Folie a Deux

I woke up fairly early, considering it was the weekened. There was a dim light coming in from the window, but it was still raining, so it was hard to tell exactly what time of day it was for sure. I stared at the window for a few moments, hardly believing that I had slept through the storm. I shifted stretching my legs and, letting out a groan as I forced my eyes all the way open. For a few seconds I was too confused to function- I wasn't in my own room, and I most certainly wasn't in my own bed.

Everything smelt of cigarette smoke and my back was stiff from sleeping on the floor.

"Goodmorning."

I craned my neck to the side, meeting Gerard's hazel eyes.

He smiled a crooked, sleepy smile, that I returned, lifting my hand in a small wave. "Hi," I said tiredly, blinking a few times. "Goodmorning."

He laughed, eyes scrunching up in the corners, nose wrinkling slightly. "Hello."

I sighed, closing my eyes for a moment, sinking back against pile of blankets that had become my bed last night. It wasn't the most comfotable bed in the world, but it worked. It kept me comfortable and that's all that really mattered.

Something touched my face and I opened my eyes as Gerard's fingers flicked a piece hair out from in front of my eyes.

I grinned tiredly at him. "Even in the morning, you're still concerned with hair?"

He shrugged, smiling back. "I'm always concerned with hair. I'll probably still be concerned with hair when I'm dead."

"Yeah? Well, you obviously haven't seen yours this morning."

"Oh, really? What's wrong with it?"

I studied his face for a minute, just shaking my head and laughing. Everything, just about, was wrong with Gerard's signature unnaturally red hair this morning. It was all tangled and knotted up, instead of framing his face like it normally did.

"Here." I reached over, dragging my fingers through it until it lay smooth, tucking stray strands of it behind his ear in a lame attempt to tame it. Some days I wondered how on earth he managed to keep it flat at all. His hair seemed to have a mind of it's own, sometimes. "That looks better. Kind of. When was the last time you washed it?"

He smiled, reaching up and running his hand through his hair, practicly destroying my 'hard work.' "A few days ago... Well, more like a week. Thanks, though."

I laughed. "You're welcome."

Gerard reached over, doing to something to my hair again. "Yours won't stay down..."

"Don't worry about it. It normally won't in the morning, anyways."

He continued to mess with it for a moment before dropping his hand. "Is that your natural hair color?"

"Yeah."

He nodded. "Black's a nice color on you."

I smiled. "Thanks."

He just smiled back.

I tilted my head to the side, studying the tired look in Gerard's eyes and the way his smile faltered, quite obviously sleep-deprived. "You really stayed down here all night, didn't you?"

He rolled onto his back, making me cringe at the sound of hardwood floors beneath him. I had blankets and stuff to sleep on top of, and I wasn't even comfortable. How on earth had he managed to not just get up and move?

"Yeah," he said, staring at the ceiling for a moment. "It wasn't too bad, though. It's eight, now. It was just over four hours that I was down here, so..."

"How on earth did you get any sleep?"

"I didn't."

I stared at him, before flicking him on the shoulder. "Gerard, why didn't you move back to your bed? Every day for the past, like, week and a half you've looked like shit, and it's all because of a lack of sleep, and yet you chose to sleep somewhere where you know you won't get any sleep?"

He sent me a sympathetic glance that I didn't understand. "I didn't want you to get scared again."

I sat up, annoyed, running my hand through my hair. "I would've been fine... I'm not a child. I don't need looking after." Sometimes I hate my phobias more than I hate the things that I'm afraid of. They were always causing trouble for the people around me.

Gerard sighed and then sat up, too. "I'm not trying to treat you like a child, I just-"

"I'm sixteen," I said defiantly, my voice trembling slightly, trying to prove to the both of us that my phobias weren't nearly as severe as they actually are. "I'm almost all grown up, Gerard. I can protect myself."

He pulled his knees up to his chest and then rested his chin on his knees as he wrapped his arms around his legs, sighing. "I know, Frank. I know you are, and I know you can. But you can't protect yourself from fear. No one can prevent fear from getting into their own head. It's an emotion, our brains are hardwired to process it and spit it out in all the worse ways."

