Folie a Deux

Hey everyone, how are you? Just a few things before we get to the story:
1. I'm gonna' do some shameless self promotion and say that you guys should all check out / subscribe to / join my website, http://contentsofmymess.webs.com/. I post blogs, poetry, prose, and playlists. (I might eventually post pictures too, but I'm not sure.)
2. Sorry this chapter is kind of short, but I'm a sucker for cliffhangers... (You'll see what I mean.)
3. I'm working on ideas / brainstorming for my next frerard fic already (don't worry, Folie a Deux is far from over,) but I did think that I should go ahead and say that my next fic will not be a Folie sequel, nor will there ever be a second Folie. When Folie is over, it will be over. There will be no follow up story, there will be no short story from Pete or Mikey's point of view (though I have considered that,) and there won't be any other sort of short story with these same characters. I will post some sort of epilogue, if all goes as planned, but considering I haven't really planned much of anything in this story (I tend to let my writing flow, rather than planning it all out,) there's no telling what will happen regarding the final chapter. I think once it's over, though, the story will be over over. Anything after that will be open to reader's interpretations.

Enjoy,
Eve.

---

I don't know what I was thinking, right then, the thoughts were too jumbled to understand. My heart was too broken and my head was pounding too much for me to make sense of anything.

All I knew for sure, the one thought that stood out to me most, was the fact that Gerard Way didn't love me.

"Fuck," I yelled, for what felt like the hundredth time, as I stomped into the room that was so much his that it felt like my own personal hell.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if I should be angry, or disappointed, or if I should cry. I didn't know if I should try to talk to him about it, or if I should beg, or if I should should leave.

I wanted to curl up right in the center of his obnoxiously warm bed and cry myself to sleep, but I also wanted to scream and yell and rip my own heart out with my bare hands.

Seeing as I'd never been one to be good at controlling my anger, I started yelling the second I saw him.

"You're such an asshole, Gerard!" I said loudly, not being able to look at him, turning around and kicking his bed roughly.

"Frank, this isn't going to change anything, we've gone this long without-"

"You ruined my fucking life," I snapped at him, kicking his stupid fucking bed again. "Do you know how much time I've wasted on you, on this relationship? You can't just fucking say- you can't, Gerard, you can't. You can't just say that we're going to be okay, because we fucking won't, okay?"

Hadn't he been the one to start this stupid thing, anyway? Hadn't he been the one to convince me that he was worth it, that we'd fall in love one day?

Why was it that when that day actually came for us to fall in love, he backed out on me?

"It's- we can work through this, Frank, can't we just talk about it?"

"Talk?" I said disbelievingly, spinning to face him. I was clenching my fist so hard I thought I would break my own fingers. "You- you made me think you loved me, and then- then- fuck." I rolled my shoulders, not sure what to do with the anger, not sure what to take it out on or how to get rid of the feelings. "Fuck you," I spat eventually. "You don't just lead someone on like that, you can't do shit like that, Gerard! It hurts, you hurt me."

His eyebrows pulled together, his mouth formed a frown, but I couldn't watch. I couldn't look at him.

I broke things. Quite a few things, actually. I broke Gerard's lamp, by accident. I threw a cup of his pencils across his room, I threw sketchbook after stupid fucking sketchbook against the wall, watching the black and white pencil portraits fall to their doom on his bedroom floor.

He asked me to stop, he was begging me to, but it only made me more angry.

"I'm not a fucking toy, okay, Gerard?" I snapped, glaring at him. "You can't play with my emotions like that, I'm not an art project so you can't just erase your fucking mistakes, you have to live with those!"

How long I raged around, destroying things, screaming at him for being such a heartless, ignorant asshole, I don't know, nor do I think is important, but I do know that he was watching me, standing in the doorway separating the rest of the world from his room, crying and holding himself and just staring at me, like I was a hurricane and my hands were the storm that destroyed everything he had ever known and loved.

"Frank," he begged, voice trembling. "Frank, sweetheart, st- stop, please."

He looked so stunned.

