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Oct. 8th, 2011 06:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gala_applesA State of Orange (2)
The rest of the week happens the same way. He goes to class because he has to, and by Friday he’s figured out what classes he can sneak in print offs of ebooks so he can read. He gets shoved around by Anderson Lee because apparently he has to, and by Friday Frank is about ready to tear him apart, jail or not. He reads comics and has sex with comic book guy -who either has multiple french pirate shirts or anti-laundry morals- because there has to be some joy in his life, and by Friday still hasn’t remembered to ask the guy his name. And he walks partially home with Gerard each day, because Gerard is his, even if he doesn’t know it yet.
Saturday mid-day the doorbell rings. Frank’s dozing, a week of following a human schedule making him awake at noon but not particularly interested in getting up. Dad is at work though, and even if Mom wasn’t in the middle of a deep sleep, she would get burned just opening the door. Besides, it pretty much has to be Gerard and company. Their neighbours don’t seem to give a shit one way or the other about their presence, they certainly wouldn’t go as far as to knock on their door. Still, Frank’s not entirely sure what to expect when he hurries to the front door, shucking on a pair of jeans on the way. Gerard, of course, but who else? Maybe there will be fifteen or twenty people, the entire art club. Gerard’s pretty awesome, he deserves to be popular.
It’s Gerard and two guys. One of the guys has a huge bulge at the zipper of his jeans and Frank thinks for a second about dropping to his knees before he mentally shakes his head. Time for that when hot guys aren’t standing on the step in the sun. The other guy is pretty decent looking too, though the hoodie he’s wearing is multiple sizes too big and goes almost down to his knees. He must be human though, his face isn’t shielded from the sun like Gerard’s.
“Hey. I’m Frank.”
“Sorry,” Gerard says by means of introduction. “My stupid brother got really fucked up with Pete and Joe last night-”
“Really fucked,” Big Dick mutters and Viking sniggers. Gerard ignores them.
“And apparently the smell of paint will make him vomit everywhere. Copiously. But this is Ray and Bob.”
Ray -Frank will do his best to call him that out loud, but ‘big dick’ is still a title relevant to his interests- smiles and Frank finds himself wanting to smile back. It’s a contagious smile. “Can you show me where we’re going? They’re cutting off my circulation like a bastard.”
Frank looks at the four cans of paint in each hand and starts walking to his bedroom. He calls over his shoulder, “how much do I owe you?”
“Not much, they’re all off-tints. And if we don’t use one I’ll just save it.”
It’s good of Gerard to say, because he has no idea what the hell he would do with five cans of paint. He opens his door and silently says goodbye to his pristine white walls. If Frank goes by Gerard’s wardrobe, in a matter of hours he’ll have four black walls.
“You don’t have a coffin.”
Frank can’t really tell if that’s a question or a statement but either way he doesn’t want to answer him. If he gets mad at Gerard’s best friend, Gerard might not want to be around him anymore. That would suck, epically. Luckily Ray does it for him.
“Jesus fucking Christ Bob." Ray turns to Frank. “Don’t mind him, he’s new too. Came in the summer, but this summer. He’s from Chicago.”
Illinois is a yellow state, so that makes sense. Frank finds it hard to trust people from yellow states, considering when they were crossing the border into Maryland the toll booth woman threw holy water on everyone in the car before letting them drive through. But he’s going to have to give it a go, for Gerard’s sake.
“I guess I should have asked before. What’s your favourite colour?”
Frank had been under the impression that Gerard would do whatever he wanted to do. It seems a bit late to ask now, when Ray’s already settling the cans onto the carpet with a muffled thud. “Green. I don’t hate anything, except maybe brown, but green’s the best.”
Ray grins and again Frank finds himself grinning back. It’s impossible not to. Ray could probably suck two cocks at once, mouth accommodating as well as beautiful. “ICI Paints had two greens and an aqua. I guess fate intervened.”
“Let’s crack that shit open!”
Bob shakes his head. “First we need to move all the shit into the middle of the room and cover it with a ratty sheet.”
Gerard waves his arm impatiently. “You get on that.”
“And while I’m moving shit for a guy I don’t know, what are you doing?” Bob says it with an air of someone that knew full well coming over meant being delegated mover.
Sure enough, Gerard answers with “I’ll be over here ideaing.”
He’s in the middle of painting out the first yellow narwhal in a green sea when Frank notices. Gerard’s hard. For a second he thinks it might be a trick of shadows, but then Gerard turns to re-dunk his brush in the can and it’s impossible to mistake it for anything else. Gerard apparently senses Frank’s staring, he looks down to track his gaze. His face turns a bit red. “Sometimes when I get really into what I’m doing. Well. Uh. Can we not talk about my awkward random boners?”
That plan might be okay for Bob and Ray, but Frank is a halfling raised in a red state. He has vampire sensibilities. Their moral code is his moral code, and their moral code says sexual interest leads to sexual performance. So he takes the few steps forward and grabs Gerard. Ray and Bob are the ones staring now. Frank’s not entirely sure why. He’s not doing much, his hand isn’t even down his underwear.
Cupping his dick might not be much, but it’s enough for a teenager. Gerard groans instead of pushing him away. If he did Frank would have asked if he meant it before stopping -some vamps like the struggle-, but he doesn’t so Frank just tightens his grip a bit.
“You joking?”
“No? You two wanna join?” Frank hasn’t had a foursome in a few months, it would be nice to give it a go. Especially if Ray’s fucking him with his huge dick or sucking him with his huge mouth.
“We’re gonna go get some Slurpees.”
“Or McDonalds.”
“Or mow your lawn.”
“Something.” That’s Bob’s last word before they rush out. Well, all the more for him then. Bob and Ray are cool, and more cocks and cunts are always better than less, but Gerard’s enough to satisfy him.
***
Monday morning Frank comes into Broadfoot to see a guy leaning against his locker. Frank crosses his arms instinctively though he doesn’t stop walking forward. He’s not a coward. Still, if whatever is about to happen is bad, Frank is just going to stop going near his locker. He can start carrying around all his shit at all times. Even humans can manage a full backpack.
The guy shakes his long black hair out of his face when Frank stops a few feet away, or at least attempts to. It all settles back down in greasy lanks over his cheeks. “Did you fuck around with Gerard Way?”
“I assume? I don’t know his last name but Gerard isn’t exactly Jason or Chris. Why?”
Scraggy guy shrugs. “Gerard’s my boyfriend.”
Something in Frank’s soul starts snarling or spitting. The next time he sees Ray or Bob he’s going to ask if they do the same possessive thing around their crushes, or if it’s a vamp thing.
“I’ve got one question. I had more but now I’m pretty sure that you didn’t know he was dating me so I don’t have to ask why you’re fucking with me.” The sentence ends with a snarl. Frank’s fangs slide down a fraction against the perceived threat before he regains control and thinks them back into his gums. Fights can be heady experiences, but he doesn’t want to be suspended or expelled. He likes comic book guy, and Ray and Bob seem decent even if Bob is ignorant, and Gerard is his, and he can’t be around any of them if he gets expelled.
“What’s that?” he replies instead.
“Did you bite him.”
“I didn't even stick my hand down his pants. Like he came, not gonna lie. But there was nothing intimate. I could have been a shrubbery for as much interaction as there was.”
“Fuck him or have him fuck you, whatever. Fill every fucking orifice with his come, I don’t care. But drink from him and I'll strand you on the roof, and you'll either burn up or have to jump off and break both your legs.”
“No blood. Got it.” It rankles a bit to think he’s sharing Gerard, but sharing is better than some bullshit about giving him up or fighting for him.
***
They’re reading, as per usual. Mikey’s got the newest edition of New Avengers, Frank’s got an old Age of Apocalypse. It’s impossible to keep XMen canon straight, but as long as you go into it not expecting things to make sense, or be related to each other at all, most of the offshoots are pretty interesting.
Frank’s only a few pages into the issue when Gerard of all people storms into the library. Rather than say hi to him though, he turns straight to the left side of the couch. “Mikey, I put that in my backpack because I was going to smuggle it into American history class! What the hell?”
Mikey doesn’t look up from his comic, just rattles off his explanation. Not that it explains everything for Frank. “A, you're almost failing American history. B, I needed it for gym, I forgot to bring a change again.”
“You mean you decided you didn’t feel like running laps!”
“Those phrases are synonyms.”
“It’s the newest issue of New Avengers, that I bought with my money, so I don’t know why you think you get to read it first.”
