The Chasing of Moons

It’s Thursday morning when Frank finds himself scowling at his reflection in the mirror. A stress zit. He’s got a motherfucking stress zit in the middle of his forehead. This always happens too, whenever he’s trying to not look like a greasy teenager with acne everywhere, he turns into a greasy teenager with acne right in your fucking face, practically screaming for attention. He can’t even part his hair one way or another to hide it.

This is what begins the story of Frank ‘borrowing’ concealer from his mom’s room. She won’t notice. At least hopefully. They’ve got the same skin tone, so it’s all good.

Frank wants to look, at the very least, not completely stupid in front of Gerard. He wants to be cool. He wants to be suave and win that son of a bitch over, and he can’t do that if he’s got a giant fucking pimple on his face.

Frank hates his life, and he does not care if he’s being overdramatic, because he has a pimple and sometimes he’s allowed to be a drama queen. He does still do his best to make his fringe cover everything, just to be safe.

If he weren’t trying to get a boy to like him, honestly he wouldn’t care. Frank just wouldn’t give a shit, but since he is trying to get a guy to like him, he wants to look like a million bucks. He wants to make straight guys question their sexuality. He wants to stop cars. He can do none of those things, not even on a good day, but at least no one’s ever puked after looking at him. Really, that’s the best you can ask for.

Frank, because he’s apparently deaf is almost surprised to look out the window a few minutes later to see the entire contents of the ocean pouring from the sky. Accompanying the downpour is thunder with a flash or two of lightning. The last time they had a full on thunderstorm, Gee was there. Frank gets this moping feeling in his stomach as he looks out at the rain and remembers that.

He remembers everything too well, and yet he doesn’t feel like he remembers enough. He doesn’t remember what he was wearing. He doesn’t remember what he drank, or what was playing on the small TV above the bar. He doesn’t remember what the woman who sat three seats down from him looked like. He remembers precisely what Gee was wearing though. He remembers everything, right down to the last strand of hair.

If Frank could, he would paint that exact image on his bedroom ceiling, but he thinks his mom would probably kill him and also Gerard would probably be freaked the hell out by him, so it’s really just not a good idea. But a boy can dream.

Frank neglects to leave the house for as long as he can put it off, but he’s going to miss the bell if he stays like this. He just doesn’t want to go outside in that weather. There’s nothing he can do though, it’s too short a walk to his car to grab an umbrella, and you end up getting soaked when you try to close the umbrella in the car, and you can’t open the umbrella inside the house either because that’s insanely bad luck, so he just puts his hood up and runs for it. Frank isn’t superstitious, but he already has a stress zit, so he shan’t test the fates.

Frank ends up being extraordinarily late for school, but that’s fine because everyone else is late too. The doors are open which is fortunate, but the parking lot is crammed with basically everyone at school, their cousin, their cousins best friend, their cousins best friends aunt’s entire bingo group, and the entire country of Canada. It actually takes him nearly ten minutes to get a parking spot which is nearly a football field away from the actual school, and Frank’s whole umbrella dilemma led him to have forgotten it at home.

Frank wants into school about twenty minutes after the first bell rang completely drenched. He would be dryer if he’d swam in a pool for three hours. Frank could not weigh any more than he does right now, he’s sure the weight of his clothes could sink a large ship. He’s basically miserable and any attempt to hide the gigantic skin mutant on his forehead is now down the drain. His hair is plastered to his forehead though, possibly hiding it from view, so maybe it’s not all bad.

Frank can already tell that school is going to be miserable today. He’s already late for class, though people are still coming in through the doors behind him so he kind of doubts that he’s going to be the only person who’s late, but his teacher is a wanker and any excuse to give him a tardy is up for grabs. And Frank really can’t get another tardy for History because then he’ll have a detention. Eventually he settles on skipping it altogether and he’ll forge a doctor’s note to give Mr. Disachio, or as he likes to call him, Douche-achio, tomorrow. Frank then waddles his way to the boy’s locker room to stand under a hair dryer for an hour.

Three periods later, Frank grumbles to himself in the cafeteria across from a heavily disheveled looking Pete. Literally no one is on their best game today it seems. At least he’s somewhat dry though. He’d had to ring his clothes out and he severely abused the dryers in the locker room, but now he’s not freezing cold and dripping water everywhere. His shoes are miserable though, he couldn’t dry those off enough in the time allotted. They make a squidgy sound whenever he moves them and he can feel water soaking into his socks maniacally with every single step.

