I Didn't Mean to Fall in Love (But I Did)

“Oh I don’t like this line,” Frank says, making a disgruntled face.

“Well it was put there courteously, but I kind of agree with you. I think that’s somewhat oversharing, but it could’ve been worse. It could have been way more impolite,” Gerard says, reading over Frank’s shoulder.

“What line are you two talking about?” Pete asks, looking down at his own copy of the newspaper and trying to figure out what they’re looking at.

Frank clears his throat and recites, “’the unnamed ex denies allegations of infidelity on his part, saying that the advances were sudden and unreciprocated.’”

“Oh, they’re talking about Gerard coming onto you?” Pete asks, reading over the line for himself. “I guess, you’ve got to give the journalist credit. She didn’t accuse you of anything on the paper.”

“Well she did when she asked me about it,” Frank replies.

“But she didn’t relay that to the page, did she? It’s left rather openly, and I guess it’s a matter of interpretation. You did sort of cheat on Aaron, but you didn’t like actually cheat on him.”

“Did you just say that I didn’t cheat on him, but I did?”

“You know what I mean,” Pete replies.

“He’s, ugh, it’s my fault if anything,” Gerard says.

“It’s your fault that I got called a cheater?”

“Well,” Gerard sighs, “I did sort of jump you. That wasn’t an alright thing for me to do. I should’ve asked you first, but there’s nothing romantic about sitting a guy down and telling him you want to get in his pants. That’s just weird. I mean, that’s just a brief list of things I want, or wanted at the time, because I’m just fucking mad for you, but really, I shouldn’t have just kissed you like that.”

“Yeah,” Pete says, “you should’ve written down on a piece of paper ‘I like you, do you like me, check yes or no.’ That would have gotten Frank to fall in love with you.”

“I think you’re forgetting the part where I was in love with him for like five years already. Though now that you say it, I might have fallen out of love if I’d been given such a childish a break.”

“Hey!” Gerard says.

“What?”

“Well I know Pete said it and he’s goofing around, but seriously, you’d fall out of love with me for me clarifying with checkmarks... actually, you know what, I wouldn’t blame you. That has got to be the lamest way to get with someone.”

“So what about the rest of the article,” Pete says, steering them back onto topic.

“What?” Frank asks, having forgotten what was going on momentarily, “oh, right. Yeah. Uh, I think it’s pretty good, other than the part where she implied that I’m a cheating dirtbag.”

“She said no such thing!” Gerard says.

“But it’s my reputation being shat on.”

“Uh,” Pete says, “you are the ‘unnamed ex.’ There’s no intelligible link between you and the person she wrote about. Dude, the author could be referring to Hulk Hogan for all anyone knows.”

“Yeah,” Gerard nods, “or Paul Rudd.”

Pete nods, “maybe even Lord Voldemort.”

“Lord Voldemort is a fictional character,” Frank says, making an unimpressed face.

“Right, and do you really think Aaron dated Paul Rudd?”

“Touché.”

“Well the rest of this article seems pretty formal and expositive. She talks about how Aaron’s done this before, and how his behavior is borderline abusive,” Pete says, “I think if we can get the story to spread, we can take the son of a bitch down.”

“I hope so,” Frank groans, “That’s the point at least.”

“Don’t worry, Frankie,” Gerard says, putting an arm around him, “he’s a high profile dude. It’s always dangerous to be a dick when a lot of people know your name. If you’re a nobody, the worst that’s going to happen to you is that you lose a friend or get fired. When you’re a big name, a celebrity or a businessman like Aaron, then it’s about your whole life basically going up in smoke.”

“Is it bad that I feel good about the idea of ruining his life?” Frank asks.

“Somewhat, but not really,” Pete says, “I kind of feel good about it too.”

“Patrick probably wouldn’t admit to it, but he doesn’t like Aaron any more than the rest of us?”

“Where is Patrick by the way?” Gerard asks, looking around. It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Friday and Patrick is nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Pete says, waving a hand at them.

