Part 5
Part 4
“Just ask her out, Jesus,” Frank’s ordering the phone when Bob gets home from the store. “Hey. Shut up. Mikey. Shut up. Yes, I’m paying attention to you. Bob just got home, hang on two fucking seconds.” Frank holds the phone away from his ear and tilts his head back to demand a kiss from Bob. Bob obliges, kisses Frank’s cheek. Frank mouths two seconds at him, smiles and puts the phone back to his ear. “Look, are you coming over or not?”
Frank’s off the phone a minute later, curling his arms around Bob’s waist. “Hi. Hi hi hi,” he says, biting at Bob’s chest through his shirt.
“Hey. Is Mikeyway coming over?” Bob mutters into Frank’s hair.
“No, he said maybe tomorrow. We have a test in Lit and Gee’s still in full-on crazy-artist mode.”
Mikey’s been coming over a lot, hiding from Gerard’s artistic frenzy. This is the first night in the last week Bob’s gotten home from work and Mikey isn’t sprawled on the couch like a freaky emo stick insect. Bob doesn’t want to mind, except it’s starting to grate on his nerves, having Mikey always there. He’s starting to get those stupid paranoid feelings again, that maybe Frank doesn’t want to be alone with him.
“Bob. Bob. Pay attention.” Frank is poking him in the stomach. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Huh? Oh. Um. Pizza?” he says.
“Okay. Usual?” Frank says, pulling away and going for the phone again.
The next night, Bob leaves the prison, gets on the train, and doesn’t get off at the stop for the apartment. He rides to the end of the line, where the bus terminal is. Where the trains out of the city leave from, and busses to everywhere but home are waiting.
Bob is staring at his phone. He needs to call Frank to remind him to not overfeed the dogs, make sure the pilot light is lit. But Frank will yell at him when he does, if he’s not talking to Mikey. Bob’s pretty sure that if Frank yells at him, he’ll cave and go home.
He can’t keep staring at the phone, trying to make a decision, so he stares at the wall of the bus terminal instead. The wall is papered with missing children and most wanted posters, all these tiny smiling faces and grim mug-shots next to vital statistics and pleas for help. Bob stares at a toddler’s picture from 10 years ago, the kid’s advanced age picture next to it. He looks away from that one, into the face of some bank robber, past a teenage girl, and catches the corner of a private school uniform and a name, layered under newer posters. Iero. He pushes past the new posters, sees a picture of Frank.
He’s tiny and grinning awkwardly at some school photographer’s camera, in his blazer and tie and rosary. No eyeliner, no piercings, no tattoos. Frank Iero, age 16. Last seen in Belleville, New Jersey. The date is four years ago. Runaway. He looks fourteen, not sixteen.
Frank never talks about what happened before he ended up in Arthur Kill, doesn’t talk about his family. This is probably why. He looks down at his phone again and half-makes up his mind.
Bob dials, gets Frank on the first ring. “Frankie,” he mutters, trying as usual to figure out what to say.
“Robert Bryar you had better get your ass home from wherever the fuck you ran off to because I made your nasty chicken parmesan and if you’re not home before it gets cold I’m feeding it to Gee and Mikey,” Frank says in one breath. “And it’s your turn to take the fucking trash out.”
“Frankie. I’m. Um. I…” Bob clings to his phone like a lifeline.
“I’m not listening, we’re not having this conversation on the phone. Get your ass home, fucker. I love you,” Frank says and hangs up on him. Bob stops at the liquor store on the way home for a bottle of something.
“You are cutting it damn close, Bryar, I was about to take this to Gee,” Frank yells when the door bangs open. Bob feels massively guilty, coming back into the apartment when it’s all warm and smells like Frank’s goddamn cooking, with the dogs looking up at him like they never doubted that he’d come home. Like he hadn’t been thinking of leaving them and Frank for good, for their own good. He scratches them both behind the ears to apologize. “You can take the trash out after dinner.”
Bob goes to the kitchen, pulls Frank into a desperate hug. “Sorry, Frank,” he mouths against Frank’s hair.
“Don’t scare me like that, you dick,” Frank says against Bob’s chest. “I thought I was gonna have to go see Gerard in the middle of his fit.” Bob snorts, tilts Frank’s face up to kiss him.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “Food?”
“Fucking Viking,” Frank says, but he pulls Bob into the kitchen.
Bob can’t focus on the TV, he keeps getting distracted by staring at the top of Frank’s head. He’s got the picture of Frank at 16 stuck in his head. Runaway runaway runaway. He has to know. He can’t stop himself from asking. He shouldn’t have had so much whiskey. “Why’d you run away?”
Frank goes icy stiff in his arms. “I didn’t run away,” he says. Bob doesn’t think he’s ever heard Frank sound like that, cold and tense. “Why?”
“Um. There’s. There’s a poster at the bus station. Frank. You were sixteen.”
“I know how old I was, thanks.” Frank pushes himself off the couch, only a little unsteady on his feet. “So did my parents when they kicked me out.” He snatches the bottle from Bob’s hand and takes another pull, shoves it back at him. “What, you think I wanted to run away and be a hooker? Fuck no, I loved school. And my family, and my friends and my boyfriend. And having a fucking future.”
Bob frowns and reaches for Frank. “No. Fuck off! I didn’t want to leave!” Frank snaps, steps back out of Bob’s reach. “But I didn’t wanna lie and hate myself and pretend that I was some straight and narrow good little altar boy.” He spits on the floor, hands flailing like he wants to hit something and cross himself at the same time.
Bob wants to pin his arms down and make him stop looking like that, that look of betrayal and pain. He wants to find Frank’s parents and make sure they regret making Frank leave, make them understand what they put their kid through. And at the same time, he has this horrible, guilty throat-clenching need to thank them, because now he has Frank. “I didn’t want to go back to straight camp or get an exorcism and they kicked me out.”
