The Chasing of Moons

“Why the fuck are you awake?” Brendon groans at him.

“Because I am,” Frank replies.

“At seven in the morning? On a weekend? Are you insane? Why did you call me? Who uses phones to call each other? What year are you from?”

“The nineties, just, okay, hear me out,” Frank replies.

“I just wanna go back to bed,” Brendon says groggily. “Whatever you have to say had better be fucking good, because if not then I will make a Frank Iero Sim and I will kill him.”

“Okay so Mikey is gonna lure Gerard to the book store, you know the one, and I’m going to bump into them, but I don’t wanna be the loser who’s there by himself, so like, I was wondering if you were available maybe?”

“Ugh, did you ask Pete?” Brendon asks.

“I- he didn’t answer his phone,” Frank replies.

“Great so I’m your second choice.”

“His name just came up first in my contacts.”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone as Brendon leaves that in the air and then resumes to say, “You’re saying Pete came before Brendon. In a list that’s sorted alphabetically.”

“It’s by last name.”

“You’re saying Wentz came before Urie. In a list that’s sorted alphabetically. Really? Really, Frank?”

“Okay fine, in my contacts I address you as Asshole and Bigger Asshole, are you happy now?”

“Does that make me Bigger Asshole?” Brendon asks.

“Yes,” Frank replies.

“And you want me to help you out?” he asks.

“Yes,” Frank repeats.

“What’s in it for me?”

“The satisfaction of knowing that you’ve helped me win over Gerard?” Frank offers.

“Yeah, I don’t really want that.”

“Fine. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

“And...?”

“And what?” Frank asks, “I’m broke. I can’t buy you anything that costs any more than five bucks.”

“Just one thing,” Brendon says.

“And what is that?”

“I wanna be the best man at your wedding,” Brendon says.

“Okay, I think you’re thinking a little too far into the future,” Frank says, even though it’s not unreasonable to ask that knowing what it is that Frank knows, but Brendon doesn’t know what he does.

“Well dude, if you marry Gerard, Mikey is going to be your best men at the wedding, if you don’t marry Gerard, the most likely option, Pete’s going to be your best man, and at Pete’s wedding, you’re going to be his best man, I just want to be the best man at one of them, I mean, I feel I’m owed that.”

“How do you even know that I’m going to know you then? I could ditch you in college,” Frank says. “Make better friends.”

“It could happen, but you don’t have any money and I need to get something out of you,” Brendon replies.

“Ugh, fine,” Frank groans, “you can be my best man, but you’re going to have to deal with Pete if he finds out about that.”

“I’ve always wanted an excuse to fight him. It’s jousting at the crack of dawn, I’m going to take that bitch down.”

“You are so weird,” Frank says.

“Yeah so when are you meeting him?”

“Oh, uh...” Frank starts.

“Oh god, when?”

“Two,” Frank mumbles.

“You called me at seven in the morning for a thing that’s going to happen at two in the afternoon?” Brendon asks, his anger very obvious.

“Maybe.”

“You’re such a twat,” Brendon replies before hanging up.

“Could’ve been worse,” Frank says to himself and looks around his room nervously.

Frank hasn’t gotten any sleep, sick with anticipation. He’s terrified that he’s going to screw something up, because he’s finally got an opportunity to hopefully get Gerard to fall in love with him. Or at least maybe cool down how much he pretends to hate him.

Frank looks around his room with dread. He’s excited, nervous, and painfully anxious. He doesn’t know how to waste what feels like thirty hours until Mikey said he would get Gerard out of the house. Apparently Gerard hasn’t done anything on the weekend for the past five years except for play video games and occasionally sing incredibly loudly in the shower. In Frank’s personal opinion, that sounds absolutely fantastic and he could get used to living like that.

Frank ends up spending an hour trying to convince himself to get out of bed. After he does get out of bed, he sneaks out of his room, grabs a pop tart and runs back up because he’s not sociable yet. He rereads Gee’s letter for what’s probably the five thousandth time, and most of his warning wastes away as he tries to will himself to get up and take a shower. He needs to smell nice for his not-a-date, but he’s still going to tell their kids about it and say it was their first date. Unless it’s a complete disaster, but he’s hopeful.

