Thank You for the Coffee

It had been a pretty unproductive night. Gerard had spent the majority of his evening at Westside talking to Beth and Frank as opposed to actually getting any work done. His brain was darting off in a million directions and it was hard to pin himself down to work on something for longer than 5 minutes, so he’d pretty much given up. That, and he was now on his 6th or 7th coffee of the evening, whereas he usually had two or three. He was more than a little jittery and Beth had been quite happy to point this out to him several times, musing that perhaps they should cut him off at four.

Beth’s shift wasn’t as long as Frank’s, so he was always left to close up on his own. It had gotten to that point in the evening now, and Frank had literally done nothing but talk to Gerard for an hour or more. Frank was now sipping on his own cappuccino at the booth and had taken his apron off, dumping it on the table.
“Gerard, you’ve been avoiding telling me all fucking night, it’s getting a little ridiculous” Frank laughed. “How did it go with Bert?” he asked for the umpteenth time.

Gerard couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. He turned away in attempt to conceal his flush, noticing that they were the only two left in the shop by now, and shrugged, swilling the coffee dregs around the bottom of his mug. Frank had apparently noticed too, when he practically shouted his next question, collapsing into laughter afterwards.
“Did you fuck?”
Reaching over, Gerard smacked him playfully on the arm.
“Oh my God. Yes, okay? Yes.”
Frank beamed and prodded Gerard in the side in retaliation.
“Aww nicely done, hotshot. I’m happy for you.”
“Well, thanks.”

Resting his chin in his hand Frank looked contemplative.
“I can’t imagine fucking a dude. Is it good?”
“I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t” Gerard giggled awkwardly, a little more embarrassed than he figured he should be. “I mean, it’s different, obviously, but you get used to it. It’s sort of an acquired taste.”
“Mmm” Frank said whilst he took another gulp of coffee. “See, people say that to me about wine, but I’ve never stuck it out long enough to find out.”

The retort that would have rolled off the tongue easiest would be to suggest that Frank try it for himself, but it felt far too suggestive, especially considering they were alone, not to mention that inwardly his remaining feelings for Bert and his budding crush on Frank were having a bit of a battle. He held it back. Thankfully Frank jumped in with another overly personal question.

“Do you top or bottom?”
“I do both” Gerard said easily. This was one question, albeit personal, that he always liked to answer without hesitation. Amongst those Gerard came across who neither knew anyone gay and/or were militantly straight themselves, there was this stereotypical assumption that you could only be one or the other, and that assumption was usually based on the misguided notion that one of them had to ‘be the girl’. A particularly backward notion, if Gerard said so himself. “There aren’t set roles, you know? I bottomed last night” he said, with another flush, shifting on his seat and remembering.
“Oh, really?” Frank asked, sounding a little shocked. “I mean...you’re not walking funny or anything.”
“Oh my God” Gerard laughed smacking his forehead with his hand. “Please stop.”
“Okay, okay” Frank conceded, holding out his palms in defeat. “But I’m glad things went well. Sincerely.”

They smiled at each other for a moment, until Gerard became a little panicked by the silence.
“You know, you always smell like grease.”

He had absolutely no fucking idea where that had come from, and immediately wished he could take it back. To his relief, Frank seemed to find this hilarious, pulling his shirt out and raising a section to his nose.
“Probably because I have to practically climb inside the fucking fryer every day when Beth damn near breaks it. I have no fucking idea how she does it.”
“It’s nice” Gerard said, absent-mindedly. “Familiar.”
“Yeah.”

He wasn’t sure whether Frank was referring to the grease or Beth’s mind-blowing propensity to break down their machinery, but he supposed it didn’t really matter.
“Hey, I think I should have your number” Frank said, casually. “You’ve been coming in for like a month, and I’d like to see whether we can function as friends outside of this coffee shop scenario.”

