Status: In Progress

The Chasing of Moons

A Life-Size Cardboard Cutout of David Bowie

Frank finds himself in a confusing situation after third period. He avoids Brendon and Pete to the best of his ability and follows Gerard out of the building, though he doesn’t seem to have taken notice quite yet.

Gerard certainly does notice him the minute he sits down next to his brother under the shade of a tree, and the look on his face is completely confrontational. It’s almost like he’s daring Frank to sit down. He doesn’t’ know if he should. He knows what Gerard is going to think, how he’s going to respond to Frank, and he knows precisely how Brendon and Pete will feel too. He’s pushing this too much, pushing himself at Gerard far too much considering how much Gerard seems to hate him. He knows that he should back off and take this easy, but he can’t help it. He likes Gerard. He likes him a lot, and he knows that it’s all projected feelings, just a place for his feelings for Gee to go, but Frank is young, stupid, and mildly insane right now.

He knows he’s probably lost his head completely, because, seriously, he has all but decided that he slept with the future version of a boy in his school who he has also decided is his future husband. It’s stupid. It makes no sense. It’s not logical in the slightest and he knows it isn’t. He can’t even fathom how fucking crazy this all is. Literally anyone else in the world would think him completely mental, and they’d probably be right. Frank’s not even sure that he is absolutely sane.

The thing is that, even if he is going crazy, even if Gee and Gerard really have no connection at all whatsoever, there’s no real reason for why Frank can’t have a crush on Gerard. There’s nothing really stopping him from feeling that way. Obviously there are some people, like his friends, Gerard, the entire school, and even himself, but Frank’s too caught up in the whole thing to care.

So, Frank walks over to the patch of grass across from Gerard, and he sits down.

“I cannot believe you,” Gerard shakes his head.

“I’m taking that as a compliment.”

“It’s Frank right?” Gerard’s brother asks, looking at Frank and then back at Gerard with a smirk on his face that Frank does not understand at all.

“Yep,” Frank says, and he’s debating whether or not he’s supposed to shake the guys hand, but he doesn’t know whether that would be way too formal or what.

“Mikey,” he says, and he nods so Frank assumes that he’d better just not even attempt to do anything, just sort of wave back at him. Frank decides that the name suits him, he looks like a Mikey. Kind of mousy, but a strong jaw and eyes so intense that they can probably shoot laser beams.

“Don’t entertain him,” Gerard says.

“Why? What’s wrong with him?” Mikey asks.

“Don’t even get me started.”

“I recall there being something about my personality, face, voice, and everything else,” Frank says.

“Yep,” Gerard nods. “So you have the ability to listen, that’s great, good for you. Where was that in class every day since middle school?”

“I’m not trying to be a jerk here, you know,” Frank says, frowning.

“Gerard’s the one being the jerk,” Mikey says to Frank, and Frank decides that he likes him. Thanksgivings may not be so bad.

“Do not take his side!” Gerard says angrily, and Frank is astounded by his ability to make eating a cracker look aggressive. Gerard must really hate him if he can actually manage to make chewing a fucking Ritz look violent.

“What do you have against him?” Mikey asks, talking like Frank’s not even there, except Mikey is looking at him analytically like he’s trying to figure Frank out.

Gerard just shrugs, and declines to answer. He puts his head down and lets his hair fall into his face so that he doesn’t have to even look at Frank.

“I think it’s because of the fact that I didn’t notice him for a couple of years.”

“Translation,” Gerard says, “he completely ignored my entire existence for eight years.”

“I did not.”

“You didn’t know my name,” Gerard says, “How could you not know my name?”

“Well, did you know my name?”

“Of course I fucking knew your name, everyone knows your name,” Gerard says.

“They do?”

Gerard scoffs, eyes him for a minute, and then looks away. Frank can’t figure him out, there’s just something off about him that he wants to understand.