"Oh, wipe that stupid fucking surprised look off of your face," I snapped, stomping towards him. "Don't act like you didn't think this whole thing would blow up in your face one day." I put my index finger against his chest, pushing softly. I took a few deep breaths, trying to control my breathing so I could make exactly what I wanted to say clear. "I am a fucking human being, Gerard, and I will fucking react like one. Do you just plan on never falling in love, were you just thinking about living the rest of your life alone? Because I have given you time. I have given you plenty of fucking time."

He was just staring at me, his lips parted like he wanted to say something he couldn't express.

"When we started this shit," I said quietly, staring back. "I was the one who couldn't fucking commit because I was scared. But I wanted this, I wanted you, so I stood the fuck up and went for it."

He was shaking.

"But when I need you," I said, my voice raising slightly. "When I need you to stop being a damn coward and just accept the emotions you know you have, you just back out on me?"

He was crying. "I- I'm sorry," he said, hugging himself tighter, taking a slight step away from me, ducking his head in what I hoped was shame. "I'm sorry, Frankie, please, I can't, not yet, I'm sorry-"

"Don't," I said, shaking my head. "Don't apologize. The damage is fucking done, Gerard. It's done."

It felt good.

It felt really fucking good, hurting him, making him see how much he had hurt me.

He deserved it. I felt like he had been lying to me for the past however-the-fuck-long it was that we had been together, and it hurt, so he deserved to hurt, too.

I yelled at him again. I screamed and yelled and shouted terrible, cruel things at him.

When I ran out of things to say, I stopped and stared at the mess I'd made, the objects I'd thrown and the few that had broken, and I wanted to die.

He didn't love me.

Oh god, I felt like such an idiot.

I took one last, solid kick at the pile of blankets in the center of his floor, and yelled at him again. I don't know what I yelled but whatever it was made him let out a small sob.

I looked up at him, and we met eyes, and I immediately looked away.

He was still crying, and it made me want to kill myself. I didn't like myself angry, I hurt too many people when I was angry.

Gerard may not have loved me, but I defiantly fucking loved him; and I couldn't do that to someone I loved.

I felt like shit.

I wanted to pick everything I had just destroyed back up and glue everything back into place, I wanted to take back everything I had just yelled at him, I wanted to hug Gerard and tell him that it was okay and that I didn't care if he didn't love me back, that I was his and he was mine and that was all I needed.

But I also wanted to kick more things and slam his door and leave and go home and kill myself, and I thought about doing exactly that, my methods of self destruction slightly more violent each time I replayed the scene in my head.

"I'm sorry," I said, instead, sitting on the edge of his bed, covering my face with my hands. I wanted to slit my own throat. "Fuck." I forced myself to take deep breaths. I wanted to lose blood and I wanted lose consciousness and fuck, I just wanted to die. "Oh, fuck. I'm sorry. That was really childish of me, I'm so sorry, Gerard, I didn't mean- Oh, god."

I looked up at Gerard to see him staring around his room, horrified.

"M- my room," he said quietly, like he hadn't even heard me speak.

"I'm sorry," I said again, desperate for forgiveness, wrapping my arms around myself. If he couldn't love me, he could at least not be mad at me. "I'll help clean up, I'll buy you a new lamp, I promise, I'm sorry-"

"Don't apologize," he interrupted, shaking his head. He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand, sniffling uselessly. He crossed the room and sat the desk chair I had knocked over back up, sitting down, re-wrapping his arms around himself tightly, mimicking my body language. "You were right, about everything. I deserved it, all of it. I'm sorry."

I stared at him and he didn't meet my eyes.

A small part of me wanted to agree with him yell at him some more- this was his fault, this was all his fucking fault, if he just loved me back than neither of us would be hurting right now; and the entire rest of me was too tired to argue.

I found myself crawling under the covers of his bed, not bothering to try and find the pillows, just draping his blanket over myself and staring at the warm black fabric, my imagination running wild, because maybe, just maybe, I could just press my face against the fabric and suffocate myself to death.

Gerard didn't love me, anyway, so of course he wouldn't care if I just died right here and now, curled up in his bed.

I was so tired, but I didn't want to sleep, I wanted to die.

I was just so done.

I was so, completely done with Gerard and with trying and with breathing and with hoping, wishing that he loved me.

Hoping and wishing had never done shit for me in the past, so of course, of course, when I really needed them to work, nothing good came out of it.

If he didn't love me, why should I even try?