It's too much for Bob; his throat is determined that no words will come out, and his fists have wrapped themselves into furious little balls; the idea that anyone could be so cold to their kid isn't exactly alien, of course, he's worked around fuck-ups like that for years - cons who don't call home once while they're inside, screws who toss the letters from their estranged teenager daughters unopened when they recognize the writing on the envelope - but thinking that Frank, who always works so hard and always, alwaysstands up for what he thinks is right, might be on the receiving end of that bullshit …
He's not breathing properly. It always happens when he's this angry. Bob inhales through his nose, hard, because his mouth won't open. Frank is staring at him with an expression he doesn't recognize for a minute; more anger. Anger, betrayal, anger, anger, and more anger.
"BOB."
Frank is twisting something between his hands - Bob can't tell what.
"BOB," Frank says, tearing whatever it is in half - Bob hopes in a distant way that it isn't anything important, like underpants. "Fucking say something. Bob. SAY. SOMETHING, okay. I didn't go through all that bullshit -" he points behind him as if he's pointing at the past, "- all the shit and the drugs and the fucking johns because I thought it was a sweet idea! I didn't quit having three meals a day and a fucking education because of a ... of a fucking whim. SAY. SOMETHING. Goddamnit. Tell me you understand that much."
Bob just stares at him, opens his mouth to try, but there's too much anger in the way. He doesn't know what to do for Frank, not when he brought it up, not when it's his fault that Frank is furious and miserable all at once. This is the sort of thing Father Gee has talked to him about so often. If you can't find anything to say, Gee says, say that you don't know what to say. Don't stand there in silence, because silence can mean so many things.
Easy for Father Gee to say, of course, because everything is easy for him to say. He hardly ever stops talking. Not so Bob.
"I -" he says, and his voice is croaky and horrible and fuck why can't things ever go simply. "- I don't know what to -"
"What to think? You could start by thinking that you FUCKING BELIEVE I'M TELLING THE TRUTH." Frank's so furious he's shaking. The dogs are hiding in the kitchen and there's a little puddle on the way to the door, because Daisy doesn't like loud noises. Bob's hands have found their way to the top of his head, as if they're trying to hold his brain in, or kick it into life. "I. Frank." Bob searches through his mental filing cabinet of words, trying to find ones that make sense. "Frank. Fuck. FRANK."
"What?" Frank slams his hand into the top of the couch. It doesn't make a very satisfying noise. "Is this it, is this the bit where you tell me I've got to get out because if it is -"
"No." Ah, that's a word Bob knows how to use.
"THEN WHAT THE FUCK. TELL ME WHAT YOU'RE THINKING."
"I don't know." Bob holds onto his head for a little longer, then, surprising even himself, lunges for Frank's hand. He catches it before Frank can jerk it away and holds it between his, anchoring him to the spot, holding him steady so Bob can struggle his way through the masses of words he can't get a grip on. "Fuck, Frank. I. You." He closes his hands tighter.
"You're crushing my fucking hand," Frank says in a slightly shaky voice.
"I don't want to let go," Bob mumbles.
"Tell me I don't have to leave," Frank says in the same shaky voice, "please."
Bob drags his gaze back from the tips of Frank's fingers, which are safe and straightforward and dirty and won't make his throat knot itself up. Frank's eyes are far too moist and his cheeks are suspiciously shiny. Bob's throat closes up and his legs lock in place, his teeth grind together so hard that he can hear bits chipping off.
"Please don't leave," Bob says, trying to refrain from crushing the bones in Frank's hand with the ferocity of his grip. "You don't have to go."
"Say it again," Frank says. He sounds like he's having an asthma attack.
"I hate your fucking parents," Bob says, because obedience is apparently not his strong suit this evening.
"Don't talk about them."
"I fucking hate them," Bob says, and he is very, very certain of this. He has let go of Frank's hand, its warmth is gone, and his own have become fists without his knowledge or instruction.
"If they weren't assholes," Frank points out, wiping furiously at his cheeks, "we wouldn't have met each other. Okay? You'd better not be getting ready to punch something."
Bob looks at his fists guiltily and mumbles to the carpet, "They're horrible fucking people for doing that to you."
There is a tense silence and Frank growls, "Fine. Hate them. Be pissed. But be pissed and tell me I don't have to leave. Be pissed and be pissed WHILE YOU'RE GODDAMN HOLDING ME." He jabs Bob in the upper arm, and sniffs hard at the same time. His mouth is doing that squiggly thing mouths do when someone is trying to hold back tears.
Bob can do that. He grabs Frank, pulls him back to the couch and clutches at him. "You don't have to go," he mutters into Frank's neck so he doesn't have to see if Frank is crying.
"Again," Frank says in a croaky voice, and sniffs. "Seriously, fucking. Again. Again. Please."
"You don't have to go, Frank. I'm not kicking you out."
"Again."
"You don't have to go. Ever."
Frank's fingers dig into Bob's arms so hard Bob knows they'll leave bruises. He's abruptly scared of this, this massive unvented volcano of tears that's hanging off him now. How long has all this shit been buried inside Frank, clamped down with cheerful shouts about music and making a fuss over the dogs and fucking about with Bob? "Again," Frank mutters. "Tell me until I believe it."
Bob's not sure he has that kind of breath in him. He feels like he's suffocating already. "You don't have to leave. I'm not kicking you out. I don't want you to go," he says, addressing himself to the top of Frank's head as he very slowly pries those razor-edged fingers from his arms.
When Frank's let go enough, he slips off the sofa and starts rifling through the drawers. There has to be some around here somewhere ...
"What the fuck are you doing?" Frank asks, suspicious and sniffling.
"Hang on," Bob says, and there it is ... a sheet of paper with a half-finished grocery list on the back. There's a Sharpie on the sideboard, fuck knows why, and he seizes that up, too. Scribbles for a minute, and passes the piece of paper as he's recapping the pen.
I, ROBERT NATHANIEL BRYAR, PROMISE THAT I WILL NEVER KICK OUT FRANK ANTHONY IERO OR LEAVE HIM OR GET RID OF HIM EVER, SIGNED.
