Fickle Reticence

“Friday?” Mikey asks.

“Friday,” Gerard confirms.

“Friday.”

“That’s what I said isn’t it? Friday. I’m not sure why we’re not just saying tomorrow, but whatever floats your boat,” Gerard answers.

Mikey makes a groaning sound so Gerard suspects that he’s annoyed with Gerard’s repetitiveness.

“You can’t drink booze back here, do you realize that? Your days of legally mooching in the dorms with your scotch is gone.”

“You know they have other alcohol in Scotland that isn’t scotch,” Gerard replies, and Mikey can practically see the eyes rolling in that brain, even from across an ocean. Gerard can’t really change that much in five months, so it’s safe to say that Gerard is still a serial eye-roller.

“Maybe you should try moving to Canada. Their legal drinking age is eighteen to.”

“You just want me to get maple syrup for you,” Gerard asks.

“Some things never change,” he answers, “so when does your flight come in?”

Gerard has to roll over and look at the laptop lying on the shoddily made bed to read the time, and relays it back to Mikey.

“Six o’clock? That’s kind of early.”

“No doofus, it’s kind of late. Post meridian, but for your uneducated ass that means afternoon.”

“I see. That makes more sense. Long flight then?”

“Yeah, I’m switching in Heathrow, and my plane doesn’t leave for about four hours after I land so I have a thrilling morning of airport sitting to look forward to.”

“Yeah, but once you’re here, you get to see me and that’s worth all the flying in the world,” Mikey says.

“Someone’s a little full of himself today,” Gerard says, elongating the words out to make Mikey snort.

“Can you blame me? I’m awesome.”

“For a toothpick.”

“Well at least I have more friends than you,” Mikey splutters.

“Your roommate doesn’t count,” Gerard chides. It’s not untrue though, Gerard repels people quite easily. Unintentionally of course.

“What? Why? What’s wrong with Frank? You’d like Frank, he’s cool. Maybe you’ll get to meet him sometime soon,” Mikey says.

“You know, most people don’t take too kindly to me, as we’ve seen in the past,” Gerard points out.

“Frank’s not like that. He’s lost a few of his screws, and the last time I saw him he was reenacting one of those generic chick flick sobbing wall slides onto the floor over a term paper, but he’s a top notch dude. He gets a little emotional about the metaphorical implications of the X-Men, but who doesn’t?”

“Lovely,” Gerard says shortly, making Mikey laugh again. Gerard is one of the only people who makes Mikey laugh for no reason at all, and one of the reasons why Gerard’s missed the little Way so much is because of that part of him that he shares so sparsely with other people.

“Well whatever, I’ll see you tomorrow Gee, and you had better bring me something fucking special, because I care more about presents then I care about you.”

“Well aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.”

~*~*~*~

Mikey opens the door after hearing a strange thumping sound in his room to see Frank spread eagled on the ground with his bangs in his eyes. He’s hitting the back of his head rhythmically against the wood floor and Mikey just stands there looking at his broken friend with amusement.

He’s like one of those windup toys that breaks after a few weeks and starts progressively becoming more attracted to solid dead ends. Frank’s head just keeps returning to the same spot over and over again like he doesn’t realize he’s even banging it down in the first place.

Mikey closes the door behind him, but Frank shows no sign that he’s aware of Mikey’s presence or that he cares. It’s probably the latter though because he’s been whining about this for the last twelve hours.

“Are you crying? Are you actually crying over this thing?” Mikey asks, looking down at Frank lying on the floor with a textbook on his chest.

“I hate Shakespeare. I hate him and his stupid fucking tragedies, and I hate his stupid face and his plays, and I just hate him.”

“I’ve never seen someone so passionate about their distaste for the bard.”

“Don’t even get me started on Homer.”

“You, my friend, are falling apart,” Mikey says hopping down on his bed to look at the muddled mess on the floor also known as Frank.

“Can you blame me? I have to translate four fucking chapters of The Iliad and write a paper on fucking Macbeth by Friday.”

“Today’s Thursday,” Mikey says.

“No really, fuckwad?” Frank says sardonically lifting his head off the floor to give Mikey a cold stare.

“I’m sorry for your numbing homework schedule,” Mikey says, then dodges a rolled up sock that Frank throws his way. “Hey I didn’t give you that shit, don’t get mad at me.”