We'd both be dead, eventually, anyway.

It's not like it matters too much.

The bed suddenly sunk, just a little, and my eyes widened. I hadn't heard him stand up.

"I'm sorry," he said, quiet, not moving the blanket from off of me. He wrapped one arm around my waist, curling himself against the back of my body, the blanket the barrier that kept me from shattering into his arms. "This is all my fault, I know."

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to cry, but he hugged me closer, so I allowed myself to crack. I allowed myself to cry in the arms of the boy that did not love me.

Gerard and I didn't speak much, not for hours after that.

Eventually, I broke the shield of the blanket and rolled myself over, giving in to what my heart wanted, hugging him, pressing my face against his neck and not even caring, then, that he didn't love me back, because his arms keeping me warm felt like love, and his lips pressing against my forehead and his fingers wiping the tears off of my face all felt like love.

I tested it; "I love you," I said softly, my voice muffled by his shirt.

His fingers curled tighter into my hair, his arms tightened around my body, his legs pressed closer against mine, and that was enough for me.

It felt so much like love that I wondered if he did love me, if he was just too scared to say it back.

Half of me thought that maybe I knew the truth, that he didn't love me and I was just hoping for something that would never happen, and the other half of me wanted to drown the first because it sounded so stupidly convincing.

"You have to go to your mom's house later," he said, his voice quiet.

I closed my eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "You call it my 'mom's house' like she's the only one who lives there."

His thumb brushed my cheek. "It's nice pretending that this is your permanent home, I guess."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

I wanted to kiss him, and I wanted to hear him say that he loved me, and I never wanted to go back to my "mom's house" ever again.

"Maybe we should go eat lunch," he murmured, his lips touching my nose. "I'm kind of hungry."

"I'm tired," I told him, ignoring his attempt at encouragement. "Can we just lay here for a while?"

He sighed, but didn't argue.

I rested my forehead against his chest and lost myself in the sound of his breathing.

---

Things seemed to move in slow motion, but dinner still came way too fast.

Gerard started to stir about half an hour before I was supposed to be meeting my mom's flavor of the week, and I groaned, rolling over. I hadn't slept at all, I'd ended up just thinking a lot and staring at Gerard's skin for a few hours. Neither of us had moved much, or spoken much, except for when Mikey wandered into Gerard's room to see if we were okay, because he'd heard me yelling earlier.

"I don't want to go," I said, curling my fingers angrily into Gerard's blanket, watching him sit up.

"I know," he said, voice sympathetic. "I wish you didn't have to."

I reached for his hand, my fingers finding his wrist. "Will you go with me?" I begged.

He sighed. "I doubt your mom wants me there."

"I don't give a shit." I forced myself to sit up, too, letting go of his wrist and rubbing my eyes. "I'd rather be there with you and piss her off than be there by myself and piss her off. Strength in numbers, and all that shit."

He reached over, moving my hair around until it fell however he thought looked good, and I didn't argue because if Gerard liked it, I loved it.

"You look like shit," I observed.

He shrugged. "I feel like shit, so it's fitting."

I felt my heart drop, pulling with it a painful breath of air down my throat. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he said, shrugging again, with only one shoulder this time. "It's my own fault." He stood up, slowly, not meeting my eyes. "I'll be right back. I'm gonna' go check on Mikey."

I just nodded, standing up as he left the room. I looked down at my clothes, which I reluctantly decided were too wrinkly to be presentable for my mom's standards.

I made my way over to Gerard's closet and sighed, finding an oversized shirt and a pair of my own jeans on the floor. I didn't bother locking the door, which I realized was probably a shitty mistake when Gerard walked in as I was just pulling my jeans up.

"Are those yours or mine?" he asked, and I ignored the way his eyes lingered on my ass.

It was really starting to piss me off, how everything for him was so physical. He couldn't love me, but he could still treat me like a sexual object? No fucking way.

"Jeans are mine, I think." I tugged the oversized shirt over my head. "Misfits shirt is yours."

He titled his head. "Are you sure?" he asked, sounding confused, his voice soft. "I thought you left that here?"

"I'm sure. I don't remember ever buying this."

"Maybe it was a gift," he suggested, carefully picking up a few of his sketchbooks from where I'd wrecked them. "Because it isn't mine."

