The Chasing of Moons

“What the everloving fuck is a cummerbund?” Mikey can be heard shouting from probably every room in Frank’s house.

“Isn’t that the guy from Sherlock?” Brendon asks.

“I said cummerbund, not the creature from the black lagoon,” Mikey says, shouting. “You know what, fuck the cummerbund. Fuck the tie!”

“Yeah, just go naked,” Frank says, rolling his eyes.

“Pete probably wouldn’t mind,” Brendon says.

Someone knocks on the door at that, and Ray sticks his head in looking annoyed, “hurry up, you guys. Your dates are waiting.”

“I don’t have a date,” Brendon says, pouting, “I’m all alone in this world.”

“Damn straight,” Mikey says.

“Okay, do you mean damn straight as in, ‘darn tootin’, or do you mean like ‘fucking heterosexuals,’ because if it’s the latter you deserve a high five,” Frank says.

“Who the fuck says darn tootin?” Mikey asks. “What year is it, 1925?”

“Seriously though,” Ray says, “hurry your asses up. Unless one of you is defusing a bomb in here, it shouldn’t be taking this long.”

“I don’t know how to do a tie!” Mikey says, whining and stomping a little bit like he’s a small child, which cannot be definitively ruled out. Frank gawks at him utterly awestruck at the fact that there is something in this world mikeyway does not know how to do. Frank was under the impression that he could hand Mikey a saxophone and he would know how to play it without ever having seen one before. Mikey’s just that kind of person. He can literally do everything.

“Oh my god,” Brendon says, and Frank starts nodding until Brendon continues, “at least have the forethought to buy a clip on like I did!” Brendon unclips his tie to demonstrate his superior intelligence, much to the total horror of Frank.

“Do I have to do everything around here?” Frank asks, walking over to Mikey and starting on the tie for him. Frank went to catholic school for several years before he could convince his mom to free him from the agony. Of course he knows how to tie a tie.

He finishes Mikey’s tie and Mikey says creepily, “do I look pretty?”

“Gorgeous,” Ray says, “now hurry your ass up.”

“We’re coming!” Frank shouts back at him.

“Hurry the fuck up would you,” Gerard yells from downstairs and Frank gets a little giddy inside, thinking about Gerard waiting for him down there. Probably looking like a million bucks and thinking that he’s not worth a dime. Frank intends to prove him wrong one of these days.

Frank gets to the top of the stairs and he’s about to go downstairs before he gets a thought.

“Somebody play something epic!” Frank calls down the stairs. He wants his entrance to be as epic as he deserves, and Frank deserves the best in his opinion. That’s why he’s got Gerard, because he deserves the best that the world has to offer him.

“I’ve got the Pokémon theme tune on my phone,” Pete shouts back.

“I was really thinking something more along the lines of The Final Countdown, but that’ll work just as well,” Frank responds. He waits for Pete, and hears the sound of the actual Pokémon theme tune a moment later. It takes every will inside of his entire body to not sing along.

And that’s how Frank makes his entrance. In the grandest way humanly possible. To the Pokémon theme tune. He’s the first one to walk down the stairs and when he sees Gerard, Gerard is looking at him with the rolling of his eyes evident on his face, but he’s smiling. Frank doesn’t care that he might look like an idiot, or a penguin, because Gerard is still waiting there to meet him. Gerard’s always going to be there to meet him, Frank thinks.

“Well fuck me, all of you are showing off to your dates,” Brendon scowls, walking behind the two of them, with Ray soon to follow. Brendon had tried to petition to let him take his dog to the prom but the school wouldn’t let him. He’s probably bitter more because of that then because he doesn’t have a date. Ray looks annoyed as he follows the three of them down the stairs, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Wait, I’m not supposed to see you!” Pete says, covering his eyes for a second before Gerard smacks him over the head.

“That’s if you’re a bride on your wedding day, you dolt,” Gerard says. “And Mikey ain’t no bride.”

“Oh, right,” Pete says, bringing his hands down and then looking at Mikey who honestly looks like he’s on the verge of either throwing a table at Pete or screwing him on a table.

