Fickle Reticence

“Holy fuck is it possible to get that ugly in just five months?” A voice says and Mikey turns his head to the left to see Gee strolling over with an obnoxiously large carry on in his hand.

“I could say the same about you, Gee,” Mikey says.

“Gerard, if you will,” Gerard declares easily.

“So we’re Gerard today?” Mikey asks.

“For right now,” Gerard says, and puts his arm around Mikey. “God it’s been so long since I last saw you! How you doing baby bro?”

“I’m doing fine,” Mikey says, and pushes Gerard away like he’s something grotesque. In all honesty Gerard smells like he’s been on a plane for twelve hours, which is where he has been for the past several hours so it’s not an unexpected scent.

“Oh man, do I smell as bad as I feel like I do?” Gerard asks.

Mikey wrinkles his nose, “it’s not great. I’ll spray some car air freshener on you later.”

“Well aren’t you just the sweetest thing.”

Gerard drags Mikey to the circular conveyor belt that’s started spitting out various pieces of luggage. The deep purple one Gerard had picked out a while ago would be pretty hard to miss. Gerard leans in to grab it by the bright green luggage tag, nearly missing it as it spins around a curve. Mikey likes to joke with him that he bought Prince’s suitcase. Gerard likes to joke that Mikey has a stupid face. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

“Still got the strength of a rotting tree branch I see,” Mikey notes, as Gerard flails around with the bag for a moment before setting it down. He very nearly sets it down on his foot, and Mikey lets out a breath when he sees that Gerard’s toes stay intact.

“I can successfully carry five textbooks across an entire campus, thank you very much,” Gerard says.

“Yeah whatever, do you have just the one bag? Or is there more?”

“Oh I had another but I shipped it last week, should be getting here soon,” Gerard says, and he spends a long moment trying to turn the piece of luggage onto the side with the wheels.

“You need help with that?” Mikey asks.

“From you? Mikes, you’d probably snap in two.”

“I drink a lot of milk. My bones are strong,” Mikey says monotonously so that Gerard has to pause for a second to see if he’s joking. The hint of a smile on his face leads Gerard to believe that he is, so he pushes the suitcase over and finally gets it on the correct side. Then he pauses and realizes that he now has to figure out where the handle is.

“You are hopeless, how the hell did you survive on your own for five months?” Mikey says walking over to it and finding the handle within seconds.

“I assaulted the google search button,” Gerard says as an explanation, and Mikey just rolls his eyes.

“As strange as it seems, I’ve actually missed you, Gerard,” Mikey says.

Gerard snorts and nudges Mikey forcefully as they start out on the walk down the long hallway to the front of the airport.

“It’s because I’m great, isn’t it?”

“Who’s full of himself, today?” Mikey asks, and then says, “So how was Scotland. Did you see the loch ness monster?”

“Yes, actually. I invited it over for barbecue but it had a prior engagement to play pinochle with the abominable snowman and the Jersey devil.”

“Well that’s a little rude. Shouldn’t he have made arrangements to postpone your meeting?”

“I’d say ‘it’, it didn’t seem too sure so I’m going with it. I guess things turned out all for the better. I don’t think my dorm room was really big enough. And I didn’t have a grill to do any barbecuing anyway,” Gerard says. Mikey’s not exactly surprised that Gerard sticks up for a mythical creatures established gender binary, but he rolls his eyes anyway. Eye rolling runs in the family.

“So how’d they treat you in Scotland?” Mikey asks.

“Uh some people were nice. Everyone was pretty much judgmental as hell, but they didn’t say it to my face which was pleasant,” Gerard says.

“But any real friends?”

“I’m too afraid to get close to anyone these days, Mikes,” Gerard says, and his tone doesn’t change even though his words are grim. “It’s just not in the cards right now. Society doesn’t respect me, and they surely don’t accept me, so I’m just going to avoid social interaction at all costs.”

“You know that not all people are like that, Gerard. I know plenty of people who’d accept you,” Mikey says, and he pushes the door open for Gerard. The night is coming in, making the sky a shade of blue that has chilled the air considerably.

“I’m not saying it’s a rational fear,” Gerard sighs, rolling the suitcase over the bumps of the doorway. It makes a rumbling noise when they set off on the sidewalk, but they both like it for some odd reason. It’s consistent and comforting.

“It makes me kind of upset that you don’t at least try meeting people. This is the 21st century, Gerard.”

“I’m aware of what century it is, I just don’t want to go through the shit I did in high school. Not again. Not ever again,” Gerard answers.

“It’s your life,” Mikey sighs, and they don’t talk until they reach the car.

Gerard looks at the old beater and he can’t believe the piece of shit still runs. It’s technically Gerard’s car, but he left it with Mikey while he was gone. Honestly he’d expected the thing to breakdown.

“Wow, it’s still in one piece,” Gerard says looking at it fondly.

“Hey, I am responsible you know!”

Gerard shrugs, “I’m not saying you aren’t, but I thought this thing would have died by now. It’s still kicking though.”

“It’s like the goldfish I had in third grade. It just refuses to fucking die already,” Mikey says, making Gerard snort.

“Aw man, I have missed Jersey. You know it smells like shit here. I love it,” Gerard says.

“Yeah, it does have that sort of lingering odor doesn’t it?” Mikey concedes. “Do you want to drive?”

“You know I do, but I’ve been in Scotland for too long, I should probably reacquaint myself with the right side of the road thing before I try to drive anywhere.”