He's expecting Frank to laugh, or roll his eyes, or call him a fucking idiot, but Frank stares at it for a moment, silent and clutching the paper too tight.
"Thanks," he says, very quietly, and he folds it up. Slides it into his ass pocket. "Sit back down, can't ya?"
Bob ditches the pen and sits. Frank coils into his lap and clings to him, buries his face in Bob's neck. "Okay. I believe you," he mumbles into Bob's collar.
Bob locks his arms around Frank's back. "I mean it."
"I know you mean it," Frank says, rubbing a hand along the back of Bob's neck. "Can you mean it while you're naked, now?"
Bob can always mean it while he’s naked. He can always mean it even more when Frank is naked. He gets his hands under Frank’s shirt and pushes it up so he can feel Frank’s skin, all the raised lines of Frank’s shitty stupid tattoos like a map for him to follow home. “You’re not leaving,” he says, and tips Frank backwards onto the couch so he can get him naked.
“Fuck no,” Frank says, smiling up at Bob. It’s a wobbly half-smile that doesn’t make Bob feel any better about the snot tracks under his nose or the shiny tears still on Frank’s cheek, but Frank is squirming out of his shirt and tugging at Bob’s hoodie. Bob helps him get it off, then can’t hold back from kissing him, biting at Frank’s lip ring and pressing him down into the cushion. “Take it off, take it off,” Frank hisses when he pulls back, shoving Bob’s shirt up too. “Fuck, I want you to be naked.” Bob still isn’t sure why Frank thinks he’s hot (fuck, all Frank has to do is look in a mirror to see who the hot one in their fucked up relationship is), but he’s stopped questioning it. Frank wants him naked, Frank gets him naked.
But if he’s gonna be freezing his ass off half-naked on the couch, Frank is too. Bob strips him. It’s so much easier to get someone naked when they want to be, and it doesn’t take him long even with whiskey-and-stress making his hands shaky. And then Frank is pulling him down again. Bob gets his hips against Frank’s, his hands on Frank’s waist and wrist, and their mouths together to try to swallow Frank’s fuck-hot little groan. He’s still got his jeans on and they’ve got to be rough against Frank’s skin, but Frank is hooking one leg around Bob’s hip and forcing him closer.
“Fuck, Frankie,” Bob grunts. He lets go of Frank’s waist (already he’s leaving finger marks on his skin, from holding too tightly), and shoves his hand under the cushion to find the lube he knows Frank stashes there. Fry, penny, fry, fry, dog treat, quarter, fry, pencil, LUBE. He pulls it out from under the cushions and bits of stale food that have fallen back there. “Hey… fucking cut it out,” he grunts. Frank’s distracting him by scraping one ragged nail over his piercing, sending half the blood in his body to his face and the other half to his dick and leaving none for his brain.
Frank doesn’t look any sort of sorry for it, but he stops and moves his hands over his head, crossed at the wrists like some fucking damsel on a train track. Bob can see that stupid fucking rose and he bites his lip. Shoves Frank’s thighs wider open and swipes a palm over his dick just to see Frank bite his lip and jerk his hips up. He gets his fingers slick and presses one against Frank’s asshole. He loves the noises Frank makes when he does this.
“Bob, fuck,” Frank groans, curls his fingers into the arm of the sofa over his head. Bob holds Frank’s hips down with one hand, holds him still, and takes his damn sweet time sliding his finger into him.
“What, Frankie?”
“Come on, I want more,” Frank whines and tries to push down further on Bob’s finger.
“You’ll get it when I’m good and ready,” Bob mutters in return. “Don’t move your fucking hands.” He’s gonna make Frank beg properly. Frank swears at him, but his hands don’t move from their places. Bob dawdles, watches Frank squirm and twist and try so fucking hard not to move his hands.
“Fucking dick, stop teasing me!” Frank demands, and Bob pinches his thigh in response.
“Ask nice,” he says. He’s adding another finger, watching Frank’s face twist and flush, and Bob’s jeans are getting too tight across the crotch.
“Ffffuck please?”
“Please what,” Bob asks, twisting his fingers.
“Please Bob?” Frank tries.
“Not good enough.” Bob adjusts his dick and tries not to stare at Frank’s bitten-red mouth. It distracts him and he’s on a mission. Frank swears at him again, breaking off into a hoarse gasp. “Keep trying.”
“Nnnghbob,” Frank mumbles. Bob runs his unoccupied hand over Frank’s chest to scrape at his pec, pinch his nipple like Frank did to him before. Frank watches Bob’s hand move, giving him little gasps and Bob’s favorite noise ever, the choked moan Frank makes when Bob’s doing something just right.
There's a beautiful catch-22 happening, because the better that Frank begs, the more Bob will give him, but the more he gives him, the less coherent Frank's words get.
Bob, watching Frank's hands scrabble at nothing as he squirms, is just fine with that.
"Don't move," Bob warns, and Frank growls at him. More desperation than threat, but Bob's hand drifts up from Frank's chest to his throat just the same, his thumb resting lightly across his windpipe. Not enough to choke, not even enough to cause discomfort when Frank swallows, just ... a warning to behave.
Frank tilts his head back and arches up, making Bob’s thumb press into his throat. A low whine vibrates under his finger, going straight up his arm and down to his dick. “C’mon, Frankie, say it.”
“Nnnbobplease?” Frank mumbles. Bob can feel him swallowing and panting, and pushes down just a little more.
“Please, what?” Bob repeats. He stops moving his fingers in Frank’s ass so he can concentrate on the pulse under his thumb, on the sweaty red shine of Frank’s cheeks and his pretty pretty mouth.
"Fuck, please," Frank says, his voice a little ragged, more than a little desperate now that Bob's stop moving, "Fuck me, Bob, do anything, fuckin' killing me here..." He's got his hands locked around each other now so hard that his fingertips have gone white, and Bob can see the tension in his muscles as he forces himself to stay still. Jesus, minimal pressure with one hand and Frank does the rest, restraining himself ... And damned if Bob can ever summon the words to explain the rush of possessive pride that goes through him at that thought.
