The Chasing of Moons

“I think that went rather well,” Frank says to Brendon after returning to the school twenty minutes after Gerard disappeared at lunch. “I mean, at least he talked to me.”

“Why do you care so much?”

“Why shouldn’t I care so much?”

“Touché,” Brendon nods, watching Frank put books into his bag. “So you going to creep on him next period?”

“What? I... how do you even know he’s in my next class?” Frank asks.

“You just told me so.”

“Damn it,” Frank groans, but he shakes his head and zips his backpack up, feeling the weight of it and dreading having to drag it across the school. He looks around the hall, unsure of what time it is, because the last thing he really needs is to be late for another class.

“Don’t freak him out too bad, okay?” Brendon says, “because, like, the last thing that we need is for our senior year to be spent dragging you away from embarrassing yourself. Why even bother trying to make friends now, we’ve only got like three months left? You should be spending your time trying to find a prom date instead of trying to get on the good side of a guy who hates you.”

Frank would very much like to tell him that he’s kind of aiming to get a prom date out of the guy who hates him, but he knows that that would be somewhat of a giveaway and his vocal chords wouldn’t support the words anyway.

“I gotta get to class, Bren,” Frank says, “and what I choose to do about friend making is none of your damn business. Also, prom is dumb.”

“Whatever you say,” Brendon shouts after him as Frank scurries along the hallway to his next class. Frank wouldn’t admit it to Brendon obviously, but he is hoping to find a way to sit next to Gerard, because what better way to talk to him than forced social interaction?

It’s Frank’s lucky day because when he gets to the class, he finds the seat next to Gerard is empty and he grins evilly to himself before he occupies it. Gerard looks at him, doesn’t seem to process that it’s Frank, looks away, and then looks back with complete surprise.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Sitting.”

“No, not that.”

“Breathing.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Gerard replies and looks away at the front of the room, even though the teacher isn’t even there yet.

“What? Breathe?”

“Yes.”

“Ouch,” Frank says, “That would mean I would be dead.”

“In a perfect world.”

“I honestly didn’t know you felt that way about me. So you, what, just want me dead or something?” Frank asks. “You know you could always just move if you don’t want to sit next to me.”

“Or you could,” Gerard answers.

“Gerard, it’s you who has the problem here, not me. I don’t have any issue sitting next to you, so I have no need to move. Sitting here is not a crime. If you don’t like it, feel free to move, but I’m doing nothing wrong just by sitting down.”

Gerard wrinkles his nose, but he says nothing in response. Frank doesn’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing. But he doesn’t make any motion to stand up and move either, and that’s how Frank decides that it is definitely a good thing.

“Listen, I’m honestly sorry that you hate me so much, but, like, I don’t hate you.”

“I get that, and it’s annoying.”

“I’m sorry? Like, I don’t know what there is for me to say. I’m sorry that you feel that way and there’s nothing I can say or do to change the way you feel about me.”

“Whatever,” Gerard says.

“Okay, so like, I don’t care that you’re gay you know. I mean, I honestly don’t care, I’m not going to make fun of you for that, I’m not going to pick on you period, I’m not like that. Well, I mean, I guess in a matter of speaking, I do care that you’re gay, but it does not in any way affect or change my image of you, but I don’t want to demean you by saying that I don’t care, which would imply that it, you being gay, doesn’t matter, because it does matter, it just doesn’t matter in the way that I treat you. But my point is that I wouldn’t make fun of you for that or for any other reason. You make that assumption about me, but, honestly, there’s a difference between bullying and ignorance. And there’s a hell of a difference between ignoring and indifference too, because it’s not that I was ignoring you that past however many years, I just literally had no reason at all to need to know much about you, because we never really interacted with each other.”

Gerard is still refusing to look at him, his face determinedly eyeing the whiteboard at the front of the room like it holds some answer to the universe, and Frank sighs, because he really just wishes that he could take back the last eight years and have a go at doing this the right way. But he also doesn’t want that because, as much as he wants Gerard to fall in love with him, he definitely doesn’t want to go through middle school and three and a half years of high school again. Also he doesn’t want the trauma of puberty twice.

