Fickle Reticence

Frank dangles his feet off the foot of the bed, happily. The only sound in the room is the steady beat of Mikey drumming his pencil on the top of a textbook. There’s also the sound of Frank’s and Mikey’s breath, but it’s not as loud as the tap tap tap of Mikey’s eraser.

“I’ve never had so much free time, Mikes! This is so exciting,” Frank says.

“Do you have to rub it in?”

“Yes, of course I do! This is the first time I’ve had all my work done, like ever, and even you have work to do. You, Mr. Hard worker, isn’t even done with his work!”

“You’re a jerk,” Mikey says.

“That’s not very creative,” Frank replies disparagingly.

“Fine, you’re a wanker.”

“Oh feeling a little British today, are we? In that case, than you, my dear Michael, are a numpty.”

“Frank, I have work to do,” Mikey says severely, turning to look at Frank, who’s still lounging on his bed staring blankly up at the ceiling. It’s a cheaply painted popcorn ceiling with ugly glaring overhead lights that give the room a surgical like lighting. They usually have them off, like they are right now so it’s dark aside from Mikey’s desk lamp, and some fairy lights on Frank’s side of the room.

“And what did you do to me when I had work to do?” Frank says, pulling his head up enough to raise his eyebrow at Mikey.

“You fucking wouldn’t,” Mikey says, giving him a venomous stare.

“Thong Song?” Frank says, and Mikey shakes his head vigorously.

“Dear god, anything but that.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have said that,” Frank replies with a shit-eating grin.

“You were Satan in another life weren’t you?” Mikey asks, as Frank fiddles with his computer for a moment.

“No, I’m worse than Satan,” Frank answers, scrolling through a long list of songs that will hopefully annoy Mikey as much as possible. “Satan used to avoid me at parties.”

“Fucking hell, why do you even have Justin Bieber on your computer?” Mikey asks a minute later.

“For times like this, my friend,” Frank answers.

“You know its torture to you just as much as it is to me, right?” Mikey says, “You have to listen to this shit as well.”

“No, because you complain more. The reason why you’re so fun to pick on is because you react, and it’s hysterical,” Frank says, even though he really is sick of the song himself.

“I will pay you five bucks to turn it off and leave the room,” Mikey says.

“Dude, you serious?” Frank asks.

“If you leave then yes,” Mikey says. Now ordinarily Frank wouldn’t consider it, but he really is fucking broke so he does give it a thought.

“Alright deal, but I want my money now,” Frank says, and Mikey groans before throwing a crumpled up bill at him.

“This is the closest I am ever going to get to rich,” Frank sighs, but picks it up, and grabs his computer bag, after turning the music off.

“Good riddance,” Mikey calls at him as he leaves the room.

“Yeah, I love you too,” Frank hollers.

He doesn’t really have any friends who he can go hang out with, because he’s done a pretty good job of completely excluding himself from socializing, through no fault of his own of course. He’s just always working though, and when he’s not working, he’s procrastinating working. He’s the kind of guy who would rather eat seventeen yogurts then actually do his work.

Frank just shrugs and decides to head over to the library again. Maybe he’ll catch up on some stuff that he hasn’t had enough time for. It’s pretty cool for him though, he has the whole rest of the day off, and tomorrow. That’s a rare thing for him.

~*~*~*~

Gerard sees the Frank guy the minute he stepped into the library. The thing is that he’s not the quietest fellow, even when he’s not making any noise intentionally. Maybe it’s his shoes. Maybe he just has really noisy shoes.

Gerard is sitting at the same table as the other day. Frank probably wouldn’t know that. Especially if he’s as bad at remembering faces as Mikey said he was. It’s not like Gerard particularly cares about Frank one way or another, he’s just aware of his existence. In the same way that Gerard doesn’t really give a shit about Cameron Diaz, but he is at least aware that she is a person that exists.

Frank saunters over to the same seat he sat at the other day, and Gerard puts his head down. He doesn’t really want to talk to anyone, and Frank seems like the kind of person who is kind of talkative.

“Would you mind if I sat here?” Frank’s voice asks, and Gerard waves his hand in a nonchalant manor, which Frank takes as a yes.

Gerard peaks around his book to see that Frank is putting ear buds in, and doesn’t seem to be all that interested in Gerard, so he relaxes a bit, and lets himself forget about the guy for the next few minutes until, “you’re Mikey’s brother.”

“Kind of,” Gerard answers with a sigh. It wasn’t really a question, but he answered it as if it was one.

“I’m his roommate,” Frank says, and Gerard looks to see that he only has the one ear bud in, and he’s looking at Gerard openly. He only recognized Gerard because he’s wearing the same shirt as before. He really is god-awful with names and faces though.

“I know, I remember. You care a lot about apples,” Gerard says.

“Well no, I have no money. I care about losing the things I paid for,” Frank says, “except now I have five bucks. Your brother doesn’t like it when I play shitty pop music at full volume.”

“Not many people over the age of twelve do,” Gerard points out.

Frank shrugs, “but I got five bucks out of it, so I’m not one to complain.”

“Sounds like a good deal on your part,” Gerard says, forgetting that he’d wanted to avoid conversation.

“Mhm, I think so. Do you have a roommate?” Frank inquires.

“Um, no. I couldn’t have one because of... reasons.”

“Oh because you were, like, gone for half the year?” Frank asks.

“Yeah, that’s one of the reasons,” Gerard answers.

“Lucky. I mean don’t get me wrong, Mikey is nice, but he does really like to piss people off. He once replaced every face on all my posters with pictures of Susan Boyle.”

Gerard snorts, and then covers his mouth, “I heard you froze his toothbrush.”

“Oh yes, but it’s been an ongoing thing with him and I. I once found a life-size cardboard cutout of Jar Jar Binks in my bed,” Frank says.

“And what did you do to deserve that?” Gerard asks.

“Booby trapped his closet to rain ping pong balls,” Frank says with a shrug, and Gerard grins. He likes Frank’s creativity.

“So who’s worse then?” Gerard asks.

“I don’t know. It depends on what you mean. Sometimes we’re both awful, but I never do the really mean stuff. No one likes that. Meanest we ever are is days like today where I keep him from studying.”

“Could be worse, true. I glued his shampoo bottle closed a lot when we were younger,” Gerard answers.

Frank’s eyes light up, “oh that’s good. I’m going to write that one down.”

“Have at it,” Gerard answers. He doesn’t seem as emotional as Mikey had painted him to be. Though he hasn’t asked him about the X-men, so it’s entirely possible that he’s just in a good mood.

Most of what Frank’s been told about Mikey’s brother has been dusted into obscurity, and due to Mikey’s indecisive nature, Frank had brushed it off, but Gerard’s nice. The way he holds himself makes Frank guess he’s probably pretty awkward. He tends to look down a lot, and brush hair into his face like he’s nervous that people are looking at him. He also has kind of a girly voice, that’s especially prevalent when he laughs.

Gerard likes to consider himself a bad conversationalist. He generally can’t even talk to people without being so self-conscious that he makes an excuse to leave, but Frank is very easy to talk to. He really is as passionate about the X-men as Mikey said.

Frank likes to consider himself a good conversationalist. Usually what this means is that he can hold a conversation with just about anyone for at least a few minutes. In Gerard’s case it ends up being about two hours. The time just gets lost, until he realizes it’s nearly ten, but even then, they just keep talking.

Gerard’s never been comfortable having long conversations with people, and maybe he’ll dissect this one later tonight to figure out why he’s so affable right now, but for now he’s just going to go with it. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of a good thing.