"There you go," Bob tells him, his own voice surprisingly rough, like he's one with someone leaning on his windpipe. "Knew you had it in you."
“Please, Bob!” Frank whines. Bob takes his hand off Frank’s throat and starts trying to get into his pants, struggling with the fly of his jeans and his boxers. Frank asked so damn nice, and Bob isn’t going to deny himself now, not with Frank spread and waiting and desperate.
“Just…fucking wait,” Bob mutters, with his fingers wrapped around his own dick and his other hand still busy with Frank’s ass. Frank is still whining wordlessly, like he’s out of coherent thoughts, and Bob has to take a second to stare down at him. Frank is … is beautiful, and perfect, and desperate for him, for Bob, and he can’t understand why. But then Frank rolls his hips up, and jerks Bob out of his obsessive staring. He gets lube on his dick as fast as he can, messy and smearing onto his jeans, and then he’s pushing forward over Frank so he can fuck him until Frank really does believe him.
Frank's chanting encouragement under his breath, broken snippets of 'yeah, yeah' punctuated with curses. He looks drunk, drugged, with his head back and his hair falling in his eyes. Bob pushes in slow, and Frank promptly seems to run out of words: mouth open, eyes shut, shuddering uncontrollably, and there's barely enough air in the room for Bob to keep breathing. He can't tell which of them is shaking, but the body-heat just multiplies and Bob feels like he's burning up, like he's clutching at a furnace. Frank gulps in a huge breath and lets it out in a rushed "Ohpleasefuckme", and Bob couldn't have denied him if he wanted to.
Bob’s pretty sure that his zipper is digging into Frank’s thigh, and it can’t be comfortable, but he’s got Frank pinned right where he wants him and unless Frank complains he’s not gonna stop. Bob pushes Frank’s thighs up, towards his chest, and drives in hard. He thinks for a second that their sofa has seen more action than most porn sets, but Frank leans up and bites his mouth and he’s too busy kissing the kid to think about anything else.
Frank's trembling with the effort of stretching up to kiss Bob while keeping his hands where they are, and behind the part of Bob's brain that always winds up wondering why Frank's willing to tie himself in knots for the sake of him, there's a little whisper wondering if Frank would keep it up until he collapsed. A little whisper of confidence that he would. A slow rush of hot lust sweeps through Bob, so intense that he can feel it right down his legs, and he groans against Frank's mouth, rocking into him as Frank shoves back up against him.
They slide together easy as sin, and it’s just as familiar and as new and shocking and intense as sex with Frank always is, has been since the first time he stopped thinking straight and followed Frank back to his hellhole apartment. Bob slides one hand up Frank’s thigh, running it over his hip and stomach and chest and throat and face and finally up to his hands, tangling his fingers in with Frank’s as he fucks him. “Love you,” Frank gasps against Bob’s mouth, and Bob’s hips spasm forward brokenly, his fingers tighten in Frank’s. “Bob … love you.”
The problem with sex (the only problem with sex-with-Frank as far as he can tell) is that the very best moments are precisely the ones that can't last. If there were a way to keep Frank exactly like he is right now, panting and flushed with pleasure and 100% his, there isn't much that Bob wouldn't give to make it happen. Even with the couch creaking under them and the waist of Bob's jeans cutting into his thigh and the sad fact that his groans don't always get drowned out by the sounds that Frank makes for him, he'd be cool with staying in this moment forever.
Bob kisses the corner of Frank’s mouth and bites at his cheek, his jaw. “Frankie,” he mumbles, and can’t say anything else, too busy trying to remember to breathe and taste the sweat trailing down by Frank’s ear. He may want this moment to last forever, but it can’t, or he’ll explode from how badly he wants Frank, and probably take out Frank and half the block with him. He hitches Frank’s legs up, driving into him rough and unsteady. Frank isn’t complaining, if Bob is right in his interpretation of the babbly half-finished words Frank is mumbling against his ear.
“Bob…please… Bob Bob Bob please…”
Get Frank begging early and it's like he can't stop, and it's probably ten shades of twisted, but it's the hottest fucking thing ... Bob feels like he's tearing apart at the seams, like hanging onto Frank's fever-hot body is the only thing keeping him together as shit gets a little crazy with sensory overload. If he opens his mouth, who the fuck knows what's going to come out? Love it when you beg me and so fucking beautiful and you're going to destroy me. Bob closes his lips over Frank's earlobe instead and sucks hard enough to make Frank gasp as he rushes towards the point of no return.
Bob gets his hand over Frank’s dick, wedged between their stomachs and his knuckles dragging over Frank’s skin. Against his cheek, Frank lets out a strangled whine, his hips bucking between Bob’s hand and his dick for a few seconds before he’s coming over Bob’s fingers. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Frank gasps, tightening his fingers around Bob’s hand over their heads. Bob barely hears him, he’s got his mouth on Frank’s pulse now, and his hand on Frank’s dick, and he’s going to finish any second now. “Love you, Bob,” Frank says again, and that’s it, he’s done, coming into Frank with a humiliating desperate choked groan.
And then they're hanging onto each other like they've survived a goddamn battle or something, just panting, slippery with sweat everywhere there's skin on bare skin. Frank nuzzles his wet forehead against Bob's temple, bites at his cheek and mutters "So what happened to you getting naked, you fuck?" with a clear note of amusement in his tone.
Bob blinks and considers the tangle of too-tight denim around his thighs. Ten bucks says Frank's got material burn on the inside of his thighs, probably some scratches from the zipper... Bob groans at the thought, immediately blushes, and rubs his forehead against Frank's collarbone before shifting off of him to let him breathe. "You're distracting," he mumbles. Truer fucking words...
"Next time," Frank decides, happily molding himself against Bob's side, "I'm getting you naked first."
