All We Need Is Daylight

The sun is shining much the same as it always has. Frank doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, for a chorus of angels to wake him up in his sleep or for the world to be surrounded by fire and ash. He knew that everything was going to be relatively anticlimactic, and yet here he is, looking out at the world through his window, and nothing has changed.

The snow on the ground doesn’t seem to have stuck, and Frank’s a little sad about that, as he’d been hoping for winter to come early this year. He was gearing up for a life of mittens and hats, he’s quite fond of being all warm and bundled up, but as of right now, it’s not that time yet. He could probably wear his winter stuff, but people really start to judge you for wearing a furry hat when it’s the end of October and it hasn’t even really snowed yet.

Frank pulls himself out of his bed, hurries putting his clothes on, as he’s got an early morning class that he hopes to get a coffee before. He didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night. Frank had a lot of difficulty falling asleep. Once he did fall asleep, it was smooth sailing until his alarm so rudely woke him up, but until that point everything was fine. Before it however, he was wrought with anxiety. That anxiety is still there now, possibly doubled in him, but when he was asleep he wasn’t aware of it. That’s the lovely thing about sleep, everything in the entire world stops, there’s no pain, sadness, grief, anxiety, no nothing. Just sleep. Frank really wishes he were still asleep now.

He hurries out of his room, saying very few words to Ray who woke up the same time he did, but is far more groggy and slow to get dressed. Frank hurries off, itching for his morning caffeine, sure that if he doesn’t get it he’s going to drop dead halfway through the day. Oddly enough, his own tiredness gives him somewhat of a spark, he’s so eager to get caffeine that he doesn’t even realize he’s as awake thinking about it as he will be when he gets a cup of coffee in his hands.

Frank doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary in his trek across campus. He really should have known that he world wouldn’t halt completely because of the article, but it does seem a little less spectacular than he had expected. He expected at least a little bit of light gossip, maybe a few surprised faces. He wasn’t expecting a build board or anything quite so ostentatious, but he was certainly expecting more than nothing at all.

Frank grabs his coffee, so eager to drink it that he burns his tongue on the first sip, which prompts him to grumble to himself as he makes his way towards the lecture hall. Frank ends up in a seat about twenty minutes before class starts, so he takes this time to now check to make sure that the article actually went up in the first place.

Frank pulls out his phone, goes to the school website and from there he finds the newspaper. Frank is a little bit more than alarmed to see that the article is not the front page of the sports section. It’s the front page of the paper. As in, it’s the very first thing you see in the whole paper, not just the first sports story.

Frank looks at it, stares at the title a few times to determine if he’s seeing things correctly or if his mind is making things up. The title reads Interview With a Closeted Hockey Player. He blinks several times, refreshes the page, and scrolls up to the top a few times before determining that he is indeed seeing things correctly.

Frank gulps, and then tries to read it, before realizing that he’s not even paying attention to what he’s reading. He’s seeing the words, knows what they say and how to read them, but doesn’t let any of the information go anywhere but to the tip of his brain and then right back out. He’s not getting any of it, because his mind is racing. He’s in disbelief. He can’t believe that he, or more accurately, an anonymous gay hockey player, is on the front page of the school newspaper.

Frank decides to give up after a few minutes. He was there, they’re his words, he spoke them. He doesn’t need to reread what he said. He knows what the article says, he obviously knows. He can’t bear to read his own words back at himself though, it’s like when actors say they can’t watch themselves act on a screen, Frank has the same feeling of something like disgust at indulging himself in what is literally himself.

He makes a face at his phone, before turning it off and looking at the lecture hall around him, feeling like it’s become a little smaller since he was last here. The walls are just a little bit narrower, there just a few more people here. The board up front has gotten bigger in comparison to the retracting walls. It’s like the trash compacting scene in Star Wars and only slightly less harrowing.

He’s having one of those Monday morning feelings, like everything has been taken away from him that he once had, but really it’s just depression that it’s no longer the weekend. It makes him feel very bitter though, it always seems like someone has stolen something very precious to you whenever Monday comes around. Frank has not grown out of this depression even in the fourteen years that he’s suffered through it.

