Three Cheers for Sweethearts [Frerard AU]

PART III: Chapter 3

                  

CHAPTER 3 – ONE SLEEPLESS NIGHT

I didn't get a lot of sleep that night, still trying to go through my social life. It had been a very long while since I'd last been up for hours thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong in the future. I made it through the morning with an hour of sleep and a gallon of coffee.

I slid into my seat in Chemistry with my head down. I still felt bad for snapping at Frank like that, though from the looks of it he wasn't bothered anymore.

"Gerard," Ray whispered from behind me. "You know Frank better than I do, probably."

"Maybe, I don't know. Why?"

"Well... Last period yesterday. He was crying. Everyone pretended they didn't notice, but... I think you should talk to him. At least to make sure he's okay."

I made him cry by yelling at him? I started to tear up at the thought of him crying, but the presence of the sudden heartbreak scared me right back out of it.

"Yeah... I will." I said distantly.

Per usual, we had no conversations until lunch. That's right – not even stage kissing every day as "the most famous pair of lovers in all of literature" (coined by Mr. Burner himself) could bring a word out of us anywhere else.

The first thing I said to him and the first thing Frank said to me, during lunch, were said at the same time.

"Sorry I yelled at you about my drawings," I said at the same time he told me, "Sorry I looked at your drawings without asking."

We laughed nervously at the unity of our words.

"So you're not mad?" Frank asked to reiterate, straightening his tie.

"Anymore," I admitted. "Really, please don't take it personally."

There was a pause.

"They were some pretty great drawings, though," Frank mumbled.

"Thanks," I said quietly, unsure whether the subject was about to change or not. It didn't. "So..."

My brain couldn't come up with a new topic in a reasonable amount of time. "Which ones did you look at?" I asked.

Frank scrunched his eyebrows in thought as he tried to remember what he'd looked at twenty-four hours ago. "There was one with a girl hiding her face... and an astronaut... and a very creative zombie turtle..."

I laughed once. "It was just a turtle. We found it in our yard," I said, turning my head towards Mikey to indicate he was there, too.

"You found a wild zombie turtle?"

"I told you zombie turtles live in the wild," Ray went along with that out-of-context quote as he found his seat across from us.

"What, you think they could breed in captivity?" Frank shot at Ray.

"Pretty sure zombie turtles don't know the difference," Ray shrugged nonchalantly. "Zombie people, maybe, but turtles? Nah..."

"Isn't the zombie apocalypse supposed to happen this year?" Frank asked quizzically.

"I think it was going to be earlier this year," I said, recalling something I'd read on some crackpot's blog about it. "But the zombies didn't get infected soon enough so they have to wait another twenty years or so."

"Does that mean I'm going to die before I'm 40?"

"It's not a bad way to go."

"Nah, zombies don't kill you, just infect you. So we won't be dead before we're 40, we'll be undead."

"Even better."

After one of the most serious dumb lunch conversations in a while, we parted ways and carried on with our day, like nothing had happened at all. Still, it was hard to shake the image of Frank crying from my mind, although I hadn't seen it. He looked completely recovered now. I hoped it was genuine.