“What’s nothing?” Gerard asks. “Did you two have a fight or something?”

“No, definitely not that,” Pete says, “just, let us have our secrets for a little while longer.”

“Whatever you say, Pete,” Frank rolls his eyes, and resigns to rereading the story over. Really, it isn’t that bad. The author does make it a point to emasculate Aaron more than she does Frank, but he still wishes that he didn’t have to bare the weight of being a cheater. It doesn’t have as much of an effect on him though, because Frank is anonymized, but it’s a mental thing. He doesn’t want to be thought of as a bad person.

Frank knows that he made a mistake. He did, that’s true. He shouldn’t have kissed Gerard back. He didn’t deserve what Aaron did in response though, that much he knows. That wasn’t his fault. Aaron was just being a dick. As usual.

How could someone who’d seemed so perfect turn out to be so sour? He was like a lemon drop. He was sweet on the outside but once Frank got to know him he was anything but. He was a completely different person than the guy that saved Frank from being run over. It’s like he wasn’t even the same man at all. Aaron just had some sort of body switching curse, and became an asshole once you got to know him.

Aaron was a workaholic. He was arrogant. The guy was elitist. Aaron tried to change who Frank was to suit him better. That’s just not something you do. Either you like the person they are or you get out of their life. You can’t just change a person to be more appealing to you. That’s sick. It’s not okay. Why did Frank let Aaron do that to him?

Why did Frank fall for him? Probably because he was so charismatic. So good at hypnotizing Frank. He played Frank, right from the get go. Tried to get him to do things Frank would never have done under normal circumstances.

Gerard would never do that. He’d never change Frank. The difference between them is that Aaron wanted an accessory. Someone pretty he could show off at parties. Maybe he liked Frank on a fundamental level, or maybe he didn’t, but that doesn’t matter. The point is that he didn’t care about Frank. Gerard likes Frank’s inner comic book nerd. He likes the dork who cares too much about punk bands and plays his music too loud.

When it comes down to it, Aaron is the guy who takes him to the five star restaurants and tells him what to order, and Gerard’s the guy who’ll splurge on getting Frank a whole pizza that they both know Frank isn’t going to finish, but will attempt to anyway. Aaron is the guy who takes him to meet dozens of snooty elite friends, while Gerard’s friends can be counted on one hand and they’re the same friends that Frank’s has. Aaron’s the guy who saved Frank from stepping into traffic once, and Gerard’s the one who saved Frank from going insane countless times.

At the end of the day, Gerard is always going to be Frank’s Ramona Flowers.

~*~*~*~

Frank wakes up to banging coming from outside the room. He groans, because it’s way too early for this shit.

It’s the kind of early that means his whole body feels sore and dead when he tries to move it. He can’t even convince his eyes to open themselves. They just want to be closed and stay that way.

Frank groans long and hard, almost crying with the feeling of not wanting to wake up, but that noise will never allow him to get back to sleep. Also, he has to find out where the noise is fucking coming from. Once he finds the source he can come back to bed and just collapse in the sheets like he really wants to.

Frank’s eyes open, but only through much protest. His eyelids feel like they’ve been stapled shut and when he finally unhinges them, everything he sees is blurry and out of focus. It takes him almost thirty seconds of blinking repeatedly to see anything at all, and his eyes feel dry, but also like he really does want to just cry and go back to bed at the same time. Frank’s not sure how that’s possible. It is though.

He and Gerard had a late one last night because they can, and it’s a Saturday so they have no obligation to get up. When Frank’s eyes focus in on the glowing clock with bright red numbers, he sees that it’s pushing seven in the morning. That’s too early even if he had gone to bed at a reasonable hour last night. He didn’t. It was like three in the morning. Gerard was playful, he wasn’t going to turn the guy down.

Frank looks over at the lump next to him, and rolls his eyes. Gerard’s got a pillow over his head like he’s aware that something is making noise, but he’s not conscious enough to put together the fact that he might have to do something about it. He’s like a zombie. He’s alive, but he doesn’t have any cognitive synapses.