He attempts to busy his mind with something that will take off the edge of that depression. Obviously, the first thing that comes to him is Gerard, because Gerard is always at the top of his mind these days. He spent the whole fucking day with Gerard just two days ago. The whole goddamn day. He’s going to see Gerard again tonight at practice. He wonders what Gerard will think of the article. He’s sure by the time that practice comes, everyone on the team will have read the article at the very least. Even if the school doesn’t pick it up, the team still will.

Gerard doesn’t seem like he’d be the kind of guy who would object, but then again, you can never really be sure with some people. Gerard seems too nice, too kind. Gerard’s a little out there himself, a genuinely real comic book nerd, which isn’t as common today as it might have been twenty years ago. Gerard’s pretty dorky, he’s going on about either comics or something else which is not cool at every hour of the day. He’s also widely acknowledged as a space cadet, he’s a kind one at that, but he’s never as fully there as his physical form would have you believe. Sometimes Frank thinks Gerard has a foot in two different realities, and it gives him a completely different take on the world. Frank envies that about him, he’s so unabashedly different from everyone else and has no shame about it.

To Frank, Gerard seems like a good person. Frank isn’t going to get his hopes up that Gerard’s gay or anything quite so fanciful, but he doesn’t come across as someone who’ll react negatively to the article. For Frank, that’s the most he can hope for. It’s possible that Frank just wants to believe that because he likes the guy, but he tends to be a good judge of character. He also tends to believe the worst in people, so the fact that he believes the best in Gerard says something monumental.

Frank’s class is uninteresting at best, his professor comes in a few minutes late, clearly hungover, or possibly still drunk, and Frank just rolls his eyes, because while it’s entertaining at first, there does come a point where you need to be able to use a fucking computer mouse properly.

It's between Frank’s first class of the day and his second when he starts to notice a certain buzzing around campus. At first, Frank is just walking from one building to another, thinking about maybe stopping by a vending machine for a bag of chips to quell his hunger, he’s not even really paying attention to anything. Then he notices two people sharing one phone, as if they’re both reading something. As he keeps walking, he sees a guy sitting on one of those benches that’s been dedicated to some rich guy who donated a bunch of money to the school, reading something on his phone. Frank can’t quite see what it is, but he’s got a suspicion.

Frank’s got his next class with Mikey and Ray, and when he makes it to the building, he sees Mikey coming at him from a different direction. He doesn’t see Ray, but he’s sure Ray will make an appearance sooner or later. Brendon’s also in this class, but he’s not really close with the guy. Mikey’s a little further off, but he jogs a ways to catch up with Frank, just before he’s about to enter the building.

“Dude, have you seen the thing?” Mikey asks.

“The thing?” Frank questions, already knowing what Mikey is about to say.

“Patrick’s article!”

“Oh, right yeah. I mean, I saw it briefly, I didn’t read the whole thing,” he says. It’s not so much a lie, really. He doesn’t feel safe telling Mikey, Mikey is somewhat of an enigma. You can never tell what’s up with that guy. He looks harmless enough, but he also doesn’t show emotions on his face which makes him seem kind of like a serial killer. He’s generally a pretty nice guy, but he also seems like he’d probably murder someone for the kicks if he got bored. He probably wouldn’t, but you can’t entirely rule it out.

“Can you believe it?” Mikey asks, “there’s a gay guy on our team? Wonder how often that’s happened before.” Mikey thinks about his own brother, who, as far as Mikey knew, was the only gay hockey player Armstrong had ever seen. Mikey’s a little ignorant of how many gay people there actually are, but he genuinely didn’t believe that anyone on the team could actually be gay. Sports and gays don’t tend to go together. Not because gay people can’t like sports, but because sports players tend not to like gay people.

“I don’t know,” Frank shrugs. Two doesn’t seem reasonable to Frank, even in the past when the world wasn’t as accepting, there were still gay people. There will always be gay people, and he’s sure a handful or two have found their way onto this hockey team, and probably thousands have ended up on other hockey teams. Just because none of them are out publicly doesn’t mean they’re not there, it just means that the world fucking sucks.