“Well, I didn’t know his name,” Mikey shrugs, and he takes a bite of whatever sandwich he’s eating. Frank had almost completely forgotten about eating, but he doesn’t know if he should. He really has problems with etiquette especially with people he’s never talked to before. His idea of classy is nonexistent. Frank has almost no standards, and when it comes to people, he also has trouble with boundaries.

Frank’s moment of thought is lost when someone sits down next to Mikey, closer to Frank than the other two, but not really that close at all, and he looks over to see it’s the guy who he recognizes by hair only.

Without even looking up the guy says, “so why is he there?” His voice really does not match his face even remotely. It’s way too light to be his, and Frank’s almost taken aback when he hears him speak.

“He’s been stalking me,” Gerard replies to the guy.

“Stalking is a strong word,” Frank says.

“But it’s a completely accurate word.”

“It’s not!” Frank says, trying to defend himself.

“Okay, so what do you call following someone and bugging them even though they’ve made it expressly clear that they dislike you?” Gerard asks.

“Determination,” Frank says, and Mikey snorts.

“Sorry, it’s just, you’ve got one hell of a way of making friends,” Mikey explains.

“He’s going to fail either way,” Gerard says. Frank is pretty sure that the guy with the gigantic hair hasn’t made any eye contact with him at all, probably ever, and he’s starting to wonder why that is.

“That’s Ray by the way,” Mikey says, almost like he’s reading Frank’s mind. Frank thanks him with a nod of his head, gets hypnotized in Mikey’s jawline and then has to turn away because he’s pretty sure he could cut glass on that fucking jaw.

“So we’re sitting here today,” Pete’s voice interrupts the uncomfortable silence and Frank can feel the air moving when he sits down beside him. Brendon does not seem so anxious to comply, but does so anyway, probably because he doesn’t want to go sit somewhere else by himself.

“No, you’re not! Oh fuck,” Gerard says, but it’s too late, Pete has a way of making himself comfortable.

“Well this is an interesting turn of events,” Mikey declares, and yes, Frank likes him, he likes his sense of humor. He likes his brother though. He really likes Mikey’s brother. Pete makes a quick introduction of himself and Brendon, and Mikey does the same, while Frank tries his best to make eye contact with Gerard who is trying his best to look anywhere but at Frank. He’s not very good at it, actually, he always seems to let his eyes trace over Frank’s whenever he looks somewhere else. Frank’s caught off guard by this weird feeling in his stomach whenever his and Gerard’s eyes meet, like butterflies in his stomach even though he’s not that nervous.

“Has Frank been creepy with you too?” Pete asks, staring at Mikey with an odd expression that Frank has decided that he doesn’t want to understand. When it comes to Pete doing things, anything, his general position is to avoid like the plague the rationale behind whatever it is.

“Yes,” Gerard says stiffly.

“No!” Frank replies.

“Well no offense, but when it concerns how I personally feel about something, it doesn’t really concern you, does it?” Gerard spits at him, and Frank all of a sudden feels like he’s aboard the sinking Titanic. He can’t stand how much Gerard hates him when Frank is so bursting with emotions to the contrary of that.

“I’m not trying to be mean,” Frank says quietly, “I honestly just want to talk to you a little.”

“And why is that exactly?” Gerard questions him, eating another cracker with such furiousness he could be bursting into flames any minute now.

“Because,” Frank shrugs.

“What a great answer,” Gerard replies sarcastically.

“So who here knows what the proper term for plural sheep is?” Pete asks, which is apparently his way of changing the subject.

“I think it’s just sheep, Pete,” Brendon says.

“Are you sure?” Pete asks, “Could be sheeps.”

“No, I’m fairly sure it’s sheep.”

“Well I’m fairly sure that you’re an idiot. I say it’s sheeps,” Pete declares.

“No, you wouldn’t say, ‘hey look at those sheeps over there’ you would say ‘hey look at those sheep over there,’” Brendon says.