“You look so generic, like you rented a twenty-dollar tux from a costume store,” Gerard says when Frank makes his way over to him.

“Excuse you,” Frank says, “this was thirty dollars.”

“All for me?” Gerard says, pretending to look surprised and honored.

“All for you!” Frank plays along.

“Darling you shouldn’t have,” Gerard says, with a terribly offensive British accent.

“What did you bring me?” Frank asks, seeing that Gerard is holding something and Frank likes presents. He still has a six-year-old boy on Christmas day trapped inside of him.

“I got you a corsage, but like, I didn’t want to get you a normal corsage, so I got you a corsage with the bat symbol on it,” Gerard says, holding out the corsage that does indeed have the Batman logo on it. Frank grins as Gerard puts it around his wrist. There’s no gift in the entire world that could possibly make Gerard more endearing than a corsage with the bat symbol.

“I was going to get you a boutonniere, but I thought it would be too boring, so I got you a Stormtrooper pin,” Frank replies. He takes Gerard’s lapel, and puts the pin in place, feeling Gerard eyeing him with the same total adoration that Frank has for him.

“Oh my god there’s two of them,” Mikey says, looking at Gerard and Frank with disgust.

“You’re perfect for each other,” Pete says, grinning like a maniac, because he loves love. Especially stupid romantic gestures, Pete’s just a syrupy mess for things like that.

“They didn’t even coordinate it,” Mikey shakes his head, “I know, I’m the one he kept bugging at two in the morning with pictures on Etsy.”

“I didn’t get you anything,” Pete says, reaching into his pocket, “unless you want half a Twix bar.”

Meanwhile, Ray is standing over by his date, a girl called Christa who Frank wasn’t aware existed. He thinks that he should probably start focusing on his friends lives now that the enormous fucking wave of chaos is over with. And Brendon is standing in the corner eating Doritos but what else is new.

Frank’s mom demands to huddle them all together for at least an entire five gigabits worth of pictures before she’ll let any of them even consider leaving. Frank knows that by the time they get there, the punch is already going to have been spiked so Frank really wants to hurry up so that he can put a fake bug in it.

Given that it is prom night, and given that Frank’s entire life is a bad teenage movie, of course they’re going to prom in a fucking limo. How else do you arrive at prom when you’re a bunch of seniors who are literally incapable of affording college next year? Of course you have to spend an inordinate amount of money so that you can look like a bunch of twats as you arrive to prom behind a literally five block line of other rented limos. And Prince is probably in town so one of them is going to be a purple limo. Because no teenage movie is complete without a random celebrity cameo, and unfortunately, James Van Der Beek was unavailable.

“If all goes well,” Mikey says, “Gerard and Frank will only break up twice tonight.”

“Ha ha,” Frank says stalely, but it’s true. It’s been barely a month and they’ve broken up about six times now.

“If it goes really well,” Ray pipes in, “Mikey and Pete won’t get arrested for public indecency.”

“You blow a guy behind one dumpster and all of a sudden you’re a sex freak,” Mikey says, followed by a chorus of ‘ews’ and groans, and someone, Frank isn’t going to take the credit for it, but someone, throws a shoe at him.

“Forgetting the fact that my little brother is disgusting,” Gerard says, “Frank and I haven’t broken up in like two weeks.”

“I know,” Ray says, shaking his head, “and I’m out thirty bucks because of it.”

“Break up bingo,” Mikey explains to Ray’s very confused date. “I got fifty for the time Frank tackled Gerard outside a concert hall.”

“Some dude was offering him a cigarette and I was not letting that happen,” Frank says, because he thinks he was well warranted to tackle Gerard. Gee had literally warned him of that event and Frank is true to his word. He would never be able to live with himself if he failed the one task that Gee had made for him, aside of course from the grand design of it all.

“I still think you got it on a technicality,” Brendon says begrudgingly.

“We’re not that bad,” Frank says, because they have worked out most of the kinks that were causing them friction at the start. It’s mostly been about ironing out what wasn’t working and learning to settle with it. Neither of them have ever been in a real relationship before each other. It’s not easy trying to figure things out when no one else around you knows how to do it either. No one ever said love was easy. Love is actually really fucking hard, and tiring. But when it’s with Gerard, Frank is more certain than he is of anything else, that it’s so damn worth it.