I frowned, sure of myself, and sat on the edge of his bed, watching him carefully reverse part of the mess I had made as I tied my shoes. "I would remember this shirt. It's from the American Psycho tour."

"And that makes it special..." He placed the collected papers on his desk, glancing at me as he straightened them out. "Why?"

I stared at him, my lips parting in surprise. "American Psycho is my favorite album, of, like, all time. You know that."

He shrugged, nonchalant, turning back to his desk. "Whatever. But, that shirt is not mine. I don't even like The Misfits that much. Punk rock isn't my thing. Everyone is too fucking whiny. It's rock n' roll or no rock at all."

I didn't know how to respond, so I just said, "You don't like The Mistfits? Really?"

"Really," he said. He then glanced around his room, shifting awkwardly. "Whatever. I'll be in the kitchen, okay? I'll start the coffee. T- take your time, I guess. Yeah. Okay."

"Okay," I said, keeping my voice quiet.

It was just a band, I knew, it was just an album, and just a stupid shirt, but it hurt to hear him say all of those things, because The Misfits and that album and even the fucking shirt that now felt suffocating, they all meant something to me, and he knew that, he'd heard me talk about how much I loved that band and that album and how much the music meant to me, he fucking knew it, and he didn't seem to care.

"Fuck," I muttered, kicking a shirt that was laying on the ground, angry again. "Fuck him."

---

The coffee, burning my fingers through the flimsy plastic cup, was the best part of the walk to my house.

Gerard and I walked side by side on the walk to my house, but he kept a fair distance from me.

I managed not to say anything, until we were turning the corner that led to the street my house was on.

"I swear to god," I said, glancing at Gerard. "If we start arguing or something in front of my mom, everything is going straight to hell. You know that, right?"

"I know that," Gerard said, frowning. "What makes you think we're going to start arguing?"

"I don't know," I snapped. "Maybe it's your pissy attitude."

"My pissy attitude?" he asked, sounding shocked. "Frank, maybe you should listen to yourself speak sometimes, ya' know?"

I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to yell and push and shove and scream at him to get the fuck away from me, because he had led me on for so long, he'd made me think that he was just as in love as I was, only to tell me that he wouldn't, he couldn't be in love with me.

But I kept my mouth shut. I drank the last of my coffee and let it scorch my throat as we made our way down the road.

We walked in silence, for the rest of the walk, so I started texting out of boredom.

I texted Mikey that I was sorry about all the yelling and that I'd talk to him about it later.

I sent Pete a text that said "I miss you."

He responded promptly with "I miss you too." There was a short pause, and then another text asking how Gerard was.

I blinked rapidly, not knowing how to answer. I glanced over at the boy in question, who was staring at his shoes as we walked, sipping at his coffee.

It took me forever to decide what to text.

>Not a good subject right now.<

There was another pause, but his answer was short.

>Want to talk?<

I sighed.

>Come to my house tomorrow? Noon? Pizza, soda, and a discussion about how much my life sucks.<

His answer was almost enough to make me smile.

>I'll be there.<

I put my phone back in my pocket, satisfied. I needed someone to talk to, about all of this, and if I tried to talk to Gerard I would probably just end up snapping on him, so Pete seemed like a good person to turn to. It was either him or Mikey, but I didn't think Mikey would want to hear about his brother's lack of a love life.

When we got to my house, the door was unlocked, so I didn't bother knocking- because this was still my house, after all; and Gerard and I made a beeline for the kitchen, where we could hear my mom talking to someone.

"Mom?"

She was pulling something out of the oven, a man I didn't know leaning against the counter near her. He was dressed in what I assumed was "business casual," with new looking jeans and a nice blue shirt, much more official looking than I'd ever bothered to dress. He looked kind of like the type of guy that worked at a computer company, or something- nice shoes and nice glasses and a relaxed but still professional style, and something about him fit so well in my kitchen, like he'd been there before, that it kind of weirded me out. I'd never seen the man before in my life; it pissed me off that he looked better and more at home in my house than I did.

At the sight of unfamiliar faces, the man stood up straight, offering Gerard and I a smile that crinkled the skin near his eyes, and surprisingly, any sense of intimidation faded. It seemed like a really genuine smile, like this guy was actually happy to see me, which was not the welcome I normally experienced when entering my own home.