‘If you were that concerned about first dibs, you should have read it when you bought it last night. It’s a well known rule that after twelve hours it’s anyone’s game, right Frank?”
“I’ve never actually bought comic books?” And he probably wouldn’t get in the middle of this, even if he had.
“Fucking assholey thief little brothers.”
“Right, because you’ve never read my issues.”
“After you get first read, Mikey. There’s a difference!”
That’s when it hits Frank he’s fucking brothers. It’s pretty cool, at home none of his friends or acquaintances had siblings. The realisation settles over his lap, and makes him want a threesome. He doesn’t ask though. He’s known Gerard a week, and that’s long enough to know angry sex wouldn’t work for him. Mikey doesn’t seem to have moods in which handjobs or blowjobs aren’t wanted, which Frank can appreciate, but Gerard needs to be willing for it to be a threesome. Besides, there’s the fact of Mikey and Gerard not knowing about each other yet. He’ll tell them as soon as he can make sure they know it’s normal for vampires to have multiple partners. Gerard should already know, at least, thanks to Bert.
“I’m gonna get Mom to make you mow the lawn when we get home.”
Frank’s eyebrow raise into his hairline. It seems really harsh just for comics. He knows Mikey likes them, and apparently Gerard does too, but still. “You’re giving him a death sentence over a comic book?”
“What?”
“I like reading them too, but that seems harsh.” If Frank had a brother he’d probably never try to kill him, even when emotions got high.
“Nothing is too harsh for comic book usurpers. But, uh,”
Mikey finishes for Gerard. “We still have no idea what you mean.”
Frank’s never seen a vamp so stupid. It’s enough to make him wonder if living in an orange state is dangerous for vampires and halflings. It cannot possibly be safe to forget your nature. “If Mikey has to mow the lawn he’ll die.”
“I agree.” He pauses. “Uh, why though?”
“The sun will burn you to charcoal?” Seriously, how does he have to explain this?
“Uh, no? I might get a sunburn, but only vampires crisp in the sun.”
Frank thinks back to all their conversations. Mikey never actually said he was, even though the clues are obvious. He better ask. “Wait, you’re not a vampire?”
“No, he’s not.”
“Then who did your mom cheat on your dad with? Do you know him?” As the silence lengthens he realises it’s maybe a sensitive topic. At home when strangers asked if his mom really fucked her meal plan, Frank would have to brawl in the name of his parents’ honour. “Sorry. You don’t have to say.”
“Our mom never cheated.”
Really, that’s pretty naive. He knows he’s being a jerk, but he doesn’t like being lied to, so he presses. “The stork doesn’t just deliver a halfling to human parents.”
Mikey shakes his head, finger tucked into the spine of his -or Gerard’s, apparently- comic book. “Dude, he’s full human too.”
It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like Frank monitors them 24/7. Sitting inside their rooms and watching them sleep would be creepy. But as far as he can see they’re always in hoodies, Mikey doesn’t eat, Gerard covers every inch he can before he goes outside, and they have decent sex drives. “Not even a quarter? Like a grandparent?”
“Nope, sorry.”
“Trust me, we think it sucks too. As soon as we actually like the way we look we’ll find a papa or a mama. No sense in changing now when I’m fat and he’s zitty.”
Frank looks them over. The assessment is hardly fair. Gerard’s not fat, he doesn’t have three chins or moobs. And Mikey’s skin isn’t that bad, no worse than the average teenager.
“Bert wouldn’t do it anyway. He’s a dick.”
“He’s not a dick. He’s gonna be forever sixteen, and he doesn’t want to cause that for others. Plus he’s not the parental type. That’s not being a dick.”
“Okay, so he’s not a dick for that. He’s still a dick, and you know it.”
“I gotta get back to Ray and Bob. Gimme my comic.” Gerard thrusts a hand out. Mikey’s response is to snort. “Fine. I’ll be back at the end of lunch. Read quickly.”
Frank nods his goodbye, and waits until he’s out of the library to turn to Mikey and ask. “Why don’t you eat with them? Do you think they’re dicks too?” Frank doesn’t. The longer they hung out with him two days ago, the more he liked them. But maybe Mikey knows a different side of them.
“No, it’s not that. The inside of my head can get pretty loud. There are always people. In classes, and the guys come over most nights. But there aren’t a lot of people in the library.” Mikey finishes with a shrug. It’s still not a lot of an explanation, but it’s enough for Frank. He doesn’t like his people easily understandable anyway. He’s never thought of himself as particularly quiet, but if he’s not an intrusion for Mikey he’s happy to be on the same couch with him each lunch hour. He can always talk to Gerard and Ray and Bob online.
***
Frank’s about to light a cigarette when a hand comes down on his shoulder. He jolts, almost setting his bangs on fire. The flame flickers out in the slight breeze and Frank turns his torso to look behind himself. It’s Mikey. Mikey’s got a green hood pulled over his hair, glasses the only thing sticking out. Even knowing the truth, he still looks like a halfling to Frank.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for Gerard. We walk home together.” He’s still got a while yet, and the library would be safer, but you can’t smoke indoors at Broadfoot.
“I didn’t know you lived by us.”
Frank shrugs. He doesn’t actually know where Gerard and Mikey live. When Gerard turns in one direction and he turns in the other he doesn’t backtrack to follow. He’s not a stalker. “Close enough.”
“You won’t char?”
“No.”
“Cool. I’m waiting for Bob,” he explains without provocation. “He’s posing for the art club. Before you get excited, no nudes. Just him picking up crates and shit so they can sketch muscles or whatever. He’s coming over after, you should too.”
There’s no reason not to, so he does. It’s a bit of a wait but eventually Gerard and Bob come out together, and he follows in line behind them. They don’t make condescending efforts to include him in the conversation, and Frank doesn’t talk as much as he might have at home -maybe because no one is discussing sex or meals- but it’s still a friendly vibe. At least until they stop in front of a house about ten blocks away from Frank’s.
Gerard unlocks the door and the three of them pile in, taking up the entire landing as they slide off their shoes. Frank’s waiting for one of them to move when Gerard turns to him and says “come in.”
“Fuck you!”
“What?” Gerard seems gobsmacked. He’s lucky he’s not Franksmacked.
“You heard me, fucking asshole.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Is this a you came from a red state thing?”
That they don’t even know how it’s offensive makes it that much worse. “Inviting me in like I’m some bullshit mythological creature. Like I don’t fucking exist.”
“Okay, definitely a red state thing. I’m guessing no one invites anyone inside in Richmond?”
“Yeah. And no one turns into fucking bats either, does that come as a shock too?”
“Don’t be a dick. We didn’t know. If there’s anything else we do that offends you, feel free to bitch loudly.” Mikey rolls his eyes and walks further inside the house. Frank considers storming off. Anyone at home would, if not for the insult than because storming off is what vampires do. But the truth is Gerard and Mikey and Bob and Ray are the most likely candidates for best friends. He doesn’t want to ruin that now over one ignorant remark.
As soon as Frank moves past the foyer of the Way house he understands why Gerard was stricken dumb by the emptiness of his room. The Way house is like four homes worth of stuff in one house. There’s stuff everywhere. It’s cluttered on every flat surface, and on shelves mounted in between mismatched paintings and pictures of Mikey and Gerard when they were young. There are three adults in a living room off the kitchen, but only Bob pauses to say hello, both brothers clatter down a wooden set of stairs.
The tiny basement is half a rec room, with three doors lining one wall. One is half open and a khaki green toilet is visible. A constant rumbling comes from the left, the bass noise of a washer or dryer. Frank doesn’t have a chance to guess the third. The couch is a three seater, but there are four of them and the only other seating is a rocking chair. Frank dives at the same instant that Bob does, leaving Gerard to sit on the carpet.
It’s a nice evening, though towards the end Frank can see what Mikey meant yesterday. When Bob’s mom shows up to pick him up, she ends up coming in and having dessert with everyone else. Maybe twenty minutes later some kid with another weird G name comes in and he and Bob’s mom talk about salads for at least a quarter of an hour. When he thinks about trying to cram Gerard’s boyfriend or Mikey’s other friends in the house Frank nearly gets claustrophobic.
Eventually everyone else leaves or heads to bed. Even Mikey and Gerard go to theirs for a minute, although it’s just to change into the comfort of worn t-shirts and pyjama pants. When they offer him, he agrees. Comfort is always a good thing. After comparing both pairs, Frank takes Gerard’s as the lesser of two evils. They’re looser, but Mikey’s are about three feet too long. He changes in their room, not because he’s modest in any form, just because he wants to spy.