“Let’s change the subject before someone loses and eyeball for rolling it so hard. Who brought the champagne?” Brendon asks.

“We don’t have champagne,” Pete says, “but I brought Capri Sun.”

“Let’s get the party started,” Brendon shrugs.

“Who wants a juice pouch?” Pete asks, looking excitedly as he grabs a cooler from the floor. Frank doesn’t know how he snuck that in here without any of them noticing.

“Only if you have fucking grape,” Frank says.

“Feisty,” Pete scolds before tossing him a juice pouch, which are usually superior to juice boxes because they double as squirt guns.

“This calls for a toast,” Brendon says when Pete’s handed out all his juice boxes, before he grabs two for himself, and puts a straw in each. Frank knew Pete when he was a little kid, he knows very well that Pete has a thing for drinking two juices at once. It’s a Pete thing, it doesn’t make sense, but Pete’s mind is laid out differently than everyone else’s. There’s a very real chance that Pete was supposed to be a dog but someone flicked the wrong switch and he accidentally got labeled as a human.

“To what?” Gerard asks.

Frank thinks for a moment, before saying, “to the chasing of moons.”

“The what?” Brendon asks, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Frank smirks, “just that the future is an ominous and on-looming beast, and I don’t know what it has in store for me, but I’m excited to find out. I’ll sleep better every night knowing that when the moon goes down my future grows nearer.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Gerard says, smiling widely at Frank, in awe of how he managed to land such a perfect boy. Because Gerard is a sap for Frank, and it doesn’t matter how stupid the words out of Frank’s mouth are, he still loves them. He makes fun of Frank a lot, but that’s part of the love, it’s a package deal.

“That’s a fucking pretentions way of saying ‘here’s to the future’. You’d have to be some dumbass loser from fucking Minnesota to think that makes any sense.”

“Now that’s a toast I can get behind,” Mikey says, looking over at Pete who’s grinning madly with two straws in his mouth. And Mikey is presented with that damn table predicament again.

The limo rolls into the school parking lot not too much later, and it’s a mad house of people. Everyone is getting there at the same time, because it started an hour ago and everyone wants to be fashionably late.

“Who’s ready for the worst night of their life!” Gerard says excitedly.

“Can’t wait to look back on this day in ten years and shudder with disgust and internal regret,” Frank grins. But at least he’ll be doing that with Gerard. Probably looking through a photo album, and trying their best not to laugh at their old haircuts.

The rest of them all make either groaning sounds are fake cheering sounds, while Pete looks genuinely excited. He’d be the only one. Except Frank, who just doesn’t want to admit it.

Frank grabs Gerard before he leaves the limo, needing to have one minute alone with him before they go in there surrounded by hundreds of people. Tonight is the most important night of their teenage lives, or so teen dramas would have you believe. Frank thinks that every night spent with Gerard is the most important day of his life.

“What’s up?” Gerard asks, looking concerned.

“I just want you to know that I love you,” Frank says, and Gerard’s blush appears almost immediately.

“I love you too,” Gerard says, looking a little scared of saying the words. Not because he doesn’t mean them, but because he doesn’t want to have to hear them out loud coming from his mouth. It’s not untrue to say them, but he’s never heard his own voice say it out loud to Frank, even though he’s been thinking those words over and over for every second of every minute spent with Frank.

The second it’s out there, it feels right. He doesn’t know how long he’s going to have with Frank, so he needs for Frank to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it’s true and it always will be. They’re gay, if their life were a movie, one of them would die before the credits, so it’s important for it to be said before it’s too late.

And Frank deserves to be the person who Gerard loses his ‘I love you’ virginity to.

“Good,” Frank says, also blushing madly, because the only person he’s ever said that too before is his mom. Saying it to Gerard is a really huge deal, and hearing it heard back is huger.

“That’s the first time we’ve said that.”

“Yeah,” Frank nods. “It won’t be the last.”

Biting his lip, Gerard says, “good.”