Chapter Text

That night Mikey was upset, jittery with some new corticosteroid treatment they had him on.

“Don’t like it,” he whispered at Gerard, hoarse and quiet. “I can’t stay still. I can’t sleep.”

So Gerard climbed in the bed with him and let Mikey play with the old broken bits of glass Frank had collected, running them over his hands and listening to them clink together like windchimes while Gerard described the river and the toppled gravestones. He figured it was safe telling Mikey about the mill house, about Frank’s sleeping bag, because who would Mikey tell? Mikey kept all Gerard’s secrets; Gerard didn’t know how not to tell him.

Mikey seemed just as worried about Frank as Gerard, but didn’t have any better ideas of what to do about it, so Gerard let it drop for a while. Mikey had enough to deal with, after all.

Gerard got out an old issue of Sandman and read it aloud, instead, doing all the voices, Doctor Destiny and everything. Nurse Ratched came in after an hour or so, to stare disapprovingly and inject some poison into Mikey’s IV, taking spirometry measurements.

He made himself watch for the IV thing, because if Mikey had to deal with it then Gerard could at least do the solidarity thing, and tried not to shudder too obviously.

“’S cold,” Mikey said, sighing and rubbing at his arm above the needle insertion. Gerard was not going to throw up. He put his arm around Mikey in a show of support. IVs were the worst of all needles, maybe even worse than the eyeball death needles from Fire in the Sky, which were pretty fucking bad. He started flipping through the comic book again, trying to distract himself from the rising bile in his throat.

“You smell weird,” Mikey told him after the nurse had left, burying his face in Gerard’s shoulder and sort of wheezing carefully into the cloth. “Like dirt.”

“Your mom smells weird,” Gerard retorted, and Mikey rolled his eyes. “I told you, I fell in the fucking creek. And stop talking, you’ll make it worse, man.”

Mikey shook his head, face calm and resigned as his breath rattled and his thin frame shook with each intake of air. Gerard hated it. He hated the face Mikey made sometimes, like he’d given up hope, like he’d accepted the inevitable cruelty and irrationality of the universe and moved on.

Gerard choked down his directionless rage. Maybe he was like Mikey’s portrait of Dorian Grey, siphoning off all the unhappiness and despair Mikey couldn’t afford to feel or articulate. He wanted to smash shit and scream and rip down curtains until someone gave into his tantrum and fixed things. Fixed Mikey. He flashed on a memory of Ted’s sneering face and had to close his eyes, count to ten for a moment.

“M’okay,” Mikey said, leaning into his brother, head on his shoulder. He mouthed the words into Gerard’s shirt, and Gerard could feel them, warm and soft. “M’okay, Gee.”

“You’re not,” Gerard said lowly, quiet enough that Mikey couldn’t hear, and took a couple deep breaths of his own until he could force a smile on his face, into his voice. “Yeah, I know, Mikey. Hey, did I tell you about how awesome Bob and Ray are? I told you about our sleepover plans, right? Lemme get my sketchpad out, I’ll show you.”

He spent the rest of the hour drawing. He drew Bob and Ray in the lunch line, Bob drooling on his desk during history, Ray in safety goggles making a dubious face as he wielded scissors and dissection pins at a dead frog. When his mother caught his eye and jerked her head towards the door, he realized that Mikey was sleeping, wheezing faintly and eyelids twitching. Gerard always worried that Mikey would suffocate while he slept. Gerard should be there to make sure he was safe, to listen for the sound of choking, the restless twitching of bedclothes.

“Time to go, Gee,” his mom whispered. “Let him sleep.”

Gerard disentangled himself, and left the sketches and his Sandman comics under his brother’s sleeping hand.

When they got home around ten or so, Gerard really, really wanted a drink. Something to numb the stinging behind his eyes. But it hadn’t worked out so well last time, so he just made himself some black coffee, strong and bitter, and resigned himself to a night awake. His mom disappeared into her bedroom and Gerard was left to poke through the half-assembled kitchen alone, finding a stash of Diet Coke and a jumbo can of Beefaroni.

He wondered how his mom could sleep like this, listening to the house and the empty spaces. Just her and Gerard, rattling around the lack of two people in a four-bedroom farmhouse. Mikey should have been in his room, practicing bass or listening to Morrissey at three in the morning. His dad should have been in the living room, watching the weather channel and fiddling around with one of his model cars, making everything smell like craft glue and turpentine. Instead it was just his mom, locked into her room and quiet. Gerard was alone in the echoing kitchen with the bright cheerful yellow lights and black windows, plugging in the microwave. He leaned a hip against the counter and watched the fake pasta revolve, waited impatiently for the coffee pot to stop gurgling.

He wished Frank could have made it out here. They could have ordered a pizza, watched Jesus Christ: Vampire Slayer, or the sixth season of Buffy, or just hung out. If Frank was worried about being spotted or whatever, well. Gerard was reasonably sure he could elude any unwanted notice by just blending into the shadows like he always did. He’d seen Frank do as much in broad daylight, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t really that asking that much, was it, wanting Frank to visit the civilized, well-lighted lands instead of forcing Gerard to leave his warm, though hatefully quiet house and tromp through the wilderness.

Frank had looked genuinely distressed, though. As if stepping foot out of the forest would result in him immediately being set upon by demons, by ravening wolves. In Gerard’s head the wolves wore the ragged remains of baseball uniforms, and Frank was waving a silver shotgun at them menacingly, outnumbered but still fierce.

The microwave dinged three times, dragging him back to reality, and Gerard tugged his hoodie sleeves down over his hand so he could pick up the hot bowl without burning his palm, then trudged upstairs precariously loaded down with the Chef and the pot of coffee and a slightly chipped mug. Each step creaked ominously beneath his weight, and he didn’t have a free hand to flick on the light switch, so he just edged his way up slowly in the dark to his room and hoped the house would give him a break for once.

It seemed like every part of his body ached, not the just the bruises, but the muscles, too, he guessed from dragging himself up and down every hill in fucking Vermont over the last few days. Gerard was tired, so fucking tired. He flipped the TV on and eased himself into bed, mounded the covers and pillows up around himself until he was vaguely comfortable.