“Dude, so, I don’t mean to alarm you, but you have a goblin growing out of your forehead,” Pete says.

“I’m aware,” Frank replies, “your hair is flat.”

“Don’t remind me,” Pete says. He did go through a phase where he worshipped a hair straightener until Brendon and Frank were able to convince him that he looked like an imbecile. He still does but now he has better hair.

“Where the fuck is the water even coming from,” Brendon says a minute later, slamming a lunch tray onto the table. Frank eyes him worriedly, because he doesn’t know what crawled into Brendon’s brain and made him think it was a good idea to buy a school lunch. Unless he’s really anxious to get food poisoning.

“Why are you-” Frank starts to ask.

“My bag fell apart,” Brendon says, before Frank can even finish. “Literally just collapsed on itself. This is what you get for using a paper bag.”

“Well at least you’ve given the squirrels a nice snack,” Pete shrugs.

“I hope they enjoy my soggy goldfish.”

“Ew,” Frank makes a face, “soggy goldfish.”

“Whoa, dude,” Brendon starts, pointing at Frank.

“Yes I know, okay! I can’t just make it go away, and absorb it back into my skin. I would if I could, but it’s a part of me now, you’ll all just have to live with it.”

“I’m naming it Earl,” Pete states.

“Who’s named Earl?” Ray says sitting down.

“Frank’s pimple.”

Ray looks at him, double takes like he’s just seen a ghost and Frank mentally flips off Satan or whoever is the cause of the damn thing.

“Yes, yes I get it. I have a sentient pimple, haha, very funny,” Frank frowns, combing his hair out the best that he can, which covers up his eyes, but he’s not sure that that’s any worse. Either he can have a gigantic eye sore in the middle of his face or a bad hair day, and he’s compelled by the latter.

Frank hears rather than sees two more people sit down, he assumes its Mikey and Gerard, but his hair is in the way of everything.

“Should I even ask?” Mikey questions, presumably in reference to Frank.

“He’s got a pimple the size of Mars,” Pete says.

“Now Pete, don’t say that,” Brendon says, “More like the size of Jupiter if you ask me.”

“It’s not that bad,” Ray says, not sounding too convinced with himself.

“I wanna see,” Mikey says, and before Frank can stop him he’s all hands on, pulling Frank’s hair out of his face.

“Oh come on!” He shouts when he hears Gerard snort, and Frank pulls his hair back in place, turning a pink that would make Kirby feel bad about himself.

“This is what I get from the people who are supposed to be my friends. You all are gigantic dicks.”

“As long as I’m king of the dicks,” Pete says. “King Dick. Your Royal Majesty of Dicks.”

“Why do you get to be king of the dicks, I wanna be king of the dicks,” Brendon replies.

“I called it first,” Pete replies.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know we were calling things so I demand a do-over.”

“The court’s denying you a retrial, I’m sorry to say,” Pete says.

“Fuck you, I, damn, I hate you. Well fine then, if you’re king of the dicks, I’m god of the dicks.”

“What? No, that’s so not fair,” Pete says, and thus ensues a long, almost too realistic fight, like it’s not even fake, about who gets to be what deity in the land of dicks.

Frank is rolling his eyes to the sound of the two of them bickering when he has the realization that Gerard didn’t correct him. Frank said that they were his friends and Gerard didn’t correct him. Maybe it slipped his mind. Maybe Brendon and Pete interrupted him. Maybe Frank’s not being delusional and he considers Frank to be a friend. His luck isn’t that good, he knows it isn’t. But Frank hasn’t opened any umbrellas indoors today so maybe he’s not as unlucky as he was thinking.

“I don’t know how it’s possible for two people that dumb to actually exist,” Mikey says, “oh god that’s my future.”

“It is,” Frank nods, “you’re going to marry that.”

“Oh god, is it too late to change everything?”

“I mean, you don’t have to go for him if you don’t want-”

“No!” Mikey says, too hurriedly, “I mean, he’s an idiot, and like, but he’s not... I don’t know. I mean it could be worse. You know. Like I could be you.”