"You must be Frank," the man said, holding out his hand. I shook his hand, not expecting someone who was dating my mother to be so polite. "My name is Henry."

Henry glanced over at my shoulder at Gerard, keeping the friendly, loose smile, which just barely helped to calm my nerves. "And who is this?"

I cleared my throat, awkwardly scooting to the side, watching as Gerard introduced himself as, "A friend of Frank's," and shook Henry's hand, and told Henry how much of a pleasure it was to meet him.

I kind of felt inferior, because somehow Gerard was incredibly good at being polite, but I decided to ignore it, because Gerard was smiling whereas fifteen minutes ago he'd been majorly upset, and I preferred him happy than sad, even if it did kind of make me feel like shit. Happy Gerard and shitty-feeling me always worked out better in the end.

My mom was done moving things and food around, evidently, so she turned to me, nodding. "You cut your hair. I like it."

I moved myself closer to Gerard, suddenly wanting to run.

My mom? Liking my hair? And bringing home such a friendly guy? Either the world was about to explode, or someone was pulling a terrible prank on me.

"Dinner's ready," she said, glancing between Gerard and I. She faltered for a moment. "I'll- I'll go get an extra chair for Gerard."

Gerard and I shared a look as my mother left the kitchen, Henry following close behind.

"So?" Gerard asked quietly, once he was sure Henry's curly head of brown hair had disapeared into the other room. "What's your first impression?"

"Well," I mumbled, glancing at the kitchen door. "He seems nice enough. But I don't know yet. Mom is acting..."

"Polite?" Gerard suggested, making me laugh a small, humorless laugh.

"I was going to say 'unnatural,' but yeah, it's the same thing, for her."

Gerard laughed a humorless laugh, too. "Give it a chance," he suggested, touching my arm for a fleeting second, before dropping his hand instantly. "Relationships work funny like that sometimes. Sometimes it takes a while to get used to the situation."

I stared at him, because it felt like he was talking about us, not my mom and Henry, and he just looked down at his shoes.

"Boys?" my mom called from the dining room. "Dinner is waiting."

---

Gerard was right, about giving it time, because Henry turned out to be okay. He talked a lot about himself, but not in the stupid, "Oh, look at how much more important my life is than yours," way, but in the really cool, really nice, "I'll answer any questions you ask honestly, because I want you guys to know who I actually am, and I'll ask questions back because I'm not an asshole adult and I remember what it was like to be a teenager who secretly wants people to know how cool they are," way.

My mom was so relaxed during the entire dinner that it kind of threw me off. It didn't take long before I realized that a lot of it was because Henry was there. Every once and a while she would say something that sort of made me feel like shit, like when she pointed out that my hair was still a little too long, and like when she mentioned how maybe Gerard should consider cutting his hair, too, and like how she mentioned next year I totally could not miss twenty-eight days like I had this year, but it never got too bad because soon after she started saying something to Henry or smiling at something Henry had said, completely dropping the subject.

I hadn't seen my mom laugh like that in a long, long time. Not at anything. It was a little weird, at first, but after the first half hour or so of conversation, I eased into it, and I was actually really enjoying myself.

Gerard being there helped a lot, because he noticed when I got nervous about things and helped change the subject, or pressed the side of his foot against mine, and he seemed to have forgiven my mom for being rude about his OCD, which, to my surprise, he openly discussed with her when she brought it up.

How they even got started on the conversation, I don't know, because I was answering Henry's questions about school and what classes I was taking, but when I turned to ask Gerard to pass the bowl of mashed potatoes, he was explaining carefully to my mom about the medications he was taking for his OCD.

"Wait," I said, making Gerard pause. "I didn't know you were on medication for your OCD."

He shrugged shyly, glancing at Henry and then back at me. As his body tensed up, I realized that I probably shouldn't have jumped into the conversation, and I was about to tell him that it didn't matter that he hadn't told me, when he answered; "I don't always take it when I'm supposed to and when I do you just happen to be at school or something."

I frowned. There were a lot of questions that I wanted to ask, but not in front of my mom or a guy that we had just met, like, an hour ago.

"I have OCD, too," Henry said suddenly.