“Listen, if you want me to sit somewhere else, that’s fine, I guess,” Frank says, sadly, but he picks his backpack up from the side of the chair and starts to stand up when Gerard shrugs.

“I don’t care, sit there if you like,” Gerard says, but he doesn’t turn to look at Frank still, and he’s starting to wonder what he could do to get Gerard to make eye contact. He’d probably have to set the building on fire.

“You sure?” Frank asks, when he puts his backpack down again.

“Yeah I guess. I don’t care, like I said.”

“Okay.”

Gerard’s friend, the one with the hair, Frank thinks his name was Ray, steps into the classroom not long before the bell rings, and he gives Gerard a long look that Frank can’t really dissect before he goes to sit in the opposite side of the room, away from them. Frank’s not sure what it says about him that he’s incapable of looking at the guys face, but really who could blame him when his hair is bigger than the Pacific Ocean.

“So like, is there any way on this earth for me to make you stop hating me?”

“I don’t know. What are you offering?”

“I, well nothing,” Frank replies.

“Well why should I forgive you if you literally give me no reason to do so?”

“Uh, out of the goodness of your heart?”

“The goodness of my heart, huh? You can do better,” Gerard says.

“I will buy you a cookie. Or two cookies. Or a small pony. Or a dinosaur.”

“What kind of dinosaur?”

“A rainbow dinosaur. A rainbow dinosaur that sings David Bowie songs,” Frank adds.

“If you can achieve that than I sure as hell would be your friend, but I don’t think you can,” Gerard responds, but Frank thinks he might be smiling a little. Frank thinks that he’s going to have to utilize Mikey as a source to figure out what Gerard likes. Then again, who doesn’t like David Bowie?

“Well is there anything that I can do that costs less than several million dollars? I mean, I’m assuming I’d have to hire a large slew of scientists to work out how to make a dinosaur, and then a bunch more to figure out how to make it rainbow colored, though I imagine we could just use spray paint or something, and that’ll all probably take a very long time, if it’s even possible, and if it is possible, we’ve all seen Jurassic park, it may not end well. But at least we’ll be going out with style because, come on, when you think about it, being taken out by a rainbow dinosaur is a hell of a way to go,” Frank says. “My point got derailed a bit there, I just wanted to ask what it is can I do that will make me less of a jackass that I don’t have to put a lot of money into?”

“Well,” Gerard says, and he makes a thinking face which makes Frank’s heart melt, because it’s super cute and he wants to make out with Gerard now, but he doesn’t do that. “Could you ask your friend to stop flirting with my brother? That was kind of extremely weird.”

“My friend to stop what?” Frank asks, confusedly. “Pete? Pete was not flirting. Pete’s straight. He wasn’t flirting. That’s just who Pete is.”

“Sure,” Gerard replies. Not sounding convinced. The teacher finally makes his way into the classroom, but he’s an old windbag of a man, who’s honestly mostly deaf, so you never really get in trouble with him unless you’re literally shouting. Besides, who gives a shit about Civics class anyway?

“What? He actually is. Pete is just, like, a person who has a weird mannerism to him, but he’s straight, I promise,” Frank whispers, because, despite how oblivious the teacher is, the classroom still falls into a somewhat respectful lulling tone of murmurs as he starts to talk about whatever the hell he’s talking about that literally no one cares about. Literally no one gives a fuck about civics. Even though it’s probably the only actual class that you will ever need to take to get by in the real world, it’s honestly just easier to read the Wikipedia page then to listen to this guy talk in his low drawling slur.

“You can tell yourself that all you want, but you have no way to prove it do you,” Gerard says.

“So what are you saying, you just assume he’s gay because he’s friendly to people?”

“Maybe I’ve just got one hell of a gaydar,” he says, which sounds almost exactly like something Gee had said to Frank and he has a moment of panic followed by a moment of sheer disbelief.