“I happen to like being me. Except for, well, certain facial blemishes aside, I still like where I stand on my future and stuff. I could’ve done way worse.”

“You really couldn’t have,” Mikey says, looking at Gerard from across the table, who’s watching Pete and Brendon with unwavering interest like he expects something philosophical to come from this debate. “Nope, you really really couldn’t have. You know he doesn’t close drawers? He just opens them and never ever closes them. Ever. He is incapable of closing a cabinet door or drawer. And I’m taller than he is mind you so if he isn’t bothered by a tall drawer than I’m left to just fucking face plant it.”

“Okay, but I’m only two feet tall,” Frank says, “I’ve never run into anything low hanging in my entire life. I would consider a hobbit hole to be roomy.”

“Yes, but you don’t know what hell it is to take a drawer to the crotch.”

“I guess I’ve gotta give you that one,” Frank says, having never had that experience, and not anxious to try it out.

“Ugh, Mikey are you complaining about the drawers thing again?” Gerard asks, apparently pulled away from the enrapturing argument that’s now devolved into Pete thinking that Brendon is ‘a dickbreathing spunkstain’ and Frank would really care not to know the details of that.

“It’s literally ridiculous! It takes like a second to push a drawer in, and less time to close a cabinet drawer. It’s not that hard, I mean come on,” Mikey says to him.

“Mikey, you’re blowing things out of proportion,” Gerard replies.

“I have a bruise on my fucking knee from the drawer in your room!”

“Okay, but it’s in my room, I don’t need to close it if it’s in my room. Like, maybe in the kitchen, but my room is where I get to make the rules.”

“Do you see what I have to put up with?” Mikey asks, turning to Frank emphatically.

“Pete borrowed my stapler three years ago and never gave it back,” Frank says.

“You can live with that though, it’s not like you’re physically attacked by cabinets every other day,” Mikey shrugs.

“Pete borrowed my copy of Independence Day and never gave it back.”

“It has Jeff Goldblum in it, can you really blame him?”

“Pete borrowed my headphones and never gave them back.”

“Well did you ever ask for them back?” Mikey questions.

“It was implied.”

“It wasn’t implied if you didn’t ask him to return them to you promptly,” Mikey says.

“Why are you defending him?”

“Mikey’s in wuv,” Gerard teases.

“I’m not even going to reply to a statement as stupid as that.” Mikey then looks at Pete, and Frank looks at him looking at Pete, and Gerard looks at Frank looking at Pete, so it’s just a weird cycle of them all swooning over or judging each other. Frank’s certainly not swooning over Mikey. It’s not that he doesn’t have a nice face it’s just that he’s Mikey and Gerard is the love of Frank’s life.

“Go suck on a tree branch,” Pete can be heard saying followed by the perfectly appropriate ‘what the fuck does that even mean?’

“Your future,” Frank whispers in Mikey’s ear.

“Drawers, Frank. Drawers,” Mikey says as a response.

Gerard looks at the two of them obliviously, blissfully unaware of how the two of them are in cahoots to get he and Frank to suck face, among other things.

“We all have to accept certain vices,” Frank shrugs.

“But at what cost?” Mikey asks.

“Sanity,” Frank replies.

“Sounds like a fair deal,” Mikey sighs, staring at Pete a little contemptuously, like he’s angry that Pete’s not noticing his advances and welcoming them with open arms. Frank can’t help but look similarly at Gerard, but softer because it’s hard not to love that face. That cute face that Frank wants to punch and then make out with. Or make out with and then punch. Or skip the making out and just punch. Or skip the punching and just make out. Frank can’t figure out what he wants from the guy but either way he wants it to involve no clothes.

Mikey looks at Frank for a second analytically before saying, “Your zit is staring me right in the face, man. It’s looking into my soul.”

“Oh fuck off,” Frank says, patting his hair down once again.

“You fuck off. I hate you, Oreo,” Mikey shakes his head, “this is all your damn fault.”

“I know,” Frank frowns, “isn’t it just the most painful thing in the world to like someone who’s a complete idiot and doesn’t realize you like them?”

“Yes,” Mikey replies.

“Welcome to my hell bro, I hope you buckled in tight, because it’s going to be one hell of a ride.”