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

epilogue

"How did she take it?"

Frank pulls a face, even though Gerard can't see it over the phone. "Badly," he says. Coming out to his mom was not exactly one of the highlights of his life so far.

Gerard makes a sympathetic noise. "Did she kick you out?"

Frank fucking giggles, knowing he sounds ridiculous and not giving a shit. Sometimes he does stupid shit around Gerard and feels his face start to heat up, but Gerard always looks at him like he thinks Frank's sweet. Like Frank's a puppy who's goofy but cute enough that Gerard doesn't mind letting him tag along.

"Shut up, fucker," he says. "You don't need to sound so hopeful. I know you just want me to move in so you can have your wicked way with me."

Gerard chuckles. "Don't you think it's a little late for that?" He sighs melodramatically. "You can't blame a boy for trying, I guess," he says, and Frank rolls his eyes.

"She didn't kick me out," he says. "I don't know, it was bad, but... not as bad as I was expecting, I guess. And her and dad are going to get counseling-- Gerard?"

"Mm? Shit, sorry, I was trying to write something down. Mikey owes me ten bucks, he thought your mom was gonna flip when she found out. You know, never darken our doorway again and all that jazz."

"Ha, ha. Tell Mikey he's a laugh riot. Where is he, anyway? I haven't seen him in, like, two weeks."

"Italy," says Gerard.

"He – what?"

"With Alicia."

"What?" Frank says again, because, well. What?

"Oh, did I not tell you about that? Turns out she wasn't actually a nun. More like... international art thief in disguise."

Frank kind of circles blankly around that for a long moment before deciding it still makes absolutely no fucking sense.

"Apparently there was this painting in the chapel or something?" Gerard continues. "Worth a fucking fortune, got stolen in the fifteen hundreds. The family who commissioned it hired Alicia to get it back."

Wait," says Frank. "You're shitting me, right?"

"Nope."

"You're serious?"

"Like a heart attack."

"What the fuck." Frank flops down on his bed and stares up at the ceiling. "That's insane."

Gerard makes a noise like the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "Well, no one ever suspects a nun."

Frank can't argue with that. He always thought Sister Alicia was pretty cool for a nun, but that was about as far as he ever got. Although, to be fair, he's been pretty distracted lately. He spares a thought for Pete – poor guy, it sucks that he seems to have drawn the short straw again. Frank promises himself he'll make more of an effort to talk to the guy. Somehow, he doesn't think Matt and his goons are going to be giving either of them any more trouble. He'll have to come up with some kind of cover story to feed Pete - he isn't sure it would be a good idea to steam right in there with oh hey, your crush has run off to Italy with an art thief disguised as a nun. Which, yeah. That doesn't get any less weird.

"That painting's fucking huge, though," he says. "How did she get it out of there?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Probably not," Frank concedes. Although, hell, at this point, he wouldn't be surprised to hear that she used a team of highly-trained hamsters or something. He's hit his disbelief limit for today. "So she just, what?" he says. "Snuck into the chapel in the dead of night, swiped the painting and left?"

"Something like that," Gerard agrees. "She needed Mikey to play lookout for her. Did you know you can hide a flamethrower, a grappling hook and a smoke grenade under a nun's habit?"

"Wow." Frank takes a minute to absorb that mental image. "I do now. So how did Mikey end up helping her out?"

"This is the best part," says Gerard happily, and Frank pictures his obnoxious, shit-eating grin. "He's never gonna live it down. I think this is the only time a demon's ever been seduced by a nun."

Frank laughs until his stomach hurts. Gerard's right, Mikey's going to get so much shit for this.

"Mikey's thing is sloth," says Gerard when Frank can breathe again. "He can never be assed to go out and, like, corrupt people. He just kind of hangs around and waits for them to come to him."

Somehow, that makes a lot of sense. "Huh," Frank says.

An easy, comfortable silence falls – gently, like snow. Frank tries to remember what the painting in the chapel looked like. Kind of gloomy, he thinks. He never liked it much.

"You know," he says. "It kind of seems fair."

"Hmm?"

"The painting. I mean, sure, it's stealing or whatever, but she was only stealing it back, right? If the church stole it first then they can't complain."

Yeah," says Gerard softly. "Yeah, something like that. Congratulations, Frank."

He sounds proud, and Frank doesn't feel the slightest bit guilty.

take me back with open arms
I know you can't resist me
my sweetest kiss will tell you this:
god, he didn't miss me.

***
THIS IS THE END!! im so sad :((((