“And d-do you?”

Gerard shrugs, “It’s okay. Not fantastic, but I get by.”

“So do you have any insight then?” Frank asks.

“On what?”

“Which of our classmates are totally bent.”

Gerard smirks, and then frowns like he disapproves of his own reaction. “Why should I tell you if I did know anything?”

“I’m not going to make fun of them or anything, seriously, I’m just curious, because, like, I have no skill in that regard whatsoever.”

Gerard purses his lips and looks around the room like he’s trying to determine if anyone is listening in on them, “Alright fine, but if you tell anyone I told you this I will hunt you down and pluck out your eyebrows one hair at a time. So you know that one guy who always brings his laptop to lunch and watches cartoons for no apparent reason?”

“He’s gay?” Frank asks.

“No, but his girlfriend is.”

“Oh my god,” Frank replies, “how do you know that?”

“Honestly that one has nothing to do with intuition at all, I actually live next to her and saw her making out with that girl who smells like egg, you know the one, right.”

“Egg girl? Really?” Frank asks, “How did I never realize it... why does that make sense? Like you ever figure out a celebrity is gay and then you can’t believe you never knew, because there’s just something about them. Not in a mean way, just like, you can’t un-realize it.”

“I don’t know, it’s just the way the world is. It’s kind of obvious after you know, always is,” Gerard grins, and then he has this moment where it looks like he realizes who he’s talking to and his face reverts back to the one of pissed off that had been there before. Frank’s kind of proud of himself for getting to talk with him a little bit, even if it wasn’t much.

Frank looks over at the teacher whose writing something on the whiteboard in his unintelligible handwriting, and Frank knows he should be taking notes, but he literally does not care at all.

“You know we did interact with each other before yesterday.”

“We did?” Frank asks. “When?”

“Never mind.”

“What? You can’t just say something like that and then say never mind! That’s not how this works. You’ve gotta, like, finish your sentence.”

“If you don’t remember, then, really, I don’t want to talk to you about it.”

“Did I... did I say something shitty to you?” Frank asks.

Gerard just waves him off and looks at the board. He begins copying down the notes from the board and Frank just looks at him aghast, wondering what on earth he could’ve said to Gerard and not remembered it at all. He’s not that forgetful. Maybe it was a long time ago. Like a really really long time ago. If it was sixth grade then there’s very little chance Frank is going to remember it because middle school was an embarrassing time for him, as it is for most people, and he’s done his best to block it out.

“Look, I cannot apologize for doing something if I don’t know what it was that I did,” Frank says.

“Just forget I said anything, okay?”

“No!” Frank hisses, and he knows he’s being too pushy, but for the life of him, he cannot remember what it was that he could’ve said or done.

“Look, it wasn’t mean or anything. You weren’t a bitch to me, it just pisses me off that you honestly don’t remember talking to me ever. Like, it- it’s not a big deal, just forget about it.”

“Okay, well, if it was a long time ago, then I’m sorry that I don’t remember but it’s not just this one incident that I forgot about, like I’ve tried to forget a lot of things about middle school, it was an uncomfortable time for me. You know how it is, it’s not like I’m blanking on this one thing, it’s a rather large number of things that I have chosen to repress, because I really do not need to be reminded of the pimply, greasy, preteen loser that I was.”

“Fine then,” Gerard sighs, “whatever you say.”

“I... god, you wouldn’t understand,” Frank says. “It’s just, you may think I look down on you, or looked down on you, but I didn’t. It’s not about you, there’s no actual reason for you to think me not noticing you was about you, that’s honestly a little egocentric, the whole matter is not that I didn’t notice any one individual, the fact is that I only noticed a few individuals at all. I can’t name half the people in this grade, and it’s not because I don’t care, it’s just that I never had a reason to have to learn them. If I were to interact with them, then yes, I would learn their names, but I never have to interact with a lot of people, so I don’t need that knowledge, it is not something that is required of me.”

