The Chasing of Moons

Gerard’s house is an unassuming, really very passable one on the street of very dissimilar, equally dingy looking coops. Each one however, has more character in a single brick than every square foot of the house Frank grew up in. Frank likes Gerard’s house however, because, even though Frank knows Gerard had no say in the design of it, it looks like him.

The old, withering shingles, barely hanging on, as if only by a thread, look like Gerard somehow, and Frank’s not sure how. It’s the way that they’re so different, he thinks. So unassuming, and completely easy to miss but somehow oddly beautiful. Just like Gerard. The way the paint is chipping away on the sides, revealing a coat of color from some previous incarnation of this house’s existence. The almost Cookie Monster blue leaks out in spots from the heinously repainted beige that was obviously chosen for its unassertive qualities than for its overall appeal. There’s a front porch, a sorry one at that, which you don’t normally find in this sort of town, and the paint here is dwindling away as well.

All in all, it’s one of the most charming houses Frank has ever seen. There’s lilies in the flower pots underneath a sagging arch-like door front, a small welcome sign hangs crookedly from the middle of the door. Weeds are eating away at the old brick foundation peaking from the bottom of the house, and the front lawn hasn’t seen proper treatment in several years, with the unkempt grass overgrown, but not unhealthy. The upkeep it must take to prevent the house from caving in on itself must be strenuous, but it’s absolutely gorgeous in Frank’s eyes.

It’s much like Gerard, and he thinks that that’s the reason for why his thinks it looks like him. It does, in a certain sort of way. It looks like the way people must see Gerard. An easily overlooked house for an easily overlooked boy. A not the typically pretty house, for a not the typically pretty boy. A house with more character and stories to tell than a cookie cutter only a few streets away, made just for a boy like Gerard, though his existence wouldn’t have been even a wisp of an idea when this house, and even the neighborhood, were first erected.

Frank grabs his phone, ready to text Gerard when he sees Gerard opening the door, looking back and saying something to someone inside. Frank doesn’t have to really wonder who, one of his parents, but he says something and then looks back in the direction of Frank’s car, pulling the front door closed behind him.

Gerard looks, and of course Frank is biased, like a million bucks. His hair is messier than usual, but Frank’s almost shocked to see that it looks like it’s been washed. Honestly, he looks like the kid that you’d watch very closely in a convenience store, torn jeans which went out of style years ago, but somehow still work on him, baggy shirt for some metal band that only five people have heard of, and shoes older than Frank. Or at least they look it.

Frank feels his heart all but stop when Gerard pulls open the car door and sits down swiftly in the passenger’s seat, barely even looking at Frank as he does so, almost like he belongs there. Frank’s heart may not actually stop, but it does a whole slew of other things. It speeds up, slows down, skips a beat, clenches, stings, warms, and probably does several other things that can’t all happen at once but do.

“Hey,” Gerard says, pulling his buckle across him before he even really looks at Frank. When he does turn to look at him, he’s a little caught off guard, because Frank looks nothing like he usually does at school. At school, he’s scruffy, tired looking, bored, with great big bags under his eyes because he was up too late the previous night studying. He never bothers to dress up, he normally just throws whatever on, and Gerard kind of likes it that way, but he looks very uniquely different now. He looks perfect.

Like, Gerard is sure that he isn’t actually sitting there, because everything about him is so on point that he might just be a robot with excellent creators. His hair looks like an expensive salon arrangement, and Gerard is positive his skin isn’t actually that clear. Why is Frank dressing up for him? Or maybe this is just the way he likes to dress up for concerts. That might be it. He just wants to look good in case he meets some cute girl there.

But everything about him is literally screaming at Gerard. He’s got a Smashing Pumpkins shirt, so obviously he is worthy to breathe the same air as Gerard, and he’s got eyeliner which makes Gerard very weary of his secret, completely harmless, but nevertheless embarrassing kink.

“You look...” Gerard starts, but then stops himself, because Frank doesn’t like boys so saying that he looks like the most gorgeous human being that Gerard has ever seen would be a little creepy.