The first thing Frank thinks when he enters the Way bedroom -besides how much stuff they own too, hoarding must be genetic- is how difficult a threesome would be. They share a bedroom, the only siblings Frank’s ever known to do so. Both beds are singles, and there’s not a square inch of visible carpet on the floor, never mind enough room for all of them to be down together. But it’s probably a good thing, a deterrent from asking. His dad’s pretty much certain that if they find out he’s with both, he’ll suddenly be with neither. It seems stupid to him, another case of human morals being weird, but he really doesn’t want to lose either of them.
They watch two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents before Gerard starts yawning. Ten minutes into the first he stands, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. “I gotta crash. Frank, you gonna go home now?”
“I’ll sleep over. My mom’s been at work for hours so she won’t notice and my dad will be happy I’m making friends.”
“K. I’ll make your bed, then I’m sleeping.”
Their process of cleaning up is interesting. Mikey deftly plucks the comics off the floor and puts them in a neat stack on one of the dressers before he starts kicking the remaining debris under both beds. Gerard joins in the kicking for a minute before wandering away. The way the rest of the evening has gone, Frank half expects to find him in half an hour, three quarters done a drawing. Instead he comes back with a pile of blankets higher than his head in his arms.
“We don’t have any sleeping bags. We’re not really the camping type.” His voice is muffled by the blankets, but loud enough that Frank can understand. Rather than drop them all at once, he stands as Mikey untangles one and a time and begins to make a nest. Frank smiles. In their own way, they’re really sort of domestic.
“You tired? Or you wanna watch more Hitchcock?”
Frank isn’t actually that tired, it takes more than two weeks to get a vampire’s body clock in a different time zone. However, he would like being in Gerard’s room with the door closed. “I think I’m gonna try to sleep.”
Mikey shrugs at him and leaves, flicking the light off as he does. Frank lets Gerard get into his bed first, it’ll lower the probability of being stepped on in the dark. Only when the springs stop squeaking does Frank pull back the top layer of blankets and lay down. The nest is surprisingly comfortable, and he’ll easily be able to sleep later. For now though, all he wants is to devise a foolproof strategy. He doesn’t have long, Gerard’s obviously near sleep. In the end he goes with what’s simple. He sits up and sneaks his hand under Gerard’s blankets to put a hand on his thigh. This time there’s no Ray or Bob to distract.
Gerard just asks. “So you want to have sex then? Move over.”
Frank only has an instant to shift before Gerard is rolling himself off the bed and landing with a ‘oomph’ beside him. It doesn’t even stretch the elastic of his loose pyjamas when Gerard pushes a hand down them. Frank hurries to return the favour. It’s still not as much as he’d like, but if it’s as far as Gerard will go he’ll take it.
“If you bite me I’m not biting you back,” Gerard whispers. Frank imagines he looks serious, though with their noses touching it’s impossible to tell.
“Uh, duh?” It should go without saying. “You couldn’t even, you don’t have fangs.”
“Bert cuts somewhere so I can drink. I’m getting sick of it though.”
“So not with me then.” Frank made his promise to Bert, he won’t betray that.
It’s the last thing they say, after they just grip at each other and work their own rhythms. Gerard doesn’t kiss him, and Frank doesn’t start anything. Breathing each other’s exhalations is almost the same anyway. He wants to bite him, he wants Gerard to be his, but he can’t cross that line.
After they’re done they wipe their hands off on one of the fleece blankets and toss it to the side. Gerard smiles at him and kisses his cheek before standing and falling into his own bed. He falls asleep pretty much immediately, Frank can hear his breathing pattern slow. Frank’s not as lucky. He might not be able sense things as well as Mattie could back home, but he still can. Gerard’s strong heartbeat when he’s trying to rest is disconcerting. Frank’s not sure he can sleep with the accompaniment, at least not until the exhaustion weighs out the distraction. So after breathing in tune with him for a long enough time to officially be a creeper, he quietly stands and leaves the room.
Mikey’s watching a movie with his headphones plugged in. As Frank sits beside him he tugs on the cords going to the buds and lets them fall to his neck. His finger is still working the trackpad to make the movie stop when he asks “you wanna fuck?”
Hell yes is Frank’s first answer, but what comes out of his moth is somehow edited into something more sympathetic. “I thought you didn’t.”
“I only fuck one person at a time. Consider it my personal mantra of the ethical slut.”
“I haven’t read that.” If it’s even a book. Frank thinks it is though, Mikey’s side of the room and the shared middle had a bunch of books scattered around.
“Yeah, I don’t think a red state worries about that kind of thing.”
Frank could have the red Vs orange state conversation. If Bob was still here they could even get some yellow laws and opinions into the debate. But he’d really rather have the ‘who’s cock, who’s ass’ conversation. The first time might not require working out Mikey’s headspace, but he won’t do it again if he felt pressured into it, and Frank doesn’t really want to be that asshole anyway. Rape isn’t unknown in red states, but there are better ways to show power, and most don’t do it through sexual activity.
“But you’re done with whoever?”
“It just took Pete and Joe a few circlejerks they didn’t want the third body.” Frank’s not sure he could imagine a situation where a third body wouldn’t spice things up, but each to their own. Or, if he’s going on with cliched phrases, more for him.
“You said fuck you? I don’t care either way but you seemed specific.”
“If you don’t care then yeah, I’d rather. Been a while since I bottomed.”
Mikey puts his laptop on the middle cushion, then stands and move around the side of the couch. The main piece of furniture in the room is smack in the middle, facing the T.V. that’s mounted on the wall. It must be a hazard when you’re drunk and prone to walking into things, but for now it’s helpful. Mikey loosens the drawstring on his Southpark pants, which is enough to make them drop to the carpet. Taking a step to the side frees him of them, letting him spread his legs and brace himself against the couch’s corduroy back. Tall, thin, and hard, he’s fucking beautiful.
A bit less than two weeks in a new city isn’t enough time to figure out where to buy all the brands the Ieros liked, or even their equivalents. Mom still can’t find a decent source for anemic blood, which is delightfully sour, and there are half a dozen different shampoos in the shower they’re trying out. But some things are important. Frank ran out of the remnants of the box of individual packets of lube before he even started at Broadfoot, he had to find a place to get more. Thankfully after the nearest sex shop kicked him out for being underage Googling around informed him the vampire needs store in the mall had no such age restrictions, only the ability to drop fangs and show you belonged inside.
It’s thanks to the Vamp Essentials -creative name, really- that Frank is able to go to where his backpack is leaning against the stairs and pull a packet out of the front pocket instead of Mikey having to sneak into the bedroom and fumble around his nightstand. There’s a packet in his jeans too, but those are in a heap in their room.
“You said it’s been a while so I’m gonna do the whole fingering thing, okay?” Frank doesn’t wait for an answer. He just tears at the slit in the package so it leaks onto his fingers and tosses it to the carpet when it’s contents are expunged. It starts to drip so he curls one hand around himself and the other against Mikey’s crack. It would suck if it dried to stickiness before he got a chance to put it to use.
Mikey gasps, but he arches backward trying to get more. Frank wants to give him that. He adds a third finger.
“This is great,” he mutters a minute later. It’s true, not just because it’s been a while since he’s fucked someone. Having sex with Mikey specifically is good. Better than it would be with a random person from class.
“Yeah.” It’s not a moan, but it should be. Frank picks up the pace until Mikey is repeating it over and over again, quickly, like he’s hyperventilating. He can hear all the air leave his lungs each H. Frank wants to eat the sound from his lips.
Bert didn’t say anything about Mikey. If Frank had to guess, he’d probably say the dislike was mutual. Vampires are too emotional to do anything but loathe anyone who as much as raises an eyebrow at them. Still, Frank doesn’t bite down when he comes. Mikey knows he’s a halfling. If he wanted it, he’d ask.
Mikey uses a sock to wipe his come off the back of the couch. Frank feels bad for a moment about not catching it, but Mikey seems to have things under control.
“You wanna watch Nailface, or you wanna try to sleep again?”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Mikey shoots him an astonished look. “Okay, you definitely have to stay up then. And I’ll print off a list of human producer movies and you tell me if you’ve seen any of them. We’ll fix your horror education by the end of the school year. I promise.”