“That’s your way of saying that you’re not rude to me, you’re rude to everybody,” Gerard says, and Frank almost outwardly groans, because he’s just not getting it. Frank is beginning to realize that Gerard is incredibly stubborn and set in his ways which is not ideal, and is going to end up getting in the way of things, but there’s nothing he can really do about any of this. He’s just got to keep running after Gerard, softening him up until he can actually come out with it and ask him the fuck out.

But Frank will absolutely ask him out someday and he will take Gerard anywhere he wants, and Frank, as unemployed and broke as he is, would still find a way to buy Gerard the world if he asked. Frank thinks he would be a good boyfriend, or even a great one, but he’s never really been given the opportunity.

Frank has never dated anyone. He has been informally attached to a couple females, but he has never actually dated someone, least of all never a boy, but he would be willing to make Gerard his first significant other. Hell, there’s literally no one else who he would even consider. Frank’s generally come to the conclusion that he doesn’t like any of the boys that go to his school, because they’re all gross, and they smell like they haven’t showered recently, and they wear the exact same clothes as each other. Every single one of them shops at sports stores and just buys the stupid ass shorts and those stupid ass T-shirts with stupid ass logos on them. Like who goes into a store and thinks, ‘yes, what I really need is a T-shirt that has the Nike logo on it. A shirt with a logo of a shoe brand on it. That’s what I fucking need, a shoe shirt.’

Now granted, Gerard does somewhat smell like he hasn’t taken a shower recently, and his hair certainly looks it, but at least he wears normal fucking clothes. His jeans are, at least right now too tight in the front though, and Frank’s elected to ignore that fact, because he’s wearing a Placebo shirt and that more than makes up for the fact that Frank wants to tear those pants off and do terribly dirty things to Gerard.

He doesn’t even know what it is about his dorky charm that’s got Frank so wild about everything about him, he just knows that it’s endearing. Frank’s not sure he really has a type. He’s not really used to himself enough to know what his type would be, other than the fact that he’s not a fan of blondes, but that’s all he knows about his own preference, so he’s not sure if Gerard is his type or if he’s honestly only attracted to him because of the whole weird situation with Gee.

Frank, who is usually a rational human being, has all but fucking given a Presidential address that he thinks Gee is the same person as Gerard. He knows it’s the stupid conclusion to come to, he knows it’s impossible, he knows there’s got to be a more logical solution than this, but he’s a dreamer, and somewhat of a romantic and he’s got his heart set on Gerard.

He just can’t put his finger on what it is about the guy that makes Frank want to cuddle with him and watch Disney movies and throw popcorn at him while they’re wrapped up in a blanket, but whenever he used to have that fantasy about him and his future boyfriend, he would never see a face in that other person. He would just sort of see the vague outline of a human, someone generic, he never saw anyone, not a celebrity or someone he knew, but now, all he sees is Gerard. He can’t even get rid of that face now. It’s just Gerard. He sees Gerard’s face clear as day, and there is absolutely nothing he can do to get rid of that image in his head. He sees Gerard, back against Frank’s chest with his head pressed against Frank’s shoulder. He sees the way that the light changes on his face as it’s reflected from the TV, and he can see the way that it distorts his features ever so slightly with every new angle that the shadows create. And it’s not Gee, it’s Gerard. He sees Gerard. Not the older version of him, but the one that is now sitting beside him, only a few inches away. Frank can almost even feel Gerard’s warmth, the way it feels with him pressed up against him, making him feel like in his arms he’s got the entire world, and if he were in that scene with Gerard, he would have exactly that, the world. He would have the whole world and more.

But it’s a far off dream. They’re both going to college next year, probably going to separate parts of the country, if not the world. Frank knows the odds aren’t high that he’ll ever see Gerard again after high school, but he wants to believe that he will. He wants to believe that Gee is actually future Gerard, and that will to believe it is what makes it so easy to accept, because he wants that.