23 days to be precise. Gerard’s heart danced around in his chest a little bit at the prospect that Frank considered them friends, even though there wasn’t really any other term that would be applicable.
“Uh, sure” he smiled, reaching into his pocket to grab his phone to programme Frank’s in. He hit the star key to unlock and was about to thumb through to the contacts when he caught sight of the time. “Frankie, it’s 11:45” he blanched.

“Jesus shit!” Frank cried, immediately jumping to his feet. “We were supposed to close almost an hour ago!”
They reached a non-verbal agreement that they would clean up together, as Frank collected up all of the dirty cups and Gerard went around with the cloth. Frank would have been here at least another hour if he had to do it himself, so Gerard thought it only polite that he pitch in, seeing as he was the reason Frank was behind in the first place.

As Frank grabbed a scouring pad and stuck his head in the oven, Gerard casually put an idea to him.
“Hey, it’s gonna be ages until you get home. Why don’t you stay at mine tonight? I’m only a 10 minute walk away.”
Frank pulled his head out, a smudge of orange grease already adorning his cheek, and looked thoughtful for a minute, before nodding.
“Sure. Thanks.”

Gerard was strangely relieved, as if he’d expected Frank to balk at the mere suggestion. He rolled back the sleeves on his dark hoodie before plunging his hands into the sink to start washing up. Frank got to his feet, sinking his own hands in briefly to wash the grease off. Skimming a hand over Gerard’s back as he moved, Frank crossed the room to pick up the cafe phone. He punched in a number he knew off by heart and leant against the wall, twirling the cable around his fingers. Gerard turned back to the dishes, listening absently.

“Hey, Mom.” There was a pause – presumably his mother asking where he was and why he was late. “No, I know. It’s taking a little longer to close up tonight, so I’m gonna stay at Beth’s okay? ...Yeah, I will. See you tomorrow. Love you too.”
He hung up and crossed to the oven again, kneeling before he spoke.
“Sorry about that. If I tell her I’m going home with someone she’s never met - a customer, at that – she’d have freaked.”

Gerard smiled to himself, a little dizzy at how good it sounded that Frank was coming home with him.
“No, I understand.”
“Let’s finish up and get out of here.”

*

It took them another half an hour to finish and lock up, so by the time they got to Gerard’s place it was almost 1am and Frank was very glad he’d taken Gerard up on his offer. Joe was still up, so they didn’t have to creep, but Frank had agreed to leave in the morning before Gerard started inking, so they headed straight for his bedroom.

“I have a sleeping bag and some spare pillows you can use. Uhh, so, you can take my bed and I’ll take the couch, or I can make you up a bed on the floor...?”
Frank took mercy on Gerard’s nervous glance and bravely decided to opt for the choice no one was mentioning. He regarded Gerard’s double bed steadily.
“Top and tail?”

Gerard’s answer was a quick easy grin, and Frank was sure he’d made the right decision. He stood back and took the opportunity to look over Gerard’s home away from home while the bed was being made up for the two of them. He had several old VHS and a couple of relatively new DVDs lined up along one wall, mostly in either the sci-fi or fantasy genres, with a couple of musicals dotted around. There was a book shelf piled up with battered novels and pristine comics, showing clearly which he prided over the other. There were a couple of posters – A Clockwork Orange and Buffy The Vampire Slayer – and when Gerard gestured grandly to the bed, Frank’s eyes fell immediately to the duvet cover. Empire Strikes Back. He lifted his face in a grin.

“You gonna go see the new one next month?”
“Uh huh, of course” came Gerard’s quick reply. “I mean, I’m not expecting it to be as good as the originals, but I’m really interested to see how they treat it, what with all the CGI and everything.”
“Plus, that racing scene looks hella cool” Frank agreed enthusiastically.
“I’m not sure how I feel about Lucas whoring out the franchise, but I’ve gotta give him the benefit of the doubt, you know?”