He wanted Frank here, on the other side of the bed with him, chortling over a Diet Coke at Jesus’ haircut and flicking ash on the comforter. Every room in this house seemed so fucking empty. He wanted Mikey snorting and making derisive comments on the cinematography, or Pete composing porn soundtracks and Gabe constructing some sort of elaborate drinking game out of DDR and handheld Simon Says. Anything but this fucking quiet.

He texted Pete to tell him about how much life sucked and how the quiet spaces were filling up everything, and Pete responded with a stream of nonsensical, lyrical lines about an ocean of leaves and smiles like sunshine and skin like scurvy. An hour later Gabe sent him a picture of what appeared to be a nostril (fuck, please let it be a nostril) and of his snake, Beatrice, poking her head out of someone’s sleeve, and then Mikey texted him goodnight, and Gerard felt minutely better about life again. He finished the rest of Jesus Christ: Vampire Slayer, and then watched old reruns of Adam West’s Batman until it blended in with his dreams. Then it was bang, pow, time for high school again. He’d rather face the Riddler or the Penguin any day, even if it did mean wearing spandex.

Gerard was nearly forced to skip Geometry because Ted was practically having sex with some girl in the hall outside class. There were hands in inappropriate places, and Isaac was leaning against the wall nearby and rolling his eyes. Gerard tried to keep his own eyes averted as much as possible, because it was totally gross. It was a terrible start to the day, then it was compounded by a pop quiz and Noltes squeaking his desk forward to try and look at Gerard’s answers, Mrs. Hall yelling at both of them, like it was somehow Gerard’s fault.

After class, Gerard got turned around and went the wrong direction down the hall and wound up in a completely different section of school, a hallway he’d only wandered through once or twice before. It was lined with trophy cases and old black and white photographs—a hall of mirrors, throwing back carnival reflections of the students rushing past. Noltes caught up with him, snagging his bookbag and pulling Gerard up short with a nauseating yank. He threw the bag down the hall, after rifling through it and stealing Gerard’s emergency can of coke.

The whole time, he was grumbling something about it being Gerard’s fault he had detention. Gerard fought the urge to make mocking cave-man like grunts at the douchebag, and stomped off down the hall to get his things. By the time he got to his bag, the bandana kid from the day before was holding it, blushing a terrifyingly bright crimson. Gerard was a little worried the kid was having an aneurysm. He also appeared to have a fake rose in his buttonhole, which was sort of awesome.

“Thanks?” Gerard said, fidgeting. He gestured awkwardly with his elbow while scratching his head, letting his hair fall down into his eyes. “I like your flower.”

The kid somehow got even redder, shoved the bag into Gerard’s arms and took off down the hall before Gerard could ask if he knew which stairwells led to the second floor. Gerard managed to figure it out on his own, after some trial and error—for some reason, one stairwell only had steps that descended into the basement where, if Buffy was anything to go by, the gym coach was probably breeding amphibious carnivorous jock-monsters in locker-cocoons.

He burst into English class ten minutes late, and Carew was seriously a scary dude, with burning eyes. Maybe he was the one breeding the amphibo-jocks. Bob gravely agreed with this assessment, and then punched Gerard in the shoulder for not showing up to play Halo and Resident Evil yesterday afternoon. When Gerard gave him a wounded look, Bob just went to sleep, which seemed to be his standard response to classwork and lectures. But apparently it mysteriously worked for him; Ray said he got mostly Bs. Lucky bastard. Gerard wished he could sleep through the school day.

“You should sit in on band practice, seriously,” Ray said after class, lingering in the hallway. He put his head on Gerard’s shoulder and made giant pleading eyes until Ted stomped by shouting about how the school was overrun by fucking faggots.

“One day,” Bob said. “I’m going to steal Worm’s tuba, and beat Sikowski’s head in with it.”

“That is why you’re our hero,” Ray replied, smiling at Bob hugely. “Worm’ll kill you, though.”

“Meh.” Bob shrugged. “See you at lunch, Toro. Way.” He nodded at them both and then sauntered off, and Gerard was left with Ray, who was still smiling adoringly after Bob, and luckily Patrick showed up before Gerard could actually start snickering, because oh god, it was sort of ridiculously adorable, Ray’s giant moon-sized crush.

Gerard hadn’t really taken in just how short Patrick was until he was surrounded by upper classmen. It was possible that Patrick was even shorter than Frank, which boggled the mind. Patrick and Ray started talking about the show on Saturday night, and who would drive. Gerard kept quiet, for the most part, but Patrick kept looking back at Gerard, and then, like, looking over Gerard’s shoulder at something and snickering, which was weird. Gerard would have been more put off, except Patrick didn’t seem to be laughing atGerard, exactly, and actually seemed really interested in Gerard’s opinions on music and different groups.

Fuck, Gerard actually had somehow managed to make friends, of his own. It was kind of amazing. Normally he just kind of got absorbed by Mikey’s friends—Mikey made friends simply by existing. It had never been that easy for Gerard, but somehow these guys were different.

He spent History passing notes with Bob. It started out as a lengthy discussion about famous drummers and Guitar Hero, and then devolved from there into a critique of Mario Galaxy and a cartoon where Bob was Donkey Kong and Ray was Diddy. Bob kept cracking up and getting them in trouble with Mrs. Gist, but Gerard was secretly thrilled. He could make Bob Bryar laugh. Gerard felt like a million bucks of awesome.

Of course, because his life couldn’t stay on a plateau of happiness for more than three minutes, as they left the class, Ted slammed into Gerard’s shoulder, hard, and then sneered at Bob. “Watch out, Bryar, that fucker’s a fairy. Don’t get too close, you don’t want anyone thinking you’re one of them.”

Bob just narrowed his eyes, and said coolly, “Watch your own self, Sikowski.” Ted hesitated a second before scowling and stomping off.

“What a dumb fucker,” Bob said flatly. “I can’t wait to get out of this fucking town.”

Gerard was sort of relieved Bob hadn’t, like, edged away or anything, which was an asshole thing to think, actually. Bob was way too awesome to do anything like that. But still. It was nice, having someone stick up for him. He really hadn’t expected anything like that in Glen Fell. Bob had never exactly asked about Gerard’s sexuality, but when Gerard mentioned it obliquely, said something about how hot Robert Downey Jr. was looking lately, he’d nodded and agreed, hadn’t batted an eye. If not for Frank and the fact that Ray would probably kill him with scalpels and dissection probes, he’d probably have a moon-sized crush on Bob himself.