Next
“Just ask her out, Jesus,” Frank’s ordering the phone when Bob gets home from the store. “Hey. Shut up. Mikey. Shut up. Yes, I’m paying attention to you. Bob just got home, hang on two fucking seconds.” Frank holds the phone away from his ear and tilts his head back to demand a kiss from Bob. Bob obliges, kisses Frank’s cheek. Frank mouths two seconds at him, smiles and puts the phone back to his ear. “Look, are you coming over or not?”
Frank’s off the phone a minute later, curling his arms around Bob’s waist. “Hi. Hi hi hi,” he says, biting at Bob’s chest through his shirt.
“Hey. Is Mikeyway coming over?” Bob mutters into Frank’s hair.
“No, he said maybe tomorrow. We have a test in Lit and Gee’s still in full-on crazy-artist mode.”
Mikey’s been coming over a lot, hiding from Gerard’s artistic frenzy. This is the first night in the last week Bob’s gotten home from work and Mikey isn’t sprawled on the couch like a freaky emo stick insect. Bob doesn’t want to mind, except it’s starting to grate on his nerves, having Mikey always there. He’s starting to get those stupid paranoid feelings again, that maybe Frank doesn’t want to be alone with him.
“Bob. Bob. Pay attention.” Frank is poking him in the stomach. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Huh? Oh. Um. Pizza?” he says.
“Okay. Usual?” Frank says, pulling away and going for the phone again.
The next night, Bob leaves the prison, gets on the train, and doesn’t get off at the stop for the apartment. He rides to the end of the line, where the bus terminal is. Where the trains out of the city leave from, and busses to everywhere but home are waiting.
Bob is staring at his phone. He needs to call Frank to remind him to not overfeed the dogs, make sure the pilot light is lit. But Frank will yell at him when he does, if he’s not talking to Mikey. Bob’s pretty sure that if Frank yells at him, he’ll cave and go home.
He can’t keep staring at the phone, trying to make a decision, so he stares at the wall of the bus terminal instead. The wall is papered with missing children and most wanted posters, all these tiny smiling faces and grim mug-shots next to vital statistics and pleas for help. Bob stares at a toddler’s picture from 10 years ago, the kid’s advanced age picture next to it. He looks away from that one, into the face of some bank robber, past a teenage girl, and catches the corner of a private school uniform and a name, layered under newer posters. Iero. He pushes past the new posters, sees a picture of Frank.
He’s tiny and grinning awkwardly at some school photographer’s camera, in his blazer and tie and rosary. No eyeliner, no piercings, no tattoos. Frank Iero, age 16. Last seen in Belleville, New Jersey. The date is four years ago. Runaway. He looks fourteen, not sixteen.
Frank never talks about what happened before he ended up in Arthur Kill, doesn’t talk about his family. This is probably why. He looks down at his phone again and half-makes up his mind.
Bob dials, gets Frank on the first ring. “Frankie,” he mutters, trying as usual to figure out what to say.
“Robert Bryar you had better get your ass home from wherever the fuck you ran off to because I made your nasty chicken parmesan and if you’re not home before it gets cold I’m feeding it to Gee and Mikey,” Frank says in one breath. “And it’s your turn to take the fucking trash out.”
“Frankie. I’m. Um. I…” Bob clings to his phone like a lifeline.
“I’m not listening, we’re not having this conversation on the phone. Get your ass home, fucker. I love you,” Frank says and hangs up on him. Bob stops at the liquor store on the way home for a bottle of something.
“You are cutting it damn close, Bryar, I was about to take this to Gee,” Frank yells when the door bangs open. Bob feels massively guilty, coming back into the apartment when it’s all warm and smells like Frank’s goddamn cooking, with the dogs looking up at him like they never doubted that he’d come home. Like he hadn’t been thinking of leaving them and Frank for good, for their own good. He scratches them both behind the ears to apologize. “You can take the trash out after dinner.”
Bob goes to the kitchen, pulls Frank into a desperate hug. “Sorry, Frank,” he mouths against Frank’s hair.
“Don’t scare me like that, you dick,” Frank says against Bob’s chest. “I thought I was gonna have to go see Gerard in the middle of his fit.” Bob snorts, tilts Frank’s face up to kiss him.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “Food?”
“Fucking Viking,” Frank says, but he pulls Bob into the kitchen.
Bob can’t focus on the TV, he keeps getting distracted by staring at the top of Frank’s head. He’s got the picture of Frank at 16 stuck in his head. Runaway runaway runaway. He has to know. He can’t stop himself from asking. He shouldn’t have had so much whiskey. “Why’d you run away?”
Frank goes icy stiff in his arms. “I didn’t run away,” he says. Bob doesn’t think he’s ever heard Frank sound like that, cold and tense. “Why?”
“Um. There’s. There’s a poster at the bus station. Frank. You were sixteen.”
“I know how old I was, thanks.” Frank pushes himself off the couch, only a little unsteady on his feet. “So did my parents when they kicked me out.” He snatches the bottle from Bob’s hand and takes another pull, shoves it back at him. “What, you think I wanted to run away and be a hooker? Fuck no, I loved school. And my family, and my friends and my boyfriend. And having a fucking future.”
Bob frowns and reaches for Frank. “No. Fuck off! I didn’t want to leave!” Frank snaps, steps back out of Bob’s reach. “But I didn’t wanna lie and hate myself and pretend that I was some straight and narrow good little altar boy.” He spits on the floor, hands flailing like he wants to hit something and cross himself at the same time.
Bob wants to pin his arms down and make him stop looking like that, that look of betrayal and pain. He wants to find Frank’s parents and make sure they regret making Frank leave, make them understand what they put their kid through. And at the same time, he has this horrible, guilty throat-clenching need to thank them, because now he has Frank. “I didn’t want to go back to straight camp or get an exorcism and they kicked me out.”
