The Chasing of Moons

“So,” Frank hears Ray’s voice before he sees him, and he’s curious about the odd tone. Like he’s mad but not mad, but also still kind of mad.

“Yes?” Frank asks.

“I hear that someone asked Gerard Way out this weekend. And I wasn’t invited.”

“He said you were at Kmart,” Frank replies.

“Well I was, but I would have liked to have been invited anyway,” Ray says, and Frank doesn’t know how to respond to that.

Pete does it for him, saying through a mouth full of potato chips, “none of us actually witnessed the actual asking out of him.”

“Dude,” Brendon says, looking at Pete like he’s a small child, “say it, don’t spray it.”

“Are you actually nine?” Frank asks him.

“You’re a jerk and I hate you,” Brendon says.

“Fine,” Frank says, “if you hate me then go sit on the other side of the table, that way Gerard can sit next to me.”

“You asshole,” Brendon says, squinting his eyes at Frank like he’s thinking about the best way to dispose of a body, but he shoves his food to the other side of the table and walks around it to sit next to Pete who makes a face at him. There was once a time when Frank all but forbade the two of them to sit next to, or across from each other, because they kicked each other so much under the table that they started to have bruises up and down their legs, but not the good kind. The good kind being the ones that do not develop through force, but rather through other means that may or may not include Gerard in Frank’s fantasy.

Frank turns to Ray and he says, “Don’t look at me, I’m not moving.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” Frank says, “I only need the one spot, and Pete doesn’t care about Brendon as long as he gets to sit next to Mikey.”

“Why should I care if I sit next to Mikey?” Pete asks, looking absolutely puzzled.

“Dude, do you really think we’re that stupid?” Brendon asks him.

“What do you mean?” Pete questions.

“Okay, seriously, you’re not that oblivious to your own thoughts,” Brendon says, somehow arguing with Pete, when there’s really not a good reason to. Frank thinks he should just leave it alone, leave Pete and Mikey to their own devices, maybe giving them a few shoves in the right direction here and there, but their relationship seems to be a lot more natural and unprotested than Frank’s and Gerard’s. At least with those two, one of them isn’t pretending to hate the others guts. But Frank did still manage to ask Gerard out, and that’s more than either of those two have managed, so it’s really anyone’s guess as to who would be categorically winning if this were a competition.

“Pete, are you under the illusion that we don’t know you’re in love with Mikey?”

Pete’s eyes widen, similar to the way a frogs eyes widen, but also similar to the way a cartoon character’s eyes widen, except instead of little heart eyes, he’s got pupils the size of a small moose, almost completely devoid of the already extremely deep brown, nearly black color.

“What?”

“Oh, he’s going to deny it,” Brendon says, as if this is the most unamusing thing in the world to him.

“Deny what?”

“That you’re in love with Mikey.”

“I don’t even,” Pete says, “what is...? Who is Mikey? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just, like, I don’t even know what the words coming out of your mouth mean. I’m totally like, whoever you think I’m in love with you’re wrong, because I don’t even, I’m just, and, like, and yeah. But I don’t even know anyone named Mikey. Who’s Mikey? What are you talking about. But- so- and- I’m- no- but- like- and- there’s- what- me... what?”

“Wow,” Brendon says, completely unimpressed with him.

“I think you broke him,” Ray says.

“Broke what?” Pete asks. “Who?”

“He’s actually denying that he knows who Mikey even is,” Frank says, “What did you do Brendon? This is not okay. He’s like one of those video game characters whose legs become detached from their body or something.”

“It’s not like he has a reboot button or anything!” Brendon shouts, “How was I to know that I would break him?”

“Did you try turning it off and then on again?” Ray asks.

“Thank you for the fucking help, guy from The IT Crowd,” Brendon shouts at him, apparently considering a reference to some obscure British show to be an insult.

“Hit it a few times to try to jump start it,” Frank helps.

“You could try pressing control, alt, delete,” Ray offers.

“Why don’t you let me transfer your call to someone who’s more experienced with this sort of problem,” Frank says.

“Please hold, your call is very important to us.”

“Shut up you two!” Brendon snaps at them, because Pete’s now just staring at the wall behind him like it’s closing in on him.

“Did you keep the receipt?” Frank asks, “We can just return him if you can’t work the problem out.”

Frank looks around, wondering where Gerard and Mikey are, but they’re not here yet, so at least Pete’s not having a breakdown in front of Mikey, which would be a little inconvenient for him.

Frank looks out the window, where he almost misses a flash of lightning streaking across the sky, but the thunder is not quick to follow. Frank usually likes the rain, but he’s seen the blue of the sky about three times in the past month, so he’s starting to miss it. He feels like he’s moved to Scotland or something with all this fucking rain. It gets old fast.

“Pete,” Brendon says, trying to control the annoyance in his voice, “You can give up pretending that you don’t love him. We know. It’s not a secret.”

“What’s not a secret?” Pete asks before laughing so awkwardly that they all cringe, and people from several tables over look at them like they’re harboring a known fugitive.

“The fact that you like Mikey.”

“I don’t-”

“Save it,” Brendon says, rolling his eyes.

“How!”

“How what?”

