All We Need Is Daylight

Frank may have been wrong before when he had thought Gerard wasn’t on the list of potential boyfriends. He may have been so completely wrong that it’s almost laughable.

Frank might be putty in Gerard’s hands already, and it’s only been a day.

Frank falls in love with everybody, it’s like his thing. He falls in love with fictional characters, he falls in love with actors, he falls in love with classmates, he falls in love with strangers. To be fair, he’s a sexually repressed hormonal teenager at his peak, so it’s not a surprise that he’s so willing to fall in love with people, but there are consequences to it.

Gerard takes him to a diner off campus, a ten or so minute walk from the rink, and Gerard starts talking about his dad, and how he had raised himself and Mikey on hockey like it was second nature, something as normal as going to school, or brushing your teeth.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve played hockey. I was on a hockey team before I even started school,” he says. “And like, every other week, we’d go to a hockey game. It was just like a family tradition, you know? We’d share fries, doughnuts, I’d go to school the next say too tired to concentrate on anything, and then I’d go home and we’d watch more.”

“My mom was never all that into hockey,” Frank says. “It took me years to teach her the rules. But she’d come to every game anyway, root me on even if she didn’t know what was going on.”

“My mom was my biggest fan,” Gerard says, “oh man, wait till your first game and you hear her screaming for Mikey.”

“Are you going to let me play during the first game?” Frank asks. The season technically started only last week, and the team has already played, and lost, their first game. Their second game is the day after tomorrow, which is far too close, and Frank is definitely not prepared for that.

The hockey season starts in October and goes through to March. An assortment of finals are scattered across March, with the final, the NCAA championship, taking place in April. Games are traditionally played on Friday’s or Saturday’s, sometimes back to back, and sometimes only one per week. There are up to 34 games in a season, excluding tournaments, and these tend to be split in half between away and home games. In a season, a team usually plays every team in the division twice, but this isn’t always the case.

The Green Knights have a game on Friday, a home game, which is at their own rink, and the week after that they’ll be in Wisconsin. The season gets hectic pretty early on, and that’s without accounting for school.

“Definitely not,” Gerard says, shaking his head, “I’m not going to put you on the ice until you’re part of the team. I mean, like a real, cohesive, part of the team. You probably won’t play until next week, or the week after that.”

“I understand,” Frank says, nodding, though he’s not happy about it. He’ll soon be one of the shining stars of the team, but even if he is a good player, he isn’t a part of the team yet, because he hasn’t practiced with them enough. He needs to understand his team members minds in and out, because being good at hockey only goes so far if you’re not on the same wavelength as your teammates.

“I hope you shape up pretty quick though,” Gerard says, “the team needs you. They won’t admit it your face, but they do.”

“I know,” Frank says, “I really hope I’m able to help the team.”

“It’s the dawn of a new era, if you ask me,” Gerard says, “Pete’s the new captain, you’re new to the team. Things are changing quite quickly, but I think it’ll be a good change. I think you’ll do us proud.”

“I hope to,” Frank says, “hockey is why I’m here. It’s what I intend to prove.”

“What do you plan to do afterhockey?” Gerard asks, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Uh, well, ideally I’ll be a millionaire by then, so probably just retire with a house full of dogs.”

“A millionaire?”

“NHL pays really good,” Frank shrugs.

“Oh, so after hockey, you plan to do… hockey.”

“Yeah,” Frank says, nodding, because that’s pretty much the gist of it.

“And they say college kids have no direction,” Gerard sighs.

“Well, what do you plan to do?” Frank asks. “You’re already out of school, and yet you haven’t even really left. So like, who’s the one with no direction?”

“Relax, I’m kidding,” Gerard says, “I’m well aware of the fact that I don’t know where I’m going in life. It eats me up at night, but let’s not get into that right now.” He says it with something like laughter on his face, but Frank has a bit of a panic attack just thinking about it. He does not want to think about what comes after hockey, or what’ll happen if he doesn’t end up in the NHL. He hasn’t considered it. It’s just always been a goal. Not quite a certainty, so much as the only option he’s ever given himself.