I turned to him, blinking in surprise, and Gerard said, "Really?"

Henry nodded, seeming so nonchalant about a subject that made Gerard so nervous.

"I don't take any medication for it," he said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose in a way that kind of reminded me of Mikey. "But there's certain things that really bother me." We all just looked at him, waiting for him to continue. "Like, folded pages in a notebook?" he said, shrugging easily. "Those have to be ripped out. But notebooks with pages ripped out? Those can't be used."

Gerard nodded quickly, his body relaxing a bit. "I know exactly what you mean. Do you do the whole 'one subject per notebook' thing too?"

Henry nodded, offering Gerard a small smile. "Yeah, I do, actually. I find it really hard to put more than one thing per notebook. It doesn't feel organized to me."

"Even with art," Gerard said, returning the easy smile. "Like, a lot of people think it's stupid because it's all, just, yknow, art, but I have to have one notebook for writing, and doodles on their own sheets of paper in a folder, and then like I have notebooks just for drawing certain people or things."

"Certain people?" my mom said, interrupting. "Like, a single notebook per person?"

Gerard nodded. "Yeah."

"You either must have a lot of notebooks, or you just draw the same people over and over."

Gerard paused for a moment before answering, glancing at me from the corner of his eyes. I looked away.

"I tend to draw the same people," he said eventually. "My mom and little brother, and other family, and- well, Frank lets me draw him sometimes when I'm bored."

I chuckled, only because I knew he was completely lying. He didn't just 'sometimes' draw me, he had an entire notebook filled with sketches of my face and my hands and my neck, pages covered in his attempts to draw the curve of my shoulders "just right," and the dip of my collar bones "nearly perfect."

"I'd love to see some of your art sometime," my mom said, politely.

Gerard blinked a few times in surprise. No one else noticed, but the way his eyebrows twitched slightly together, wrinkling the skin between them, and then quickly relaxed again, showed his indecision. Then he said, "Uhm, sure, okay. I'll- I'll bring a few sketches next time I see you, I guess," nervously.

My mom smiled, a real, genuine smile, and Gerard allowed himself to smile back, and for the first time in a long time, I felt okay.

Not great, not brilliant; but I felt like I had a family. A really, really shitty, dysfunctional family, without a dad, but a family all the same.

I had a mom who was suddenly being normal, a guy who was surprisingly nice and friendly as a new friend who just happened to be something more to my mom, and a brilliant boy who could eventually be part of the family by marriage was sitting next to me.

We fell into easy conversation, after that, and it was nice. Gerard opened up a lot more after that, having OCD in common with Henry and knowing now that he could talk about his art freely, because people were actually interested in it, and I actually found myself talking more, too. I told my mom how I was really enjoying staying at Gerard's house, and how Gerard and I had discussed becoming 'roommates' one day, and I was pleasantly surprised when she nodded and said that that was definitely a possibility for the future. Even though she didn't know the whole truth of mine and Gerard's friendship, it didn't matter to me. I had this stubborn, stubborn woman's approval, and that was all that mattered.

"Do we have ice cream?" I asked suddenly, when the table fell silent for a moment.

My mom paused, looking at me. "I don't think so."

I blinked a few times. We used to eat ice cream a lot when I was younger, just my mom and I, before she turned into a total bitch.

"Could we get some?"

My mom glanced at the table before looking at me again, and then she glanced at Henry and Gerard. "Now?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. Is that an option?"

She pressed her lips tightly together and I prepared myself to be shouted out.

"Ice cream sounds wonderful," Henry said, smiling.

My mom's mouth opened, like she was going to protest, and then shut again. She let out a long sigh. "I'll go to the store right now." She forced a smile. "Ice cream sounds wonderful, I suppose, and it'll give you boys a chance to talk." She stood up. "Any flavor requests?

We pretty much all agreed on chocolate.

As soon as my mom was gone, I made up an excuse to get Gerard into the kitchen, saying we were both thirsty, and Henry just nodded, retreating to the living room with his own can of soda.

"So?" Gerard said, leaning against the kitchen counter, placing his hands on the cool white marble on either side of him. "What's up?"