“Who do you think it is?” Mikey asks the burning question that he’s sure everyone on the team, and many people on campus will soon be asking.

“I don’t know,” Frank shrugs.

“Oh, wouldn’t it be fucking great if it was Morgan,” Mikey says. “What a fucking plot twist that would be, right? Morgan the homophobic gay, gosh that sounds like a fucking teen movie.”

“Except not, because you can’t have a gay main character in a mainstream film,” Frank replies.

“Touché,” Mikey nods. He’s getting the feeling from Frank that he might not even care. Frank doesn’t seem all that interested in the article at all, which is kind of a hopeful sign for Mikey. Gerard hasn’t told anyone, not a person in the world besides him. Gerard tells Mikey fucking everything, though.

Gerard told Mikey he thought he was gay when he was in the seventh fucking grade. He came into his room, Mikey was a fourth grader, he needed Gerard to explain to him what being gay was. It was left in the air for a couple of years until Gerard was a sophomore and he was pretty fucking sure of himself right around then. Gerard just doesn’t keep anything from Mikey, not like he could if he wanted to. Gerard’s face is easy to read, or at least, it is to Mikey.

Since then, Mikey has been very judgmental of other people based on their reactions to even the concept of gay people. Gerard and he have somewhat of a pact where they’d totally kill people for each other, would help the other hide the body, anything really. Like, he’d probably hold it over Gerard’s head for the rest of his life, mostly in a joke sort of way, but he’d still absolutely fucking kill someone for him.

Mikey tends to react to people talking about gay people very harshly, always ready to get the talons out, because he’ll defend Gerard to his fucking grave. What Mikey sees is that Frank is apathetic at best about the whole gay thing, which is actually somewhat of a positive sign. Frank cares very little about there being an anonymous gay hockey player, and the fact that he doesn’t care means he’s not bothered by it. That’s the key, after all. If Frank isn’t bothered, there’s a good chance he’d be accepting of Gerard if he ever so wished to come out.

Mikey’s also quite aware of the fact that Gerard is in love with this boy. He may not say it out loud, but he fucking adores him. Gerard always smiles tellingly when he talks about Frank. He tries to talk about Frank in passing, he doesn’t go right out and say it, but he will refer to Frank, or compare things to Frank. He thinks he’s being casual. He thinks that if it’s in passing, Mikey won’t notice he’s doing it, because he doesn’t go right out and talk about Frank. The thing is though, there’s only so many times you can casually talk about someone and still have it be a coincidence. You can mention them every now and again. But then there’s Gerard, who can’t hold a conversation without talking about Frank in passing at least three times. It’s a little ridiculous.

Frank and Mikey find seats near the middle of the room, and Ray appears shortly thereafter, his large head of hair unmistakable as he enters through the doorway.

“You guys have read the thing, right?” Is Ray’s opening line when he takes the seat next to Frank.

“Yes!” Mikey says, “we were just talking about it.”

“Who do you think it is?” Ray asks.

“I don’t know,” Mikey shrugs, and when Ray turns to Frank for a guess he just shrugs. He doesn’t particularly want to engage in this conversation. He’s nervous he’ll give something away.

Frank looks around the room, as various other people start to make their way into the class, all freshmen. Frank sees that a girl, three rows in front of him, has the article open on her phone like everyone else seems to, and he takes a deep breath.

It’s starting to sink in that the article is gaining attention. It’s not going unnoticed, and there is a good chance it will not stay under the radar. The team all know about it by now, he’s sure, but it’s starting to seem like the whole school might too soon enough.

Frank doesn’t feel like he’s made a huge mistake even though he feels like he should feel that way. It doesn’t seem to be much of a bad thing yet. Even if Ray and Mikey are being kind of annoying in their assumption that none of the three of them could be the gay guy, it’s still so far been a somewhat positive reaction. At least, so far, no one has said to him that he deserves to die. It’ll happen sooner or later, but right now he’s just glad that his teammates, the ones he considered friends, haven’t said it.