“You look amazing,” Frank says to him, and Gerard turns his head to look back at his house so that Frank can’t see him blushing. Gerard knows it’s not a date. It’s not. But it feels like it is.

Frank however knows that it technically is a date and he also knows that Gerard is completely clueless and needs to have a brick thrown at his head. But it’s a very nice head, so Frank doesn’t want to do that. And it might not help.

“Uh,” Gerard says, “we should go. Before Mikey gets home.”

“Yeah,” Frank agrees, putting the car in reverse as he backs out of the driveway. He doesn’t think to mention that Mikey’s probably over at Pete’s being showered in baked goods by his mother. Or, like, in a bush making out with Pete, either one seems likely to Frank.

“So, uh,” Gerard says, wincing at the fact that he has nothing to say to Frank. Well, in truth, he’s got hundreds of things to say to Frank, all of them as invasive as the next. He doesn’t say any of those things though.

“I’m really hoping that this means you don’t entirely hate me,” Frank asks Gerard, looking at him only for a second, because any more would be bad for two reasons. Gerard would notice, and also, he is driving a car, so not looking at the road can have some bad consequences, all of them are worse than embarrassing yourself in front of a boy.

“I think it’s probably too late to deny that I don’t completely hate you.”

“But the way you say completely-”

“Frank, just, ugh,” he sighs loudly, “I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you when you bought me tickets to a concert when I was acting the way I was to you.”

“It wasn’t unwarranted.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Gerard says, “but I think I kept the act going too long. I mean, I am still pissed, that’s never going to go away-”

“Yeah, I know,” Frank says with complete honesty. He does know. Gee told him. Eight years have passed between Gerard now and the Gerard that he will become, and in that eight years, he has still failed to forgive Frank. He is hoping he can do many things to at least try to redeem himself a little bit between now and then.

“What? Oh, yeah,” Gerard says, Frank’s words seeming to muddle him a little bit. “But, I mean to say, you’re not a bad dude. Mikey likes you. I mean, I think mainly he likes you because you’re his insight into Pete, but he’s like that sometimes. And Ray doesn’t seem to mind you either, and if there’s any speaker of truth, it’s him.”

“You can always trust him?” Frank asks.

“Well, I don’t know about always, he enjoys Moby Dick.”

“Enjoys?” Frank asks, “like, he enjoys it even after that assignment in Sophomore year where we had to dissect every single word of it and basically just rewrite the entire length of the book into a hellish walking thesaurus, which the book already is I mean, come on Melville, I get it, you like the color white but I don’t want to read six million words on it, and fucking hell Ahab, grow up, I get it, you’re pissed and you hold a grudge, but just let the fucking thing go already, you long-winded piece of shit.”

“See, and that’s what I told him,” Gerard says. “But does he listen to me?”

“Why are all classics that everyone commends so awful?”

“Like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and that fucking table. I don’t give a fuck about the famous marble table, shut up.”

“Great Expectations leaves you with just that, and then you come out if it thinking that you would rather have been physically assaulted with a baseball bat for six hours than to have read that piece of shit.”

“Dante’s Inferno is the most hate-filled book imaginable. Is there anyone that man did not hate?” Gerard asks.

“I could sit here forever shitting on literary classics,” Frank says.

“I could write my own book about how much I hate Ethan Frome,” Gerard says, shaking his head.

“So you’ve never read Tess of the d'Urbervilles then.”

“Frank,” Gerard says, “he tried to kill himself by sledding into a tree.”

“Gerard,” Frank replies, “she was executed for murdering the man who raped her.”

“Frank,” Gerard repeats, the same tone as before, “he fell in love with his wife’s cousin.”

“Gerard,” Frank says, “he pretends to be her cousin, rapes her, impregnates her, the baby dies, she falls in love with a different guy, and on their wedding night she tells him that she had a baby so now she’s impure and her husband runs away from her where he almost dies of Malaria and then comes back after his horribly timed epiphany of her purity but she’s gone off and married her rapist so then she kills him to be with the guy she loves and then they run away and the police find her and they execute her and her husband nails her sister.”

