nobody will love you like the devil will//frerard/ferard

chapter five

Frank manages to sneak back into his room and hide the flask in the back of his closet without waking his parents, but he has to work a lot harder at it than he did earlier. He suspects this is mostly down to whatever Gerard had in that flask. He feels a little lightheaded, just on the verge of laughing, warm and golden all the way down to his toes. He leaves his clothes draped haphazardly over the back of his desk chair, wriggles into the stretched t-shirt and sweats he uses as pajamas, then climbs into bed.

Of course, he can't sleep.

His alarm clock tells him it's 2:37am, but he's too wired to calm down enough to doze off. Every time he thinks he's getting close, he remembers something Gerard said about the movie, or Gerard offering him a drink like it was no big deal, or Gerard insisting that popcorn is a must for horror movies or Gerard throwing rocks at his window.

Frank feels sort of cheated, like he's been missing out all these years, and that's the last thought in his head before he finally passes out.

***

morning, his mouth tastes like something died in there, and he's sure as fuck his alarm clock isn't normally that loud. He groans, reaches over to hit the snooze button, and burrows deeper under the covers. The noise is drilling into his skull and it just needs to go the fuck away. He's trying to sleep, for fuck's sake.

He's just drifting off again when his mom knocks briskly on the door. "Frankie?"

"'M up, 'm up," he grumbles, kicking the covers off and shrinking away from the cold. Jesus fuck, there is no need for it to be this cold. He forces himself out of bed, frowning as a half-remembered dream shifts uneasily in the back of his mind. Something about fire, he thinks, but then it's gone, dissipating like smoke in the watery morning sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains. Weird.

He grabs yesterday's pants off the back of the chair and goes in search of clean socks.

***

He's halfway to school before the vague sense that he's forgotten something solidifies, and the penny drops with a nasty clatter. He can't believe he forgot to pray a rosary last night, being out late with Gerard is no fucking excuse. Guilt curls in his stomach, sick and familiar, and he promises himself he'll make up for it. It feels a lot like disappointing his parents, but worse. Extra Hail Marys, for sure. Mary's his north star. She's easier to talk to than God, and she always forgives him. She hasn't led him wrong yet. Maybe he'll go to the chapel at lunchtime. He's pretty sure the cafeteria lunch today is that gross-smelling lasagna that he wouldn't eat even if it didn't have meat in it.

Feeling better already, he keeps walking.

***

It turns out that late nights and the thrill of sneaking out don't do much for Frank's concentration in class. Which, he reflects, okay, isn't all that surprising. He sits and zones out in the back row in English, doodling a zombie on the cover of his notebook. He can't draw for shit and the proportions look pretty terrible even to him, but he thinks Gerard would appreciate his dedication to artistically rendering the zombie's decomposition. The right arm, hanging off on a sinew, is a particularly nice touch.

"Frank?"

"Zombies," says Frank automatically, then jumps at the spiky ripple of laughter that goes through the rest of the class. Every single person in the room is watching him (except for Matt, who's asleep again), and Sister Alicia raises an eyebrow.

"I appreciate your use of modern pop culture archetypes to comment on Holden Caulfield's characterization, Frank, but is there anything else you'd like to add?"

Frank manages to pull out some plausible-sounding bullshit about Holden Caulfield being a cautionary figure for modern youth, but he's blushing so hard he's pretty sure his face must look like a traffic signal. When he finally rambles to a halt, Sister Alicia tips him an approving half-smile and a nod. He sinks down lower in his seat in a feeble attempt to disappear completely. At least it was Sister Alicia, she's pretty chill. He likes her. She doesn't seem to take things too seriously, unlike Sister Agnes, who believes that untucked shirts, misplaced apostrophes and split infinitives should all be made hanging offences. Frank is basically permanently persona non grata with Sister Agnes.

Frank wonders idly if Sister Alicia knows that eighty percent of the student body lusts after her. She probably does, she's pretty sharp.

With an effort, he wrenches his mind off its tangent and tries to concentrate on the paragraph he's meant to be analyzing.

***

It isn't until later, when Frank is idly watching the dude who sits across from him in math surreptitiously texting under his desk, that he realizes that he doesn't have Gerard's number. He doesn't know his address, or his email, or... well, anything. For some reason, that's a lot more disappointing than it really should be. Maybe Gerard makes a habit of throwing rocks at the windows of near-strangers and taking them to the movies. Or maybe he thought Frank was cool until he actually spent some time with him, then realized his mistake and vowed to avoid him like the plague in the future. There's a small part of Frank that's perfectly aware that he's being ridiculous and paranoid and whiny, but he ignores it.

He settles a few inches deeper into his sulk, then, when the lesson's over, slouches off to the toilets.

When he steps back out of his stall, Pete Wentz is standing at one of the sinks, peering into the greasy mirror and dabbing carefully at a nasty split lip. Frank kind of hates himself for the way he automatically checks that there's no one else around before he speaks – he's not an asshole, he's just very aware of the fact that a) he's about as useful as a dead fish in a fight and b) being seen talking to Pete Wentz is basically the same as sticking a "kick me" sign on your own back. Frank feels sorry for the guy. The word is that Pete's parents are going to ship him off to military boot camp or something if he keeps getting into trouble. Frank thinks it's only a matter of time, Catholic school clearly isn't working out for him.

"Dude," he says. "Again?"

Pete nods, looking resigned. "Fucking assholes," he says thickly, and Frank notices the dried blood just under Pete's nose. "They got me when I went outside the back gates for a smoke."

What happened?"

"Same old. They call me a fag, I get pissed and sarcastic and ask them if they even know how to spell denial, I get a bloody nose." He smiles, but it looks brittle and stretched and his lip starts oozing blood again. Frank doesn't know whether the dude's an idiot for talking back or a hero for sticking it to the douchebags. Maybe he's both.

it feels like i haven't updated in forever omg