Usually time tends to slow down around Frank, but today, the hours fly past him so fast he’s sure that he’s being tricked by some sort of mass clock failure. That doesn’t turn out to be so though, and he does end up picking up a very disgruntled looking Brendon a short time later.

“What are you going to say to get him to fall in love with you?” Brendon asks.

“Uh, Star Wars,” Frank says, “lots and lots of Star Wars. That’s my biggest talking point, because there’s nothing I know more about than Star Wars.”

“Is that it?”

“We could literally spend years talking about Star Wars. We could spend four hours discussing who shot first.”

“Okay Frank, it’s been like forty years, everyone knows it was Han. It’s not even a debate anymore.”

“It’s still a debate, I will not give up on this,” Frank says.

“You’re such an idiot,” Brendon says shaking his head. “God, why can’t Pete be here instead of me?”

“He’s too busy to answer my phone calls,” Frank frowns, “Such a shame because he and Mikey could have made googley eyes at each other.”

“Both of you are gross. Why can’t I just have not insane friends who don’t drool over everybody?”

“We’re going to end up marrying those boys, I swear to god,” Frank says.

“Yeah right,” Brendon scoffs.

“It’s true!” he insists.

“You wanna make that a bet?” Brendon says.

Frank gets an evil little glimmer in his head before he says, “yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Frank replies, “I think I could make it happen that we both end up with them. I’m actually sure of it. I would be willing to bet a very large amount of money.”

“You’re in denial,” Brendon shakes his head. “It’s not even likely that one of you is going to marry someone you met in high school and you think you two are going to marry brothers? I need to hire a statistician to show you how unbelievable and dumb that idea is.”

“I’m an optimist.”

“You’re a surrealist,” Brendon replies.

“Shut up, we’re here,” Frank says, pulling into a parking spot.

“When are they going to be here?” Brendon asks.

“Mikey said he’ll text me. We have to ‘run into them’ wherever they keep the Dungeons and Dragons books, which, I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know existed.”

“And that’s what you want to marry? A guy who invests more in Dungeons and Dragons than he does in soap?”

“I... you’re a dick,” Frank says, unbuckling, and pulling himself out of the car. “Oh and before I forget, how much are you actually willing to bet that both me and Pete end up with Gerard and Mikey.”

“Well I’m assuming that we’re going to have real money in the future, so it could be real money. What do you want to go for?”

“You could pay our kid’s future college tuition,” Frank suggests.

“So in this future did I happen to win the lottery? Like four times?” Brendon asks. “Or do you really want your kid to go to school in a shoe box?”

“I’m assuming that someday school tuition fees will be more logical than they are now.”

“How about we go for just a hundred bucks,” Brendon says.

“That seems like a very small amount of money for someone who’s got three kids, five hundred dogs, and a husband to spoil.”

“Three kids?” Brendon asks emphatically as he slams the car door shut, and drags his feet up the sidewalk.

“I love how you focus on the three kid’s thing and not the five hundred dogs.”

“I expect that from you,” Brendon says, “but three sounds like a lot of human beings to be held accountable for.”

“And five hundred dogs isn’t as much work?”

“Well dogs are way easier,” Brendon says as they walk over to the book store, Frank almost having to be pulled away from the lure of the smell of the coffee store. They’ve really done a good job at making this hipster corner, because on the other side of the book store is a candle shop. Frank’s not sure what’s so special about candles that can’t be bought in a Bed Bath and Beyond, but he’s not an expert on that sort of thing anyway.

“Okay yeah, dogs are totally easy,” Frank says, rolling his eyes.

“Dude, dogs may need to be walked and shed everywhere, and giving them a bath is hell, and they’re just overall hard work, but you don’t have to pay for furniture, school fees, dentists and orthodontists, they’ll probably need braces because they have dumb crooked teeth, and they’ll need lunch money, school supplies, clothes, and expensive food because they always want chicken nuggets and refuse to eat anything that has a foreign word in it, and they’ll want the newest technology and they’re basically just gigantic assholes.”

“You sound like a father of twelve who hasn’t had a day off in fifty years,” Frank says, as he pulls open the door to the bookstore, which has this awfully stale ambiance which necessitates that everyone whisper everything they say, which makes the whole building feel overwhelmingly creepy. But they do have a very large collection of rare prints and a senile store owner who will gift you a book if you pay in two dollar bills. The problem is that no one has two dollar bills, so people very rarely get free books.