“But you don’t want to be an assistant coach forever,” Frank says.

“No, well, the next rung would be… coach.”

“Oh, very funny,” Frank says with the hint of a snarl, as he rolls his eyes. “What did you even go to school for though?”

“I got a degree in cartoons,” Gerard says, and when Frank wrinkles his eyes in skepticism, Gerard just shrugs. “No, actually. That’s actually what I have a degree in.”

“So, what, did you just sit inside and watch Spongebob all day?”

“No, cartooning and illustrations, you blockhead. Like drawing cartoons.”

“Oh,” Frank says, nodding, “see I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me.”

“You’re an idiot,” Gerard shakes his head. “After hockey, if I ever decide to stop, that is, I’ll try to do something like that. Do animation or comics or something.”

“I could see you as a comic book writer,” Frank says, and Gerard, though for the life of him he doesn’t know why, blushes. Frank looks at him with fascination as his ears and then the sides of his face turn scarlet, and he tries to figure out what he said that could cause that.

“You think so?” Gerard asks.

“I’ve never met anyone as into comics as you,” Frank says, “if you can’t create comics, then who the fuck can?”

“Thanks,” Gerard says, not able to look back up at Frank for a good couple of minutes. People don’t tend to believe in Gerard. He’s always been second best, at everything. Everything he does is second rate, idiotic, lesser than what others have done. Even Mikey’s a better hockey player than he is. There’s always been someone who has been better than him at everything he has ever been good at.

Drawing is the only thing that he’s ever been better than other people at, the one thing that he does better than everyone around him. So, when he pursued it at school, he was excited to be the best. Then everyone told him it wasn’t a viable career option and that he should find a better life’s ambition. Scrap the old one because it’s just not probable enough. Like you can just dothat. Just throw away your dreams because it’s convenient.

Something about Frank makes his words feel more important than other peoples, it’s probably just because Frank’s the only person to validate his feelings. The only person to actually encourage Gerard. It’s refreshing, having a change in climate. Someone who actually believes in him is something Gerard is not used to.

The truth is, Gerard doesn’t want to do hockey forever. That’s not exactly true, though. He does want to in some way always be involved with hockey, whether as a fulltime coach or an assistant coach, but he wants to do more. He wants to write a comic book, or create a TV cartoon, or write a fucking children’s novel, something, anything, that allows him to bring his creativity to the table.

Maybe if he were to date someone who plays hockey he could have the best of both worlds. Possibly a member of the NHL…

“Do you have a girlfriend, Frank?” Gerard asks, unable to help himself. The question is out of nowhere, though, making Frank splutter slightly and look at Gerard quizzically.

“Do I what?”

“Have a girlfriend?” Gerard asks.

“Why…?” Frank starts to ask Gerard why he wants to know and then just shrugs and replies, “no, I d-don’t.”

“Interesting.”

“Do you?” Frank asks.

“No,” Gerard says, shaking his head, his answer almost immediate.

Frank has a flash of puzzlement, with his brain conjuring up the radical idea that this is flirting. This is Gerard flirting. This is him trying to see if he has a shot with Frank.

Then, Frank lets reality come back to him and he rolls his eyes at himself, because of the idiocy of his own imagination. Of course this isn’t flirting, Gerard’s as straight as every other hockey player. Hockey players aren’t gay, not even technically retired hockey players who are now coaches. And even if Gerard were gay, he would have no interest in Frank, who’s about four years younger than him, and boring as fuck. He’s probably in the same league as Gerard, but if Gerard were to get a haircut and some nicer clothes he probably wouldn’t be.

Gerard’s just being nice. He’s just trying to learn more about Frank, that’s all. That’s why he asked Frank to breakfast, and wants to know if he’s dating someone. Because he’s being nice. Because he’s Frank’s coach and he should know most of the details about Frank’s life in order to make sure he is doing the best he can out there on the ice. It’s nothing more than that, obviously. Gerard’s just nice.