“Would you do me a favor, Mikey?”

“Probably not. What do you want?”

“If the police come here tomorrow and question us about Professor Hoffman’s whereabouts, would you tell them that I was here all night?” Frank inquires.

“No problem, seems easy enough. I do have one question though, how are you planning of disposing of the body, because I am so not up for grave digging tonight? I have a shit-ton to do as well.”

“You know I was thinking more Silence of the Lambs, giant pit of doom sort of deal.”

“Mmk, just try not to track any dirt in,” Mikey says.

“Like you’d even notice, you’re the slob,” Frank whines, and he pulls himself up just enough so that he can lean his back against his bed.

“I prefer to call it ‘organized chaos’,” Mikey says.

“I prefer to call it, ‘clean your fucking side of the room before I take a weed whacker and destroy everything you love’,” Frank answers.

“That’s kind of a long name, you might want to consider abbreviating that,” Mikey answers, in his traditional Mikey voice. It’s so hard to tell when he’s being sarcastic, or whether he’s ever been sarcastic, because his inflection never changes. Frank’s gotten used to it, and he’s actually kind of comforted by the way that Mikey seems so unfazed by everything, but sometimes he just doesn’t know anymore.

“I’m going to die, Mikes. I’m going to die after having been strangled by all these fucking assignments. A man named after a brand of dish soap will be the death of me.”

“Okay, even I know that Ajax was named after the Trojan hero, and not the other way around. Besides the last time I checked that book was written in like 500 BC which is way before the invention of the dishwasher.”

“Can’t a man mope without being corrected by his smartass of a roommate?”

“He can but he shouldn’t be surprised if he’s reprimanded for his historical inaccuracy,” Mikey says.

“I’m the one historically inaccurate? You were off by about 500 years, Mikes. Okay, enough chatting. I’ve gotta, like, get this done,” Frank says, and he pulls the book in front of him and his eyes sweep over the page quickly.

“Don’t mind me,” Mikey says, “It’s not too bad though, Frank.”

“Not helping,” Frank says, holding a hand out to silence Mikey, who just rolls his eyes and falls back on his bed to pick up a textbook of his own.

Frank’s still studying desperately after about an hour of partial silence and only pauses for a nutritional dinner of dried ramen because both of them are too lazy to go down the hall and microwave it. Frank also doesn’t have that much time to waste, because he’s still got about six hours of work to be done, before he can even think about getting some sleep.

It’s Mikey that first breaks the silence, “Oh I forgot to tell you, Gee is coming back tomorrow, so we’re going to be out all night probably. We haven’t seen each other in, like, half a year, so there’s a lot of catching up to do.”

“Gee? Oh right yeah, you’re brother,” Frank says, not paying too much attention.

“Sure,” Mikey says, but Frank’s attention is elsewhere and Mikey’s voice is little more than white noise.

“I’d invite you, but I honestly don’t know how you’d feel about Gee,” Mikey says, “kind of a strange one.”

“Listen Mikey, not now, I have to get this stuff done, I don’t want any distractions, okay? Have fun with your brother. How old is he?”

“Gee’s a junior, I’ve told you this. Went to study abroad for the first part of this year. I go to this school because Gee does, and really likes it,” Mikey says, but he’s not all that angry with Frank for being distracted by his work.

“Okay, that’s nice.”

“Yeah, we’ll probably go out on the town and set fire to some churches, no big deal. Maybe throw a few babies down an elevator shaft,” Mikey says, watching Frank to see if he’s even kind of paying attention.

“Right, have fun,” Frank says. Not even a little bit. Mikey could shoot a porno in here without Frank noticing. He won’t, but he could.

All Frank even knows about the guy is what Mikey’s told him, but it’s always very cryptic so he assumes there’s something really off about him. He’s never met his roommates brother, and the only thing he has to go off of what he looks like is the collection of ten year old year book photos Mikey keeps on his desk.

Though Frank doesn’t really care is the thing. He'd just assume to never give a second thought about Mikey’s older brother. Mikey doesn’t push it and eventually falls asleep with his body above the covers because he’s too exhausted to crawl under them.

Frank doesn’t let up on himself until well after two in the morning when he finally finishes up a sloppy, but complete translation of Homer, and an even sloppier, and very nearly incomplete, essay on Macbeth.