Oh Baby Let Me In

December 19th, 1999
Friday;afternoon

"Frank?"

I rubbed my eyes and yawned, inadvertently scratching the back of my head as I did so, peering into my locker.

Winter break officially began the second I stepped foot outside of those rusty old double doors out in front of the school, and I couldn't wait. Though Mrs. Walker, my English teacher was currently holding me back from reaching my day’s destination. She had made a large assignment due at the end of our two week break from school, and I couldn't seem to find the damn book needed to actually write the thing. I believe it was called The Grapes of Wrath, or something along those lines. We were supposed to be done with the thing almost a week ago, and I hadn't even touched the four hundred plus page book yet, and I had to finish that and write a paper.

Yeah.

Good luck with all of that.

"Frank!"

My head shot up from inside of my locker, connecting with the sharp metal at the top, which for your information, was just a bit taller than me. I'm not that short thank you very much.

I glared at Mikey as I clutched the top of my head, my throat clenching up as the words 'What the hell was that for?' stuck there and refused to spill past my lips. Teachers and students passed behind us, some sounding excited to be able to get away from school for a long period of time, others just not giving a care in the world, wishing those in front of them to move out of their way.

I didn't dare even think about saying a word in front of any of them; my mouth wouldn't ever allow it anyways.

He gave me a small grin, squeezing his eyes shut in the process.

I rolled my eyes at him, turning back to my locker, ignoring the throbbing pain in the back of my head. Shifting a few binders and stray papers around at the very bottom of my locker, I finally found the damn book I had been searching for. I sighed loudly as I stood up, flicking through the pages just to see how obnoxiously long the thing actually was before shoving it into my bag and linking my arms back through it. The second I slammed my locker back shut, I felt another yawn crawl up my throat which in turn caused my arms to raise above my head, my fingers linking together in midair as I stretched my stomach.

"That's fine, right?"

Mikey's voice scared me as he set his hand on my back. I jumped a bit, and quickly turned to face him.

I had been doing that all day; tuning people out. Well, to be honest, I did that almost everyday. To everyone but Mikey that is. Nobody was ever really talking to me anyways, so it was never really a big deal.

But it's not like I wanted to ignore Mikey or anything, no. I was tired as hell and had been dozing off all day now. I couldn't sleep last night because of -- reasons, and I haven't had a chance to talk to Mikey yet. Though I didn't even know if I wanted to talk to him about it.

"Frank!"

My head shot up once again, this time I had been staring at my shoes, which for a fact needed to get thrown out, before raising my eyebrows at Mikey.

"Are you even listening to me?" he asked, waving his hand in front of my face. I swatted it away, only to make him laugh. "I take that as a 'no'."

I rolled my eyes, not really in the mood for his 'up beat' one, lightly pushing past him and making my way to the front doors.

"Frank," he whined, his shoes shuffling behind me, his body soon walking next to mine. "What's crawled up your ass?"

I shrugged, shaking my hair out of my eyes and shoving my hands into my jean pockets. But I also cringed at the irony his sentence had to do with what was bothering me.

If you get my drift..

Though I would then have to share what was actually bothering me. But I don't think I could ever tell Mikey I had a dream about his brother.

A -- dirty dream?

Hence why his statement about something ‘crawling up my ass’ was so ironic. In my dream, something did – go up there.

I can’t believe I just said that.

I shook my head at the memory. I had no fucking clue why I would even think of dreaming about Gerard -- like that at least.

That's what I was thinking last night at one in the morning as I oh-so quietly snuck down to the basement with my sheets in attempts to wash them before my Mom woke up and asked questions. Thank the heavens above that she didn't. I ended up sitting up all night, down in the basement, racking my brain, trying to figure out why I had a dream about me and my best friend's older brother -- doing 'it'.

Maybe because it was because I knew he would do something like that with a guy. He did tell Mikey he 'swung that way'.