Gerard, of course, is flirting.

“Okay,” Frank says, nodding, trying to brush it off. He had a lapse in judgement there where he actually allowed himself to believe that a boy might be into him, which is of course, impossible.

Their food comes following a few minutes of awkward silence, and Frank is thankful for the distraction. Gerard sees it as an opportunity to change the subject.

“Do you really have no other plans beside hockey?” Gerard asks, looking at Frank cautiously, because he’s not sure if he freaked the boy out or something.

Frank sighs, and doesn’t know what to say. If hockey doesn’t work out, he supposes he could always try figure skating. He’d have to quit hockey in order to do that though, which simply isn’t worth it. Frank loves hockey too much, and the difference between the two is that you can figure skate by yourself. You can’t play hockey by yourself though. He can’t be a figure skater who does hockey in his free time. It doesn’t work like that. It’s only the other way around.

“I’ve never given myself permission to imagine any other paths,” Frank says. “Because hockey, skating, has always been the end goal, you know? Skating is what makes me feel like I have a life worth living.”

“Well then, fuck everything else, right?” Gerard says. “I’m not going to say that having a backup plan isn’t a good idea, but honestly, if you keep working hard, Frank, well then the skies the limit.”

“What?” Frank asks, because he’s definitely not used to people being supportive of that. People call him an idiot for not having a backup plan. His career advisor in high school literally hated Frank’s guts, because Frank vehemently refused to ever make any alternate plans. He just wouldn’t do it. He’d be told to name his top three ideal jobs, and he’d write hockey, hockey, hockey.

“Dude, if you’re going to go all in, then you do you, man. It helps that you’ve got the skill to back it up,” Gerard says.

“You’ve only seen me practice one time!” Frank says, because Gerard literally cannot be that quick to judge when he’s supposed to be a fucking coach.

“Well, I saw you beat the shit out of my brother three times,” Gerard says, and he decides to exclude the part where he’d googled Frank last night and watched clips of him playing on YouTube, because that would be creepy. Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it, but he doesn’t want to admit to it.

“You should talk to my mom and try to convince her of that,” Frank says.

“Oh man, what does she want you to be, let me guess, lawyer?” Gerard asks.

“Engineer?” Frank says, with a shrug. “They get the best scholarships, or at least that’s what she told me.”

“Huh,” Gerard says, “yeah, no, you shouldn’t do that. You’d look awful in a hard hat.”

“I don’t think hard hats are really made to be fashionable,” Frank says, with a shrug.

“Well, either way, don’t be an engineer. Unless you want to be, that is, but since you don’t, fuck that. And fuck lawyers, man.”

“Amen,” Frank says with a nod, biting into a piece of toast.

Frank would very much like to say that half an hour later, after finishing breakfast, he has somehow managed to lull the feeling in his stomach into becoming dormant. That he has miraculously gotten over his crush, or whatever you want to call it, on Gerard.

Sadly, that is not the case. Frank manages to weasel his way away from Gerard after they pay their bill, by giving him a lousy excuse about touring campus, which of course, only inclines Gerard to offer to guide him, but Frank says that he’d rather do it himself, and without more word than that, he just runs away from the guy in a panic. Gerard is too confused to follow him, so Frank escapes him relatively unscathed, but not without embarrassment.

Frank runs back to his room, which is empty because Ray is at class, and he hides under the blankets of his bed for a good ten minutes or so before getting his breathing down to a steady rate. With all the extra time that Frank has all to himself, he decides that what he really needs to do is to google the shit out of comic books so that he has fuel for talking to Gerard.

He doesn’t admit it to himself that that’s the reason for why he reads the entire Wikipedia page for Doom Patrol, but he can’t deny it to himself either.

Ray comes back to the room at about eleven, making exasperated groaning sounds as he throws his backpack on the bed, with himself soon to follow.

“I feel you, man,” Frank says, looking down at him, which is honestly a first in his life, but having an elevated bed he supposes does have one advantage.

“You ever just want to like, fucking, stick yourself in a microwave and just die there?” Ray says.