“Wow,” Gerard says, “you win.”

“It is the most depressing book on the face of this planet,” Frank says, “and I will forever hate Mr. Smythe with a passion for making me read it.”

“Why did she marry her rapist?” Gerard asks.

“Money,” Frank shrugs, as if it’s obvious. Really all the stupid things in life boil down to that one thing. “And he was the only dude who’d have her since she wasn’t a virgin.”

“Man, why are classics always so depressing and shitty?”

“It’s because they’re hyped up so much that you start to believe it. If they were to tell you honestly that it’s a book full of angst, and cynicism than you wouldn’t read it. And you can really tell in that older stuff that they used to get paid by word. Like I said, great expectations. But before you go shitting on Catcher in the Rye, just know that it is my favorite book and I will punch you in the ear.”

“Fair enough,” Gerard says. “But like, Catcher in the Rye is the favorite book of psychopaths.”

“I’m not in the business of denying that many psychopaths enjoy Catcher in the Rye, but they also probably enjoy ice cream.”

“Again, fair enough,” Gerard says.

Frank has to pause for Gerard to tell him where to go, because he’s not fantastic with directions, and he ends up pulling into the parking lot of a very decrepit looking building a few minutes later. This place honestly looks like a poorly rehabilitated speakeasy.

Gerard seems to like it, but Frank is not so thrilled. It’s different to Gerard’s house. Though both are old, Gerard’s house does not look grungy, or dirty, or germy. Everything, from the door handle that Frank grabs for Gerard because he is a gentleman, to the floor that he stands on looks like it could use a bath in Purell.

“I like it,” Gerard says, noting Frank’s uncomfortable face.

“Okay, there’s charm and then there’s gross,” Frank says.

“It’s not that bad,” Gerard replies.

“There’s a hole in the ceiling.”

“Most buildings in this town have holes in the ceiling,” Gerard says, “the old barber, the old town hall building, that bar uptown.”

Frank doesn’t know why he jumps at the words ‘that bar uptown.’ Because of course Gerard knows that bar. Because Frank met Gerard in that bar. Frank fell in love with Gerard in that bar. Or at least outside of it. Though he would never admit that to anyone. Because he’d known the guy for a minute and half when he made Frank fall in love with him. But he supposes that that’s what happens when timelines get all twisted up with each other. Gerard, Gee, he must’ve broken something. Broken some small little thread in space, because Frank loved him instantly. Gerard might have carried that back with him. That’s the only thing Frank can figure. Because you don’t just fall in love with a stranger. Because that’s stupid.

Frank is falling in love with him again, he can feel it. He feels it when he looks at Gerard’s profile, the way his features look so much more distinguished from this angle. You can see the curve of his nose and the way his lips meet, making Frank extremely hungry for him.

What Frank wouldn’t give to be alone, and to just push him up against a wall and kiss the fuck out of him. He’d sell his soul for that. He just wants to shower Gerard with all the love he’s built up for him, and he doesn’t care if even one fifth of that is reciprocated, as long as Gerard were to kiss him back. Frank can’t imagine Gerard could ever, not in the future, not now, not ever, love Frank in the way that Frank loves him.

Frank’s so unaccustomed to throwing that word around. Love. It’s not a word that can be thrown out so Willy-nilly. It’s not like it loses its meaning when you profess how much you love your favorite show, but it’s not as true as when you talk about someone who you do actually love. And Frank loves Gerard. It’s too late to deny it. He’s fallen, and he’s fallen hard. He knows it. He’s not sure how he knows it, but he does. It’s like this warmth he gets all over his body when he so much as thinks about Gerard. It’s that way that Frank smiles when he hears the sound of Gerard’s voice. It’s the fact that he misses Gerard when he’s standing right next to him.