“I’ve got kind of an idea about who it is…” Ray says, drifting off purposefully, as if begging for them to ask him to spill his suspicion. He’s got that knowing glint in his eye, and for a moment, Frank panics, thinking that he might suspect the truth.

Frank gets a little bit of a leaden feeling in his heart when Mikey says, “dude, who?”

“Well,” Ray says, and then look around, as if he’s wary of someone eavesdropping. Then he looks down to the front of the class as a familiar face enters the room. “Speak of the devil.”

Frank, confused, turns to look down to see Brendon walking into the class, and he makes a face. Does Ray actually suspect Brendon? Of all people? Brendon? He doesn’t seem to have much of a personality at all to Frank, other than kind of short-tempered. He’s indifferent to the guy, if he’s being totally honest. Brendon is lukewarm on him at best, he doesn’t seem to dislike Frank, but he doesn’t like him too much either.

“What? Brendon?” Mikey asks, in a whisper, eyeing him as he takes a few steps up the stairs on one side of the lecture hall and then finds a seat near the front in the far-left corner, which as far as Frank can tell, is the seat furthest away from all other humans.

Come to think of it, Frank can’t actually recall ever seeing Brendon hanging out with anybody. Brendon just sort of strays in and out of Frank’s peripheral, never really engaging with him or anybody else. He didn’t come to the afterparty the other day when everyone else did. Frank knows more about Mikey than he does about Brendon, and Frank can name the things that he actually knows about Mikey on one hand. Namely, Mikey is Gerard’s brother and he plays hockey. That is the extent of his knowledge about Mikey.

“Yeah, dude,” Ray replies, “he’s just got that way about him.”

“Way?” Frank asks, “what, you mean he shits rainbows?”

“No,” Ray says.

“Then I guess he’s probably just a person, isn’t he?” Frank says, and he doesn’t mean for it to come out so snippy but it does.

“I’m not saying he isn’t, I just think that it’s probably him,” Ray says. “He’s always, so like, I don’t know, he’s the only guy who calls Morgan out when he’s being a dick to his face.”

“Oh, okay so he’s gay because he’s not an asshole,” Frank nods.

“Dude!” Ray says, “I just mean, oh whatever. I just think it’s Brendon.”

Mikey shrugs, “could be me. Maybe I ghostwrote it after I saw Pacific Rim.”

Ray makes a face, “why Pacific Rim?”

“Have you ever seen Idris Elba? Fuck if there ain’t a straight man alive who wouldn’t bend him the fuck over.”

Frank makes a nodding sort of gesture as Ray just shakes his head, obviously, his no homo complex is being tested and he doesn’t like it. At some point though he just shrugs and nods.

The three of them are forced into silence when their professor comes in, the one that doesn’t seem to like Frank too much, though he hasn’t quite figured out why yet. He suspects it has something to do with Frank’s haircut, though what about it that the windbag doesn’t like, Frank hasn’t determined, but he’s the kind of vapid person who’d hate someone for their hair.

Frank glances around the room a few times and he notices the school newspaper open on someone’s laptop, gets a strange sort of feeling in his stomach, and then ignores it. It doesn’t stop there, though.

Frank is walking out of the classroom a little while later, saying bye to Mikey and Ray who are off in a different direction as Frank makes his way towards the dining hall. Frank feels someone’s eyes on him as he’s exiting the building, and he locks eyes with another hockey player, Garret, Morgan’s roommate. He doesn’t look too happy about something and Frank does not need to wrack his brain to determine what that something is.

Frank can’t help himself but to look at the phones of the people he passes, he’s just checking on instinct. Out of a few dozen people that he passes, at least a third or more of them are either reading the article, or he catches some sort of snippet of conversation about it. It’s quite peculiar. Frank isn’t totally aware of how many people know, quite yet, but it seems like it won’t take very long at all for this to spread.

The goal of the article might actually come to fruition. Other gay sports players, or just any gay people on campus, might actually read the article. They might actually feel less alone. Frank might actually be speaking to people, making a difference.

