz into practice and somehow not be a tool, just because he'd decided not to. Maybe that shit worked for Bob, but it wouldn't for Gerard. He said as much, and Bob cuffed him on the back of the head and told him to toughen up because Lyn-Z didn't seem like the kind of girl who went for pansies.
"Plus," Bob added, "your constant trips into pitiful-land are kind of annoying."
That, Gerard supposed, might be true.
"Have any of you heard from Ray today?" Bob said.
"No," Gerard replied, realizing for the first time Ray hadn't actually been at the party last night. Bob either, but then, Bob had a tendency to skip parties like that. Gerard suspected he went and hung out with his old group of friends on those nights, but that was still a tender subject so he never asked.
Bob called Frank over and asked him the same thing.
"Ray said he was going to be doing something with Dewees," Frank replied.
"Is Dewees really planning something that epic?" Bob asked. Dewees' previous attempts to sabotage the pep rallies had usually involved him following the cheerleaders out in a knockoff cheerleading uniform and attempting to cheer along until one of the coaches pulled him away, or trying to pay off the marching band to play "Iron Man" instead of the fight song, except the only currency he’d offered were lap dances performed by Dewees himself, and the marching band had surprisingly not taken him up on the offer.
“Who the fuck knows,” Frank said. "He's apparently sworn Ray to secrecy."
"And Ray's actually keeping his mouth shut?" Gerard asked. In his experience Ray could be plied with TV spoilers and cupcakes.
“It’s fuckin’ weird,” Frank agreed.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in a blur. They finally found Ray and then were forced by every rule of friendship to make fun of him forever because of the fact that his hair was now shorter on one side than the other, giving him the illusion of being a dandelion puff that had only been halfway blown away.
"My mom did it, okay," Ray kept protesting, but they all figured it had to do with whatever misadventure he was getting up to with Dewees. They filled him in on the various situations the Ways had gotten into, and Ray shook his head at them, something which made them laugh at him even more.
It was time to get ready for practice before Gerard was really ready, and he'd almost - almost - forgotten the texts to Lyn-Z as he pulled on the knee socks decorated with frightened black cats that Bob had gifted him with.
He heard the upstairs door slam, and he glanced at the clock. He was going to be late, but if Mikey was home then he had to go see him. He attempted to run up the stairs, but his boots' low heel, even though it was sturdily wide, threw him surprisingly off balance and instead he ended up creeping up the stairs and almost staggering down the hall into Mikey's room.
"Damn, I almost twisted my ankle," he bitched, glaring at his shoes and then at Mikey, who was standing next to his stereo, a Smiths CD in hand, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Having troubles?" Mikey said, putting the CD in the player and hitting play casually, like Gerard couldn't tell which song he wanted to skip to. Gerard solved the problem by going over and skipping to "I Want the One I Can't Have," and flicking Mikey's arm.
"Seriously, Mikey, you're better off without him," he said, though even he knew how empty his words were. He pushed his hair out of his face, then quickly checked in the mirror to make sure that he hadn't smeared his painstakingly applied eye makeup too badly.
"Uh-huh," Mikey said.
"Too bad you've already made your move," Gerard continued. "Because I am totally willing to share my eyeliner and skirts, and that is not an offer I make to just anyone."
This time Mikey did snort.
"I'll be back later, okay?" Gerard said. "And don't spend the night listening to number six on repeat."
"I was just going to listen to it all on repeat," Mikey said, flopping on his bed.
"At least you have Alicia," Gerard pointed out.
Mikey gave him a crooked smile. "Yeah."
"I am so fucking late," Gerard said, "Lyn-Z is going to think I freaked out."
"She isn't," Mikey told him, and motioned for him to go. "I'm okay. Really."
"Pete Wentz is an idiot," Gerard said.
Mikey rolled his eyes and flipped him off, and Gerard left. He spent the walk to Alicia's perfecting the art of walking in his boots - turned out that ass-wiggling served an important function, who knew - which allowed him to mostly keep his mind of the impending drama of seeing Lyn-Z face to face for the first time since their almost-kiss.
It was hard to believe that had been less than twenty-four hours ago.
"Looks like our songbird's finally decided to show up," Alicia snapped when he walked into the garage. Kitty and Lyn-Z both looked relieved.
"Sorry?" he said. He hadn't thought he was that late.
"Don't fucking make us wait around for you again," Alicia said, picking up her guitar, then turning to glare when Lyn-Z and Kitty didn't immediately move into band formation. "Well?"