“No fucking kidding,” Gerard said, and Bob grinned at him. “Hey, have you applied for colleges yet? I’ve got, like, just the one in, to SVA in New York, but I should probably apply to more. Thank god Mr. Russo already wrote me recommendations, ‘cause the art teacher here fucking hates me.”

“I thought I might go back to Chicago for school, actually,” Bob said as he pushed open the cafeteria door, raising his voice slightly as a wave of conversation and clanging utensils filled the hallway. “Patrick sounded interested too. Don’t know about Ray.”

“Oh,” Gerard said as they got into line. “I bet Ray’s totally interested in, uh, Chicago. Wouldn’t be surprised. Heh.”

Bob shot him a bewildered look.

“You’re weird, Way,” he said, but he said it in a bemused way, not mean or anything, so Gerard just smiled mysteriously and picked up a tray.

Lunch was sort of awesome. The school served pizza that was almost edible, and had jello cups for dessert. It was warm out, warm with the sun overhead and with the palette of colors around them, rich browns and reds and oranges, golden grass and bright blue sky. It was like sitting inside a campfire, or a bucket of Halloween candy.

Ray got involved in a tiff over who was driving what car to Burlington for the Dinosaur Jr. show on Saturday, and kept asking Gerard’s opinion, like he was completely confident of Gerard coming along. Not that it mattered, since Gerard had no idea who had what car and if Patrick’s story about Bob backing out of the driveway and taking out all four mailboxes on his block was true or a gross exaggeration. Gerard was sort of busy wistfully wishing Frank could come to the show, but, well. No one had to know that.

Somehow without his noticing, the topic had shifted, and everyone at the table was staring at him. Gerard stopped shredding the crust of his pizza.

“Uh, what?” he asked, alarmed.

“Those fuckers are still picking on you,” Bob said mildly. “We’re figuring out a game plan.”

“Oh!” Gerard said, shocked, and wow, he really didn’t know what to say. “I, uh. Thanks? Fuckers always pick on me, though. No big deal. There’s nothing I can really do about it.”

“Hmm,” Patrick said. “I did hear you were sassing Ted at lunch the other day.”

Gerard squinted at him. “Did you just say sassing?”

Patrick grinned and tugged at the brim of his hat. “Shut up. But seriously, Ted’s gang is sort of pissed. I’m just worried, that’s all.”

“Oh, come on,” Gerard scoffed. “They were fucking with that kid, it was bullshit. Someone needed to do something.”

Patrick was snickering again, just a little. What the fuck was so funny, Gerard wanted to know. Social oppression and the entrenchment of the hetero-patriarchal norm wasn’t funny. It was fucking tragic.

“No, it’s not—you’re right,” Ray said earnestly. “But that’s what we’re saying. No one should do that to you either, you know? But Isaac’s dad’s the mayor. Ted’s family is basically the police department. They could get away with murder without more than, like, a slap on the wrist.”

“I’m totally cool with you starting a revolution,” Bob said, stealing Gerard’s pizza crust. “Just, next time, get one of us to come with. You need back up. Muscle.”

“And you shouldn’t just walk around alone with those guys gunning for you,” Ray said, steepling his hands and glaring at Gerard. “It’s not safe.”

“It’s really not that big a deal,” Gerard protested. Wow, okay, the last thing he was expecting to have to deal with in Vermont, for the record, was fending off attempts to give him a personal guard. He focused on stripping a crimson leaf to its veins. Another leaf was stuck in Ray’s hair, bright yellow against the brown. “Seriously, it’s nice of you guys, but they’re just hassling me. I’m fine. Really.”

“Hmm,” Bob said, and the conversation dropped. Bob picked the leaf out of Ray’s hair and Ray went totally, completely scarlet, which effectively distracted him from the topic for the rest of the day, thankfully. Gerard couldn’t help but tease him a bit about it as they got their goggles and shit ready in Biology, and Ray got dithery and vague. It was hilarious.

Gerard couldn’t quite shake the feeling of unease, though, that maybe Ray and Bob were right, that he should be taking this more seriously. But it really wasn’t a big deal. Ted and his gang might have the run of the town, but they were just kids.

Over their disemboweled frog, Ray looked at Gerard sideways and frowned. His hair was pulled back in a giant pink scrunchy borrowed from the teacher—Gerard had snagged a sparkly red one, himself.

“So, listen, I know you think we’re all just crazy, but you really should be careful. Where’d you go yesterday, after school? We were all sorta worried Ted had grabbed you, but you showed up this morning,” Ray said, eyes concerned behind his goggles. He was methodically sucking the formaldehyde out of the body cavity with a pipette with a disgusting whooshing sound, and if he didn’t pay more attention, that shit was going to get everywhere. Again.

Gerard didn’t know how to respond, so he just went back to trying to pick the frog’s filamentous lungs out of the assorted heart and perforated digestive goop.

“Do you think this is a lung?” Gerard asked dubiously, picking up a gray membrane with his tweezers and squinting. “This is such a waste of life, I swear. I’m not learning anything, you’re not learning anything, and a frog is dead. It could have been out there, like, spawning tadpoles. Eating flies. Living the lily pad life.”

Ray hunkered down and peered at the strip of tissue. “Uh, I could be wrong, but I think that’s part of the. . . liver? Why are we even bothering. You know the teacher doesn’t give a fuck.”

“Because,” Gerard said primly, setting down the liver-lung. “The frog gave its life for us to learn the organs of the amphibian. And we will learn them. Or, well. Try. Anyway, I just—” he sighed and lowered his voice. “I just went out the back by the band room, you know? And waited out in the woods for everyone to leave. It worked pretty well. I’ll probably do it again today, I guess. So stop worrying, alright?”

Ray stared at him, mouth open.

“What?” Gerard asked, bewildered. “Is something in my hair?”

“You went into the forest? Seriously?” Ray waved the pipette in the air and gesticulated with it unhappily, voice rising in alarm. “The forest? Seriously?”