It's too much for Bob; his throat is determined that no words will come out, and his fists have wrapped themselves into furious little balls; the idea that anyone could be so cold to their kid isn't exactly alien, of course, he's worked around fuck-ups like that for years - cons who don't call home once while they're inside, screws who toss the letters from their estranged teenager daughters unopened when they recognize the writing on the envelope - but thinking that Frank, who always works so hard and always, alwaysstands up for what he thinks is right, might be on the receiving end of that bullshit …
He's not breathing properly. It always happens when he's this angry. Bob inhales through his nose, hard, because his mouth won't open. Frank is staring at him with an expression he doesn't recognize for a minute; more anger. Anger, betrayal, anger, anger, and more anger.
"BOB."
Frank is twisting something between his hands - Bob can't tell what.
"BOB," Frank says, tearing whatever it is in half - Bob hopes in a distant way that it isn't anything important, like underpants. "Fucking say something. Bob. SAY. SOMETHING, okay. I didn't go through all that bullshit -" he points behind him as if he's pointing at the past, "- all the shit and the drugs and the fucking johns because I thought it was a sweet idea! I didn't quit having three meals a day and a fucking education because of a ... of a fucking whim. SAY. SOMETHING. Goddamnit. Tell me you understand that much."
Bob just stares at him, opens his mouth to try, but there's too much anger in the way. He doesn't know what to do for Frank, not when he brought it up, not when it's his fault that Frank is furious and miserable all at once. This is the sort of thing Father Gee has talked to him about so often. If you can't find anything to say, Gee says, say that you don't know what to say. Don't stand there in silence, because silence can mean so many things.
Easy for Father Gee to say, of course, because everything is easy for him to say. He hardly ever stops talking. Not so Bob.
"I -" he says, and his voice is croaky and horrible and fuck why can't things ever go simply. "- I don't know what to -"
"What to think? You could start by thinking that you FUCKING BELIEVE I'M TELLING THE TRUTH." Frank's so furious he's shaking. The dogs are hiding in the kitchen and there's a little puddle on the way to the door, because Daisy doesn't like loud noises. Bob's hands have found their way to the top of his head, as if they're trying to hold his brain in, or kick it into life. "I. Frank." Bob searches through his mental filing cabinet of words, trying to find ones that make sense. "Frank. Fuck. FRANK."
"What?" Frank slams his hand into the top of the couch. It doesn't make a very satisfying noise. "Is this it, is this the bit where you tell me I've got to get out because if it is -"
"No." Ah, that's a word Bob knows how to use.
"THEN WHAT THE FUCK. TELL ME WHAT YOU'RE THINKING."
"I don't know." Bob holds onto his head for a little longer, then, surprising even himself, lunges for Frank's hand. He catches it before Frank can jerk it away and holds it between his, anchoring him to the spot, holding him steady so Bob can struggle his way through the masses of words he can't get a grip on. "Fuck, Frank. I. You." He closes his hands tighter.
"You're crushing my fucking hand," Frank says in a slightly shaky voice.
"I don't want to let go," Bob mumbles.
"Tell me I don't have to leave," Frank says in the same shaky voice, "please."
Bob drags his gaze back from the tips of Frank's fingers, which are safe and straightforward and dirty and won't make his throat knot itself up. Frank's eyes are far too moist and his cheeks are suspiciously shiny. Bob's throat closes up and his legs lock in place, his teeth grind together so hard that he can hear bits chipping off.
"Please don't leave," Bob says, trying to refrain from crushing the bones in Frank's hand with the ferocity of his grip. "You don't have to go."
"Say it again," Frank says. He sounds like he's having an asthma attack.
"I hate your fucking parents," Bob says, because obedience is apparently not his strong suit this evening.
"Don't talk about them."
"I fucking hate them," Bob says, and he is very, very certain of this. He has let go of Frank's hand, its warmth is gone, and his own have become fists without his knowledge or instruction.
"If they weren't assholes," Frank points out, wiping furiously at his cheeks, "we wouldn't have met each other. Okay? You'd better not be getting ready to punch something."
Bob looks at his fists guiltily and mumbles to the carpet, "They're horrible fucking people for doing that to you."
There is a tense silence and Frank growls, "Fine. Hate them. Be pissed. But be pissed and tell me I don't have to leave. Be pissed and be pissed WHILE YOU'RE GODDAMN HOLDING ME." He jabs Bob in the upper arm, and sniffs hard at the same time. His mouth is doing that squiggly thing mouths do when someone is trying to hold back tears.
Bob can do that. He grabs Frank, pulls him back to the couch and clutches at him. "You don't have to go," he mutters into Frank's neck so he doesn't have to see if Frank is crying.
"Again," Frank says in a croaky voice, and sniffs. "Seriously, fucking. Again. Again. Please."
"You don't have to go, Frank. I'm not kicking you out."
"Again."
"You don't have to go. Ever."
Frank's fingers dig into Bob's arms so hard Bob knows they'll leave bruises. He's abruptly scared of this, this massive unvented volcano of tears that's hanging off him now. How long has all this shit been buried inside Frank, clamped down with cheerful shouts about music and making a fuss over the dogs and fucking about with Bob? "Again," Frank mutters. "Tell me until I believe it."
Bob's not sure he has that kind of breath in him. He feels like he's suffocating already. "You don't have to leave. I'm not kicking you out. I don't want you to go," he says, addressing himself to the top of Frank's head as he very slowly pries those razor-edged fingers from his arms.
When Frank's let go enough, he slips off the sofa and starts rifling through the drawers. There has to be some around here somewhere ...
"What the fuck are you doing?" Frank asks, suspicious and sniffling.
"Hang on," Bob says, and there it is ... a sheet of paper with a half-finished grocery list on the back. There's a Sharpie on the sideboard, fuck knows why, and he seizes that up, too. Scribbles for a minute, and passes the piece of paper as he's recapping the pen.
I, ROBERT NATHANIEL BRYAR, PROMISE THAT I WILL NEVER KICK OUT FRANK ANTHONY IERO OR LEAVE HIM OR GET RID OF HIM EVER, SIGNED.
