The Chasing of Moons

Frank would deny this to anybody who asked, he’d even deny it to himself in the mirror, but catching up to Gerard, he thinks, hey, this is a good vantage point to maybe look at his ass. So he does, and maybe Gerard’s pants aren’t doing him any favors, they’re kind of baggy, probably only held on by his belt, but Frank doesn’t have to use too much of his imagination to guess what his ass is like.

Frank hurries himself because there’s less than five minutes before the bell rings again and he needs to at least say something of a redeeming quality so that Gerard doesn’t think he’s completely insane. Though to be fair, even Frank isn’t ruling that out himself at this point.

He’s a few steps behind Gerard when he suddenly realizes that he doesn’t know what to start with. ‘Hi’ sounds too casual. ‘Hello’ is too formal. ‘Hey’ is too confrontational. ‘Sup’ is too idiotic. ‘What’s up’ is too nineties. He doesn’t know the right thing to say, so Frank just wings it.

“Gerard?” he settles on, making his way the final space between the two of them.

Gerard looks at him very briefly before making a huffing sound and turning his head away. That’s not the ideal reaction Frank would’ve gotten out of him, but at least he didn’t punch him in the face or anything.

Frank’s at a loss though when Gerard doesn’t respond. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t ask him what Frank wants, doesn’t chew him out, doesn’t say anything back at all. He just stays silent and continues walking.

“Okay, so about earlier-”

“You high?”

Frank’s at a loss for words for a moment before he starts tripping over his words, “What? No! I swear, I’m not, I just, like you reminded me of someone, and I, you were just, and I’m sorry.”

Gerard makes no attempt to reply, he just continues to walk down the hall, and Frank’s never found himself more confused as to what to say next than he finds himself now. He can’t think of a single word in the English language all of a sudden. The only word that’s coming to him is crêpe, and for the life of him, he doesn’t know why.

“You, uh, you don’t like me very much, do you?” Frank asks him.

“What ever would make you think that?” Gerard says, still not glancing at him, “you ignore me for nearly eight years, didn’t even bother to know my name, and now you’re talking to me just because I look like someone you know?”

“I, well, I’m a very oblivious person, I wouldn’t take it to heart if I were you,” Frank says, thinking that he’s achieved a minor success given that he got Gerard talking at all.

“Oh well that makes it all better then, doesn’t it?” Gerard replies, oozing sarcasm.

“I, well, I’m sorry?” Frank asks.

“For what? The ignoring me part, the not knowing my name part, the embarrassing yourself in front of me part, or the fact that you’re a complete idiot?”

“You don’t even know me, like, how could you know that I’m an idiot? I’m not denying anything, but you can’t know that,” Frank asks, and then he realizes he just called himself an idiot, but he decides that if Gerard dislikes him, being self-deprecating is actually probably a good thing.

“Because I’m not as unaware as you are.”

Gerard’s taller than Frank, but that’s not saying much. He’s about as tall as Brendon, but Brendon’s height is more in his legs, while Gerard seems to have shorter legs so it’s not as hard to keep up with him. That doesn’t mean that Gerard isn’t walking as quickly as he can in an effort to shake Frank off.

“So you think you know me?” Frank asks him.

“That’s not what I said,” Gerard replies, and it’s the first time when Frank thinks he might have caught Gerard off guard.

“Listen, I can’t take back any years of not knowing you exist, and we both know that, but I’m just trying to make amends now.”

“For what reason? So what if I look like someone you know, that doesn’t mean I want to talk to you.”

“Yeah well, maybe giving me a chance isn’t a bad idea,” Frank offers.

“Why do you care about me all of a sudden?” Gerard asks him, sounding pissed as all hell, which makes Frank’s bones feel like paper Mache.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Why should you?” Gerard counteracts which is both a good point and also extremely hard to reply to.

“I think I’m allowed to try talking to you,” Frank groans.

“But I’m also allowed to ignore you,” Gerard replies.

“So that’s what you’re just going to do then? Ignore me?”

Gerard doesn’t respond. He just keeps walking, almost losing Frank when he takes a sharp turn down a hallway. That’s a fairly self-explanatory response to Frank’s question though. Yes, he does plan on ignoring Frank.

“Okay, well if you’re going to ignore me than this is a perfect time for me to tell you that I’m sorry if you think I’ve been a jerk to you. I mean, I think there’s a huge divergence between being a bitch and just plainly being unaware. I’m not friends with a lot of people, there are a lot of people I’ve been in the same class as for a bunch of years and never talked to, that’s not anything that’s on you, or me really. I hang out with my friends, it’s not really my fault if we’ve never socialized, there’s two people in this equation, Gerard. You and me, if you’re honestly going to hate me for the fact that I’ve never talked to you, I don’t see why it’s out of the cards for me to hate you back, because, like, it can go both ways.”

“Then explain to me why the fuck it is that I know your name, and you had no idea what mine was?” Gerard snaps at him.

“Well it’s the same as when you watch a movie with someone and you know the actors names and your friend doesn’t. It’s just never been in a frame of passing for my life.”