In the front of the room the teacher was typically oblivious, half-hidden behind her desktop and clicking away—apparently this had been her MO her entire Glen Fell career. Rumor was bondage porn was involved. The result was a senior bio class that was largely a chaos zone of burned pond scum and filched formaldehyde. Easy A, if you weren’t a target. Either way, it meant Ray could freak out totally unfettered and probably not get yelled at.

“Dude,” Ray hissed, leaning in. “Dude, you can’t go into the forest, no one goes into the forest.”

“Yeah, kind of the point,” Gerard said, puzzled, and mentally washed his hands of their poor frog for the rest of the period. Ray clearly wasn’t in the mood for learning, and, well, it wasn’t like the teacher would notice them slacking off. Ray had a point there, at least.

“No, man, that forest is bad news. It’s fucking creepy. It’s, okay, look. Don’t laugh. It’s totally haunted.”

“Really?” Gerard breathed, entranced, before he remembered Frank chortling about nitwits thinking the ruins were haunted, Frank hunkered down in his run-down mill house in a ratty sleeping bag and cold at night, alone. He blew out a disappointed breath. “Dude, hate to disappoint you, and myself, but I’ve been going out there for ages now, and I haven’t seen any ghosts. It’d be fucking cool, but no dice. Still, if it keeps people away, works for me.”

Ray shook his head and his ponytail bobbed wildly.

“No, I’m telling you, people have seen shit. I’ve, well. I’ve seen shit. Something, anyway. You know how it is, fucking go in on a dare, right? I went when I was a kid, and I heard something, I don’t know. I was out there with Patrick, you can ask him. It suddenly got cold, in the middle of July, see-your-breath fucking cold. And the wind picked up, and it sounded like somebody talking. It was really hard to hear, but it was freaky as hell. And Patrick said he saw somebody on the path, right fucking next to me, all fucking see-through and reaching out.”

How was that fair? Gerard had been going into the forest for weeks now, it seemed like, and all he’d seen was Frank, and a graveyard, and maybe he’d heard someone chuckling at him, but it’d probably just been the wind in the trees, or the sound of the river. He wanted to believe it was someone chuckling—definitive proof of life after death would be a nice thing to have, some days. Just in case—well, it’d be nice. And fucking wicked cool.

Maybe some of the envy showed on his face, because Ray scowled at him. “It’s not a game. I’m serious, the forest is bad news.”

“It’s not like you got hurt, though, right?” Gerard asked, shrugging. “I’m just saying. Even if you did see something, it doesn’t sound like it was a big deal. And you were just a kid, right?”

The bell, thank god, would be ringing soon, and then he could escape this formaldehyde hell and draw insipid art for Mr. Felts. And then go visit Frank, and maybe laugh about this, about Ray and his superstitions, about Bob’s bizarre guard-duty idea. Of course, first he had to somehow elude Ted and his dim minions. Maybe Bob had a point. Gerard rubbed at his sore jaw uneasily.

“I was twelve,” Ray muttered. “I wasn’t, like, an infant. And that’s not the point! I’m not the only one, Gerard. Shit’s happened to other people, too, for years and years. Once the baseball team went in there on a camping trip, but they left like ten minutes after sundown, screaming bloody fucking murder. They’d all heard voices. Some people saw shit.”

Okay, it was sort of weird, that multiple people had seen shit, but rumors built on rumors, right?

“Drugs, maybe?” Gerard suggested. “I dunno. I guess it’s possible. I’ve just never really seen anything out there.” Well, except for Frank, but he’d promised not to bring Frank up, not around Ray.

“Well, maybe you’re just not sensitive to that sort of thing,” Ray pointed out archly, and started putting away their dissection kit while Gerard stripped off his gloves and scrubbed at the latex powder left behind. “Apparently some people just don’t see or hear anything, but dude, they still get cold, and if rocks are being thrown, they get hit. Just… think about it. Be careful.”

“It’s the woods,” Gerard scoffed. “So it gets cold sometimes.”

“Look, if you’re worried,” Ray said cautiously, stripping off his own gloves and washing his hands in the sink, “about, you know, those assholes ganging up on you, just. We’ll meet you by the band room, okay, and walk you home, me and Bob and Worm and Brian. They’ll leave you alone, they’re fucking cowards like that – they’ll never go after you if you’re in a group.”

“No,” Gerard said immediately. Fuck, he hated the smell of latex on his hands, and the crummy antibacterial soap didn’t get rid of it at all, and if it couldn’t get rid of condom-glove smell, then he sort of doubted it could get rid of dead frog germs. “No, okay. You don’t need to get involved. And you guys have marching band practice anyway.”

Ray looked frustrated, loosing his hair in a reddish thunderhead and shaking it out. Gerard couldn’t lie, it was impressive. “We’ll just meet you at the band room, don’t worry about it. You can wait and watch practice with us, talk to Mr. Curtis about chorus. We’ll go play some video games after, it’ll be great.”

Gerard rolled his eyes, still undecided. He really didn’t want to drag Bob and Ray, or any of the other band kids, into actually confronting Ted Sikowski. Ray was at least tall, but picturing him next to Noltes made Gerard a little queasy. Plus, there was Frank.

“The woods aren’t so bad,” he reiterated, more to himself than to Ray. “I really think it’s just… urban legends run wild, you know?”

Ray huffed out a sigh. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, you’re right, it’s not like I got hurt. And some people say that it might be Frank’s ghost out there, and I don’t think Frank would ever try to bash my head in with a rock or anything. But it was so fucking creepy out there. I don’t get how you can stand it, man.”

As Ray talked, Gerard felt all his internal organs go into a panicked mambo and he clutched the edge of the lab desk, black spots dancing in his vision.

“Who?” he managed to get out from between clenched teeth. “Whose ghost?” It was possible all the blood vessels in Gerard’s eyes had just popped; they felt like they were literally bugging out of his skull.

“Frank’s? Frank Iero?” Ray said slowly, clearly bewildered. “Remember, I told you about him at lunch the other day, the kid who disappeared when I was little. I guess it might not be his vengeful spirit, or whatever, but that’s what everyone’s always said – the whole haunted forest thing started up after he went missing, right after the searches stopped. I dunno. Hey, are you okay?”

Then the bell rang, thank motherfucking god, because Gerard had absolutely no idea what to say.