"Then-"

"But if there's someone else there to distract you, you don't noticed the things that scare you nearly as much. And Frank, I just don't want you to get scared, okay...?"

I mimicked his sitting position, meeting his eyes from over our knees and processing his words. "Fine. Whatever. Just... Next time I stay over, don't do something stupid like that, okay? Sleep in your own bed. If I get scared I'll tell you, and then once I go to sleep again we can both go back to where we started."

"Okay. Sure. That works."

We blinked at each other for a few minutes. I studied his hazel eyes, attempting to figure out what he was thinking about.

"So, what do you want to do today?" I asked finally, giving up on cracking into that brilliant mind of his.

"I don't know... That's a good question." He glanced around his room for a few seconds. "There really isn't much to do in here..."

"What do you normally do on the weekends?"

He nodded to the piano behind him. "Practice. You?"

"Anything and everything," I laughed. "Anything that's doesn't bore my to death."

Gerard laughed, too. "Let's go find something like that to do, then. But get breakfast first... I'm hungry."

"Me too..."

He held his hand out to me and I took, letting him pull me up. We got thrown off balance and went stumbling, bumping shoulders and tripping over feet- our own or each other's, it was hard to tell- and went tumbling to the ground. Gerard's eyes went wide as his back thumped the hard wood and I landed on top of him, laughing as I rolled off.

We layed there on the ground for a seconds before we both started laughing.

I'd come to love the sound of Gerard's laugh- he had a very distinct, boyish laugh that made me smile.

"Let's try that again," I suggested, grinning at him.

He just smiled. We stood up, extremely careful this time. "Okay, that worked a little better."

"Yeah," I agreed, stretching a bit as I stood up straight.

Gerard walked over to his dresser, pinching the fabric of the flannel pajama pants he had on and at the bottom of his t-shirt. "I should probably change out if my pajamas... Hey, uh, do you need a change of clothes?"

I glanced down, frowning at the slept-in jeans and shirt. I'd been wearing them both since yesterday morning. Between the now-dried rain from running through the beginning of the storm yesterday, the cigarette smoke, and everything in between, I probably didn't smell the best, either. "Yeah... That'd probably be a good idea."

Gerard nodded as he pulled open one of the drawers of his dresser and ruffled through the fabric, pulling out some clothes for himself and then handing me a pair of jeans and an old, faded band t-shirt. "Here... Those are the smallest clothes I have... They'll probably be a bit big on you, though." He tilted his head to the side, grinning. "You know, I've never noticed how short you are."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, shut up."

"Aw, look, you're blushing," he smiled.

"I'm not blushing! I don't blush!" I lied. "I'm just... Red with embarrassment, is all!"

"Which is the same thing as blushing..." He crossed his arms, lips tilted up in a smirk as he leaned against his dresser. "You do that a lot, actually. Blush, I mean."

I was probably even pinker than I was before. "I do not."

"You do, though."

"When?"

"Just... A lot. I wonder why..."

"I do not blush!" I huffed, crossing my arms right back at him. "Give me a single example of a time when I have blushed besides right now."

He tilted his head to the side, thinking. "Yesterday, when we were sharing the cigarette..."

"Okay, that's one tim-"

"When something about you being vegitarean comes up."

"Well-"

"And you turned pretty pink yesterday, too, when- well, when you put your head on my shoulder."

I rolled my eyes. "You'd be pink, too, if you had done that-"

"I wouldn't, actually."

"Yeah?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I'm not homophobic or anything-"

"Well, who said I was?" I argued.

He raised an eyebrow. "No one. Now you're just being overly defensive."

"Overly defensive? I'm not the one randomly bringing the topic of homophobia into the conversation!"

"You wouldn't be getting defensive if it weren't a topic you felt strongly about, Frank," he said.