Frank grins and throws himself over the back of the couch, narrowly avoiding crunching the laptop. He can stay up until dawn, if it’s for horror movies.
***
Friday morning Bert is at his locker again. Frank doesn’t know what that’s about, but his concern takes a back seat when Anderson Lee spots him and glares. The jock takes a menacing few steps towards him and Frank curls his hands into fists as he waits. He won’t make the first move, and he won’t drain him of blood, but he can at least defend himself.
Luckily- or at least it seems that way for a moment- Bert intervenes. Anderson makes it about five feet towards him before Bert shoves him with full vampire strength and he flies down the hall before crumpling when he hits a bank of lockers. Only when Anderson is dispatched and Bert is still glaring does it occur to Frank that there’s no reason for Bert to give a shit if a jock beats him up. Considering how well he knows vampire nature, it’s pretty clear Bert just didn’t want another person to interrupt his confrontation. Frank braces himself for a brawl, knowing he’s about to get his ass handed to him. Mike or James would be great right about now.
The hallway is silent, or at least Frank’s instincts have moved past catching idle conversation. It’s maybe not the smartest thing but Frank’s never been a wimp, or a especially planned out thinker. He breaks the stillness with a ‘hi’.
“Gerard broke up with me last night.” Bert’s moving full speed down the hallway at him. In an instant he’s face to face. “Why.” Bert is taller than him, but no taller than Gerard, and there’s not a single muscle on his frame. That doesn’t make him less frightening.
“I dunno.” It’s not like he told Gerard to break up with his boyfriend.
“I know you didn’t bite him. What did you do?”
“I don’t know.” He and Gerard haven’t even had sex since Tuesday. It’s highly fucking unlikely that Gerard broke up with Bert due to his own sexual prowess.
“It’s what he didn’t.”
It’s Mikey’s voice. Frank doesn’t turn to check, he can’t afford to. In an unmatched fight like this, every instant he has to react is the moment that might save him from being disemboweled. There’s only so much his healing can take care of, as a halfling some things can kill him before he can fix them. That’s the problem entirely. He’s a halfling and he’s gonna get hurt, at the very least. Mikey could easily die, depending on how enraged Bert gets. Even thinking it makes Frank’s fangs drop. “Mikey, go away.”
Mikey speaks again, clearly ignoring Frank and the danger of goading a pissed off vamp. “Gerard hates fishnet bars, and that’s all you do. You, Quinn, Jepha and Dan go to a fishnet bar before you take him to the car to fuck. Six nights a week.”
“He likes that.”
Frank finds Bert’s perplexed tone and look sort of sad. Mikey doesn’t have the same sympathy. He says coldly “no, he really doesn’t.”
“What’s a fishnet bar?”
“Humans that get off on it get put in these bondage net things that are chained to the ceiling above a round table. Vampires chill and drink as interests them. Or in Gerard’s case, cuts the human and sucks from the wound. It’s all consensual, but it’s not very interesting.”
“I dunno. Sounds kinda awesome. We didn’t have that at home, it was all either free range hunting or meal plans.”
He can practically feel Mikey’s glare heating the back of his head. Mikey’s probably got a point. This isn’t about him. Of course he thinks it’s good, blood is natural for him. There’s no nutritional value in it for Gerard.
“How do you know?”
Mikey snorts. “He told me.” The word come out sounding a lot like duh.
Bert frowns. Frank braces himself, prepared to give Mikey an extra thirty seconds to run. It won’t be enough to save himself, but there’s always hope. Instead Bert turns and stalks off.
Frank calms for all of two seconds. Then he realises what that means. “We need to find Gerard and tell him to hide. Would he have his phone on him right now?”
Mikey shakes his head. “He’s not gonna go after him Sappelstien style.”
“Look, I know a lot about vampires and-”
“I know Bert. They’ve been together almost two years. He’s gonna go see Quinn and Jepha and Dan, and they’re going to blow off school for a few days. It’ll-” the five minute warning bell goes off, cutting him off for a second. When it stops, Mikey continues. “It’ll be fine. Bert wouldn’t hurt him, he’s just fucking blind to shit sometimes. Go to class.”
The incident doesn’t so much fade from his mind as other things climb on top of the attention span hierarchy. The pop quiz in geography takes his mind off anything except soil conditions, which, unfortunately he doesn’t remember much about. At the end of the period Frank’s pretty certain he bombed the whole thing. Multiple choice leaves a seventy five percent chance of being wrong. Thankfully Mom and Dad don’t care about individual assignment failure, only overall passing of courses. Next class is chemistry. Balancing chemical equations is like math with possible hypothetical horrible death. It’s distracting.
It’s not until lunch that Frank remembers Gerard’s life has fallen apart, and even then it takes a visual prompt. Mikey is standing outside the library, loose backpack straps letting the bag hang low on his ass. Frank knows the backpack has to have beautiful, stunning comics in it, but when Frank walks forward arms outstretched parodying a zombie going for brains, Mikey shakes his head.
“We’re going to the caf today. Gerard’s gonna be nuts.”
Honestly, Frank would like to see Gerard going nuts. Any human, really. Compared to Richmond everyone’s been so calm and sedate he’d almost think they were stationary. He always got shit for being emotionless, but everyone here is drywall compared to hm. On the other hand, the cafeteria doesn’t really mesh with Mikey using lunch for breathing room. “You sure? It’ll be noisy.”
“Gerard needs me.”
And that’s that, apparently.
Frank follows Mikey through the labyrinth of tables. He hasn’t been in here since the first day of school, and looking around he’s pretty happy for it. It’s hard to blame Mikey for hiding with comics, when comics are so much better than the people arm wrestling over ketchup packets at the table he’s passing.
For someone that never lunches with his friends, Mikey knows exactly where they are. It’s probably a homing beacon thing, like how Gerard knew he’d be in the library. Mikey’s sliding onto the bench before Frank even spots Ray’s hair pulled into the hood of a sweatshirt. He sits across from Bob and listens in. It’s clearly mid-conversation, Ray telling Gerard he can’t make Bert’s decisions for him.
Mikey whispers an explanation for the sweater to Frank -apparently Ray pulls on his hair when he’s aggravated, and talking Gerard off a ledge is frustrating as hell- before speaking over them loudly. “What happened?”
Ray rolls his eyes and tugs on the cotton cords of his hoodie as Bob studiously eats his pita. Mikey keeps looking and after an odd hiccupy-wail Gerard bursts into arm waving motion. “Bert and Quinn dropped out!”
“And of course it’s all Gerard’s fault,” Ray tosses in.
“It is! I broke up with him.”
“Most people don’t move out of state when they break up.” Ray answers. Bob takes another bite of his pita.
“Out of the state?”
He answers miserably “They’re gonna take their band to Virginia. They’re good, but they could have been good here. If it wasn’t for me.”
Frank looks at Mikey and Ray and decides to join in the conversation. It’s not like he can make things worse. “Gerard Way, are you a groupie? Because I know guitar, if it’ll get you out of your jeans and into your bed.”
“What?”
“Sex makes everything better. In Richmond after every long stint of monogamy there was a ‘congratulations on being free’ orgy.”
“Yeah, we don’t really do orgies here.”
“I don’t want sex, I want to find Bert and apologise.”
“You do not need to apologise for not wanting to drink other people’s blood.”
Frank thinks his next statement is actually a lot more helpful. Or at least better suited to the delicate sensibilities of humans. “You can’t find him anyway. If you try to go into Virginia you’re literally volunteering as a meal plan.”
“That mean what it sounds like it means??”
Bob doesn’t look like he’s joking so Frank explains without being sarcastic. “You know how you have arranged marriages?”
“Well, I don’t think North America does.”
“But you get the concept, right? Well, our state has arranged meal plans. I think most red states do. You commit yourself to a single human and take the vast majority of your meals from them, but it’s your responsibility to take care of all their needs. It’s why we left, actually. My mom and dad met and fell in love, but that’s not okay in red states.
“Why didn’t your mom just turn him? I don’t understand.”
“It’s none of your damn business,” Frank answers, trying to keep the calm that this state is smothered with. It’s not even his business, really, never mind Bob’s.
“Okay, so let’s recap. Not your fault, Bert makes his own life choices, can’t go find him because everyone in Virginia will eat you. Anything else you’d like to say?”
“I’m gonna miss him.” It’s not histrionic, it’s low and sad. Frank lifts his leg and rubs his foot against Gerard’s knee as Ray pulls him in for a hug.
