When We're Both Thirty

Gerard thinks that he’s literally never had a worse headache in his entire existence. This isn’t just a bad hangover headache or anything, someone is trying to burrow his way out of Gerard’s cranium and he’s making the biggest possible hole in his head to do so.

He can’t even move, he’s in so much pain. Gerard groans and feels his hand clasp at his temple, but the panging doesn’t stop. Certainly he’s dying. That might be preferable to this migraine though.

Gerard wiggles around, trying to find a comfortable angle to rest his head on the pillow underneath him. That’s when he notices the unfamiliar surroundings. He’s swaddled in a few big blankets, and there’s a nice pillow under his head, but this isn’t his bed. He’s not sure what the hell this is. It’s too soft to be the floor. Maybe he’s dead or something. That doesn’t seem entirely fair though. Gerard would hate for himself to have a headache while he’s chilling in hades or wherever the hell he is.

Gerard tries to open his eyes, but that’s an enormous mistake. The light in whatever room he’s in hits him, and it makes his head screech in pain. He closes his eyes just as quickly as he can, and tries to move around some more to let his hands figure out where he is.

He hears something moving quietly behind him, and he’s not sure what it is. There’s a faint clattering, it sounds really foreign and far away. Gerard groans, and tries to block out the noise because it makes his head hurt even more. This is entirely unpleasant. Way too unpleasant for him to be dead, so he assumes he must be alive, but that doesn’t seem like any sort of relief to him right now.

“Gerard?” A voice asks, “You awake?”

He knows instantly that the voice belongs to Frank, and he wonders why on earth wherever he is has to have Frank there too. He’d probably be better off dead then in the same room as Frank while unconscious. He probably has a mustache drawn onto his face right now. Or maybe he’s got something rude written on his forehead. He highly doubts he could possibly be unconscious anywhere near Frank and not have had his face violated by a permanent marker.

“Gerard?” Frank says again, and then Gerard hears soft footsteps walking nearer to him, so he puts his hands over his ears to block the sound from stabbing at his head.

“You are awake,” Frank says.

“Quiet,” Gerard murmurs in response.

“Headache?” Frank asks him.

“Yes.”

“Let me get you some aspirin.”

Gerard doesn’t respond to that, he just sort of puts his hands over his eyes and pretends to not exist for a minute, hoping that if he falls back to sleep, he won’t have to suffer from this aching.

“Gerard!” Frank says way too loudly, interrupting his reverie after a minute. Gerard’s almost completely forgotten what was happening a moment ago. He just knows that his head hurts.

“It’s not just going to go away, dumbass,” Frank says. “You’re going to have to sit up if you don’t want to get water all over yourself.”

“What?” Gerard asks. He feels a hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him up into a sitting position, but he whimpers and grabs the sides of his head to stop making it shake. Moving around has dislodged the peace he’d had for a moment when he kept entirely still.

“Here,” Frank says, and he feels a cold glass put into his hand and something small in the other hand.

“Huh?” Gerard asks again, because he’s really not understanding much of anything right now while his head is screaming in agony.

“Just take the damn pill, otherwise your head’s not going to get any better,” Frank says. Its weird hearing him try to be helpful through a voice full of spite. It’s like hearing an executioner telling you to smile, or like hearing a politician say something respectful about the female gender. It just doesn’t sound right coming from someone who never has a helpful thing to say.

Gerard takes a sip from the glass, tasting water that he hadn’t realized his mouth was lacking. His mouth is bone dry, and he almost drains the glass before remembering the small pill in his hand. It almost gets caught in his throat, but he swallows it nonetheless and then he feels Frank’s hand grabbing the glass from him.

Gerard groans, and then slouches back into his little nest of blankets. There’s something solid to one side of his body, and that’s how Gerard figures out that he’s on a couch. To one side, there’s the back of it which is squishy but relentlessly there, and the other side where there’s a drop from the cushions that leads to the hard floor.

“Do you remember what happened?” Frank asks, and Gerard can tell that Frank is looking down at him, leaning over the back of the couch.

“No,” Gerard replies.

“Maybe not such a bad thing,” Frank replies. “I’m going to give you some time for that stuff to kick in. Do you need anything?”

Gerard really isn’t sure that he isn’t dead, because there’s no way on earth Frank would ever offer him anything besides a kick in the groin. That’s just not who he is. He wouldn’t ask Gerard if he needed anything. He also wouldn’t help him with a headache, he’d just scream in Gerard’s ear some more. This just all feels really weird.

“Frank?” Gerard asks, just to double check that this is, in fact, Frank he’s talking to right now.

“What?”

Gerard doesn’t respond. It must be Frank if he answered to Gerard calling him by his name. This is so strange. What on earth happened last night?

“Nothing,” Gerard answers, and then he puts his hands on the side of his head again to keep it still. That seems to be helping some, because his head doesn’t throb if he holds it in place.

Gerard must fall back into sleep, because he thinks that he wakes up some time later. His head still hurts, but it’s not nearly to the same extent as it had been however long ago. He only wakes up because he hears something quiet playing somewhere near him. After some guessing, he figures out that it’s a TV.

He groans a little bit and blinks his eyes open, which doesn’t meet him with as much pain as it had last time. This time he looks up at a ceiling that he recognizes but he hasn’t seen it very many times. Then it settles into his stomach that he’s in Frank’s apartment. He’s in Frank’s apartment. He’s on Frank’s couch. He’s cradled in Frank’s blankets. His head is on Frank’s pillow. He’s breathing Frank’s air.

“Ew,” Gerard groans.