He gathered his things in a daze. Ray was still talking, his voice slow and indistinct, like Gerard was underwater and Ray was miles away, on the surface. Gerard stared at Ray’s mouth moving for a moment before turning and walking off. He wound up stumbling down the hallway, past the stairwell and towards the cafeteria. He fumbled in his pockets for his lighter as he walked, concentrating on that. On placing each foot after the other. On finding his Bic, and his pack of Marlboros.

Normally he would have camped out in the creepy basement or maybe the library, hidden in the stacks of books and smoked furtively, but now he just wanted to get outside, away from everyone. He made it out without being caught by any adults or fellow students, kicked his way dully through leaves and dirt and wound up outside the band room. He leaned against the back of the huge old maple tree and chain-smoked four cigarettes, not seeing anything. His mind kept doing this leaping thing from thought to thought, disjointed and useless.

He focused on smoking, the physical sensations of it: the smoke in his lungs, the thin tube of paper and tobacco between his fingers. Keeping his hand steady was oddly difficult—he couldn’t stop shaking. He fumbled the lighter, flicking it again and again until his thumb was raw and burning but in the end he finally got a light going despite the breeze and his own treacherous nerves.

All these clues and hints kept suddenly leaping out at him. Ray sitting beneath this tree, mouth full and gesticulating wildly with his hands, saying ‘He fucking knew everything about music, man, I thought he wrote the book on cool.’ Frank seeing Gerard for the first time, appearing out of nowhere on the path, ragged and dressed for a spring afternoon in the middle of October. Frank in the middle of the graveyard, begging Gerard not to tell anyone about him.

Nothing made any fucking sense. His head hurt, and fuck, he was smoking the filter. He dropped the ragged remains of the cigarette on the leaf litter and ground it out with his toe. Suddenly his problems with Ted seemed completely inconsequential.

Mikey. Mikey would know what to do. He pulled out his scuffed black Nokia—his mom had had a fit the other month when she realized he’d cracked the screen again, like it was his fault the new cellphones were so small and slippery and tended towards slinky-like suicide leaps down stairs—and fired off a text. He pulled out another cigarette and waited for a response. He could wait all day. He had nothing else to do, so long as Ted didn’t show up and Ray didn’t find him and Mr. Curtis didn’t ask him to join chorus. It was nice to pretend he could just stay here forever, leaning against the tree, looking at the sky.

He didn’t know how long it had been before the phone buzzed at him—another two cigarettes, at least. Gerard was starting to get light-headed from the nicotine, which was a fucking feat.

dont know what to do about what? blinked onto the screen, and he could just see Mikey, sitting up in bed and frowning at his phone. Fuck, he missed Mikey patronizing him all the time, rolling his eyes and sighing obnoxious, tolerant sighs.

ray says franks been dead for like 10 yrs. No point in beating around the bush.

There was a long pause. By the time Mikey responded, Gerard had gotten tired of standing and had slid down to the base of the tree and snuggled amidst the roots. It was actually pretty fucking comfy, if a little damp—he’d found the perfect spot for his ass and there was a little knurl to lean his head against. Like he could drift off Rip van Winkle style and sleep through all this bullshit and wake up with a wicked beard.

whats frank say?

That was not good advice. That was crap advice. Gerard scowled at the phone.

if thats even his name. maybe hes been lying the whole time?

why would he lie? And then immediately after. sorry, tests, g2g. if hes a zombie take pics

Gerard made a face at the phone and snapped it closed; it made a worrisome crunching sound that probably meant he’d fucked up the flippy-thing again. That hadn’t been helpful at all. Fucking Mikey, all, ‘why would Frank lie.’ Because, fuck, why would he? It didn’t make any goddamned sense.

Frank obviously wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. That was ridiculous. Gerard would have noticed. Frank was weird, sure, but he wasn’t— except—

Except there was a lot of weird shit about Frank, and it was… Gerard could actually buy it, in a way. It made about as much sense as his serial killer or runaway theories, that Frank was some sort of undead entity.

Frank, living in the forest and popping out of nowhere onto the path and wearing the same scraggly jeans and t-shirt day after day. Well, okay, Gerard did that too. But still, he at least, you know, changed hoodies. But on the other hand—Frank was totally solid and non-see-through. Gerard should know; he’d tripped up against Frank enough times in the forest, and Frank was an awful big fan of invading Gerard’s personal space. Maybe a zombie, he mused, grinding his last cigarette out thoughtfully. But even then, he was remarkably well-preserved for a rotting corpse.

Plus, he hadn’t exactly gone after Gerard’s living flesh. More’s the pity. Gerard could go for Frank mauling him, only maybe with less teeth and more tongue, and okay, now was not the time to be thinking about this. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and scowled.

In the distance, the bell for last period was ringing, shrill and piercing, signaling Gerard had to leave his tree or be trapped, either by Bob and Ray and the rest of the marching band, or by Ted and his fucking friends. Gerard wasn’t in the mood for admonitions to join chorus or questions about his woodland jaunts, and he definitely didn’t feel like getting used as a punching bag again.

And, okay, he could admit to himself, he really wanted to see Frank. And fuck, if ghosts were real, Gerard would have been all over that, and Frank would have known that and told him. He would have told Gerard if he was dead, right? There was no fucking way. Frank was probably just going to laugh at him when Gerard brought it up, because Frank was a common name, and it was totally ridiculous to think his Frank was the Frank Iero of Legend, the missing boy from days of yore.***

He set off towards the forest determinedly, leaving the school and the rush of noisy Friday afternoon students behind. He thought he could hear music, somewhere beneath the distant noise of the parking lot and the angry chittering of a squirrel. Maybe the band was starting up, or maybe it was just a car radio. He stood there at the edge of the forest, staring at the enraged squirrel, trying to make himself take that next step.

“Just move,” he muttered to himself, jittery and terrified and excited, and the squirrel seemed to agree, getting louder and louder, until Gerard finally raised his palms and gave in. “You win,” he said, and took a deep breath, and then headed down the path. The woods were empty, for now, and it didn’t take long for Gerard to reach what he thought of as their wall, the one Frank usually showed up by. It was the perfect height for slouching against, and had smooth rounded stones. Gerard took a moment to close his eyes and breathe and try to regain some semblance of calm.

“Hey hey!”