"I'm not sure," I said, sighing, opening the fridge and examining it's contents. I wasn't even hungry, I just needed an excuse to get away from Henry for a minute to talk to Gerard. "He seems really nice, and my mom seems to be happier-"

"And nicer."

"-and nicer, when she's with him."

"So?" Gerard said again, as I leaned into the fridge, wrapping my fingers around a can of freezing soda. I handed Gerard a Dr. Pepper, which he rested in the pocket of his jacket.

"So, what?" I said back, leaning back out of the fridge. I glanced at him, letting the refrigerator door swing shut. He looked disappointed. "What's that face for?"

He smiled, laughing softly. "Your ass looked nice from that angle, you should bend over like that more often."

I rolled my eyes, popping open my Pepsi in one swift motion. "You're talking about my ass," I pointed out obviously.

"And?"

I took a long swig from my soda. "You don't love me," I said, like that should explain everything.

I couldn't bring myself to look at him.

He sighed, quietly. "That doesn't mean that we can't be in a relationship still."

I rolled my eyes again, leaving the kitchen, suddenly very sad.

I'd found, recently, that I'd been turning every ounce of depression into anger- except for last night, when I fell asleep crying in bed next to Gerard. But at this particular moment, I just wanted to punch the shit out of something.

Gerard sighed loudly, following me down the hall that was lined with pictures of my mom and I, and of my dad and other of family members that I hadn't seen in years.

"Frank," he said, as I ignored him. "Frank," he repeated.

I kept walking, but he caught my arm, dragging me into a stop in the middle of the hall.

I turned around, sighing at him. "What do you want, Gerard?"

He caught my face between his hands, forcing me to look up at him, and I held my Pepsi closer to my body as he got closer, too.

"I'm sorry," he said, meeting my eyes. His thumb brushed my cheek lightly. "Just give me a little bit longer, okay?"

I turned my head, just a bit to the left; not to get away from him, but to press his warm fingers closer against my cheek.

"How much longer do you need, Gerard?" I asked roughly. "I can't wait on you for the rest of my life."

He kissed me, softly. It was the first time he'd ever kissed me in my own house. When our lips parted, he rested his forehead against mine. "I'd wait for you," he said, soft, sweet, making me feel guilty. "I'd wait for you forever, if you asked me to. 'Till death do us apart."

I stepped away from him, clutching my soda tightly. "Come on," I said, not looking at him and his stupid messy hair and his stupid beautiful jawline and his annoying perfect nose. He was too fucking cute for his own good. "Let's go back in there before Henry starts suspecting something."

Gerard nodded, pausing for a second. "So- so you'll wait?"

I didn't nod back, looking at the silver top of my Pepsi instead, suddenly interested in the cool gleam of the sharp edge of it's top. "I'll wait but only because there's no way in hell I'm letting you go. But-" I sighed, placing my finger on the edge of the top of my soda can, tracing the silver circle. "I think I'm going to sleep here for a few nights."

His face fell. "But Frank-"

"Gerard, just-" I paused, angrily. "It's just a few nights, okay? And it's not just because I'm mad at you, or anything, there's other reasons, too, I-"

"It's okay," he said, looking at his feet. "Whatever."

I looked down the hall, in the general direction of the living room. "Henry is probably wondering if we fell into the fridge."

Gerard just nodded, following me into the living room.

"I don't get what you see in my mom," I said to Henry as we approached him. I sat on the couch next to Gerard. Misjudging the distance between us, my thigh pressed warmly against Gerard's, and his hand slimmed softly over my knee. I glanced first at him, but he kept his eyes focused on his can of Dr. Pepper, and then I glanced at Henry, who didn't seem to notice, and then I decided to stare at a wall on the other side of the living room. "No offense," I said quickly. "But it just seems like you could do a lot better than her."

"I think she's a wonderful person," Henry said, holding his soda in one hand, leaning back slightly in his chair.

"Really?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "You and her... You don't exactly seem similar."

Henry shrugged easily. "You and Gerard don't exactly seem similar."

Gerard's jaw tensed in shock, and mine slacked in surprise.

I suddenly felt like I was going to pass out.

"But we're just friends," I said, trying to make myself sound offended. "We're not-"

"Frank," Henry said, slowly. "I saw you guys in the hallway, I was going to get a second drink, and-"

"Fuck," was all I could bring myself to say.