Gerard awkwardly pulled his guitar strap over his head and took position at the mic. They practiced in a circle, so he was staring at Kitty. She shrugged at him, and cut her eyes to Alicia, who was angrily twisting at the tuning pegs on her guitar.
"Are you okay?" Gerard asked. He'd been so focused on his brother and his own drama that he hadn't really thought about the fact that Alicia was totally just as involved in the Wentz mess as Mikey was.
"Fine," Alicia gritted out. "I just want to fucking play, okay?"
"Let's start with "Me and Little Andy”," Lyn-Z quickly suggested. Her pigtails were crooked and she wasn't wearing the red lipstick she tended to wear when playing - it made her feel badass, she'd explained during the first practice when she noticed him looking - but she looked like she was in better spirits than Alicia, at the very least.
Gerard tried to remember the words and managed to not flinch when Alicia hit a particular screeching note on her very first strum. She glared at her guitar like it was to blame and kept playing, improving somewhat but still sounding as though she was taking a lot of aggression out.
He tried to strum as inoffensively as he could, and Kitty seemed to be hitting her drums half-heartedly until Lyn-Z glared at her - Gerard had no fucking clue what was going on with them today, especially in light of last night - and then Kitty started pounding away, leaving Gerard to try to fill in vocals on the most aggressive rendition of a Dolly song ever.
Well, he thought, at least they were getting the punk part down, even though he was a little worried that Alicia was going to break a string soon. Or maybe all of them. Or her pick. She was not treating her instrument with respect, like Ray kept insisting that Gerard do.
He did his best to sing along, internally flinching as he hit sour notes and his voice cracked, but no one seemed too bothered by his performance. Halfway through Lyn-Z met his eye and winked, and he only forgot a few of the words.
He wasn't sure how he made it through the next half hour of cycling through the four songs they'd been working on, each taking a more and more hardcore edge as even Gerard started using the music as an outlet for the frustration he was feeling, and by the time they all put down their instruments and made their way to the couch along one wall of the garage, surrounded by broken bicycles and boxes of holiday decorations, they were sounding - well, not really competent, but really fucking aggressive and kind of awesome.
"That was kind of awesome," Kitty announced, pulling a lawn chair out of the pile of junk to one side of the couch and settling down on it. Gerard flopped on the middle cushion of the couch more out of habit than thinking, and it was only when Lyn-Z casually dropped down on the cushion beside him that he realized that she was going to be all up against him when he was pretty gross and sweaty.
Alicia looked pretty boneless when she took the other side, leaning her head against the back of the couch and staring at the ceiling. "Sorry I'm bitchy today," she said. "It hasn't been a good day."
Lyn-Z leaned over Gerard - he sucked in his belly and tried to convince himself that breathing wasn't the most difficult thing in the universe to do - and patted Alicia on the hand. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Alicia said, then, after a pause, "Boys. Stupid, stupid boys and their stupid, stupid brains."
"You and Mikey have a fight?" Kitty asked.
Alicia paused. "No."
Lyn-Z raised her eyebrow. She moved so that she was sitting sideways on the couch, back to the arm of it and legs splayed in a way that made Gerard extremely conscious of where his hands were.
"It's complicated," Alicia said. "Um. Remember Pete?"
And that was the first time Gerard realized that Alicia herself had history with Pete Wentz.
"You can't cheat on Mikey!" Lyn-Z protested. "Where will we get our DVDs then?"
Alicia glared. "No one's cheating. Not really. Um. It doesn't count, anyway."
Gerard kept his mouth firmly shut.
"What the hell does that mean?" Kitty demanded. Gerard thought she was a fine one to get indignant about cheating, but again, he kept his mouth shut.
"It means... I've been talking to Pete, and, um, so has Mikey," Alicia said. "And last night something that wasn't talking happened, but it got complicated and now Pete and Mikey aren't talking, and Pete isn't talking to me, either."
"You talk too much," Lyn-Z judged. "And what the hell does complicated mean? Did Mikey get jealous or did you?"
"Neither," Alicia said. "Pete kind of freaked out."
Gerard felt like he'd had this conversation a lot lately, but it was only now that Lyn-Z's knee was bumped up against his bare thigh - their bare skin was touching where the hole in the knee of her jeans was, and it was all that he could fucking do to keep from giving away the whole ruse right here and now, focusing intently on his brother's sex life in an attempt to keep his mind off anything pertaining to his own - that he thought about what was going to happen if Lyn-Z found out that he wasn't a girl.