“Yeah?” Gerard asks, not sounding at all pleased with the answer, “So I guess that all the times you and I have been in the same class, which has been at least once every year since sixth grade I should point out, and all the thousands of times during roll call when you could’ve paid attention to see what my fucking name was, that was just never in your frame of passing. Never once, not a single fucking time could you have listened for three seconds to find out what my name was? Frank, I hate to be the bringer of bad news here, but your argument is completely void of validity.”

“I, well, how was I supposed to know I’d need your name?” Frank questions.

“How about because I’m a human who deserves at least the bare minimum of respect,” Gerard retorts.

“Alright so you think I’m a piece of shit, and there’s literally nothing I can say to stop that, is there?”

“Nope.”

“Well, that’s just great,” Frank sighs, “what if I were to tell you something embarrassing about myself, would that endear me to you?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay, well I’ll give it a go anyway. I, uh, once told a cashier I loved them after they handed me my change. I got my hand stuck in a vase once. I used to think Croatia was the capital of Austria.”

“All that says to me is that you’re a poor decision maker and bad at geography.”

“Well, I’m trying here, but I don’t know what else I can say,” Frank admits, “I honestly just don’t want you to hate me.”

“What makes me so special then?” Gerard asks him, and that’s a multifaceted question to say the least. Frank decides against admitting that he’s the younger version of the guy he fucked, because that would be a bad decision on many levels. The first being, Frank’s supposed to be straight, and the second being that he’d probably end up in a rubber room.

“Can’t I just want to get to know you?”

“If the only reason you want to get to know me is because I look like someone else, leave me out of it,” Gerard says.

“Okay, you make a very good point there, but maybe the fact that you look like someone else is making me realize that I’ve never really talked to you and I feel guilty about it now?”

“Then that’s not my problem. Your guilt is yours to bare, not mine.”

“But-”

“Listen,” Gerard says, stopping in front of his classroom, and if Frank cared to notice, he’d realize that he’s going to be really late for his next class, because he’s about as far from the History classroom as he can possibly get while still being on campus. “If you honestly think I’m not used to the harassment of the popular guys by now, then you’re dumber than I gave you credit for. I’ve had three years to get used to being the gay guy that everyone wants to make fun of, alright? So I don’t need you to pile onto the shit everyone wants to call me. I get it, okay? I’m gross, and you probably want me to rot in hell or something. Just save it, I’ve heard it all before.”

“I-” Frank starts, feeling his mouth actually widen in disbelief. “I didn’t even know you were gay.”

“Yeah right,” Gerard says, “just piss off, okay?”

At that, Gerard turns around to enter his class, leaving Frank just standing there to feel like an ultimate failure. He can’t even begin to think of how awful that all went.

Frank turns around, looks at the faces of people walking by, unaware or uncaring of who they are. That only makes him feel even shittier though, because now he can’t help but to think that he treats everyone the same as he does Gerard, fully capable of learning who they are but neglecting to do so. But it’s not like he can know everyone. Frank’s only got so much room in his head to store information, and if he’s never going to need to know someone’s name, then why should he be expected to learn it.

Frank hears the bell ring a few seconds after he starts to move off in the direction he should be going, and he groans, because he’s going to be late and he knows that for sure now. He might as well take his time, because there’s no chance that he’s going to get by on this one. Even if his teacher is late, he’s on the other side of the school. There are a few stragglers around him who start sprinting at the tone, but Frank instead aims for the bathroom. He decides it’d be a better idea to collect his thoughts now than to try to do it in class. At least he can have more privacy in front of a mirror than he would have in the seat next to his friends who are both going to be eying him strangely for the rest of the day.

They have every right to, and Frank knows that. He’s been acting very strangely today. He’s been all over the place. Nothing he’s done or said has made much sense. First he’s supposed to be bragging about some chick he supposedly slept with, and then he’s freaking out over a nameless face that he’s seen a million times before. Now he’s late for class and he looks like he’s been to hell and back again.

Frank steps into the bathroom, which is empty, as he’d expected. He looks around to make sure before he huffs and stands in front of the mirror trying to grapple with how severely he’s messed up whatever he was trying to have with Gerard. He can’t think straight though because he just keeps cringing at the way that it all went down. He never anticipated that Gerard was going to hate him. He maybe expected Gerard being uncomfortable, awkward, or wary around him, but Frank did not think that he could actually earn the hate of someone he’d never talked to.

Except now he has one piece of good news. He doesn’t have even the remotest chance of ever being able to utilize the information for his own benefit, but he now knows Gerard is gay. So although he hates Frank and has no intention of ever softening up to him, at least Frank has the knowledge that it’s not completely impossible. It’s highly improbable Gerard will ever look at him twice, but now Frank gets to have dreams that don’t make him feel as guilty. It’s never as easy to daydream about straight guys, it’s very uncomfortable really, but this, this is good news.

Even if it is good news, Frank’s still left to mope away looking into his own eyes feeling like someone kicked him in the stomach. He doesn’t know why he’s so upset, Gee probably has nothing to do with Gerard in the slightest, but Frank can’t help but feel like the similarities outweigh the impossibility of the situation. They have the same voice, same face, same teeth, same everything. The only differences seem to be the most important ones though, like their age, and most importantly the fact that Gee seemed to be all over him, but Gerard, well, Gerard wants nothing to do with Frank. There’s probably nothing less ideal than the fact that Frank just might have a crush on the guy who just might hate his guts.