Part Three
The rest of the week happens the same way. He goes to class because he has to, and by Friday he’s figured out what classes he can sneak in print offs of ebooks so he can read. He gets shoved around by Anderson Lee because apparently he has to, and by Friday Frank is about ready to tear him apart, jail or not. He reads comics and has sex with comic book guy -who either has multiple french pirate shirts or anti-laundry morals- because there has to be some joy in his life, and by Friday still hasn’t remembered to ask the guy his name. And he walks partially home with Gerard each day, because Gerard is his, even if he doesn’t know it yet.
Saturday mid-day the doorbell rings. Frank’s dozing, a week of following a human schedule making him awake at noon but not particularly interested in getting up. Dad is at work though, and even if Mom wasn’t in the middle of a deep sleep, she would get burned just opening the door. Besides, it pretty much has to be Gerard and company. Their neighbours don’t seem to give a shit one way or the other about their presence, they certainly wouldn’t go as far as to knock on their door. Still, Frank’s not entirely sure what to expect when he hurries to the front door, shucking on a pair of jeans on the way. Gerard, of course, but who else? Maybe there will be fifteen or twenty people, the entire art club. Gerard’s pretty awesome, he deserves to be popular.
It’s Gerard and two guys. One of the guys has a huge bulge at the zipper of his jeans and Frank thinks for a second about dropping to his knees before he mentally shakes his head. Time for that when hot guys aren’t standing on the step in the sun. The other guy is pretty decent looking too, though the hoodie he’s wearing is multiple sizes too big and goes almost down to his knees. He must be human though, his face isn’t shielded from the sun like Gerard’s.
“Hey. I’m Frank.”
“Sorry,” Gerard says by means of introduction. “My stupid brother got really fucked up with Pete and Joe last night-”
“Really fucked,” Big Dick mutters and Viking sniggers. Gerard ignores them.
“And apparently the smell of paint will make him vomit everywhere. Copiously. But this is Ray and Bob.”
Ray -Frank will do his best to call him that out loud, but ‘big dick’ is still a title relevant to his interests- smiles and Frank finds himself wanting to smile back. It’s a contagious smile. “Can you show me where we’re going? They’re cutting off my circulation like a bastard.”
Frank looks at the four cans of paint in each hand and starts walking to his bedroom. He calls over his shoulder, “how much do I owe you?”
“Not much, they’re all off-tints. And if we don’t use one I’ll just save it.”
It’s good of Gerard to say, because he has no idea what the hell he would do with five cans of paint. He opens his door and silently says goodbye to his pristine white walls. If Frank goes by Gerard’s wardrobe, in a matter of hours he’ll have four black walls.
“You don’t have a coffin.”
Frank can’t really tell if that’s a question or a statement but either way he doesn’t want to answer him. If he gets mad at Gerard’s best friend, Gerard might not want to be around him anymore. That would suck, epically. Luckily Ray does it for him.
“Jesus fucking Christ Bob." Ray turns to Frank. “Don’t mind him, he’s new too. Came in the summer, but this summer. He’s from Chicago.”
Illinois is a yellow state, so that makes sense. Frank finds it hard to trust people from yellow states, considering when they were crossing the border into Maryland the toll booth woman threw holy water on everyone in the car before letting them drive through. But he’s going to have to give it a go, for Gerard’s sake.
“I guess I should have asked before. What’s your favourite colour?”
Frank had been under the impression that Gerard would do whatever he wanted to do. It seems a bit late to ask now, when Ray’s already settling the cans onto the carpet with a muffled thud. “Green. I don’t hate anything, except maybe brown, but green’s the best.”
Ray grins and again Frank finds himself grinning back. It’s impossible not to. Ray could probably suck two cocks at once, mouth accommodating as well as beautiful. “ICI Paints had two greens and an aqua. I guess fate intervened.”
“Let’s crack that shit open!”
Bob shakes his head. “First we need to move all the shit into the middle of the room and cover it with a ratty sheet.”
Gerard waves his arm impatiently. “You get on that.”
“And while I’m moving shit for a guy I don’t know, what are you doing?” Bob says it with an air of someone that knew full well coming over meant being delegated mover.
Sure enough, Gerard answers with “I’ll be over here ideaing.”
He’s in the middle of painting out the first yellow narwhal in a green sea when Frank notices. Gerard’s hard. For a second he thinks it might be a trick of shadows, but then Gerard turns to re-dunk his brush in the can and it’s impossible to mistake it for anything else. Gerard apparently senses Frank’s staring, he looks down to track his gaze. His face turns a bit red. “Sometimes when I get really into what I’m doing. Well. Uh. Can we not talk about my awkward random boners?”
That plan might be okay for Bob and Ray, but Frank is a halfling raised in a red state. He has vampire sensibilities. Their moral code is his moral code, and their moral code says sexual interest leads to sexual performance. So he takes the few steps forward and grabs Gerard. Ray and Bob are the ones staring now. Frank’s not entirely sure why. He’s not doing much, his hand isn’t even down his underwear.
Cupping his dick might not be much, but it’s enough for a teenager. Gerard groans instead of pushing him away. If he did Frank would have asked if he meant it before stopping -some vamps like the struggle-, but he doesn’t so Frank just tightens his grip a bit.
“You joking?”
“No? You two wanna join?” Frank hasn’t had a foursome in a few months, it would be nice to give it a go. Especially if Ray’s fucking him with his huge dick or sucking him with his huge mouth.
“We’re gonna go get some Slurpees.”
“Or McDonalds.”
“Or mow your lawn.”
“Something.” That’s Bob’s last word before they rush out. Well, all the more for him then. Bob and Ray are cool, and more cocks and cunts are always better than less, but Gerard’s enough to satisfy him.
Monday morning Frank comes into Broadfoot to see a guy leaning against his locker. Frank crosses his arms instinctively though he doesn’t stop walking forward. He’s not a coward. Still, if whatever is about to happen is bad, Frank is just going to stop going near his locker. He can start carrying around all his shit at all times. Even humans can manage a full backpack.
The guy shakes his long black hair out of his face when Frank stops a few feet away, or at least attempts to. It all settles back down in greasy lanks over his cheeks. “Did you fuck around with Gerard Way?”
“I assume? I don’t know his last name but Gerard isn’t exactly Jason or Chris. Why?”
Scraggy guy shrugs. “Gerard’s my boyfriend.”
Something in Frank’s soul starts snarling or spitting. The next time he sees Ray or Bob he’s going to ask if they do the same possessive thing around their crushes, or if it’s a vamp thing.
“I’ve got one question. I had more but now I’m pretty sure that you didn’t know he was dating me so I don’t have to ask why you’re fucking with me.” The sentence ends with a snarl. Frank’s fangs slide down a fraction against the perceived threat before he regains control and thinks them back into his gums. Fights can be heady experiences, but he doesn’t want to be suspended or expelled. He likes comic book guy, and Ray and Bob seem decent even if Bob is ignorant, and Gerard is his, and he can’t be around any of them if he gets expelled.
“What’s that?” he replies instead.
“Did you bite him.”
“I didn't even stick my hand down his pants. Like he came, not gonna lie. But there was nothing intimate. I could have been a shrubbery for as much interaction as there was.”
“Fuck him or have him fuck you, whatever. Fill every fucking orifice with his come, I don’t care. But drink from him and I'll strand you on the roof, and you'll either burn up or have to jump off and break both your legs.”
“No blood. Got it.” It rankles a bit to think he’s sharing Gerard, but sharing is better than some bullshit about giving him up or fighting for him.
They’re reading, as per usual. Mikey’s got the newest edition of New Avengers, Frank’s got an old Age of Apocalypse. It’s impossible to keep XMen canon straight, but as long as you go into it not expecting things to make sense, or be related to each other at all, most of the offshoots are pretty interesting.
Frank’s only a few pages into the issue when Gerard of all people storms into the library. Rather than say hi to him though, he turns straight to the left side of the couch. “Mikey, I put that in my backpack because I was going to smuggle it into American history class! What the hell?”
Mikey doesn’t look up from his comic, just rattles off his explanation. Not that it explains everything for Frank. “A, you're almost failing American history. B, I needed it for gym, I forgot to bring a change again.”
“You mean you decided you didn’t feel like running laps!”
“Those phrases are synonyms.”
“It’s the newest issue of New Avengers, that I bought with my money, so I don’t know why you think you get to read it first.”