And it’s literally been only five days. He met Gee on Thursday night, it was almost midnight at the time so it’s probably more accurate to say that it’s been only four, but it has been so little time, but to Frank, it’s like he’s invested entire years to this. It feels like he’s had a crush on this dumb dorky boy sitting next to him for years, not hours. Because, really, at this point, Frank has only known his fucking name for about a day. He knows that that’s not enough time to form such a strong opinion, but he simply cannot explain it.

There is just this supernatural energy drawing him towards Gerard and he is helpless to drown it out. He is incapable of stopping his mind from wandering, and incapable of pushing down the thoughts inside his head that he wants Gerard.

It’s not natural, Frank is positive of it. Something is going on here that is not just a hormonal urge, because what happened Thursday night is not something that Frank would have done in a million years. He wouldn’t have slept with a guy he didn’t know who he’d met at a bar. He wouldn’t have done that. That wasn’t him. Yet, he was in complete and utter control of himself the whole time and it had felt right. It was the right thing to do, it was what needed to be done, and he wanted every second of it. He wanted Gee, in a way that he’d never experienced and he had been drawn in by some force that, looking back on it now, doesn’t even seem possible.

The same force is drawing him into Gerard now, he wants, needs, and knows that what should be done is to chase after Gerard. He absolutely has to, and he sure as hell isn’t going to go without a fight because there is something that he simply cannot put into words that makes him yearn for Gerard in a way that he has never wanted anything in his life.

It’s kind of like Frank can see into the future, because he himself knows that all he needs is Gerard, and he’s got everything else made. He doesn’t care about school, or money, or anything, and he knows how fucking stupid that is, because everyone feels that way about their high school sweetheart. Frank’s heard a thousand different stories of people wanting to go to the same college as their boyfriend or girlfriend because they’re so in love, and Frank thinks it’s annoying and cliché, just like everyone else. He thinks those people are making decisions from their pants rather than their brain, and he’s always considered that sort of thing to be a no brainer.

Whenever that’s a plot point, Frank absolutely agrees with the character who decides to go to the school they want rather than to the school their ‘love of their life’ goes to, because it’s the logical choice to make. Frank knows all those things, and hell, he’s already decided where he’s going to school, but right now, all that he can think in the world is that he doesn’t give a flying fuck about college at all. He literally couldn’t care less, because his head is in the clouds.

And yet he still insists to himself that it’s some magical force that’s pulling him in. It’s some invisible magnetism between him and Gerard. It’s been there all this time, he just never noticed it before now.

Frank feels himself almost forcefully pulled out of his reverie by the sound of a book slamming in front of him and he looks up to see that everyone around him is packing up their stuff. He doesn’t know when that happened. He had thought that it was only a few minutes into class, he’s literally astounded that almost an hour has passed where he was stuck in his own thoughts.

Frank, who’s normally so calm and collected, is more disorganized than ever. By the time he’s started to pull his stuff together, Gerard is already leaving the classroom, not looking back at him. Frank hurries to gather his things, but he knows it’s too late to catch up to Gerard now.

He’s got more things strewn across the table then he’d realized. He doesn’t even know why he pulled out his science textbook in the first place, or remember doing so, but it’s his science book, it’s got his name on it, so presumably he must have. There’s also a few pencils and a couple of his notebooks. He honestly doesn’t remember grabbing any of this stuff, but he’s not been having the most normal week so it doesn’t exactly surprise him that he’d turn on lifeless Frank mode without realizing it.

Frank is in the middle of stowing his notebook into his backpack when it decides to just slip out of his hand altogether and onto the floor. He groans, and leans down to pick it up, and he glances at the page it had landed on where he sees a note in Pete’s handwriting, because evidently he has no faith in Frank whatsoever, that they have a book report due on Friday that Frank has conveniently completely forgotten about. He hasn’t even read the fucking book yet. Frank groans, scribbles a note to himself on his hand and then tosses the rest of his shit into his bag, hurrying out the door.

As he’d expected, Gerard’s nowhere to be seen which is a bummer, but he didn’t really think Gerard was going to linger conveniently so that Frank could follow him. He sighs, and makes his way resignedly to his next class.