I fell silent, staring at him. He was right- it was a topic I felt strongly about. "I'm n- not gay, or anything, but you're right... It's just that... Well, I guess I've always been a strong believer in loving whoever you love..." I could feel my cheeks turning pink, and could almost tell that he was adding it to some mental list of how many times I blushed. I fleetingly wondered how many of those he had about me- how many mental lists did Gerard have about boring little Frank Iero? He certainly seemed to have a lot of lists about other things, so of course I would be somewhere in those lists. I sighed, forcing my mind back to the topic at hand. If I wanted to talk about my opnion, I needed to focus. I wasn't good at this whole 'love' thing. I wasn't good at thinking about it, I wasn't good at talking about it, I sure as hell wasn't good at actually going out and falling in love and being in love and staying in love. "I guess I just don't think that anything else should matter, if two people really love each other. They shouldn't worry about what other people think. They should just... Love."

Gerard nodded. "Y- yeah... It's more or less the same for me."

"More or less?"

He shrugged. "With the exception of a few things, yeah..."

I blinked, feeling my fists tense up. "What exceptions do you have, then?" I swear, if Gerard has a single thing against-

"Just something you said towards the begining."

I froze. The beginning? What had I said in the beginning? "I'm n- not gay, or anything, but you're right..." I could feel my eyebrows pull together in confusion. That couldn't be... Could it?

"You're gay?"

He sighed, un-crossing his arms, only to lace his fingers behind his head. "No."

"Then-"

"I don't label myself as so, at least... I guess some people would call it that, but..."

"But what?"

He dropped his arms by his sides again. "I'm not gay."

"Okay..."

"But I'm not exactly 'staight,' either."

"I- I don't understand..."

I don't think I've ever been more confused in my life.

If you're not gay and you're not straight, then what the hell were you?

"We can talk about it later," he said, standing a little straighter. "My sexuality isn't relevant, anyways."

"But-"

"But it won't change anything, right? Either way, we'd still be friends?"

I nodded. Of course, if Gerard were gay, I'd probably be blushing a lot more. I've been around people who are gay before, I know that for sure, but I've never been around someone like that as much as I was around Gerard.

"Can't you tell me, though?" I pleaded. "If I'm your friend, doesn't that give me a right to know?"

"It doesn't give you a right to anything, Frank," he said, shaking his head. "It just gives you a reason to support my choices no matter what, right?"

I sighed. "Right... But... Will you tell me, one day? Eventually?"

He nodded. "When there comes a reason for me to tell you, I'll tell you. Until then... Just take me as I am, okay? I've had enough of people making assumptions about me, I don't-"

"I'm not going to make any assumptions," I assured him. "The only thing I need to know is that you're Gerard and you're my friend. I know those things for sure. Everything else is just... Well, a little bonus, I guess."

He smiled, one side of his lips pulling higher than the other. "Can I hug you, or would that make you uncomfortable, now that you know that I'm not exactly the straightest crayon in the box?"

I laughed, grinning and setting the clothes that I hadn't even realized I was still holding on his desk. "I'm not going to protest a hug, Gerard."

He sat his clothes down, too, and smiled a bit again before hugging me. I sighed, wrapping my arms around his torso. It'd been a while, since I'd hugged anyone, especially like this. Most hugs I've ever had were just the short, 'nice to see you again,' hugs. This hug was a nice change, though.

"Thank you," I said, resting my head in the crook of Gerard's shoulder.

He laughed. "Why on earth are you thanking me?"

I shrugged, leaning away and looking up at him. "I don't actually know."

He messed with my hair, letting out a slight chuckle. "Don't thank someone for things that they didn't do. Then you start oweing false favors."

I sighed. "Well, fine then. I'll wait until I do have something to actually thank you for."

He grinned, pushing me away slightly. "Just get dressed, Frank."

I rolled my eyes, bumping his shoulder with mine. "You just want to see me strip, don't you?"

He winked, throwing his head back and laughing. "You know it, baby."

I felt my cheeks heat up, even though we were both just kidding.

Gerard's mocking smile grew wider as we both peeled off our shirts to change. "You're blushing again," he observed.

"I am not!"

"My new goal in life is to make you blush."

"Gerard-"

"Nope. That is, from this point on, my sole purpose in life; to make Frank Iero blush."

I sighed, tugging the shirt I was borrowing from him over my head. "You're never letting this go, are you?"

"Nope. Never."

"What are you going to do when I stop being embarrased by what you say?"

He paused, shirt half-way over his head. "Well, if I run out of things to say, I guess I'll just have to start finding things to do, won't I?"