The Chasing of Moons

Frank wakes up in a cold sweat from a very peculiar dream. It’s more of a memory than anything else but usually when you have a dream about fucking someone it doesn’t feel like you’ve just woken up from a dream about being chased by Chuckie.

Frank looks around the dark room trying to calm his breathing, wondering why on earth it bothered him so much. Maybe it was because of the fact that he knows it’s never going to happen again and that feels like a stab in the gut. He wants it to happen again. He wants to make out with Gee again and spend a weekend with him, and do everything with him. Frank has no idea why he feels so strong so quickly. He shouldn’t and he knows that and he hates that he knows that because it just makes him feel guilty about it. He can’t change the fact that there is something about that guy. There was just something about Gee. This glimmer. There was such a weird gravitational pull of some sort about him that kept Frank close, made him cling, and now he’s gone.

Frank’s stuck here, the same old high schooler in the same old dumb bedroom, in the same old bed sheets, looking back at the same old faces on the same old posters on the same old walls. Nothing’s changed. He knows that nothing has changed. He looks around and he sees everything the way it was a week ago, but everything is different. It’s like the opposite of tainted, everything that is in this room, was seen or touched by Gee. Frank looks at the pillow beneath his head and he remembers when Gee’s head was there, right where Frank’s head is now, his head was here, but now it’s not. If Frank breathes in deep enough he can smell him. He can smell Gee. He’d smelled like cinnamon, and like soap, and like coffee. It was nice, he felt warm.

Frank looks at the red light from across the room where his clock shows the time, and he feels a groaning sound come from him when he realizes it’s four in the morning. He’s tired, he feels his bones protesting to go back to sleep, but he knows that nothing will actually come of it. He’s awake, he knows he is. He would really rather not be. He would rather be blissfully dreaming about clouds and jelly beans, but he’s awake and there’s no point in trying to get back to sleep if he’s going to have to be awake soon anyway.

That’s why Frank finds himself being pulled by his body out of bed, which he would really rather not do, and wandering into the bathroom, which he would also really rather not do, to take a shower, which he is actually kind of okay with.

Frank tries to wash away this panging feeling in his gut that he’s never going to see Gee. He knows that’s true, but at the same time there’s Gerard. But he’s not the same person, and even though Frank knows that, he still feels like that’s untrue. Gerard is Gee, he has to be, but even if he’s the same person, he’s different because he has different experiences to Gee.

If Frank’s guess is right and Gee really is Gerard somehow from the future, then he has different memories. He has a different view of the world, different knowledge, different wisdom, and different memories. He’s probably a completely different person than Gerard is. And the sad thing is that Frank wants to be with Gee not Gerard. He doesn’t want Gerard, Gerard is a different person in Frank’s mind. He wants Gee.

Frank’s mind drifts to the reality of Gee’s words, because then he starts to put the pieces together. Gee married his high school sweetheart. It’s not really cheating. It’s not an open marriage. It’s a unique situation.

Frank has this moment where he just stops thinking, barely even feels the water falling over his head, because it finally makes sense. Gee, the Gee that Frank met, he was married to Frank. Frank from the future. Future Frank was married to Gee who was Future Gerard, and Frank should stop calling him Gee because he’s really just future Gerard.

“Fuck,” Frank frowns, looking at the water swirling down into the drain below him. Now he can’t stop his mind from wandering because, wow, it’s kind of creepy that he slept with a guy who’d seen him naked before. He doesn’t know why that’s what bothers him, literally while he’s standing naked in a shower, but it does. Then he realizes that the exact same thing happened yesterday when he saw Gerard, because the guy is the same person. He just is. He’s got a bit of a different temperament, but he’s the same person. Frank’s being somewhat hypocritical about the whole naked thing, but it’s still weird.

Frank’s heart starts racing because he literally just decided that he’s married to Gerard from the future which is an odd thought to have whilst shampooing.

That’s a lot to take in at four in the morning. He’s not sure how he feels about this theory, because it still is a theory right now. It’s the only theory that makes sense, but it’s only a theory. He’s not old enough to be deciding who he’s marrying, but it’s not like he really has a choice in the decision, he literally met his future husband. How the fuck is that even possible. Why the fuck is it even possible?

He’s suddenly astounded by his own lax attitude towards the idea of time traveling. Yesterday he was completely skeptic, if not a little curious, but today he’s just kind of accepted it. What other possibility is there? Gee is Gerard, who is his future husband. The reason it’s not cheating is because Gerard is married to future Frank and went back in time to have sex with past Frank, or present day Frank.

Frank’s brain hurts.

Frank turns the shower off and he stands there for a couple of minutes thinking.

If he marries Gerard, than that means he actually is going to have to hang out with Gerard, but Gerard seems to hate him. What had Gee said? Something about Frank being clingy for the first couple of weeks? That makes him frown because he doesn’t want to be that guy. He doesn’t want to be the weirdo who clings to Gerard even though he has no chance with him. But he obviously does have a chance if he marries the guy.