“Daily,” Frank says, nodding.

“I literally hate calculus,” Ray replies.

“Oh, dude,” Frank says, making a face, “That’s rough.”

“It doesn’t help that I can barely add,” Ray says, pulling himself back up, with his hair everywhere, like the lion that he truly is. “What’s got you, so, uh… wigged out?”

Frank pulls himself up and tries to figure out what about him was radiating the internal mess he’s in. It’s probably the fact that he was staring at the ceiling and doing literally nothing else.

“Just, you know,” Frank says, he wants to say ‘boys’ but he refrains, and instead makes a groaning sound.

“Um, yeah, that really… clears things up,” Ray says.

“Just, ugh,” Frank says with another groan, “I’ve been here a fucking day, and I’m already so unsure of everything.”

“What do you mean? Like you’re regretting coming here?”

“No, that’s not it,” Frank says, because it’s really not. He’s not really regretting being here, or at least, not yet anyway. He’s pretty chill about the hockey and the school, if not extremely stressed. He’s not uncertain about his decision to move here, what he’s uncertain about is Gerard, and just boys in general.

He’s uncertain about what relationships are like, what flirting is, how you’re supposed to know if a boy likes you, how to know if you like someone or if you’re just so used to people ignoring you that the first time someone pays you any mind you think you’re falling in love. Frank is just all muddled in the brain area, and it’s because of that stupid fucking hobo looking shit.

“Oh, I get it,” Ray says, “it’s a girl.”

Frank sighs, because he supposes that Ray is close enough that he’ll settle with it.

“Am I that transparent?” Frank asks.

“Everyone is transparent when it comes to girls,” Ray says. “I’d love to do the whole, ‘what’s her name?’ and ‘where’d you meet’ game, but I have a class in twenty. I’ll quiz you on her later though.”

“Great,” Frank says, and he watches as Ray pulls out some textbooks and replaces them with different ones, before putting his backpack on, and making a groaning sound at the increased weight.

“See ya,” Ray says, before waving at Frank, who waves back halfheartedly.

He goes back to his really invigorating staring contest with the ceiling, and starts to try to piece together this ‘girl’s’ personality who he’s now going to have to pretend he’s into. He settles on calling her Rachel, because when Frank was a small child, he had a crush on Jennifer Aniston. Now, he’s a little more into Joey.

Frank’s already in a pickle and he has been in this town for less than 24 hours. He’s already got a crush, on someone he knowsno less, and it’s worse because the guy is his fucking coach. Well, assistant coach to be exact, and he may only be like four years older than him, but he’s still an authority figure, kind of. Not really though, because his personality is really not very menacing. He’s like a slightly adultier adult.

And now Ray thinks he likes a girl, and he supposes that he can just copy and paste Gerard’s personality onto the fake girl he’s going to have to tell the guy about, but he might see through it. Any of the guys could see through it, they all know Gerard better than Frank does, and yet Frank is the one who’s in love with the guy.

Ray can’t know, of all the people in the world, Ray is the last person who can know. Ray is his roommate, for god’s sake, if the boy knew, he’d probably have Frank kicked out of the room, the school even, if can manage it. He doesn’t know Ray too well, but he’s a hockey player, it’s not hard to guess how he’d feel about that aspect of Frank’s personality.

Liking anyone else, though, wouldn’t make his problems any easier, he can’t transpose how he feels onto Travie, it won’t do him any good. Travie and Gerard will both still be straight, and Frank will still be the gay hockey player. Well, he’s actually more likely to be the gay ex-hockey player after he’s kicked off the team.

The fact of the matter is no one can know, and Frank can’t like Gerard. He just can’t. He can’t allow himself to. He has to stop these thoughts before they become any stronger or start to erode away his resilience.

He’s sure that that his plan to not like Gerard is going to be impossible come practice tonight, and the next day, and the next day, and the day after that. It’s just great that the one guy he ends up crushing on is one of the ones he has to see every single day for possibly four years.

That’s sure to make things more difficult.