Patrick was right about the article, he supposes. There are just somethings that you can’t help but to read. An article about a secret gay, that’s just something that sparks interest. It prompts conversation, itches to be spread and shared. It’ll catch on like a virus. It’s something that you can’t help but to be interested in or curious about. It’s got a layer of mystery as well as a layer of scandal. It’s not going to take long for this to be a schoolwide phenomenon, Frank can tell.

Frank ends up in the dining hall, grabbing food aimlessly, not particularly concerned in the goings on of the people around him, as he’s fairly sure he knows what most of their conversations are about. Everyone’s going to have something to pitch in about this article. If it weren’t a school article, it wouldn’t be this big. The fact that it is a school article, however, indicates that it’s something that the student body population is supposed to get engaged with.

Frank hears a snippet of conversation as he’s walking through the room about it, but he doesn’t invest himself in what the person is saying. He’s very nervous about listening in on too many people, because he’s sure he’ll hear negative things when people don’t know he’s listening. That’s half the point of the article, in all fairness, but it’s not going to happen overnight. He wants people to be more conscientious, be aware that not everyone around them is straight, but the article is still fresh in people’s minds, they’re going to have some more blunt things to say about it today of all days.

Frank takes a seat, near the corner of the huge room, liking his privacy. He likes to sit next to walls, because people aren’t likely to walk behind him or past him when he’s against a wall. He always feels somewhat invaded when people walk past him too much, like his life is on display.

“Hey, Patrick,” Frank says only a few minutes later, looking up at the man who sits down next to him with a very slack posture which leads him to believe that something is wrong. Frank looks at him, evaluates him for a moment, and sees that the look on his face is one of something very grim, so there is definitely something wrong. Frank looks around, but there’s no one sitting anywhere close to him, since it’s a little too early for the lunch rush, and way too late for it to be breakfast.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” Frank whispers, nervous that it has something to do with the article. Patrick’s name is attached to that piece even if Frank’s isn’t, so there’s definitely a chance that Patrick has received some backlash from the article, probably from the homophobes who want to make him feel like shit for acknowledging that gay people exist, which is a big no-no on the asshole front.

“Nothing,” Patrick says in a voice that indicates that it is not nothing. Frank wrinkles his eyebrows together and becomes genuinely worried when he looks at Patrick’s face bent down over his tray of food, with something like agony etched across his every feature.

“No, that’s definitely not true.”

“I…” Patrick stops when either a lack of air or too much air interrupts him, making him cough and then make a whining sound, and as Frank looks at him, he realizes that Patrick is about to fucking cry. Something definitely bigger than an asshole being an asshole has happened, and it makes Frank very nervous. He knows it must have something to do with the article, so whatever it is, he feels partially responsible.

“Oh shit, man,” Frank says, “what happened?”

Patrick makes a face, and then puts his head in his hands. Frank can hear only very faintly, “Pete broke up with me.” He says it with a tone of voice that sounds like he’s given up all hope, or like he’s already broken.

Frank’s entire body immediately turns to stone at Patrick’s words. He doesn’t know if he’s even heard Patrick correctly because there’s no way that Pete, the guy who literally fawns over Patrick when he so much as breathes, could possibly have broken up with him. It’s just not possible. There’s no way that he could or would do that.

Except the look on Patrick’s face is definitely not one that could or would ever be faked, which makes Frank believe that somehow, for some unearthly reason, he’s telling the truth. Pete broke up with him for some inconceivable reason.

“That’s not… no. No, why would he? How could he ever?” Frank asks, feeling aghast, and it feels a little bit like he’s been broken up with too. Frank’s never dated anyone, never had a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or anyone, but he feels like the hollowness inside of him right now is what you would feel if you’d just been broken up with.

Frank doesn’t know why yet, but he is sure that this is all his fault. It must have something to do with the article, how he’s not sure, but it’s his fault all the same. Frank feels like trash, feels like the scum of the earth, and if he’s correct, then he’s not incorrect in feeling as such. Pete and Patrick were made for each other, they were made for each other. If Frank is in anyway responsible for breaking them up, he’s going to fucking hate himself for the rest of his life.