‘If you were that concerned about first dibs, you should have read it when you bought it last night. It’s a well known rule that after twelve hours it’s anyone’s game, right Frank?”
“I’ve never actually bought comic books?” And he probably wouldn’t get in the middle of this, even if he had.
“Fucking assholey thief little brothers.”
“Right, because you’ve never read my issues.”
“After you get first read, Mikey. There’s a difference!”
That’s when it hits Frank he’s fucking brothers. It’s pretty cool, at home none of his friends or acquaintances had siblings. The realisation settles over his lap, and makes him want a threesome. He doesn’t ask though. He’s known Gerard a week, and that’s long enough to know angry sex wouldn’t work for him. Mikey doesn’t seem to have moods in which handjobs or blowjobs aren’t wanted, which Frank can appreciate, but Gerard needs to be willing for it to be a threesome. Besides, there’s the fact of Mikey and Gerard not knowing about each other yet. He’ll tell them as soon as he can make sure they know it’s normal for vampires to have multiple partners. Gerard should already know, at least, thanks to Bert.
“I’m gonna get Mom to make you mow the lawn when we get home.”
Frank’s eyebrow raise into his hairline. It seems really harsh just for comics. He knows Mikey likes them, and apparently Gerard does too, but still. “You’re giving him a death sentence over a comic book?”
“What?”
“I like reading them too, but that seems harsh.” If Frank had a brother he’d probably never try to kill him, even when emotions got high.
“Nothing is too harsh for comic book usurpers. But, uh,”
Mikey finishes for Gerard. “We still have no idea what you mean.”
Frank’s never seen a vamp so stupid. It’s enough to make him wonder if living in an orange state is dangerous for vampires and halflings. It cannot possibly be safe to forget your nature. “If Mikey has to mow the lawn he’ll die.”
“I agree.” He pauses. “Uh, why though?”
“The sun will burn you to charcoal?” Seriously, how does he have to explain this?
“Uh, no? I might get a sunburn, but only vampires crisp in the sun.”
Frank thinks back to all their conversations. Mikey never actually said he was, even though the clues are obvious. He better ask. “Wait, you’re not a vampire?”
“No, he’s not.”
“Then who did your mom cheat on your dad with? Do you know him?” As the silence lengthens he realises it’s maybe a sensitive topic. At home when strangers asked if his mom really fucked her meal plan, Frank would have to brawl in the name of his parents’ honour. “Sorry. You don’t have to say.”
“Our mom never cheated.”
Really, that’s pretty naive. He knows he’s being a jerk, but he doesn’t like being lied to, so he presses. “The stork doesn’t just deliver a halfling to human parents.”
Mikey shakes his head, finger tucked into the spine of his -or Gerard’s, apparently- comic book. “Dude, he’s full human too.”
It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like Frank monitors them 24/7. Sitting inside their rooms and watching them sleep would be creepy. But as far as he can see they’re always in hoodies, Mikey doesn’t eat, Gerard covers every inch he can before he goes outside, and they have decent sex drives. “Not even a quarter? Like a grandparent?”
“Nope, sorry.”
“Trust me, we think it sucks too. As soon as we actually like the way we look we’ll find a papa or a mama. No sense in changing now when I’m fat and he’s zitty.”
Frank looks them over. The assessment is hardly fair. Gerard’s not fat, he doesn’t have three chins or moobs. And Mikey’s skin isn’t that bad, no worse than the average teenager.
“Bert wouldn’t do it anyway. He’s a dick.”
“He’s not a dick. He’s gonna be forever sixteen, and he doesn’t want to cause that for others. Plus he’s not the parental type. That’s not being a dick.”
“Okay, so he’s not a dick for that. He’s still a dick, and you know it.”
“I gotta get back to Ray and Bob. Gimme my comic.” Gerard thrusts a hand out. Mikey’s response is to snort. “Fine. I’ll be back at the end of lunch. Read quickly.”
Frank nods his goodbye, and waits until he’s out of the library to turn to Mikey and ask. “Why don’t you eat with them? Do you think they’re dicks too?” Frank doesn’t. The longer they hung out with him two days ago, the more he liked them. But maybe Mikey knows a different side of them.
“No, it’s not that. The inside of my head can get pretty loud. There are always people. In classes, and the guys come over most nights. But there aren’t a lot of people in the library.” Mikey finishes with a shrug. It’s still not a lot of an explanation, but it’s enough for Frank. He doesn’t like his people easily understandable anyway. He’s never thought of himself as particularly quiet, but if he’s not an intrusion for Mikey he’s happy to be on the same couch with him each lunch hour. He can always talk to Gerard and Ray and Bob online.
Frank’s about to light a cigarette when a hand comes down on his shoulder. He jolts, almost setting his bangs on fire. The flame flickers out in the slight breeze and Frank turns his torso to look behind himself. It’s Mikey. Mikey’s got a green hood pulled over his hair, glasses the only thing sticking out. Even knowing the truth, he still looks like a halfling to Frank.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for Gerard. We walk home together.” He’s still got a while yet, and the library would be safer, but you can’t smoke indoors at Broadfoot.
“I didn’t know you lived by us.”
Frank shrugs. He doesn’t actually know where Gerard and Mikey live. When Gerard turns in one direction and he turns in the other he doesn’t backtrack to follow. He’s not a stalker. “Close enough.”
“You won’t char?”
“No.”
“Cool. I’m waiting for Bob,” he explains without provocation. “He’s posing for the art club. Before you get excited, no nudes. Just him picking up crates and shit so they can sketch muscles or whatever. He’s coming over after, you should too.”
There’s no reason not to, so he does. It’s a bit of a wait but eventually Gerard and Bob come out together, and he follows in line behind them. They don’t make condescending efforts to include him in the conversation, and Frank doesn’t talk as much as he might have at home -maybe because no one is discussing sex or meals- but it’s still a friendly vibe. At least until they stop in front of a house about ten blocks away from Frank’s.
Gerard unlocks the door and the three of them pile in, taking up the entire landing as they slide off their shoes. Frank’s waiting for one of them to move when Gerard turns to him and says “come in.”
“Fuck you!”
“What?” Gerard seems gobsmacked. He’s lucky he’s not Franksmacked.
“You heard me, fucking asshole.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Is this a you came from a red state thing?”
That they don’t even know how it’s offensive makes it that much worse. “Inviting me in like I’m some bullshit mythological creature. Like I don’t fucking exist.”
“Okay, definitely a red state thing. I’m guessing no one invites anyone inside in Richmond?”
“Yeah. And no one turns into fucking bats either, does that come as a shock too?”
“Don’t be a dick. We didn’t know. If there’s anything else we do that offends you, feel free to bitch loudly.” Mikey rolls his eyes and walks further inside the house. Frank considers storming off. Anyone at home would, if not for the insult than because storming off is what vampires do. But the truth is Gerard and Mikey and Bob and Ray are the most likely candidates for best friends. He doesn’t want to ruin that now over one ignorant remark.
As soon as Frank moves past the foyer of the Way house he understands why Gerard was stricken dumb by the emptiness of his room. The Way house is like four homes worth of stuff in one house. There’s stuff everywhere. It’s cluttered on every flat surface, and on shelves mounted in between mismatched paintings and pictures of Mikey and Gerard when they were young. There are three adults in a living room off the kitchen, but only Bob pauses to say hello, both brothers clatter down a wooden set of stairs.
The tiny basement is half a rec room, with three doors lining one wall. One is half open and a khaki green toilet is visible. A constant rumbling comes from the left, the bass noise of a washer or dryer. Frank doesn’t have a chance to guess the third. The couch is a three seater, but there are four of them and the only other seating is a rocking chair. Frank dives at the same instant that Bob does, leaving Gerard to sit on the carpet.
It’s a nice evening, though towards the end Frank can see what Mikey meant yesterday. When Bob’s mom shows up to pick him up, she ends up coming in and having dessert with everyone else. Maybe twenty minutes later some kid with another weird G name comes in and he and Bob’s mom talk about salads for at least a quarter of an hour. When he thinks about trying to cram Gerard’s boyfriend or Mikey’s other friends in the house Frank nearly gets claustrophobic.
Eventually everyone else leaves or heads to bed. Even Mikey and Gerard go to theirs for a minute, although it’s just to change into the comfort of worn t-shirts and pyjama pants. When they offer him, he agrees. Comfort is always a good thing. After comparing both pairs, Frank takes Gerard’s as the lesser of two evils. They’re looser, but Mikey’s are about three feet too long. He changes in their room, not because he’s modest in any form, just because he wants to spy.