Gerard’s eyes flew open and he stifled a squawk of alarm. Frank was standing in front of him, clutching a guitar case, and his beam faltered to a slightly bewildered smile in the face of Gerard’s stare.

“Uh, what’s up?” he asked, setting the guitar down and hopping onto the wall beside Gerard. He bumped their shoulders together, confused but still cheerful. “Everything okay?”

Gerard shook himself. Frank, totally solid, totally hot. Totally normal. There was no way. “No, yeah,” he said, offering a smile back of his own. “Everything’s cool. School sucks, though.”

Frank nodded. “School always sucks, bro,” he commiserated, and held out his fist to be pounded. Gerard looked at Frank, who had to be kidding with the brotastic fist-pounding thing, but Frank just waggled his eyebrows and waited. Gerard sighed and awkwardly bumped his fist against Frank’s. It was a brief moment of contact. It would have been easy to dismiss the chill of Frank’s skin as poor circulation, or hypothermia, or something.

Something like being dead, Gerard thought. Maybe he is. Maybe he’s dead. He leaned against Frank, who looked confused but pleased with the contact, leaning back into him and smiling. Before he could think too much about it, Gerard shoved a hand out blindly and wrapped his fingers around Frank’s arm, just below the elbow.

Frank immediately tried to tug his arm away, but Gerard had frozen, breath caught in his throat.

“Gee—what? C’mon, man, what are you doing?” Frank said, with a brittle laugh. “Let me go.”

Back home Gabe had a pet snake, a Colombian red-tailed boa named Beatrice, and sometimes they’d all get stoned and watch old kung-fu movies in Gabe’s living room, the boa meandering around the couch and looping across Gerard’s shoulders, winding down his arm. That’s what Frank felt like, like Beatrice, cold-blooded and taut beneath Gerard’s palm. Not icy, not frozen. But—Gerard watched himself rub his thumb across the tattooed saint. Cool. Like a stone lying in the shade.

Frank made a strange, strangled noise and jerked free. Gerard stared at him, oddly aware of how hard his heart was thumping in his own chest. It couldn’t be—but—

***

art by formerlydf

***

“Okay, seriously,” Frank hissed, folding his arms against his chest and huddling in around himself. “What the fuck’s going on, Gerard?”

Okay. There was probably a subtle, tactful way to approach this.

“Are you a vampire?” Gerard asked carefully, and instead of joking or rolling his eyes, Frank stopped glaring and just froze. Seconds passed, and he wasn’t saying anything, none of the lines or excuses Gerard expected. He was just staring at Gerard with huge eyes and a panicked expression.

“Oh my god,” Gerard said, hushed and delighted, and was just about to reach over and feel Frank’s non-pulse when Frank exploded into action, flinging himself backwards and away from Gerard. Gerard frowned at him.

“No, I—a vampire? No!” Frank said, waving his arms over his head. “Jesus, Gerard. What the fuck, a fucking vampire? Seriously?”

“Oh,” Gerard said, disgruntled. Okay, it had been a long shot, but Gerard liked vampires; vampires were awesome. Also, Frank was dead and cold-blooded and lived in the forest, it wasn’t that weird a thing to think. Although he admitted that Frank was walking around in sunlight, which shot a giant-ass hole in that theory. Fuck. “Well, what are you then?” he asked grumpily. “It’s not like you told me. You could have, you know. I mean, you’re Frank Iero, right? If you’re not a vampire, what’s going on?”

Frank’s eyes bugged out and he scooted away from Gerard. Gerard frowned and tried to subtly inch along after him, which didn’t work so well, since Frank just leapt to his feet and backed away, like Gerard was going to leap up and start trying to suck his blood.

“Goddammit,” Frank said finally, voice hoarse. “Fuck, Gerard, I didn’t—I didn’t want… Who told you? Just, look. Stay calm, okay, you know I’d never hurt you or anything, right?”

“Of course not,” Gerard said, bewildered. “I mean, if you wanted to eat me, it would have been totally easy. You didn’t have to drop me in a fucking creek first.”

Frank didn’t seem to have heard him, which was maybe for the best. He just paced and gnawed at his fingernails and never took his eyes off Gerard, just looked at him beseechingly, which was weird.

“Who told you? It was Toro, wasn’t it?” Frank asked, almost more to himself than to Gerard. “God, that fucking kid—I should have known, I should have—”

“What?” Gerard asked, now totally bewildered, and then he fucking noticed—he should have noticed five days ago. Frank was pacing back and forth through drifts of dead leaves. And he wasn’t making a sound. If Gerard closed his eyes, all he could hear was Frank muttering to himself, like hearing a voice from a television or headphones. There were no footsteps, no dead, crackling leaves, just Frank raving on about conspiracies of silence or something. He opened his eyes, and Frank was there, walking back and forth on top of a bunch of crinkly shit, and he didn’t even… he didn’t even cast a shadow. Gerard was the most oblivious fucker in the entire world, holy shit.

Frank finally noticed him staring and stopped mid-stride, mouth twisting.

“Gerard?” he asked, voice wavering.

“You are Frank Iero,” Gerard squeaked out. “Holy fucking! Fuck! You—fuck! You’re totally… I dunno, undead? Immortal? What are you? Jesus, Frank!”

Frank tried to say something, and Gerard knew he should try to calm down, but he couldn’t, couldn’t even stop himself from bouncing to his feet and waving his arms excitedly in the air.

“No wonder you never ran into those fucking mud puddles!” Gerard continued, elated, and automatically whipped out his cellphone to tell Mikey. Holy shit, this was so cool. Mikey was gonna flip, he thought gleefully, then reconsidered mid-type. Or possibly freak out. While he was dithering over what to type, he finally noticed Frank still hadn’t moved. In fact, he looked—okay, he looked pretty distraught. Gerard slid the cellphone back in his pocket, feeling strangely ashamed.

“Gee,” Frank said after a moment, his voice breaking. He was staring at Gerard with an almost alarming intensity, like every iota of his being was focused on Gerard, just on Gerard. Gerard stuck his hands in his hoodie pouch and waited uneasily. “Just, please. I’m sorry, I—I wanted to tell you, I just didn’t… I don’t have anyone to fucking talk to out here, and you’re the first person that’s ever just thought I was a kid, a normal fucking kid, and—I didn’t want you to leave, I—”

“Why would I leave?” Gerard asked, and sidled a few steps closer, now that it seemed like Frank wasn’t going to run away or whatever. “I mean, seriously, dude, this is so cool!”

