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

chapter nineteen

Time creeps by ridiculously slowly, even when Frank finally gives up on his English lit assignment and tries to read instead. He's pretty sure he's read the same page four or five times without actually taking in a word, so when his mom finally calls him down for dinner, it's kind of a relief.

It stops being a relief pretty much as soon as he gets into the kitchen. His mom is standing at the counter, serving the lasagna up onto plates, and his dad's already sitting down at the table. The tension is thick and choking and horrible, and Frank can practically smell the fight they've just finished having. It suddenly hits him how hard he'd been hoping that things were getting better, and his heart kind of sinks.

His mom and dad spend dinner making stiff, carefully polite conversation while Frank sits and eats and tries to smile. No one laughs once. It's fucking awful, it just feels wrong. The sooner he's out of this house, the better.

When the doorbell rings, he's out of his chair immediately and running for the door. Thank fucking god.

"I'll get it!" he calls, hearing his mom and dad getting up to follow him into the hall.

He opens the door, and there's Gerard standing on the doorstep in clean black jeans and a button-down shirt, his hands in his pockets and a big, guileless grin on his face. He even looks like he's washed his hair. Frank is about to ask him who he is and what he's done with the real Gerard, but Gerard is reaching out to shake Frank's dad's hand before Frank can get a word in edgeways.

"Hi, sir," he says cheerfully. "Nice to meet you, I'm a friend of Frank's."

Frank can feel hysterical laughter bubbling in his gut. This is like some kind of crazy surrealist painting or something – his dad and Gerard, what the fuck – and Gerard looking all... clean.

"Oh, from school?" says Frank's mom from somewhere behind him.

"Gerard. Nice to meet you, ma'am," Gerard beams, neatly avoiding the question. Frank's either going to piss himself laughing or break a rib trying not to laugh, it could go either way right now. Ma'am, what the fuck.

And then Gerard says, "I wanted to ask if Frank could come and hang out. Nothing big, just, you know, for his birthday," and then Frank gets it. Gerard is fucking smart.

"I'm not--" Frank's mom starts, but his dad is already just shoving him out of the door. Frank's dad is a total sucker for being called "sir."

"Sure, sure, of course it's okay," he says. "Have fun, kids! See you later, Frank."

As the door closes behind him and Gerard tugs him onto the street, Frank distinctly hears his mom say approvingly, "What a nice, polite boy. That's one whose mother brought him up right."

And then Frank laughs. He laughs until he can hardly breathe, clinging to Gerard for support. "That," he says weakly, as soon as he's capable of speech again, "Was fuckin' hilarious."

"The man of many faces," says Gerard archly, and Frank laughs at that too, but it's actually sort of true.

"So, uh, where are we going?" he asks as they round the corner, but Gerard just smirks.

"Patience, Frank," he says. "Good things come to boys who wait."

Frank shivers. He can wait.

Gerard leads Frank up the street to where his car's parked, then opens the door and grabs a plastic bag from the back seat.

"Here," he says, pulling something black out of the bag and tossing it to Frank. Frank catches it by his fingertips, and frowns down at it.

"What do I...?"