Frank could tell that Gerard was a die-harder when it came to Star Wars, and it made him smile that he was a geek of many mediums. They stood staring at each other for a couple of minutes. Frank shifted uneasily on his feet, and when Gerard still didn’t understand, Frank flicked his eyes to the bed and back a couple of times.
“Oh!” Gerard cried, turning around and busying himself at the desk.

Frank wasn’t quite sure whether it was polite to strip right down, but he did so anyway, removing each of his layers apart from his boxer shorts, laying them neatly at the foot of the bed. He crawled into the bottom, pulling it up to his waist before clearing his throat lightly.

Gerard turned, casual as anything, as if he hadn’t just been messing scrap papers around on his desk while he was waiting for Frank to cover his modesty. He had a couple of comic books in his hand. He handed them over to Frank with a smile, hair falling into his eyes.
“What’s this, bedtime reading?”All the jokes ceased as soon as Frank skimmed over the front. ‘On Raven’s Wings’ by Garry Way. “Oh my god.” He ran a hand over the front cover, slipping a finger under the first page.
“Not now!” Gerard cried. When Frank looked up at him questioningly he was met by a sheepish curve of the lips. “Please. Take them. I’ll get them back from you tomorrow night, okay?”

Frank nodded and leant over, tucking them into his bag underneath his clothes. In all honesty he wanted to devour them right that second, but he respected Gerard’s wishes and tampered the urge down. Gerard looked at him curiously as he retrieved what Frank assumed were a pair of pyjamas from underneath the pillow.

“Oh hey” he said distractedly. “You have another tattoo.”
Frank looked down at his chest, as if he’d never noticed it there before.
“Yeah.”
“The Souls” Gerard smiled appreciatively. “You really are a Jersey boy.”
“’Til the day I die.”

At that, Frank settled down and turned his head on the pillow, facing the opposite direction as Gerard changed.
“Hey, we were born the same year, right?” Gerard asked.
“Yeah?”
“Where’d you go to school? You weren’t at Belleville High.”
“Well observed. Nah, my Mom packed me off to Catholic School.”
“Oh. Guess that explains your uhh... gay issues.”
“No!” Frank exclaimed, fighting the urge to turn around and feverishly assure his friend. “No, I’m not actually religious or anything, despite her best efforts. I really didn’t mean anything by it that day, I promise.”

Gerard chuckled and made his way back to the bed, swinging his legs in at his end, shooting Frank a sincere smile.
“It’s okay, I’m kidding. If you really had a problem with it you wouldn’t be sharing my bed.”
He smiled contentedly and laid down on the pillow, making Frank’s stomach dance happily.
“Ready for lights out?”

When they were left alone in the dark he continued his quiet panic that Gerard might believe him some sort of homophobe. Apparently he wasn’t quite as subtle about it as he thought, though, and felt one of Gerard’s toes poke into his side.
“Hey” came the quiet voice. “I’m glad we’re friends.”
It did nothing to calm his stomach, but everything to soothe his nerves. Debating it for a second, Frank moved his leg, settling it up comfortably against Gerard’s.
“Me too.”

“...I’ve been thinking about you.”
Christ, Gerard really just wanted Frank to have a heart attack this evening, he was sure.
“...Yeah?”
“About your band, and college and everything. You should apply to do music.” He let it settle for a beat before he elaborated. “You should go into the actual business side of things. Make your own label, a good one, that won’t rip bands off and destroy their dreams.”

Frank was taken aback by how warm the prospect made him feel. It would be perfect. He knew how shitty that felt, so he’d do everything within his power to stop it happening to anyone else. It wasn’t anything he’d really considered before, and perhaps just for tonight, while he could feel the warmth of Gerard’s skin through the pyjama pants material, he’d believe in it, without considering the logistics.
“That’s a really good idea.”

He felt Gerard smile, as if that was even possible. One of those warm pants legs shifted, lying comfortably over his shin, foot hooking around the underside of Frank’s thigh.
“Night, Frankie.”