“Gerard!” Frank complains, pushing at Gerard who returns his action with a very poorly aimed kick. He just sort of flails around actually, Frank’s not even sure if that was justifiably a kick, or if Gerard was attempting to kick him at all. If Frank’s got to be awake right now though, than Gerard sure as fuck does to.

“Gerard!” Frank says again, pushing him more insistently until Gerard makes a vocal response that resembles a constipated whale. “Wake the fuck up, Gerard.”

“No,” Gerard grumbles. Frank eventually finds that the solution to getting Gerard to wake up is to just push him out of bed. He falls onto the floor with a small thud, muffled by the fact that he took most of the blankets with him. Frank crawls over to Gerard’s side of the bed and he looks down at the crumpled mess on the floor. Gerard looks thirsty for blood.

“Get up,” Frank says lazily, “something is banging on... something else? I don’t know.”

“I think it’s the door,” Gerard replies than yawns loudly, and tries to cover himself up with the blankets. Frank is trying to figure out what he’s doing. To be honest, it looks like Gerard is trying to camouflage himself into the carpet. It’s unsuccessful, for one thing, because there’s no carpet, and for another, the hardwood floor is brown and the sheets are a worn, but still bright, white. It’s like if a raccoon tried to hide in a display of lemons.

“Well get up then,” Frank says.

“Why can’t you get it?” Gerard’s voice comes from the pile of bedding.

“Because we’re both awake, and I said so.”

“I am not awake,” Gerard says, and that is one statement Frank can agree with. He’s vaguely conscious, but he is not the kind of guy you’d want to spot you on a rock-climbing wall. Actually that’s true under most circumstances. Frank and heavy lifting are about as compatible as marshmallows and horseradish.

“But we’re conscious.”

“Says you.”

Frank finally just gets up and walks over to Gerard’s side of the bed. He then finds what feels like Gerard’s arm and pulls him up into a sitting position. He looks stupid with a duvet on his head, but Frank tugs it off of him, and finally manages to get Gerard onto his feet. It’s not easy, and it should probably be an Olympic sport, but eventually, Gerard is standing. Well technically he’s slouching, but he’s on his feet and that’s what counts.

“C’mon,” Frank says, dragging Gerard behind him by the hand like he’s a grumpy toddler resisting going into a store.

“You’re not wearing pants,” Gerard points out.

“I have boxers, it’s not the end of the world,” Frank replies. Gerard’s wearing a pair of flannel pajama pants that are baggy, and a shirt that has some small logo on it, Frank suspects it was a free T-shirt from somewhere. At least it’s not that old Ramones shirt that’s quite possibly older than the band itself.

Frank feels victimized by the light in the kitchen that they forgot to turn off last night. It’s too bright. He feels like he’s got a spotlight on him that was harnessed from light directly from the sun.

“Fuck,” Frank says, almost tripping on nothing.

“It’s louder out here!” Gerard says, trying to take his hand back from Frank to cover his ears, but Frank firms his grip. Gerard just crams one of his hands against his ear and then the other against his own shoulder, to drown out the sound.

“Who the fuck is it this early?” Frank screams at the door when he’s standing in front of it.

“Open the motherfucking door, Frank!” a voice yells back at him, and Frank freezes. The guy has a French accent that Frank is very familiar with.

“Shit,” Frank hisses quietly and all of a sudden, he feels more alert. He looks back at Gerard, who’s still trying to block out the sound of knocking, which isn’t there anymore now that Frank has acknowledged Aaron’s existence.

“Would you grow up?” Frank asks, grumpily, as he grabs Gerard’s hand and moves it away from his ear.

“Who is it?” Gerard asks.

“Aaron,” Frank mouths at him. Gerard paralyzes at Frank’s words with his eyes wide open and he looks somewhat scared.

What Frank wouldn’t give to just have the ground open up and suck him into it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have that luxury. Instead, Frank takes a long deep breath and sighs as he opens the door.