“Sometimes I feel like I am,” Brendon says, looking off into the distance wistfully.

“You need to dial down the Sims, Bren.”

“I’m sorry,” Brendon says, “I just had a grandchild. I’m very emotional.”

“What’s the grandkids name?” Frank asks.

“Unfortunately, I ran out of celebrities with the last name of Simpson. So I named him Orange Juice.”

“Orange Juice?”

“It was the alternative to calling him OJ.”

Frank nods, “I see. Wise decision.”

Brendon nods, doing his best to inconspicuously steer them towards the children’s section, not because he is a child, but because he has the mind of a child. And he really likes Shel Silverstein.

“Ugh, I don’t wanna be here,” Brendon groans, “I don’t want to be dragged to all your weird creepy romancing escapades.”

“Romancing escapades,” Frank repeats, “that is a hell of an alternative over the word wooing.” He then shivers and makes a gagging sound at the very thought of the word.

“You can have that off me if you like, as long as I get your fruit roll up at lunch on Monday.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Frank says, eyeing a girl across the aisle from them who’s very obviously looking at Brendon’s ass, and it’s too shameless to even earn a judgmental glare from him.

“You’ve got a fan,” Frank says, nodding toward the girl to Brendon, who’s too entranced apparently to notice.

“Well what else is new,” Brendon shrugs, pretending to be completely nonchalant about it, but Frank knows that he’s secretly forcing himself not to look because he likes to remain ‘cool.’

Frank’s phone buzzes and he jumps at the sound of it, “oh they’re here.” He looks down at his phone only to realize it’s not Mikey texting him at all. “Never mind. Pete wants to know what the capital of Luxembourg is.”

“I don’t know if you should break it to him or not that the capital of Luxembourg, is in fact, Luxembourg.”

“I’ll tell him that it’s Estonia,” Frank shrugs, “just to mess with him.”

“That’ll teach him not to ignore your calls,” Brendon says.

“Exactly,” Frank says, texting Pete, and hoping to himself that Pete’s not doing some sort of geography assignment. He’s an asshole, but he doesn’t want to be the asshole that makes Pete get a bad grade. But if he’s dumb enough not to know that Estonia is a country then maybe he deserves a bad grade.

Barely a minute later, Frank actually does get a text from Mikey and that’s when his internal organs actually do turn to chalk.

“Oh my god, they’re here,” Frank says, “but like actually this time.”

“Dandy,” Brendon says, looking completely apathetic, and Frank is likely to smack him. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t know how to stand or where to look, or how to act natural. He doesn’t want Gerard to know that this was all planned, he wants it to feel organic, but he’s suddenly forgotten how he normally acts and he now feels like a person on a TV show who is told to act natural and then strikes the most unnatural pose humanly possible.

“Frank, you look like you’re about to shit yourself, calm your tits,” Brendon says.

“I don’t know how,” Frank responds pleadingly.

“Well for starters you look like a store front mannequin,” Brendon says, and tries to reposition Frank’s arms not to look like he’s posing for Highlights magazine. “And your face says Riddler when it should say smoldering Batman.”

“How’s this?” Frank asks, trying to change his facial expression.

“I said smoldering Batman, not constipated anime villain.”

“Well what the hell does smoldering Batman even mean?”

“It means to do your best Flynn Rider and hope for the best!” Brendon says, like it’s obvious, which just makes the whole situation a million times more confusing. At least if he were here with Pete, whatever face he’d make would be a million times more idiotic than Frank is even capable of.

“I hate you so much,” Frank says, shaking his head.

“Yeah whatever, your boyfriend just walked in,” Brendon says, commentating like he’s watching a horse race. Frank refuses to turn around because he doesn’t want to be obvious, so he has to hang on Brendon’s every word.

“He’s looking at the Neil Gaiman display... he’s saying something to Mikey... Mikey’s staring at me like I set fire to a park bench... Gerard is fangirling over Neil Gaiman... Mikey is trying to drag him away... oh, now he’s looking at the Harry Potter display, Mikey just can’t catch a break can he?”

“Has he seen us yet?”

“Nope, I don’t think so, but Mikey sure has,” Brendon says, “Oh wait, they’re getting closer. They’re walking over here, and oh-”

“Frank?”