But how on earth does that happen? How is he supposed to marry the guy if Gerard hates him? How does Frank know that Gee wasn’t lying through his teeth? Maybe he wasn’t at all affiliated with Gerard? Maybe he escaped from a psych ward, traveled back in time and pretended to be Frank’s future husband. Except if that were true than how on earth was it possible that he knew basically everything there was to know about him? Like, the guy knew some things Frank didn’t even know about himself. Apparently he’s really sensitive in the space on his neck that’s just below his ear and putting your mouth there makes him whine, and there’s no way that Gee could have just spontaneously figured that out without any prior knowledge of him first. Frank didn’t know that about himself, how the hell did Gee?

There’s just this really substantial part of him that wants to believe it. Frank really fucking wants to believe that he was married to Gee. He wants that to be true. Because of the fact that he wants it, it makes it easier to believe everything he’s thinking. He wants to believe that he’s going to end up marrying Gerard who will become Gee. He wants that so much that he can’t even think straight with how much he wants that.

He wants to be high school sweethearts with Gerard and take the guy to prom and, fuck it, why is everything about this so romantic and sweet? This should be crazy, insane, and worrying, not desirable. But he wants it so much. He wants to believe it, and he’s decided that, to hell with logic, he does believe it.

He’s going to marry Gerard, one way or another, it happened so it’s got to happen again, he supposes. But that’s a scary thought because he doesn’t know what timeline he’s following, whether it’s flexible or fixed. He really hopes that it’s fixed because he wants to know that he’s going to end up with Gee, but he doesn’t have that assurance, he can only guess. He really hopes that it’s destined to be though.

That only brings him back to the impossibility of Frank actually getting Gerard to like him, because the guy seems like he really hates Frank, and he honestly doesn’t blame him. He kind of thinks that Gerard has a good point on the matter. He really doesn’t deserve to be accepted by the guy, but Frank just wants to date him so much. He doesn’t know why, he just knows that he does. He wants to date Gerard and there’s nothing he can do about that desire.

Frank realizes that he’s still standing in the shower, dripping off water and freezing. He can’t believe he got so distracted that he didn’t realize he was turning into a Popsicle. Or maybe frozen gelato because he’s Italian.

Frank steps out of the shower covers himself with a towel and has a minor panic attack at the fact that he doesn’t know how to date a boy, least of all Gerard. He’s got problems with the whole not being out at all, so how on earth is he supposed to get Gerard to fall in love with him? This seems too difficult. He wants to just zap himself to the future and replace that future Frank with himself.

He cannot believe he’s jealous of future him. They are literally the same person. Future Frank is still Frank, he’s just the future version of him. Frank is literally jealous of that guy for being married to Gee, when they are the same person. How the hell did he manage it? How did that Frank manage to get Gee to go for him? What are his secrets, because Frank needs to know in order to have that future become his own reality?

This is all too complicated, why can’t he just time travel forward and save the trouble? He knows that he’s got to earn all the things that his future self has, but he’s still impatient and lazy. He wants it now, no ten years from now. Now now. The now that is present.

Frank’s brain is going to melt if he keeps trying to figure this out, he’s sure of that.

He tries to completely shut it all down and that’s how he ends up filling his thoughts with the injustice of Firefly’s cancelation for the next hour and half.

He considers it to be child cruelty to make school start to early, but he’s awake early enough so actually fill himself with coffee today. This morning feels fake, feels like a movie scene, because it doesn’t feel like it’s possible for him to be sitting here at the kitchen counter drinking coffee when somewhere in the future he’s probably having sex with Gee or something. That just doesn’t seem fair, and it makes the reality around him seem like a movie set.

He doesn’t want to go to school, and he doesn’t want to have to try to get closer to Gerard, because he just wants to go up to Gerard and ask him out and have him say yes. He just wants it to be easy, he didn’t sign up for this. He could easily just not pursue Gerard, but then again, he can’t. He’s not capable of that. He can’t just give up any chance with Gerard, he doesn’t have that in him. He’s not going to be happy about it, but he will sure as hell try to get Gerard to fall in love with him.

Frank looks over at the clock, bitter over how early it is, and even more bitter about the fact that he has to leave for school, because he does not want to do that in the slightest. The only silver lining is that he’s going to see Gerard. It’s going to be a very embarrassing day of exchanges, he knows that, but he’s actually kind of excited to try. As of today, the wooing of Gerard commences.

He’s pretty used to going into lifeless Frank mode, it’s the only way he’s able to survive the school day. Lifeless Frank mode is when he lets his body take over and doesn’t think about what he’s doing in the slightest. He’s more reliable in this state, but will not hear a single word you say to him.

He’s a fairly good driver in this state though, and he only starts to actually pay attention to what he’s doing when he pulls into the parking lot of the school, early enough that it’s not filled up yet.