He'd be in the same boat as Pete fucking Wentz, and that was the last thing Gerard wanted.
He fiddled with a loose thread on the hem of his skirt as he said, "Maybe he just needs a little time to process things."
Lyn-Z shifted her weight and her knee pressed harder into his thigh, so he looked directly at Alicia and tried to not think about Lyn-Z's knees, not the scratch mark on one or the way it would feel to have them pressed against him from another angle. Her hand was casually resting just inches away from his and he refused to think of how little movement it would take to touch her fingertips.
Alicia was biting her lip. "I don't know. What if Pete's really, like, not gay enough? It might break Mikey's heart and I'm not prepared to deal with that."
Kitty shrugged. "If he can't love all of Mikey, then he's not worth it."
Beside him, Lyn-Z bit her fingernail. "Yeah, but maybe that's not his fault, you know?"
Kitty was looking at Lyn-Z in a way that told Gerard this comment was just thinly veiling an old conversation between them.
Alicia seemed too preoccupied with her own issues to notice. "He really likes Mikey, though. He smiles when he talks about him." She paused, like she was debating sharing, but then went for it. "It's nice, you know, talking to someone who feels the same way you do about someone else."
"You aren't jealous?" Lyn-Z asked.
Alicia shrugged. "I think they're the same way about me, so, not really. Not jealous enough to want this to not happen."
"But if Pete freaks out again..." Kitty said, then bit her lip. "I mean, that'd fuck with the dynamic, if he's weirded out by Mikey being a guy."
"I'm trying not to pry," Lyn-Z said, "but where did Pete freak out, exactly?"
Alicia thought a second and then said, "He was okay with everything up until... Basically, as long as he didn't come in contact with a dick that wasn't his," Alicia said. She didn't seem too willing to share the nitty gritty details of her failed threesome, a fact Gerard was somewhat grateful for, even though he'd already gotten the gist from Mikey himself.
"So he was down with things so long as he could pretend Mikey was a girl?" Lyn-Z asked. Gerard thought she didn't sound like she disapproved of Pete, but he realized he was probably projecting.
"I mean, he wasn't pretending Mikey was a girl," Alicia said. "I think he just... he just managed to not think about what he was doing until he had the evidence right there in his hand, and then it was too much."
"But if he lo-likes Mikey," Lyn-Z said, "then maybe he just needs to get used to the idea."
"But if he can't," Kitty said, looking at Lyn-Z, "then what?"
Alicia looked lost. "I don't know," she said quietly.
Gerard felt like he should say something. "Just give him a little time. Maybe they’ll come around."
Lyn-Z nodded.
"I hope so," Alicia said, but then scrunched her nose up at Gerard. "But what do you know, Gee, it's not like you've met them. They're stubborn bastards, the both of them."
"Sounds like you're meant for each other," Lyn-Z offered, and Gerard couldn't help grinning at her. She grinned back, and Gerard realized only a few seconds too late that he was being a goofball and stopped grinning at her like a loon. He saw Kitty roll her eyes and hoped that he hadn't been too obvious.
Alicia was grumbling - something, Gerard missed the first half of it because Lyn-Z smiled at him, seriously - and Kitty offered to buy her a coffee "with as fancy a name as you want, and caramel and whipped cream and if that cute boy's there we can probably convince him to add sprinkles, too."
"You coming?" Alicia asked, but Gerard shook his head. He should get back to Mikey.
"Come on, Lyn-Z," Kitty said, and Lyn-Z said, "I'm just gonna head home. I still haven't written that stupid English paper."
Kitty shrugged and said, "Your loss," and escorted Alicia out, who was already on her phone. Probably reading all the things Mikey had sent her during the past hour, Gerard reckoned, and hoped Mikey hadn't gotten stuck listening to "How Soon Is Now," because then it would take him all night to get him to believe that no, all hope was not gone, and he hadn't waited too long.
Then he realized he was standing alone in Alicia's garage with Lyn-Z, who was picking at the hole in her jeans nervously.
"Uh," he said, shifting nervously and almost losing his footing because of his damn boots.
Lyn-Z half-smiled and said, "Hey, you should walk with me."
"Okay," he said, never mind that would be his answer to anything Lyn-Z suggested, up to and including covering himself with honey and streaking through a bear den.
Part Three | Return to Title Page