Gerard leaned over and poked Frank in the chest a couple times, felt the thump of a sternum beneath his fingers. Frank had frozen again, motionless, mouth opening and closing, and when Gerard lifted the hem of his shirt to poke his side—finally getting to see the tattoos was totally just a bonus—Frank snorted with helpless laughter before batting his hand away.

“You’re ticklish,” Gerard said, delighted. “And solid. What are you, a zombie or something?” He bounced on his feet, leaning in a little closer.

Frank stared at him. “What? No! I’m a vegan, dude, that’s gross!”

“Well, if you’re a zombie it’s not like you have a choice,” Gerard offered, rather reasonably, he thought. “It’s not like a moral dilemma. You wouldn’t condemn foxes for eating bunnies, right? Circle of life, man. Or, uh, unlife?”

Frank looked really silly with his mouth hanging open like that, and if he kept staring at Gerard like that, Gerard was gonna do something stupid, like attack his face with a triumphant ‘The undead are real! My life is validated!’ kiss. This was the best day ever.

“I’m not a fucking zombie!” Frank finally squeaked out, voice high and outraged.

“Oh,” Gerard said, a little disappointed. Zombies were sort of a favorite of his. Maybe Frank had an alien symbiote? Like the black oil aliens in the X-Files. Either way, if he was Frank Iero, he looked about ten years younger than he should, so something had to be going on.

“I have a body, it’s—over that way,” Frank continued, flapping his hands in the general direction of the river before turning back and looking at Gerard with huge, earnest eyes. “Are you—I know this is weird, dude, but please don’t—”

“Really?” Gerard breathed. “Where? It was a long time ago, so it’s probably all skeletal by now, right?” He noticed Frank’s eyes getting bigger and bigger, and reevaluated what he’d just said. “Oh, dude, fuck, sorry. Was I being insensitive? I didn’t mean to be.”

There was another long pause and then Frank buried his face into his hands and his shoulders started shaking. Gerard squinted. Was Frank fucking laughing at him?

“Dude,” Frank said between his fingers, the words nearly unintelligible through the giggling. “Are you kidding me?”

“I’m serious!” Gerard protested. “I don’t wanna be, like, rude or anything.”

Then he had to wait an hour or so for Frank to stop laughing, a little wild and hysterical, hunched over and clutching his ribs. Gerard took the time to catalog all the ways he’d been a moron not to notice something was up, because sometimes the light shone right through Frank’s shoulder blades—how had Gerard missed that before, seriously—and then Frank’s laughter sounded suspiciously ragged.

Gerard hovered next to him awkwardly and then settled for putting a tentative hand on Frank’s shoulder.

“Frankie?” he said uncertainly. “I, uh. What’s wrong? Seriously, I really am sorry, if I hurt your feelings or anything.”

Frank lifted his head from his hands and stared at Gerard, and Gerard had just enough time to register that Frank looked worried, or—not worried, something stronger than worried. Terrified. Gerard didn’t know what to do, so he just hugged Frank and tried to make a soothing noise, and then Frank’s face wavered from horror to incredulity, and then out of nowhere came this blinding, brilliant, smile and Gerard couldn’t even breathe for a second. Frank huffed out something between a laugh and a sob and flung himself at Gerard, burying his face in Gerard’s neck, nearly toppling both of them off the wall entirely.

“Whoa!” Gerard said, and then awkwardly patted Frank’s back and tried to think unsexy thoughts, because holy fuck, there was a hot guy on top of him. His fantasies didn’t usually involve the hot guy freaking out so much, though. “Uh, there there. Frank, it’s okay. Um, are you, uh, okay? Do you need anything?” Thoughts of donating blood or life force passed through his mind for a moment—howcool would that be? So cool, as long as Frank didn’t actually, like, drain him or whatever, but he trusted Frank not to do that. Frank might be dead or supernatural, but he wasn’t evil. Gerard could tell.

“Gerard Way, you are so fucking weird,” Frank said into Gerard’s neck, but he sounded pretty delighted about it, so Gerard let himself wriggle happily, at least internally. “I can’t fucking believe you. You’re not—you’re not scared at all, are you?”

“Of you?” Gerard asked incredulously, and then snorted. “Uh, no? Hate to break it to you, Frankie, but you’re not super scary.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Frank mumbled, ducking his head a little further into Gerard’s hoodie and snuffling. “I’m fucking terrifying, okay.”

“Uh huh,” Gerard said, and let himself squeeze Frank back a little. “You and your expired Diet Coke and your bridge of doom. I’ll alert the presses.”

“Fuck off,” Frank said indignantly, and drew in a quavering breath that seemed to rattle the trees and send a cascade of leaves around them. He was shaking, just a little, and Gerard was finally reviewing their previous conversation and was coming to the conclusion that he’d been kind of an asshole.

“Frank,” he said, finally, and Frank pulled away, rubbing at his face and not meeting his eyes. “You know… I would never just, fucking leave or whatever, right? I, uh, I mean, I like you. A lot. And,” he added hastily, when Frank’s head shot up, “you’re a fucking ghost! Or something else, I don’t even know. That’s totally awesome except, um, in the way I would rather you not be dead? Except you have to admit it’s kind of totally awesome.”

Frank looked skeptical, and he still had one hand clamped on Gerard’s arm, like he was afraid Gerard might suddenly tear off in the opposite direction. Gerard remembered again how fucking thrilled Frank had been to see Gerard that first time, how Frank constantly reached out to touch him and wow, he really was an asshole. If Frank was dead… Gerard felt abruptly sick.

He must have died when he was just eighteen years old, on the brink of going to college—his whole life stretched out ahead of him. He must have died in a white t-shirt and ripped jeans, alone in the woods. Gerard couldn’t wrap his head around that part of things. Frank could be dead, but he couldn’t have died.

But he had, obviously, and for all Gerard knew he was the first person in over a decade to hug Frank, to talk to him or joke with him. No wonder Frank had freaked out. Jesus, Gerard was a jerk.