Frank’s never been in love before. He never knew what it would feel like. He certainly never imagined this. It’s almost more painful than it is amazing. But it’s not a bad kind of pain. It’s this pain of wanting to be so unbelievably close to him that he’s void of what makes them individuals. Frank thinks, what love is, what it really is, it’s wanting to hold the other person, not in a death grip, but just hug them, and know that they’re hugging you back. That’s what it feels like to him. He doesn’t need any of the other stuff. He doesn’t need to kiss Gerard, or fuck him, or any of that stuff that they talk about in romance novels. He just needs to hold him. And talk to him. Make him laugh. Make him laugh that dumb, high, goose honking laugh.

Frank once broke his arm. It was their fifth grade graduation party, the class went on a field trip to a roller-skating rink. He didn’t know what he was doing. Brendon had told him outright, rollerblades are easier, the glide is better, the control is stronger, the stopping is easier. It looks like there’s less balance, but there’s so much more with four wheels in a row rather than four, with two each side by side. But Frank did not listen. He broke his arm. Two days left of school and he broke his arm. At that time, he had thought breaking his arm would be the most painful thing that had ever happened to him. It was pretty excruciating.

Breaking his arm, it doesn’t hold a candle to how much it hurts for him to be in love without Gerard knowing.

He follows Gerard over to a small, cramped looking booth near the back, Gerard doesn’t need a good spot he says, he doesn’t like mosh pits, he just likes the music. Frank’s not complaining. In a mosh pit, it’s easier to accidentally get really close to Gerard and be extremely creepy with his thoughts in that closeness, but somehow, having their own spot is more intimate. It makes the moment theirs, not theirs and two hundred other teenagers, just theirs.

It’s one of those wrap around booths, but it’s not grand and large like it is at family restaurants. The stuffing is peaking out of the seat, and the table is tiny, not the proper size for this booth, so you either have to put it in the middle and be far away from it or squish everyone on one side and pull the table closer to you. Gerard gets in first, moving in to sit in the middle, and Frank decides not to get too close. There’s so much room, it would look suspicious if he were to get too close to Gerard with five feet of space on his other side that he could be occupying. This way, the table isn’t too far in between them, but it’d be closer to them both if Frank were closer to Gerard. But he doesn’t move.

Frank left his fake ID at home. He doesn’t know this place as well as the bar, he doesn’t know how easy it is to trick the bartenders. Besides he’s not really all that fond of the looseness, not on a day like tonight anyway. He doesn’t want to be impaired. If that’s what he wants for the night, then it’s fine, to be a little more free and have dulled inhibitions. But Frank doesn’t want to forget this. He doesn’t want to lose a moment of this. Not a single second. If he were to be tipsy, even the tiniest amount, he might miss something, some small little nuance. He doesn’t want that. Frank has plans to keep his eyes on Gerard for the whole night. Watch his smile, his every move, that moment when he mimes the lyrics thinking that no one else is watching. He wants all of it, but he wishes he were holding Gerard’s hand during.

Frank looks at Gerard’s hand, resting lightly on the table, so completely plainly. His fingernails are kind of dirty, and his hand looks a little dry, and Frank shouldn’t be so beckoned by it, but he just wants to hold Gerard’s hand. He just wants that. He wants to be holding Gerard’s hand and not have to care about himself, or anyone’s judgment. He wants Gerard to be grinning like a dork as he looks at Frank, blushing after Frank tells him he’s beautiful. He wants it so much, he almost feels like crying, because it’s right there. Gerard’s hand is right fucking there.

Frank makes his own hands into fists, digging his own fingernails into the palms of his hand to keep him from doing anything stupid. It’s not helping.

He still wants to hold Gerard’s hand.

Fuck the Beatles.

“I’m going to get us some drinks,” Frank says, because the only thing he can do to get away from Gerard is that.

“What?” Gerard asks, “No!”

“Why?” Frank asks, stopping to look at him, looking completely serious.

“Because you paid for these tickets,” Gerard says, and he starts to shuffle around the other side of the booth, which isn’t technically the long way round because he’s in the middle, but Frank feels like it is. “I can get the drinks.”

“No, it’s fine,” Frank says, but Gerard just gives him this evil eye that he does not want to argue with. “Alright.”