“He thought…” Patrick starts, makes a gasping sort of sound and then breathes in deeply before looking up, with an expression void of any emotion at all, like showing any feelings whatsoever will somehow make him fall apart. The little composure that he has left will all just tumble down. “He thought the article was about him.”

“He what?” Frank asks, confused.

“Thought I went ahead and did it without his consent,” Patrick says, his voice cold and so very broken, so much so that Frank feels a sharp twang of pain in his heart like someone poking at his insides with a stick or possibly a wrecking ball.

“Fuck,” Frank says, “but you didn’t.”

“No,” Patrick says, “but I promised you I wouldn’t tell him… I-I couldn’t break your trust.”

“Oh fuck that,” Frank says, standing up abruptly. “You just stay there, Patrick, I’m going to set him straight.”

“Frank you don’t have to-”

“Fuck yeah, I do,” Frank says, “there’s nothing that’s going to stop me from making this right, and right now, it’s my fucking fault, and I’m not going to let this happen if I can fix it.”

“Frank-” but that’s all Patrick gets out before Frank is rampaging off with a whole lot of determination in his fucking everything. It’s on his face, in his walk, it’s probably in his ears at this point.

Frank doesn’t waste any time, he texts Pete the second he steps out of the building. He instinctively heads towards Pete and Patrick’s dorm, because that is the most likely place to find him. If he’s not there, he could also be at the library working on that paper Patrick mentioned yesterday.

Frank doesn’t wait for a reply though, he just heads in the direction of their dorm, and he doesn’t care if he’s wrong, because he will track Pete down to the ends of the fucking earth before he allows the guy to break up with the love of his fucking life over something Frank did.

Frank’s a little bit incredulous of the fact that Patrick actually kept his secret after Pete literally broke up with him. If Frank loved anyone as much as those two love each other, he would have let the cat out of the bag the second he saw troubled waters. He’d feel shitty about it, sure, but he’d have his boyfriend there to make him not feel so bad about it.

Patrick keeping his secret in these circumstances tells Frank a huge thing about the guy. He’s the most trustworthy guy on the planet. If Frank had any doubts about Patrick, they’re gone now. Patrick actually kept his promise to Frank even though doing so caused Pete to break up with him. Patrick might just be the best and truest friend he’s ever had, which is a surprise to him. He’d honestly thought that he’d been growing closest to Pete, but now that he reflects on it, he honestly can’t find a time when Patrick wasn’t there for him. Even though he’s only known the guy a few weeks, and they’ve had very few encounters compared to how much Frank sees Ray, Pete, and Gerard, it’s unreal how much closer he feels to Patrick. Patrick kept a promise that resulted in what might be the worst thing that’s ever happened. He’s a keeper.

Frank doesn’t receive a response from Pete, not even when he makes it to the dorm and storms into it, looking like a man on a mission. People get out of his way, though there’s not very many people lazing around in the hallways, but there’s enough for Frank to realize that he must look fucking scary, which is an accomplishment given that Frank is a hobbit.

Frank turns down Pete’s hallway, and he stops in front of Pete’s dorm room, hearing music coming from inside. Immediately, Frank can tell it’s one of those sad breakup playlists on Spotify which are both cliché and harrowing. He knocks on the door quite forcefully, and he doesn’t receive a response. He knocks again, but still nothing. Pete is ignoring him, both on his phone and while Frank is literally outside his door.

Frank just rolls his eyes and opens the door, which is unlocked, not surprisingly, because Pete is very forgetful and he of course, would forget to actually lock the door while he was trying to hide away from the world. What a fucking idiot.

Frank steps in, sees a very large mass of blankets with some feet sticking out on the other end, and then huffs, as he closes the door behind him.

“Pete,” Frank says.

“Go away,” Pete replies, his voice muffled as it’s coming from somewhere underneath the sheets, though Frank couldn’t say where. His entire head is covered, the only piece of him showing are his feet.

“Pete,” Frank says again.

“I’m not in a very chatty mood, Frank,” Pete replies.

“Pete, I’ve got to tell you something.”