He's expecting Frank to laugh, or roll his eyes, or call him a fucking idiot, but Frank stares at it for a moment, silent and clutching the paper too tight.
"Thanks," he says, very quietly, and he folds it up. Slides it into his ass pocket. "Sit back down, can't ya?"
Bob ditches the pen and sits. Frank coils into his lap and clings to him, buries his face in Bob's neck. "Okay. I believe you," he mumbles into Bob's collar.
Bob locks his arms around Frank's back. "I mean it."
"I know you mean it," Frank says, rubbing a hand along the back of Bob's neck. "Can you mean it while you're naked, now?"
Bob can always mean it while he’s naked. He can always mean it even more when Frank is naked. He gets his hands under Frank’s shirt and pushes it up so he can feel Frank’s skin, all the raised lines of Frank’s shitty stupid tattoos like a map for him to follow home. “You’re not leaving,” he says, and tips Frank backwards onto the couch so he can get him naked.
“Fuck no,” Frank says, smiling up at Bob. It’s a wobbly half-smile that doesn’t make Bob feel any better about the snot tracks under his nose or the shiny tears still on Frank’s cheek, but Frank is squirming out of his shirt and tugging at Bob’s hoodie. Bob helps him get it off, then can’t hold back from kissing him, biting at Frank’s lip ring and pressing him down into the cushion. “Take it off, take it off,” Frank hisses when he pulls back, shoving Bob’s shirt up too. “Fuck, I want you to be naked.” Bob still isn’t sure why Frank thinks he’s hot (fuck, all Frank has to do is look in a mirror to see who the hot one in their fucked up relationship is), but he’s stopped questioning it. Frank wants him naked, Frank gets him naked.
But if he’s gonna be freezing his ass off half-naked on the couch, Frank is too. Bob strips him. It’s so much easier to get someone naked when they want to be, and it doesn’t take him long even with whiskey-and-stress making his hands shaky. And then Frank is pulling him down again. Bob gets his hips against Frank’s, his hands on Frank’s waist and wrist, and their mouths together to try to swallow Frank’s fuck-hot little groan. He’s still got his jeans on and they’ve got to be rough against Frank’s skin, but Frank is hooking one leg around Bob’s hip and forcing him closer.
“Fuck, Frankie,” Bob grunts. He lets go of Frank’s waist (already he’s leaving finger marks on his skin, from holding too tightly), and shoves his hand under the cushion to find the lube he knows Frank stashes there. Fry, penny, fry, fry, dog treat, quarter, fry, pencil, LUBE. He pulls it out from under the cushions and bits of stale food that have fallen back there. “Hey… fucking cut it out,” he grunts. Frank’s distracting him by scraping one ragged nail over his piercing, sending half the blood in his body to his face and the other half to his dick and leaving none for his brain.
Frank doesn’t look any sort of sorry for it, but he stops and moves his hands over his head, crossed at the wrists like some fucking damsel on a train track. Bob can see that stupid fucking rose and he bites his lip. Shoves Frank’s thighs wider open and swipes a palm over his dick just to see Frank bite his lip and jerk his hips up. He gets his fingers slick and presses one against Frank’s asshole. He loves the noises Frank makes when he does this.
“Bob, fuck,” Frank groans, curls his fingers into the arm of the sofa over his head. Bob holds Frank’s hips down with one hand, holds him still, and takes his damn sweet time sliding his finger into him.
“What, Frankie?”
“Come on, I want more,” Frank whines and tries to push down further on Bob’s finger.
“You’ll get it when I’m good and ready,” Bob mutters in return. “Don’t move your fucking hands.” He’s gonna make Frank beg properly. Frank swears at him, but his hands don’t move from their places. Bob dawdles, watches Frank squirm and twist and try so fucking hard not to move his hands.
“Fucking dick, stop teasing me!” Frank demands, and Bob pinches his thigh in response.
“Ask nice,” he says. He’s adding another finger, watching Frank’s face twist and flush, and Bob’s jeans are getting too tight across the crotch.
“Ffffuck please?”
“Please what,” Bob asks, twisting his fingers.
“Please Bob?” Frank tries.
“Not good enough.” Bob adjusts his dick and tries not to stare at Frank’s bitten-red mouth. It distracts him and he’s on a mission. Frank swears at him again, breaking off into a hoarse gasp. “Keep trying.”
“Nnnghbob,” Frank mumbles. Bob runs his unoccupied hand over Frank’s chest to scrape at his pec, pinch his nipple like Frank did to him before. Frank watches Bob’s hand move, giving him little gasps and Bob’s favorite noise ever, the choked moan Frank makes when Bob’s doing something just right.
There's a beautiful catch-22 happening, because the better that Frank begs, the more Bob will give him, but the more he gives him, the less coherent Frank's words get.
Bob, watching Frank's hands scrabble at nothing as he squirms, is just fine with that.
"Don't move," Bob warns, and Frank growls at him. More desperation than threat, but Bob's hand drifts up from Frank's chest to his throat just the same, his thumb resting lightly across his windpipe. Not enough to choke, not even enough to cause discomfort when Frank swallows, just ... a warning to behave.
Frank tilts his head back and arches up, making Bob’s thumb press into his throat. A low whine vibrates under his finger, going straight up his arm and down to his dick. “C’mon, Frankie, say it.”
“Nnnbobplease?” Frank mumbles. Bob can feel him swallowing and panting, and pushes down just a little more.
“Please, what?” Bob repeats. He stops moving his fingers in Frank’s ass so he can concentrate on the pulse under his thumb, on the sweaty red shine of Frank’s cheeks and his pretty pretty mouth.
"Fuck, please," Frank says, his voice a little ragged, more than a little desperate now that Bob's stop moving, "Fuck me, Bob, do anything, fuckin' killing me here..." He's got his hands locked around each other now so hard that his fingertips have gone white, and Bob can see the tension in his muscles as he forces himself to stay still. Jesus, minimal pressure with one hand and Frank does the rest, restraining himself ... And damned if Bob can ever summon the words to explain the rush of possessive pride that goes through him at that thought.
