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

chapter six

It's another week before Frank sees Gerard again, and by then he's pretty much resigned himself to the fact that Gerard's obviously forgotten all about him and is now somewhere else, doing more interesting things with cooler people. Frank's grades take a sudden and mysterious upswing again, which his mom and dad notice but don't complain about. Frank supposes the grades are probably going to be more useful in the long run, but it's still a bummer. The empty hipflask stays hidden in the back of Frank's closet, out of sight but not out of mind.

He's staring at his calculus homework and willing it to do itself when the doorbell rings.

"Frank, can you get that?" his mom calls up.

Frank is already out of his chair. "I got it!" he yells back down the stairs. It won't be anyone looking for him, but it'll get him away from his desk and give him a cast-iron excuse not to be working. No amount of dedication to getting into college is ever going to make calculus bearable.

He slouches downstairs towards the door. Maybe it'll be Aunt Nina on one of her flying visits, or one of his mom's friends from church. Sometimes they just show up out of the blue with cakes or cookies, which is always awesome (apart from when it's Mrs. Messieri, who seems to think that the existence of carrot cake means beetroot and broccoli cookies are completely A-okay too). He hopes it's not Mrs. O'Brien either, she can't even look at Frank without pinching his cheeks. He fucking hates that. He'd pinch her cheeks just to see how she likes it, but she's built like a brick shithouse. She could fuck him up.

Mrs. O'Brien. It's Gerard.

"Hi," he says. "You're coming over today. I have frozen pizza and violent video games."

"Uh," Frank says, because keeping up with Gerard is really hard work and it takes him a minute to switch gears to Gerard's speed. He's still kind of stuck on the fact that Gerard is here, wanting to hang out with him. "Hi. Sure? Sounds, uh, good." (It sounds fucking awesome, but he doesn't want to scare Gerard off by acting like an over-eager puppy.) "I'll go and, uh, tell my mom."

He cringes internally and makes for the kitchen, leaving Gerard on the doorstep. Smooth, Iero, he thinks. Way to fucking go. He is seriously the biggest dork in the history of ever.

His mom is in the kitchen, up to her elbows in dish soap, and Frank feels momentarily guilty for not offering to help.

"Mom?"

"Mhmm?" She doesn't look up from the tomato sauce stain she's scrubbing at.

"I can go out, right? My friend's here."

That makes her look over her shoulder at him, one eyebrow raised. "A friend?"

"I have friends," he says defensively. Well. He has a friend, non-plural. Whatever, it's basically the same thing.

"Of course you do. Well, I don't see why not, as long as you're not back too late and you get all your work done for Monday."

says immediately, already backing out of the kitchen. He can cross that bridge when he comes to it. "Thanks, Mom!"

Gerard is waiting at the car, leaning against the hood.

"Time off for good behavior, huh?" he says, smirking like a motherfucker.

"Cleared of all charges." Frank sticks his tongue out at Gerard and climbs into the passenger seat.

"Not guilty?" says Gerard, starting the engine. "We should celebrate."

***

Gerard and Mikey's apartment is nestled deep inside one of the only modern buildings in Devil's Gap, a grimy slab of bricks with spidery fire escapes clinging to the outside walls. It's right out on the edge of town, and as Gerard leads Frank up through the dingy stairwell Frank's almost sure he can hear little rodent-y things scurrying around in the gloom.

"This one, right here," says Gerard, stopping in front of a door with a tarnished number six nailed to it and red paint flaking off to show black underneath. Gerard fishes a key out of his pocket and wrestles with the lock for a minute, then opens the door to let Frank in.

Inside, the apartment is small, dark, odd-smelling and impossibly full of mess. The fact that so much mess even fits into so little space is probably breaking several generally accepted laws of physics, Frank thinks, gazing with awe into the kitchen. It's making him itch to clean, which means his mom would probably be having a conniption right about now.

But for all that, Gerard has an apartment almost all to himself. Frank can't even imagine how fucking cool that must be, eating what you want, sleeping whenever you want, going out without having to clear it with anyone first. He's jealous. He's really, really fucking jealous.

"Okay," Gerard says, from where he's kneeling by the TV. He's holding one flat case, and as Frank watches, he digs another one out from under a heap of comics and an empty Chinese takeout carton. "Halo first, then pizza, then Call Of Duty. Think of it as part of your cultural education. Life lessons, or whatever the fuck. You want a drink?"

***

bathroom," Frank slurs, two hours later. He manages to push himself up off the couch, but his knees suddenly stop cooperating and he nearly falls on his ass.

"Woah," says Gerard, suddenly right there, slinging an arm around Frank's waist and propping him up. "Dude. You gonna hurl? 'Cause I would really appreciate it if you could, you know, not do that on the carpet."

"'M good," Frank hums, swaying slightly in place. He feels... weird. Warm all the way down to his bones, feather-light. He counts drinks. One, two, three, four, five, six – seven. Oh. Yeah, that would be it. "Gerard," he says, because it suddenly seems really important that Gerard gets to share his epiphany. "Gerard. I think I'm really, really fuckin' drunk."

Gerard cracks up. Frank likes his laugh. He doesn't even mind that Gerard's laughing at him. "No shit, Sherlock. C'mon, let's get you into the bathroom."

Frank lets Gerard push-carry him through to the bathroom, then collapses to his knees in front of the toilet. He actually does feel kind of sick now. Gerard is really smart. He can feel Gerard's hand resting between his shoulderblades, moving in little gentle circles. It's nice, kind of soothing.

"Yeah," Frank says weakly. "I don't feel so--"

And then the nausea rises to an icky, churning peak and he's throwing up the contents of his stomach. Gerard makes a sympathetic noise, and keeps on rubbing Frank's back.

"The more you throw up now, the less shitty you're gonna feel later."

"I feel shitty now," groans Frank. This is conclusive proof of the existence of a vengeful, smite-happy God if he ever saw it.

Gerard makes another low humming noise of commiseration. "I know, man, I feel your pain. You gonna be okay here for a minute? I'm just gonna get you some water, you'll thank me for it later."