“You mean you don’t want to drive head on into another car? Gerard, I am baffled by your decision,” Mikey says, not changing his tone.

“Yeah, sorry to disappoint. Maybe another day.”

“Oh, well you’ve thoroughly lost my interest,” Mikey says pulling open the driver’s side door. Gerard gets in on the other side after ungracefully plopping the bag into the backseat. He keeps the other bag, his backpack with him, because he’s decidedly against crushing his computer.

“So what do we have planned for tonight? Unpacking my luggage and then sleeping, or sleeping and then unpacking my luggage?” Gerard asks.

“I’m not helping you,” Mikey says contemptuously.

“You are if you ever want to use my car again.”

Mikey sighs, “fine, but I told my roommate we were going to arson a few churches so we have to get that done first.”

“Sounds good to me,” Gerard answers.

~*~*~*~

“I am going to get this essay done, I’m going to do it,” Frank says, staring at the blank word document in desperation. For some reason there are no words on the page, and Frank’s concluded that it’s not even his fault. Just because he hasn’t typed anything doesn’t mean it’s his fault... yeah, it’s sort of his fault. He kind of has to type for anything to appear on the screen.

Frank just watches the cursor blink warily, and then watches the clock on the bottom of the screen change digits. There’s a small twitch of the mouse whenever he takes in a deep breath because the laptop is perched on his thighs. His legs are starting to overheat, and he’s quite certain that the bottom of the computer is the most heat he’s familiar with at the moment, because he hasn’t seen the sun in a few days.

“Who are you talking to Frank?” he asks himself, “I’m losing my mind.”

The essay isn’t actually due for another four days, but he did tell himself that he wasn’t going to push it off until the last minute this time. Who is he kidding though? He’s a filthy procrastinator, and there’s nothing he can do about that.

Frank closes the document and mopes to himself when he does so, because now he’s actually made it official. He opens up a new document, stares at it for another ten minutes, and then closes it again.

The third time he opens it though, he actually types some words. Seven words to be exact.

‘Censorship in Modern Media by Frank Iero.’

“That seems like enough work for tonight,” Frank says, saving the document and flipping off his future-self. Why he’s such a masochistic bastard, he’ll never know. Right now is not the time for essay writing though. Right now is time for totally legally acquiring the next episode of Orphan Black, and then later he might even do some hardcore Tetris playing. Because Frank is a responsible adult who has a deep understanding of time management.

It’s right in the middle of Frank yelling at his laptop screen when Mikey enters the room, and just gives Frank that judgmental onceover.

“You were yelling at Alison again weren’t you?” Mikey says shaking his head.

“She’s a bad person Mikey!” Frank says trying to defend himself.

“If I remember correctly you were plotting on throwing your Greek professor into a pit just yesterday, so you have absolutely no grounds to call her a horrible person,” Mikey points out.

“Excuse me? I have never tied my husband to a chair and threatened him with a hot glue gun.”

“Oh Frank, we both know you’re kinky as hell,” Mikey throws himself on his bed and makes a huffing exhausted sound.

“So how was your brother?” Frank asks, grabbing his ear buds from the side of his desk.

“Gerard was Gerard. Psychotic and unstable as always,” Mikey answers, a little surprised that Frank had even paid him any attention yesterday.

“Well that’s good. Now if you don’t mind me, I’ve got some perverse fangirling to get back to. Don’t mind me,” Frank says, slipping one ear bud in and then the other.

Mikey does that annoying thing of his where he pretends to talk while Frank’s ear buds are in, when in reality he’s actually just mouthing nonsensical things into the open air. Frank ignores him, because he has some acerbic clones to attend to at the moment.

About twenty minutes later, Frank speaks out into the quiet room.

“I was just thing about how immoral human cloning would be. Like do you realize what ethics they’d actually be violating if they pulled something like that off? It would be so far past messed up, and look where it got them in the show? A bunch of pissed of clones who are out for blood. It’s like they’re experiment turned on them or something, and now it’s all out of whack,” Frank says.

“You are thinking way to philosophically about that damn show, Frank.”

“Do you think God stays in heaven because he too, lives in fear of what he's created?”

“Now I know you did not just quote Spy Kids 2 on me,” Mikey says and there’s actually exasperation in his voice.

“You should be ashamed that you understood that reference.”

“Speaking of ethics though,” Mikey says, “do you think it’s ethical to look down on someone for something about them that they can’t change? That they didn’t even choose in the first place?”

“Of course that’s not ethical. You should never look down on someone for something they can’t do anything about. What kind of a question is that?” Frank asks.

“Nothing, it’s just... something Gerard got me to thinking about. I feel like people are so quick to look down upon others when they don’t know shit about what it’s like in another person’s brain. No one chooses the person they become or whatever, so why would you segregate them out for who they are?”

“You’re talking deep shit, Mikes. I was just commenting on the principles of nonexistent human experimentation.”

“I know, I just... I can’t wrap my head around the hate that comes with belief. I get that people believe in certain things, but I thinks it’s so wrong to base your way of life off of something that is nothing other than faith.”

“Preaching to the choir, Mikes. Or, um, maybe not the best idiom, but you get what I mean.”

It’s hard knowing everyone hates you. It’s worse knowing everyone hates someone you love.

Mikey frowns, wondering what Frank would think if he met Gerard. A lot of people disagree with Gerard’s entire existence, and obviously Mikey wants to believe the best in his friend, but what does he really know? Mikey can’t help but think about Shan Yu at the moment; what would Frank really tell him if he were to hold him over the edge of a volcano?