“What?” Frank asks from somewhere way too near to him for his comfort. Gerard looks around and sees Frank sitting on the arm of the couch next to his feet. Gerard pulls his knees up closer to his body to put some distance between the two of them.

“I’m in your apartment,” Gerard says as an answer.

“I know,” Frank says, “and you’re a fucking mess.”

“What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Frank asks, “I’m not positive, but I’m fairly sure someone drugged you.”

“Oh god,” Gerard says, putting his hand to his forehead, but mostly because of embarrassment this time. He’s not sure why he’s embarrassed about it. It’s not exactly his fault. Sure he could’ve been more vigilant, but it’s not his fault. Also, he’s just remembered some of last night. His head was on Frank’s shoulder. He literally used Frank as a pillow. He’ll never be able to wash his face enough after that. He’s never going to forget the time when he put his head on Frank’s shoulder. He kissed Frank once too. That was almost twenty five years ago, but still, it happened.

“You’re fine, so far as I can tell,” Frank says. “I mean, I don’t think you should have any permanent damage.”

“God, I’m so stupid.”

“You’re not going to see me denying that,” Frank says. “You are stupid. You’re fine though, nothing seems to be wrong. I mean, probably.”

Gerard makes a noise that can’t be easily described, and then he pulls himself up enough into a sitting position. He’s got that feeling that you get when you wake up on someone’s couch after a sleepover. He hasn’t had that feeling for several years. Obviously not, he’s an adult. Usually sleepovers he has now involve a lot less clothes and you don’t call them sleepovers.

Gerard groans, he didn’t even get laid last night. All things considering though, he should probably be very happy about that. Actually, there’s absolutely no way to feel bad about that.

Gerard frowns when he realizes that he should probably thank Frank. He really should. Frank really could’ve left him there. He could’ve. Though, Gerard doesn’t like the guy, but he doesn’t think Frank’s that bad. Gerard doesn’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if Frank hadn’t gotten him out of there. What if Mikey hadn’t invited Frank? Gerard might’ve been on an episode of Law and Order. There’s so many different horrific things that could’ve happened to him, but none of them got that chance because Frank was there.

“I guess...” Gerard starts, before gagging on his words. “I guess I should, like, uh, thank you.”

“You sound ever so sincere,” Frank replies sardonically.

“No really,” Gerard answers, “I mean it. Like, thanks. Something bad could’ve happened if you weren’t there.”

Frank looks over at him, looking skeptical of the sentiment, before he sees that Gerard isn’t being sarcastic about it at all. Gerard hates being nice to Frank, but he really can’t deny that Frank helped him. He acted like a human, he’s nothing special for helping, but he still deserves thanking no matter how much it doesn’t want to come out of Gerard’s mouth.

“Yeah,” Frank says, because he doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that.

They sit there staring awkwardly at each other for way too long. The TV is playing quietly in front of them, and Gerard doesn’t know what to do or say now.

“Uh, you hungry?” Frank asks.

“I,” Gerard starts before realizing that he doesn’t have an answer. He thinks about it for a moment before deciding that he really could use some food. Gerard nods his head and Frank nods back, and then looks around like he forgot what he was doing.

“Uh, okay,” Frank says, standing up and walking back over to the kitchen.

Gerard pulls a few blankets off of himself, and he rubs some of the sleep out of his eyes. He looks around for a moment, before looking behind him to see Frank messing around with something in the kitchen.

“Frank?” Gerard asks, and he turns around at the sound of his name.

“Yeah?”

“Uh, bathroom?”

“Oh, yeah. Down the hall. First door on the left,” he replies and Gerard nods in response.

Frank’s apartment isn’t all that big so Gerard doesn’t have too much trouble finding his way.

Gerard checks his face in the mirror to see that Frank hasn’t drawn all over it. That almost surprises him. He’d actually expected to be covered in marker, but he isn’t.

Gerard’s a snooper. He can’t really help it. He’s the kind of person who looks through your medicine cabinet, and he’s ashamed of his obsession with looking through peoples stuff, but he can’t help it. It’s just a habit of his.

Gerard looks around the small bathroom for a moment, and opens the cabinet above the sink curiously. There’s nothing very interesting in there. Basic stuff. Various medicines, nothing all that exciting. He’s also got some cough drops, as well as a box of condoms in the back, but Gerard doesn’t know why that’s so weird. For some reason, he can’t fathom Frank, the kid who grew up in the house next door, having sex. It’s just so weird. This is the same kid who once skinned his knee in Gerard’s driveway and cried for an hour and a half. The same kid who wore a Spiderman bandage on that same knee for like four weeks just to make sure it healed properly. It’s just hard for him to associate Frank as that same person.

Frank’s the guy who he used to play with every day in first grade. They used to attempt skipping rocks at the pond near their school together. Frank was the guy who he used to play hide and seek with. Frank always picked rock when they played rock-paper-scissors. Frank was afraid of one of the monsters on an episode of Scooby Doo.

It’s the same Frank who used to try to trip him in the hallway between classes. The same Frank who put paint in his hair. The same Frank that stole Gerard’s calculator in eighth grade.

That Frank is the same person with a bunch of tattoos all over him. He’s the same guy that’s apparently really good at getting laid. The same Frank who’s in a band, and the same Frank who swears like a sailor.

The Frank he knows now used to be his best friend. They were inseparable. He was Gerard’s first kiss even. They liked each other well enough to see each other every day after school.

Now they detest the very ground the other walks on. They call each other stupid insults and imagine increasingly more creative causes of death that might befall upon the other. But still, they used to be best friends. How on earth did they end up here?