“What’ya want?” Gerard asks him.

“Coke is fine,” Frank says, Gerard nods, and just like that he’s disappearing. They’re here nearly an hour early, and it’s already starting to fill up. Not a bad turnout for a band that Frank had never heard of before Mikey told him about them.

This isn’t much better, Frank thinks. He’s still thinking about Gerard and how it would feel to hold his hand, and he hates how much he wants it.

Frank never once thought to hold Gee’s hand. It never occurred to him. He was caught up in the heat of the moment, he just forgot to think about it. He’d never held a guy’s hand before, only a girls, and he still hasn’t held a guy’s hand. Not once. It feels so wrong to have visited all the other bases and never held anyone’s hand. It’s not something he likes.

Gerard comes back some time later, it feels like ten minutes, so it’s probably only five. He brings Frank a coke, and thank god it’s not in a glass that they provided because Frank doesn’t think he would want to drink in a cup from this place. Instead, it’s just in a plastic disposable cup, and he accepts it with a thank you as Gerard scoots over to the middle again. Frank’s pretty sure Gerard’s got a coke too, because of the way he’d handed it to Frank, like it didn’t really matter which one he gave him. He knows it’s stupid, but he would love to be that gross couple who share a pop and get two straws. He knows it’s stupid but he wants to be that couple. He wants to be gross. He wants to be the couple that Pete and Mikey still aren’t but someday will be.

“You okay?” Gerard asks him, and Frank feels like he’s being shaken awake as he’s pulled from some distant reverie.

“What?”

“You just had this weird look on your face,” Gerard says.

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” Frank says. “I’m great.”

“Yeah?” Gerard asks, like he’s still not satisfied with the answer.

Frank nods, “Yeah. Completely. I’m having a good time so far.”

Gerard smiles lightly, not entirely sure what Frank means. All they’ve done is talk to each other, but that doesn’t make sense. He just can’t imagine that Frank enjoys spending time with him.

Frank curses himself for not noticing this guy sooner. If he’d only known. He could have befriended him years ago and then Gerard never would’ve hated him in the first place so getting him to fall in love and accept that Frank, does in fact like him a lot, wouldn’t be so hard. But maybe Frank never would’ve looked twice at Gerard. Maybe they’d have been friends, and hell maybe they would’ve known for years that each other was gay but Frank would never have considered him. He would’ve just looked over Gerard’s head the whole time, not noticed how perfect he was.

Maybe Gee is right. Maybe Frank really only ever did look twice at Gerard because of Gee. It’s all some big looping paradox, where Frank never would have looked at Gerard if it hadn’t been for the fact that he fell for Gerard who was not in fact Gerard, or at least not yet. Frank’s brain hurts.

All he knows is that Gerard is sitting right there and it has never been so hard to hold himself back from anything before. Sitting with Gerard at lunch wasn’t this hard. He was always surrounded by other people, or worried about someone seeing him, or just worried about Gerard rejecting him, but here, it’s so much harder. Here, Frank looks at him and there’s no barriers there except for themselves and its infuriating. He’s never been closer to Gerard, had more of a chance to fucking go for it with him, he’s never been in a situation this reckless and this hypnotic before. Yet still, he doesn’t get to be with Gerard. Not even now, knowing what he does. He doesn’t get that.

Frank sighs and looks down into his hands. If Gerard had thought he’d looked odd before, he shouldn’t see this face. Frank can’t see his own face, but he feels like utter despair, so he knows he must look it. He wants something so bad that he doesn’t have and it’s painful and infuriating, and he can barely handle it anymore.

Frank starts to question whether coming here was a good idea. He’s been so focused on what could go wrong that he never once imagined how hard it would be having to look at Gerard and knowing that he doesn’t have him.

“Oh fuck,” he mumbles to himself.

“What did you say?” Gerard asks, and Frank looks up, switching his face to the blankest one he can make.

“It’s nothing,” Frank says. As he says it he thinks about how real that is. It’s the fact that it’s nothing that makes him ache so fucking much.