“Not now, I’m in mourning,” Pete replies.

“Not for long, you’re not,” Frank replies.

“My boyfriend, the love of my life, wrote an article about me in the school newspaper and didn’t even tell me. After I explicitly told him I didn’t want an article written about me. And they’re not even my words, it’s just fucking garbage. I’m a poet, and it’s garbage.”

Frank makes a face and rolls his eyes at the ceiling like he’s directly questioning God, as he grumbles, “well thanks.”

“I just want to stay in my blanket cocoon and be wallow in misery, okay? Just go away,” Pete responds. Still, Frank has yet to see his head.

Frank groans, walks over to his computer and pauses the music so that he can actually hear himself think for a moment, though he’s so high on adrenaline that he doesn’t even feel the nerves from what he’s about to do.

“Pete, just listen to me for a second,” Frank says.

“No!” Pete groans, and he finally pokes his head out of the blankets, emerging about a foot to the left of where Frank thought his head was. “Make Adele come back, I need her. She’s the only one who understands.”

“Pete, the article isn’t about you,” Frank says, with a tone of annoyance in his voice. He’s a little irked that Pete would jump to the conclusions that he did and make the rash decision to break up with Patrick. Like Patrick would ever betray a promise, and a promise with Pete at that.

Frank understands why Pete would assume literally anyone else might have made the article, pretending to be Pete. An article like that is going to be popular, or at least, it’s going to get attention, as evidenced already. But Patrick is the last person who would ever betray a promise, and if Pete said no, Pete should know better. He should know that Patrick would never do anything Pete asked him not to.

So, Frank gets why Pete might think it’s about him, because Pete is the only gay hockey player that he’s aware of, but it’s a little baffling for Frank to think that he didn’t even consider that it could be about anyone else. Pete is so afraid and so far into the closet that he genuinely believed he was the only player on the team who could possibly be gay. He’s so scared, and feels so truly alone that he never considered the possibility that the article could be about another player on the team.

“What?” Pete asks, looking confused.

“The article isn’t about you, Pete,” Frank says, taking a deep breath and then continuing. “It’s about me. I’m gay. I’m the one Patrick interviewed.”

“You-” Pete starts, but then his eyebrows scrunch together in a way that makes him look like a very confused dog. Frank’s sure that if he were Patrick, he would find Pete’s face to be irresistible. “What?”

“I’m gay, Pete,” Frank says, sighing slightly, a little miffed about having to say this, but he isn’t thinking twice about it, and he wouldn’t take it back. This is what he needs to do and he knows that. Patrick and Pete deserve each other, he can’t come between the two of them like this. “After I walked in on you two… I told Patrick. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I told Patrick a few weeks ago, and I made him promise not to tell anybody, for any reason, not even you. I planed to tell you sooner, I did, but I just never got around to it, it’s hard, you know. And when Patrick asked about the article, I knew I wanted to do it. Patrick wanted you to have someone to feel close to, even if I didn’t tell you, and he wants other closeted people like us to have that too. He’s just looking out for you.”

“You’re…” Pete starts, then drifts off, looking at Frank like he’s a rare fossil, or like he’s just turned into a bear or something else ridiculous that could prompt an expression as incredulous as that.

“Yeah, Pete,” Frank says, rolling his eyes a little bit, but it’s not like he doesn’t understand the emotions Pete is having right now, he experienced the very same ones a few weeks ago.

“Gay?” Pete says, as if finishing his own sentence a minute too late.

“Yes,” Frank says, nodding now. He does understand completely what it’s like to not be able to compute that information, though. When he found out about Pete, he was amazed, astounded. He almost didn’t believe it himself. Going through those emotions is not easily done, or a light task to have to handle either.

“For real?” Pete asks, and Frank smiles at him, not in a pleased sort of way, just in a ‘wow, this guy is an idiot’ sort of way, but it’s a loving one nonetheless.

“Pete, I’m so gay I struggle walking in a straight line,” Frank replies.