The first thing Frank thinks when he enters the Way bedroom -besides how much stuff they own too, hoarding must be genetic- is how difficult a threesome would be. They share a bedroom, the only siblings Frank’s ever known to do so. Both beds are singles, and there’s not a square inch of visible carpet on the floor, never mind enough room for all of them to be down together. But it’s probably a good thing, a deterrent from asking. His dad’s pretty much certain that if they find out he’s with both, he’ll suddenly be with neither. It seems stupid to him, another case of human morals being weird, but he really doesn’t want to lose either of them.
They watch two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents before Gerard starts yawning. Ten minutes into the first he stands, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. “I gotta crash. Frank, you gonna go home now?”
“I’ll sleep over. My mom’s been at work for hours so she won’t notice and my dad will be happy I’m making friends.”
“K. I’ll make your bed, then I’m sleeping.”
Their process of cleaning up is interesting. Mikey deftly plucks the comics off the floor and puts them in a neat stack on one of the dressers before he starts kicking the remaining debris under both beds. Gerard joins in the kicking for a minute before wandering away. The way the rest of the evening has gone, Frank half expects to find him in half an hour, three quarters done a drawing. Instead he comes back with a pile of blankets higher than his head in his arms.
“We don’t have any sleeping bags. We’re not really the camping type.” His voice is muffled by the blankets, but loud enough that Frank can understand. Rather than drop them all at once, he stands as Mikey untangles one and a time and begins to make a nest. Frank smiles. In their own way, they’re really sort of domestic.
“You tired? Or you wanna watch more Hitchcock?”
Frank isn’t actually that tired, it takes more than two weeks to get a vampire’s body clock in a different time zone. However, he would like being in Gerard’s room with the door closed. “I think I’m gonna try to sleep.”
Mikey shrugs at him and leaves, flicking the light off as he does. Frank lets Gerard get into his bed first, it’ll lower the probability of being stepped on in the dark. Only when the springs stop squeaking does Frank pull back the top layer of blankets and lay down. The nest is surprisingly comfortable, and he’ll easily be able to sleep later. For now though, all he wants is to devise a foolproof strategy. He doesn’t have long, Gerard’s obviously near sleep. In the end he goes with what’s simple. He sits up and sneaks his hand under Gerard’s blankets to put a hand on his thigh. This time there’s no Ray or Bob to distract.
Gerard just asks. “So you want to have sex then? Move over.”
Frank only has an instant to shift before Gerard is rolling himself off the bed and landing with a ‘oomph’ beside him. It doesn’t even stretch the elastic of his loose pyjamas when Gerard pushes a hand down them. Frank hurries to return the favour. It’s still not as much as he’d like, but if it’s as far as Gerard will go he’ll take it.
“If you bite me I’m not biting you back,” Gerard whispers. Frank imagines he looks serious, though with their noses touching it’s impossible to tell.
“Uh, duh?” It should go without saying. “You couldn’t even, you don’t have fangs.”
“Bert cuts somewhere so I can drink. I’m getting sick of it though.”
“So not with me then.” Frank made his promise to Bert, he won’t betray that.
It’s the last thing they say, after they just grip at each other and work their own rhythms. Gerard doesn’t kiss him, and Frank doesn’t start anything. Breathing each other’s exhalations is almost the same anyway. He wants to bite him, he wants Gerard to be his, but he can’t cross that line.
After they’re done they wipe their hands off on one of the fleece blankets and toss it to the side. Gerard smiles at him and kisses his cheek before standing and falling into his own bed. He falls asleep pretty much immediately, Frank can hear his breathing pattern slow. Frank’s not as lucky. He might not be able sense things as well as Mattie could back home, but he still can. Gerard’s strong heartbeat when he’s trying to rest is disconcerting. Frank’s not sure he can sleep with the accompaniment, at least not until the exhaustion weighs out the distraction. So after breathing in tune with him for a long enough time to officially be a creeper, he quietly stands and leaves the room.
Mikey’s watching a movie with his headphones plugged in. As Frank sits beside him he tugs on the cords going to the buds and lets them fall to his neck. His finger is still working the trackpad to make the movie stop when he asks “you wanna fuck?”
Hell yes is Frank’s first answer, but what comes out of his moth is somehow edited into something more sympathetic. “I thought you didn’t.”
“I only fuck one person at a time. Consider it my personal mantra of the ethical slut.”
“I haven’t read that.” If it’s even a book. Frank thinks it is though, Mikey’s side of the room and the shared middle had a bunch of books scattered around.
“Yeah, I don’t think a red state worries about that kind of thing.”
Frank could have the red Vs orange state conversation. If Bob was still here they could even get some yellow laws and opinions into the debate. But he’d really rather have the ‘who’s cock, who’s ass’ conversation. The first time might not require working out Mikey’s headspace, but he won’t do it again if he felt pressured into it, and Frank doesn’t really want to be that asshole anyway. Rape isn’t unknown in red states, but there are better ways to show power, and most don’t do it through sexual activity.
“But you’re done with whoever?”
“It just took Pete and Joe a few circlejerks they didn’t want the third body.” Frank’s not sure he could imagine a situation where a third body wouldn’t spice things up, but each to their own. Or, if he’s going on with cliched phrases, more for him.
“You said fuck you? I don’t care either way but you seemed specific.”
“If you don’t care then yeah, I’d rather. Been a while since I bottomed.”
Mikey puts his laptop on the middle cushion, then stands and move around the side of the couch. The main piece of furniture in the room is smack in the middle, facing the T.V. that’s mounted on the wall. It must be a hazard when you’re drunk and prone to walking into things, but for now it’s helpful. Mikey loosens the drawstring on his Southpark pants, which is enough to make them drop to the carpet. Taking a step to the side frees him of them, letting him spread his legs and brace himself against the couch’s corduroy back. Tall, thin, and hard, he’s fucking beautiful.
A bit less than two weeks in a new city isn’t enough time to figure out where to buy all the brands the Ieros liked, or even their equivalents. Mom still can’t find a decent source for anemic blood, which is delightfully sour, and there are half a dozen different shampoos in the shower they’re trying out. But some things are important. Frank ran out of the remnants of the box of individual packets of lube before he even started at Broadfoot, he had to find a place to get more. Thankfully after the nearest sex shop kicked him out for being underage Googling around informed him the vampire needs store in the mall had no such age restrictions, only the ability to drop fangs and show you belonged inside.
It’s thanks to the Vamp Essentials -creative name, really- that Frank is able to go to where his backpack is leaning against the stairs and pull a packet out of the front pocket instead of Mikey having to sneak into the bedroom and fumble around his nightstand. There’s a packet in his jeans too, but those are in a heap in their room.
“You said it’s been a while so I’m gonna do the whole fingering thing, okay?” Frank doesn’t wait for an answer. He just tears at the slit in the package so it leaks onto his fingers and tosses it to the carpet when it’s contents are expunged. It starts to drip so he curls one hand around himself and the other against Mikey’s crack. It would suck if it dried to stickiness before he got a chance to put it to use.
Mikey gasps, but he arches backward trying to get more. Frank wants to give him that. He adds a third finger.
“This is great,” he mutters a minute later. It’s true, not just because it’s been a while since he’s fucked someone. Having sex with Mikey specifically is good. Better than it would be with a random person from class.
“Yeah.” It’s not a moan, but it should be. Frank picks up the pace until Mikey is repeating it over and over again, quickly, like he’s hyperventilating. He can hear all the air leave his lungs each H. Frank wants to eat the sound from his lips.
Bert didn’t say anything about Mikey. If Frank had to guess, he’d probably say the dislike was mutual. Vampires are too emotional to do anything but loathe anyone who as much as raises an eyebrow at them. Still, Frank doesn’t bite down when he comes. Mikey knows he’s a halfling. If he wanted it, he’d ask.
Mikey uses a sock to wipe his come off the back of the couch. Frank feels bad for a moment about not catching it, but Mikey seems to have things under control.
“You wanna watch Nailface, or you wanna try to sleep again?”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Mikey shoots him an astonished look. “Okay, you definitely have to stay up then. And I’ll print off a list of human producer movies and you tell me if you’ve seen any of them. We’ll fix your horror education by the end of the school year. I promise.”