"There you go," Bob tells him, his own voice surprisingly rough, like he's one with someone leaning on his windpipe. "Knew you had it in you."
“Please, Bob!” Frank whines. Bob takes his hand off Frank’s throat and starts trying to get into his pants, struggling with the fly of his jeans and his boxers. Frank asked so damn nice, and Bob isn’t going to deny himself now, not with Frank spread and waiting and desperate.
“Just…fucking wait,” Bob mutters, with his fingers wrapped around his own dick and his other hand still busy with Frank’s ass. Frank is still whining wordlessly, like he’s out of coherent thoughts, and Bob has to take a second to stare down at him. Frank is … is beautiful, and perfect, and desperate for him, for Bob, and he can’t understand why. But then Frank rolls his hips up, and jerks Bob out of his obsessive staring. He gets lube on his dick as fast as he can, messy and smearing onto his jeans, and then he’s pushing forward over Frank so he can fuck him until Frank really does believe him.
Frank's chanting encouragement under his breath, broken snippets of 'yeah, yeah' punctuated with curses. He looks drunk, drugged, with his head back and his hair falling in his eyes. Bob pushes in slow, and Frank promptly seems to run out of words: mouth open, eyes shut, shuddering uncontrollably, and there's barely enough air in the room for Bob to keep breathing. He can't tell which of them is shaking, but the body-heat just multiplies and Bob feels like he's burning up, like he's clutching at a furnace. Frank gulps in a huge breath and lets it out in a rushed "Ohpleasefuckme", and Bob couldn't have denied him if he wanted to.
Bob’s pretty sure that his zipper is digging into Frank’s thigh, and it can’t be comfortable, but he’s got Frank pinned right where he wants him and unless Frank complains he’s not gonna stop. Bob pushes Frank’s thighs up, towards his chest, and drives in hard. He thinks for a second that their sofa has seen more action than most porn sets, but Frank leans up and bites his mouth and he’s too busy kissing the kid to think about anything else.
Frank's trembling with the effort of stretching up to kiss Bob while keeping his hands where they are, and behind the part of Bob's brain that always winds up wondering why Frank's willing to tie himself in knots for the sake of him, there's a little whisper wondering if Frank would keep it up until he collapsed. A little whisper of confidence that he would. A slow rush of hot lust sweeps through Bob, so intense that he can feel it right down his legs, and he groans against Frank's mouth, rocking into him as Frank shoves back up against him.
They slide together easy as sin, and it’s just as familiar and as new and shocking and intense as sex with Frank always is, has been since the first time he stopped thinking straight and followed Frank back to his hellhole apartment. Bob slides one hand up Frank’s thigh, running it over his hip and stomach and chest and throat and face and finally up to his hands, tangling his fingers in with Frank’s as he fucks him. “Love you,” Frank gasps against Bob’s mouth, and Bob’s hips spasm forward brokenly, his fingers tighten in Frank’s. “Bob … love you.”
The problem with sex (the only problem with sex-with-Frank as far as he can tell) is that the very best moments are precisely the ones that can't last. If there were a way to keep Frank exactly like he is right now, panting and flushed with pleasure and 100% his, there isn't much that Bob wouldn't give to make it happen. Even with the couch creaking under them and the waist of Bob's jeans cutting into his thigh and the sad fact that his groans don't always get drowned out by the sounds that Frank makes for him, he'd be cool with staying in this moment forever.
Bob kisses the corner of Frank’s mouth and bites at his cheek, his jaw. “Frankie,” he mumbles, and can’t say anything else, too busy trying to remember to breathe and taste the sweat trailing down by Frank’s ear. He may want this moment to last forever, but it can’t, or he’ll explode from how badly he wants Frank, and probably take out Frank and half the block with him. He hitches Frank’s legs up, driving into him rough and unsteady. Frank isn’t complaining, if Bob is right in his interpretation of the babbly half-finished words Frank is mumbling against his ear.
“Bob…please… Bob Bob Bob please…”
Get Frank begging early and it's like he can't stop, and it's probably ten shades of twisted, but it's the hottest fucking thing ... Bob feels like he's tearing apart at the seams, like hanging onto Frank's fever-hot body is the only thing keeping him together as shit gets a little crazy with sensory overload. If he opens his mouth, who the fuck knows what's going to come out? Love it when you beg me and so fucking beautiful and you're going to destroy me. Bob closes his lips over Frank's earlobe instead and sucks hard enough to make Frank gasp as he rushes towards the point of no return.
Bob gets his hand over Frank’s dick, wedged between their stomachs and his knuckles dragging over Frank’s skin. Against his cheek, Frank lets out a strangled whine, his hips bucking between Bob’s hand and his dick for a few seconds before he’s coming over Bob’s fingers. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Frank gasps, tightening his fingers around Bob’s hand over their heads. Bob barely hears him, he’s got his mouth on Frank’s pulse now, and his hand on Frank’s dick, and he’s going to finish any second now. “Love you, Bob,” Frank says again, and that’s it, he’s done, coming into Frank with a humiliating desperate choked groan.
And then they're hanging onto each other like they've survived a goddamn battle or something, just panting, slippery with sweat everywhere there's skin on bare skin. Frank nuzzles his wet forehead against Bob's temple, bites at his cheek and mutters "So what happened to you getting naked, you fuck?" with a clear note of amusement in his tone.
Bob blinks and considers the tangle of too-tight denim around his thighs. Ten bucks says Frank's got material burn on the inside of his thighs, probably some scratches from the zipper... Bob groans at the thought, immediately blushes, and rubs his forehead against Frank's collarbone before shifting off of him to let him breathe. "You're distracting," he mumbles. Truer fucking words...
"Next time," Frank decides, happily molding himself against Bob's side, "I'm getting you naked first."
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