Pete’s face goes from awe and astonishment to panicked in a matter of only seconds. It’s almost cartoonish, and Frank feels bad that he’s slightly amused by it. Not entirely though, Pete’s an idiot and a bit of a jackass, so he’s not going to feel too bad about making fun of him.

“So, you’re saying I broke up with Patrick for nothing?” Pete asks, looking like someone just stole his entire life savings from him.

“Well, no, you broke up with Patrick for being the best friend of all fucking time,” Frank replies.

“Shit!” Pete shouts and then he’s shoving himself out of the bed, and Frank genuinely has only a second before Pete is running right past him, out through the door. He almost hits himself on the closed door when it doesn’t open fast enough for him. Frank sticks his head out the door to watch Pete running frantically down the hall like he’s being chased by a horror movie villain. He nearly bumps into a girl walking the other way, she makes a face and looks back at him, but Pete’s fucking gone before she has the chance to scold him.

“Well, I guess there’s my work done for the day,” Frank says to himself. He leaves the room, closing the door behind him, and feeling a little proud of himself.

He’s sure that he and Pete are going to talk more about this later, sure that Pete wants to share all the things Frank does about how awful it is to be the gay guy on the hockey team. He’s kind of excited to have that conversation as well, because Pete is honestly the only other person he knows who will understand that the way that Frank does.

Frank walks with somewhat of a hop in his step, very proud of himself for mending a relationship, and for finally telling Pete. It’s been like two weeks, Frank really had meant to tell him earlier. He wishes it had been under better circumstances, but still, Pete knows. That’s quite a feat for him. Frank has now not only doubled, or tripled, but quadrupled the people who know he’s gay in just under a month. He’d never told anyone before and now he’s told three of the closest people to him.

Frank smiles to himself, walking down the hallway, lost in thought, when he feels something very hard, and very painful, jab into him on his side. He’s so surprised and caught off guard, that it takes him a few seconds to realize what’s even happened, he’s just aware of the pain in his side that’s already beginning to sting. It’s the kind of bump that stings for a while rather than being only immediately painful, sort of echoes in a way that shouldn’t make sense but does. Frank turns to see what the source of the feeling is, and he sees Morgan, with his stupidly intimidating eyebrows, smirking back at him. Like an actual justifiable fucking smirk. Frank doesn’t think he’s ever seen a real fucking smirk before, but that could go in a dictionary, because there’s no other word for it.

Frank keeps walking down the hall, not anxious to get the shit beaten out of him, because he’s sure Morgan’s that kind of guy, the kind of guy who’d actually beat you up if you piss him off.

Frank just keeps walking, and lets his thoughts wonder off, back to the talk of the town that he’d momentarily forgotten about. The article is out there. The reactions he’s been seeing aren’t all in his head. Everyone on campus knows he’s here. They all know there is a gay hockey player. Frank is no longer in the shadows. But he’s also now got more of an opportunity to be accepted, because no one’s ever going to begin accepting him if he keeps his own existence a secret.

Frank considers Morgan now, for a moment. The thought crosses his mind that Morgan is in a bit of a mood today. He does normally hit Frank when he walks by him, but he’s never hit him quite so roughly before, and this could be due to either the angle at which he was walking in, or the fact that the dude is fucking pissed off about something. What else is there to be pissed off about right now then the big news? He and Garret may have come together to talk shit earlier. Someone on Morgan’s very own team is gay, and Morgan, as he has evidenced, isn’t very much fond of that whole scene. You could say he hates gays, or you could just call him a piece of shit. Either works, and gets the point across. He’s probably totally cool with lesbians so long as they’re not wearing any clothes, but gay dudes? Nah mate. Morgan doesn’t want any of that shit.

Frank doesn’t want to think about that right now, because there’s too many good things he could be focusing on. Pete knows, Pete’s going to go find Patrick and beg on his knees for Patrick to forgive him, and everything’s going to be fine. The article is out, the reactions have been surprised so far, but they haven’t been definitively bad, which is a good sign. The schools knows about it, that’s all Frank wanted from this. That’s all he still wants. He wants everyone at least in this school to feel like they have a place in society since he can’t quite touch the world. Not yet at least.