Or maybe it was because when I was at his house yesterday, visiting Mikey thank you very much, that I may have seen him singing and dancing around a bit -- racy -- in the kitchen when I was only going to the bathroom.

Maybe I didn't need to stare until he finished singing along with his own style of Whitney Huston.

Oh wanna dance with somebody
I wanna feel the heat with somebody
Yeah wanna dance with somebody
With somebody who loves me

His voice was nothing less than amazing, and he just kept shaking his hips, back and forth, back and forth, back and fo--

"FRANK! For Christ's sake! What the hell is wrong with you?" Mikey laughed, shoving his boney elbow into my side, causing me to wince, and once again be pulled from my daydream.

I stopped walking, finally noticing that we had left the building and we were standing outside in the schools snowy parking lot. I threw my arms out to the side, giving him my best annoyed look as if to say 'What?!'

He rolled his eyes before jutting his thumb to his left, towards the parking lot. "Gerard's picking us up."

My head shot towards where he was pointing, my eyes widening and my body freezing
at the sight of Gerard leaning up against the side of his beat up car, a cigarette hanging off of his lips.

You know, another one of those cliché moments?

Mikey noticed that I wasn't about to lead the way over to him, so he grabbed my sleeve and dragged me through the snow to Gerard.

"Took you two long enough," Gerard laughed, throwing the rest of his cancer stick to the ground, smothering it with his beat up vans. He reached up and pulled the sides of his leather jacket tighter around him, apparently the buttons that ran up the middle of his jacket didn't work or something, before speaking once more. "Aren't you cold?"

My eyes widened once again before looking next to me to see Mikey looking at me, just like Gerard was, finally noticing that he had been talking to me. I looked down at my arms, realizing that I had forgotten my jean jacket in my locker, and that I was indeed cold.

I rubbed my goose bump covered arm, shrugging as I did so.

I watched Gerard roll his eyes before laughing. "Don't lie. There's a sweatshirt in the backseat if you want it," he turned around to open his door, but turned back before closing it. "And you need it."

++

"Did you buy the whole store?!"

I was now sitting at the Way's kitchen table, Gerard's black sweatshirt that had been laying in his backseat now covering my body. The smell of cigarettes and apple shampoo just dripped off of it, and I couldn't help love it. My face had been sitting in my arms for a while now, enjoying it, my eyes scanning the room now and again.

About four or five plastic bags sat on the counter, everything Mikey pulled out of it was a different flavor of coffee.

Gerard laughed, almost like I do. "Pretty much.”

I watched him push himself up onto the counter, his sock covered feet dangling off the side and lightly bumping into the cupboard door below him.

Mikey shook his head. "You know this isn't going to last long with us two in the house, right?"

I knew Mikey was addicted to coffee like he was going to die without it or something, but didn't know Gerard was too.

But I didn't know much about Gerard as it was, so I wouldn't know.

"You drink it too, Frank?" Gerard asked as he watched Mikey shove the coffee up into the cupboard above the sink with a bit of difficulty, before moving his view to me.

I met his eyes for a few seconds, my face never leaving my arms, before looking back down at my fingers, which were absentmindedly playing with the cuff of Gerard's sweatshirt. I shook my head.

Gerard gasped overdramatically, the sound of him sliding off the counter and falling into the seat next to me followed. I looked up to see his eyes wide and mouth hung open in awe.

My own eyes grew as I shifted them down to my hands again, my face burning hot. Memories of my dream the night before rushed back into my head, and the face he was making just happened to be the one in my dream that I -- came to.

If that makes any sense.

I felt so -- weird. That feeling I had last night was coming back, and I had no idea how to stop my problem from popping up.

So I just shoved my face completely into my arms, blocking his face out of view.

It helped a little.

"Aww, Frankie. You're not insane. You are just missing out on the best thing in the whole entire world," Gerard laughed, hitting me lightly in the arm.

Frankie?

I looked up briefly to see him send me a smirk before raising himself from his seat.

My pants suddenly became a whole lot tighter.

Holy shit, I need to get to the bathroom.