Frank grins and throws himself over the back of the couch, narrowly avoiding crunching the laptop. He can stay up until dawn, if it’s for horror movies.
Friday morning Bert is at his locker again. Frank doesn’t know what that’s about, but his concern takes a back seat when Anderson Lee spots him and glares. The jock takes a menacing few steps towards him and Frank curls his hands into fists as he waits. He won’t make the first move, and he won’t drain him of blood, but he can at least defend himself.
Luckily- or at least it seems that way for a moment- Bert intervenes. Anderson makes it about five feet towards him before Bert shoves him with full vampire strength and he flies down the hall before crumpling when he hits a bank of lockers. Only when Anderson is dispatched and Bert is still glaring does it occur to Frank that there’s no reason for Bert to give a shit if a jock beats him up. Considering how well he knows vampire nature, it’s pretty clear Bert just didn’t want another person to interrupt his confrontation. Frank braces himself for a brawl, knowing he’s about to get his ass handed to him. Mike or James would be great right about now.
The hallway is silent, or at least Frank’s instincts have moved past catching idle conversation. It’s maybe not the smartest thing but Frank’s never been a wimp, or a especially planned out thinker. He breaks the stillness with a ‘hi’.
“Gerard broke up with me last night.” Bert’s moving full speed down the hallway at him. In an instant he’s face to face. “Why.” Bert is taller than him, but no taller than Gerard, and there’s not a single muscle on his frame. That doesn’t make him less frightening.
“I dunno.” It’s not like he told Gerard to break up with his boyfriend.
“I know you didn’t bite him. What did you do?”
“I don’t know.” He and Gerard haven’t even had sex since Tuesday. It’s highly fucking unlikely that Gerard broke up with Bert due to his own sexual prowess.
“It’s what he didn’t.”
It’s Mikey’s voice. Frank doesn’t turn to check, he can’t afford to. In an unmatched fight like this, every instant he has to react is the moment that might save him from being disemboweled. There’s only so much his healing can take care of, as a halfling some things can kill him before he can fix them. That’s the problem entirely. He’s a halfling and he’s gonna get hurt, at the very least. Mikey could easily die, depending on how enraged Bert gets. Even thinking it makes Frank’s fangs drop. “Mikey, go away.”
Mikey speaks again, clearly ignoring Frank and the danger of goading a pissed off vamp. “Gerard hates fishnet bars, and that’s all you do. You, Quinn, Jepha and Dan go to a fishnet bar before you take him to the car to fuck. Six nights a week.”
“He likes that.”
Frank finds Bert’s perplexed tone and look sort of sad. Mikey doesn’t have the same sympathy. He says coldly “no, he really doesn’t.”
“What’s a fishnet bar?”
“Humans that get off on it get put in these bondage net things that are chained to the ceiling above a round table. Vampires chill and drink as interests them. Or in Gerard’s case, cuts the human and sucks from the wound. It’s all consensual, but it’s not very interesting.”
“I dunno. Sounds kinda awesome. We didn’t have that at home, it was all either free range hunting or meal plans.”
He can practically feel Mikey’s glare heating the back of his head. Mikey’s probably got a point. This isn’t about him. Of course he thinks it’s good, blood is natural for him. There’s no nutritional value in it for Gerard.
“How do you know?”
Mikey snorts. “He told me.” The word come out sounding a lot like duh.
Bert frowns. Frank braces himself, prepared to give Mikey an extra thirty seconds to run. It won’t be enough to save himself, but there’s always hope. Instead Bert turns and stalks off.
Frank calms for all of two seconds. Then he realises what that means. “We need to find Gerard and tell him to hide. Would he have his phone on him right now?”
Mikey shakes his head. “He’s not gonna go after him Sappelstien style.”
“Look, I know a lot about vampires and-”
“I know Bert. They’ve been together almost two years. He’s gonna go see Quinn and Jepha and Dan, and they’re going to blow off school for a few days. It’ll-” the five minute warning bell goes off, cutting him off for a second. When it stops, Mikey continues. “It’ll be fine. Bert wouldn’t hurt him, he’s just fucking blind to shit sometimes. Go to class.”
The incident doesn’t so much fade from his mind as other things climb on top of the attention span hierarchy. The pop quiz in geography takes his mind off anything except soil conditions, which, unfortunately he doesn’t remember much about. At the end of the period Frank’s pretty certain he bombed the whole thing. Multiple choice leaves a seventy five percent chance of being wrong. Thankfully Mom and Dad don’t care about individual assignment failure, only overall passing of courses. Next class is chemistry. Balancing chemical equations is like math with possible hypothetical horrible death. It’s distracting.
It’s not until lunch that Frank remembers Gerard’s life has fallen apart, and even then it takes a visual prompt. Mikey is standing outside the library, loose backpack straps letting the bag hang low on his ass. Frank knows the backpack has to have beautiful, stunning comics in it, but when Frank walks forward arms outstretched parodying a zombie going for brains, Mikey shakes his head.
“We’re going to the caf today. Gerard’s gonna be nuts.”
Honestly, Frank would like to see Gerard going nuts. Any human, really. Compared to Richmond everyone’s been so calm and sedate he’d almost think they were stationary. He always got shit for being emotionless, but everyone here is drywall compared to hm. On the other hand, the cafeteria doesn’t really mesh with Mikey using lunch for breathing room. “You sure? It’ll be noisy.”
“Gerard needs me.”
And that’s that, apparently.
Frank follows Mikey through the labyrinth of tables. He hasn’t been in here since the first day of school, and looking around he’s pretty happy for it. It’s hard to blame Mikey for hiding with comics, when comics are so much better than the people arm wrestling over ketchup packets at the table he’s passing.
For someone that never lunches with his friends, Mikey knows exactly where they are. It’s probably a homing beacon thing, like how Gerard knew he’d be in the library. Mikey’s sliding onto the bench before Frank even spots Ray’s hair pulled into the hood of a sweatshirt. He sits across from Bob and listens in. It’s clearly mid-conversation, Ray telling Gerard he can’t make Bert’s decisions for him.
Mikey whispers an explanation for the sweater to Frank -apparently Ray pulls on his hair when he’s aggravated, and talking Gerard off a ledge is frustrating as hell- before speaking over them loudly. “What happened?”
Ray rolls his eyes and tugs on the cotton cords of his hoodie as Bob studiously eats his pita. Mikey keeps looking and after an odd hiccupy-wail Gerard bursts into arm waving motion. “Bert and Quinn dropped out!”
“And of course it’s all Gerard’s fault,” Ray tosses in.
“It is! I broke up with him.”
“Most people don’t move out of state when they break up.” Ray answers. Bob takes another bite of his pita.
“Out of the state?”
He answers miserably “They’re gonna take their band to Virginia. They’re good, but they could have been good here. If it wasn’t for me.”
Frank looks at Mikey and Ray and decides to join in the conversation. It’s not like he can make things worse. “Gerard Way, are you a groupie? Because I know guitar, if it’ll get you out of your jeans and into your bed.”
“What?”
“Sex makes everything better. In Richmond after every long stint of monogamy there was a ‘congratulations on being free’ orgy.”
“Yeah, we don’t really do orgies here.”
“I don’t want sex, I want to find Bert and apologise.”
“You do not need to apologise for not wanting to drink other people’s blood.”
Frank thinks his next statement is actually a lot more helpful. Or at least better suited to the delicate sensibilities of humans. “You can’t find him anyway. If you try to go into Virginia you’re literally volunteering as a meal plan.”
“That mean what it sounds like it means??”
Bob doesn’t look like he’s joking so Frank explains without being sarcastic. “You know how you have arranged marriages?”
“Well, I don’t think North America does.”
“But you get the concept, right? Well, our state has arranged meal plans. I think most red states do. You commit yourself to a single human and take the vast majority of your meals from them, but it’s your responsibility to take care of all their needs. It’s why we left, actually. My mom and dad met and fell in love, but that’s not okay in red states.
“Why didn’t your mom just turn him? I don’t understand.”
“It’s none of your damn business,” Frank answers, trying to keep the calm that this state is smothered with. It’s not even his business, really, never mind Bob’s.
“Okay, so let’s recap. Not your fault, Bert makes his own life choices, can’t go find him because everyone in Virginia will eat you. Anything else you’d like to say?”
“I’m gonna miss him.” It’s not histrionic, it’s low and sad. Frank lifts his leg and rubs his foot against Gerard’s knee as Ray pulls him in for a hug.
Part Three