Frank would be lying if he said that he wasn’t looking for a specific someone with dark black hair while he sits in his seat in the car. He’s not ready to actually get up yet, and the school doors don’t open for another few minutes anyway. There’s a group of people standing outside the doors, large enough that Gerard could be in there somewhere but not too large that Frank won’t be able to spot him.

Too his displeasure though, he doesn’t see Gerard. He sits in his spot and he decides to wait, no need to go outside in the murky cloudy weather. The sky had opened up to the sun yesterday, but apart from that it’s been grey all week.

Frank’s about to give up and decide that Gerard is coming in on a bus or something when he spots him, and he smiles for the first time today. Frank quickly pulls himself from his seat, grabs his backpack and locks the car door before he’s hurrying off to catch up with Gerard, who’s making his way to enter the big mass of people that’s steadily grown in the last few minutes.

Gerard is with someone, the guy who Frank assumes is his brother, but he can’t recall the guy’s name. Frank supposes that that makes him his future brother in law. Weird. He should probably learn the dudes name if he’s going to spend Thanksgivings with him someday.

The instant that Frank calls out to him, Gerard turns around with this look of complete annoyance in his eye that Frank was fully expecting, but is still hurt by.

“Oh not again,” he says, looking pissed when Frank finally catches up. Frank wonders if he knows that he stopped walking the second he saw Frank. He probably doesn’t know, it was probably an unconscious thing. Or maybe he wanted Frank to catch up and just isn’t going to admit to it.

“Good morning,” Frank says, walking in stride with him. His brother, who’s on Gerard’s other side, looks at Frank confusedly, and doesn’t tear his eyes away even though staring is considered rude.

“It was, but now you’re here,” Gerard replies and Frank frowns. “What do you want this time?”

“Why do I have to want something? Maybe I just like talking to you,” Frank says and they come to a stop behind the huddle of people outside of the doors.

Gerard’s brother says, “Hey Gee, I’m going to go find Ray, see you later?”

“Please don’t go,” Gerard is saying, but he’s scurrying off before Gerard’s words even register. “Oh great.”

“Hey, what’s so wrong with me?” Frank asks.

“Nothing really. It’s mostly just your personality, and face, and voice, and everything else about you.”

“Wow, don’t sugarcoat it.”

“Okay. And it’s your arrogance, your hair, your intelligence, or lack thereof, your-”

“It was a figure of speech,” Frank interrupts him.

“Could you maybe not talk to me? Could you just, like, go anywhere else at all on the earth instead of stand right next to me?” Gerard asks him.

“But I want to,” Frank replies.

“Why do you want to do that? I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t want to talk to you,” Gerard responds.

The bell rings, broken sounding in the crisp outdoor air, and the crowd of people starts agitating seconds after the sound. Frank can see Gerard getting antsy and he’s probably trying to come up with an escape route to get away from Frank, but he’s not going to be that easy to get rid of.

Or at least, he wasn’t going to be until someone puts their hand on his shoulder and Frank’s being physically stopped from moving by Brendon. Frank was not, until today, aware of how strong his grip is, because he tries to shrug the guy off and chase after Gerard, but he actually can’t.

“Were you bothering that dude again?” Brendon asks him.

“No!” Frank responds too quickly, making his lie all the more transparent. Frank spots Gerard looking back at him, and he likes to think that the look on his face is one of disappointment. That’s what it looks like to Frank, but he knows that that’s because his mind is playing tricks on him. No way in hell is Gerard actually disappointed to shake Frank off.

“You have got to stop that,” Brendon says. “What do you want from him? You’re so weird.” Brendon finally lets him go, but Gerard’s lost in the sea of people so Frank can’t follow. He starts walking with Brendon, more upset than he really should be, but he can’t help himself.

“I just want... to chat?” Frank says.

“Really, because it looks like you’re waiting on a wedding proposal,” Brendon says, and Frank almost physically freezes in fear. What did Brendon say? Frank’s straight as far as Brendon knows, so what is he talking about?

“What? No! Gross, absolutely not. He’s a dude, no,” Frank says, unsure if he’s convincing.

“I didn’t mean literally,” Brendon says, his response far more relaxed than the words that just came out of Frank’s mouth had been, “I just meant that you were acting really weird. You have been ever since lunch yesterday.”

“I’m sorry,” Frank shrugs, “I just, I don’t like it when people dislike me.”

“And do you also make a habit of thinking that strange men are also your classmates?”

“No,” Frank says, sighing, “Just forget it okay? Don’t mention this to Pete, he already thinks I’m crazy.”

Brendon rolls his eyes and gives Frank a half-hearted wave along with a “whatever” before the two of them split up, because their lockers are down two different halls.

Frank curses to himself, knowing he’s literally as awkward about this whole thing as he could possibly be. He just wants to have Gerard’s undying love, is that too much to ask? Frank decides that yes, it probably is. At least for now it is.