“How do you know?” Pete asks, and that’s seriously one of the dumbest questions that has ever been asked by anyone ever.

“Because you do. You’re very bad at hiding it,” Brendon tells him.

“I... I am?” Pete asks.

“You’re about as good at covering up your crush on Mikey as Frank is at covering up his crush on Gerard,” Ray tells him.

Brendon shakes his head, “nah, Pete’s worse.”

“I’m worse?” He asks emphatically. “But I didn’t even know about Frank and Gerard until you guys told me, so it’s not that obvious, right?”

“You’re just bad at reading signs,” Brendon tells him.

“Fuck!” Pete says, and he definitely says that too loudly, because people really do start to look at them at that, and Frank tries to pretend he doesn’t notice as he eats his sandwich uncomfortably.

“It’s fine,” Frank shakes his words off the best he can, “I promise you, everything will work out with him someday. Hell, you two might even get married someday.”

“Oh, here we go again,” Brendon shakes his head.

“What?” Ray asks.

“Frank is under the impression that he and Gerard will get married, and so will Mikey and Pete.”

“Yeah right,” Ray scoffs.

“I know!”

“There’s no chance in hell,” Ray says, looking at Frank like this is imperative information that must be heard, “dude, the odds of one of you actually dating one of them aren’t that slim, but then you factor in any real future that exceeds things like college and shit, there’s no chance.”

“No way in hell,” Brendon adds.

“You two have no faith in my ability to get Gerard to fall in love with me.”

“It’s not that... well it’s partially that actually, it’s just that the odds of a high school romance to ever be anything other than just that, high school, pretty much diminish after the first year of college.”

“If it’s real, it can survive,” Frank says. He’s certainly confident that his feelings for Gerard are real. At least he thinks the chances are slim that he would marry someone without real emotion to back it up. And he does marry Gerard, or at least he did in one timeline, so he thinks it should be the same for this timeline as well. Or maybe that’s more of a hope than an actuality.

“Really?” Pete asks, “You think?”

“Oh my god, don’t drag Pete into your dreams too, Frank. He’s already messed up enough.”

“Yes, Pete,” Frank says.

“I knew you were always a better friend to me than Brendon,” Pete says, and he sighs, looking a little less petrified than he was a moment before, but still pretty freaked out over the fact that they know he’s in love with Mikey. Or maybe not in love, but smitten all the same.

“What’s his problem?” Gerard says, finally sitting down, Mikey not far behind him. Luckily for Frank, Gerard seems to understand why the seat next to Pete was unoccupied, so he goes to sit next to Frank, which makes him cheer internally. He’s not sure if Gerard is technically sitting next to Frank more so because he wants Mikey to be able to sit with Pete, or because he just wants to sit with Frank, but he hopes it’s the latter.

“Brendon told him that we know he has a crush on Mikey,” Frank whispers to Gerard. Mikey’s looking at Pete, too focused on him to eavesdrop on Frank so he might not even need to have whispered.

“Oh so that’s why he looks like he just shat his pants,” Gerard whispers back and the feeling Frank gets when Gerard whispers in his ear is absolutely filthy. He is aware of every single hair on the back of his neck, and indeed all over his body as well, standing up the same way they do when you’re watching a scary movie. He feels his eyes dilate, the same way Pete’s had when Brendon told him that they know about his crush, but it’s a very different feeling inside of Frank’s head than it had been for Pete. It’s an utterly foreign feeling to Frank. He’s fond of it, the way that it makes him feel some unfamiliar impassioned sensation, but it’s the kind of feeling he thinks is not one he should be having in the middle of public. Still, now he’s sort of wondering what it would be like if Gerard were to whisper something in his ear when they’re alone.

“Pete!” Brendon says angrily, “look, you rubbed off on Frank! What the hell is wrong with the two of you?”

“I’m sensing demonic possession,” Gerard offers, “why don’t we just burn them both at the stake?”

“Wouldn’t fire support a demons existence though?” Ray asks, “Like, if they’re from hell, presumably there’s lots of fire in hell, so burning them would probably just give them more power.”

“How about we test it out though?” Brendon asks, “I mean, Gerard has a fair suggestion, we might as well give it a shot.”

“I’m fine!” Frank shouts, even though he’s not particularly worried that they have any real plans to burn him anytime soon. He just doesn’t want to be as immobile and dumbstruck as Pete now is. “I just had a moment.”

Pete makes a very short but also very drawn out moment of eye contact with Frank, where he receives some sort of telepathic message from Pete saying something along the lines of, “what the hell are we going to do?”

Frank shrugs back in response and Pete looks like someone’s giving him the worst news he’s ever heard.

Frank turns to look at Gerard, he’s grinning widely at something Ray had just said, and this makes Frank’s heart stagger in his chest before he’s making a small little whimpering sound in the back of his throat. He turns to look back at Pete whose expression tells him that he knows precisely how Frank’s feeling, and that, yes, it is just as painful as he thinks it is. It’s just in his head, but Frank could swear someone’s stabbing him in the chest. He just wants so much, and Gerard’s so clueless to it.

Even though no words have actually been spoken between the two of them, Frank thinks that this is probably the best, most insightful conversation he and Pete have had since they met.