“Well, you might say it that way, but I would say sheeps.”

“How many sheep do you expect to find in the middle of suburbia anyway?” Mikey asks, joining what Frank has decided is quite possibly the stupidest conversation to have ever been held.

“I don’t know, I just think that there’s bound to be an event you’ll come to in which you’ll need to know the plural form of sheep,” Pete shrugs.

“Yes, because of the annual plural form of a word contest they have at the community center,” Brendon says, with so much sarcasm Frank can almost feel himself aging from it.

“Don’t sass me, forehead,” Pete says, and Mikey laughs unusually loud at that.

“Sheepen,” The Ray guy says. He doesn’t seem the most talkative, Frank has decided, but he seems thoroughly invested in the sheep debate, while Gerard could be in a different universe with the look on his face. He doesn’t even look annoyed, he’s just looking off, somewhere behind Frank’s left ear, with utter determination.

“Gerard, what do you think?” Mikey asks.

“What?”

“Sheep,” Pete says, as an answer, which isn’t very helpful if he’d tuned out.

“What about them?”

“Plural form of sheep,” Frank says, and Gerard scowls at Frank when he explains it, which doesn’t make sense to him. He was trying to be helpful, but he doesn’t know how to be apparently.

“I don’t care,” Gerard says.

“That’s a great answer,” Brendon nods.

“I gotta go,” Gerard says, standing up quickly, but he’s pretty much cornered into the tree so he has to step over Mikey’s leg to leave, which he does. His need to get away from Frank is apparently stronger than his instinct to avoid embarrassing himself. From there, he’s whisking away across the sidewalk to the double door entrance of the school where Frank had caught up with him earlier this morning.

“Well he hates my guts,” Frank says when he’s gone.

“Yeah, but he also hates red velvet cake, so clearly his logical decision making ability isn’t entirely credible.”

“I think his problem was not with red velvet cake as a whole, Mikey, but with the time you tried to bake one and you used salt instead of sugar,” the guy who is apparently called Ray says.

“Fuck you, my baking skills are masterful.”

“I’m sure they are,” Pete says and Frank really does not understand him at all, not even kind of.

“Okay but how do I get him to not hate me?” Frank asks, not caring if he sounds selfish.

“Buy him a life-size cardboard cutout of David Bowie,” Mikey says, the look on his face so serious that Frank isn’t actually sure if he’s kidding or not.

“Okay, but how about the broke guy version of getting Gerard to like me?”

“Like you how?” Mikey asks, and Frank’s eyes bulge, because he doesn’t know how that sounded. He tries to repeat the words he’d said back in his head, but he can’t remember his own wording. He’s terrified that it sounded like he was asking for flirting tips. From the guy’s brother even! Technically he is asking for flirting tips, but he doesn’t want that to be so obvious.

“I just mean, like, I don’t want him to hate me,” Frank says.

“Oh, then you’re on your own, I’ve been trying to figure out the secret to that for like sixteen years,” Mikey says.

“Seriously?” Frank asks, “Great.”

“Well you could try what I did,” Ray says, “Don’t ignore him for eight years.”

“Thanks,” Frank answers snappily, even though he knows that he probably deserved that.

“So like, what would he even do with a cardboard cutout of David Bowie? Make out with it?” Pete asks, still stuck on that topic. “Because the problem with cardboard is that it doesn’t kiss back.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you,” Brendon says.

“Shut up!” Pete says, hitting Brendon in the arm, and Frank actually thinks he’s blushing which has got to be a first. Pete has never blushed a single day in his entire life.

“You know, I think he’d just worship it like a deity,” Mikey says.

Frank frowns, because honestly he’s thinking ‘same.’ He hates how every new thing he learns about the guy is making him want him more even though every new thing he learns brings him no closer to actually getting him. This is not going to be easy. But obviously it has to turn out if he’s going to marry the guy someday. Frank thinks. More like, Frank hopes.
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