“Hey,” Gerard said softly. “Seriously, it’s okay. I don’t discriminate against the dead. It’s okay, Frankie. I am totally pro-the dead. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

Frank looked up and when he laughed, it sounded all clogged and choked, but he was grinning again.

“Yeah? I should have known, you giant morbid freak,” he said, and wiped at his nose. Ghost snot! Gerard thought, entranced, and wondered if he could subtly offer his hoodie sleeve for a handkerchief to collect a specimen. Then he immediately felt like a jerk when Frank continued. “It’s just—usually people don’t really see me like you do, just some kind of freaky cloud or a voice or whatever. I mean, some people do, but it’s not like they stay to talk to me, you know? Much less ask to see my fucking body, you goddamn ghoul.”

“Hey,” Gerard said feelingly. “I said I was sorry!”

Frank punched him in the shoulder without looking up, and Gerard couldn’t even be mad about how it actually sort of hurt, because a fucking ghost had just fucking punched him in the shoulder. So cool.

“It’s okay,” Frank said, lifting his head and smiling faintly. “My corpse is pretty awesome, I’m not gonna lie. I mean, who gets to see their own skull? It’s pretty badass.” He made a wiggly hand gesture indicating the general badassness of his cranium.

“People who get MRIs?” Gerard suggested, then backpedalled rapidly when Frank glared. “Not that that is in any way cool. Radar technology, what the fuck ever. Who needs it?” Frank shook his head, and Gerard had to admit he probably did have an awesome skull, what with those cheekbones and that jaw line and the curve of forehead he could see now.

“Do you ever do, like, Hamlet and Yorick scenes?” he asked, unthinking.

“No!” Frank said. “Who would do that? Oh my god, you would. You would totally do that.”

“Maybe?” Gerard hedged shiftily, and subtly changed the subject. “The point is, I mean, you couldn’t have thought I’d have minded, right? You should have told me ages ago! I thought you were fucking homeless, man. I was going to kidnap you and make you live with me in my closet.”

“You what?” Frank spluttered, raising a hand to hide his smile when Gerard scowled. “Dude, seriously? You thought I was just living out here?”

“It was a totally reasonable assumption!” he said defensively. “I didn’t have all the information! If you’d just been upfront about it—I mean, what’d you think I thought?”

“I couldn’t,” Frank interrupted, and then looked away, and his face was all in shadow so that Gerard couldn’t see his expression. “Gerard, I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I mean, what if you’d just thought I was crazy, or if you’d run away—Fuck, Gee, what would I do if you left?”

“But I wouldn’t! I won’t!” Gerard said, exasperated. “I told you, you’re not scary. You’re awesome. It’s awesome.”

“Is it?” Frank said weirdly, staring at Gerard, and Gerard had to abruptly steel himself not to look away or lean back. Frank had never looked at Gerard like this before, intense and otherworldly. He seemed almost luminescent, hollow, like the skin of a paper lantern, and his eyes were bright and distant. Not human.

“It is,” Gerard gritted out, and folded his arms over his chest. He wasn’t scared, he wasn’t. Frank could fuck off with his fucking freaky-deaky ghost-routine.

Then Frank sighed abruptly, scowling a little and shoving his hair out of his face, and he was just Frank again, rolling his eyes and long-suffering.

“I need a fucking cigarette,” Frank grumped, and laid his head on his knees, holding out a hand imploringly while Gerard fished in his pocket for the battered box of Marlboro Reds.

“How can you smoke, by the way?” Gerard asked, pleased when his voice came out steady and normal. “Do you even taste it, really?”

“This is the end of all normal conversation, isn’t it?” Frank said mournfully, and lit up without answering. Gerard watched to see if he could see the smoke move down Frank’s throat, into his lungs, but he could only see smooth, opaque skin. He wondered if Frank could get hickeys. “We’re never gonna talk about anything else ever again. I’m just ectoplasm to you now.”

“Ectoplasm?” Gerard squeaked, and then, belatedly, said, “Uh, I mean, no, of course not. I would never objectify you like that.”

Frank scowled at him.

“Such a liar,” he muttered, and stole Gerard’s pack of cigarettes, but Gerard saw a faint glimmer of a smile lurking around the corners of Frank’s mouth, so he figured he wasn’t accidentally being a jerk again. Frank was probably used to it by now anyway, he figured. Still, Gerard should probably change the subject. Then he remembered.

“Oh!” he said, rustling in his bag and emerging triumphantly with a stack of comics. “I brought you these, um. Here. Guess you can’t get out to the comic stores much, right? Hah.” Crap, he was talking about the dead thing again. This was useless.

Frank didn’t seem to mind, though, just snatched Gerard the comics out of his hands, and then dug gleefully through the bag for more.

“Normally I just swipe what I can off campers and shit, but damn!” He clutched the Seven Soldiers of Victory to his chest, beaming and looking like any other human comic geek. A hot, totally out of Gerard’s league, geek, to be honest. “This is fucking—Gee, have I told you lately how awesome you are? So fucking awesome. I don’t—how did I get so fucking lucky, man?”

“Aww, dude,” Gerard said, and kicked his feet against a stump, trying not to beam. “I just, you know, didn’t think we could still be friends if you hadn’t read about Zatanna and the new Spider. I guess you, uh, can’t leave the forest or whatever?” He wasn’t prying into Frank’s deadness, per se. Just making polite conversation. Right.

“Obviously not, or I’d have followed you home and set up camp in your closet,” Frank said, pawing through the bookbag for more and crooning to the smooth plastic. Gerard scowled as he watched one of the pages crumple slightly in Frank’s enthusiastic hands. Frank continued absently as he flipped pages, “I’m totally stuck here. Ghostly territory, ends at the edges of the forest, et cetera, et cetera, blah blah. It’s pretty boring. Oh my god, dude, you have the Defenders series? Sweet!”

“You better not fuck those up,” Gerard grumped, a little annoyed to have so thoroughly lost Frank’s attention but at the same time sort of pleased for the opportunity to ogle Frank busting a nut over Gerard’s comic book collection without fear of being spotted. Also, Frank fucking haunted a forest. He rolled that over in his mind gleefully, then got distracted by Frank’s indignant snort.

“Of course not! What do you think I am?” Frank glared Gerard, and god, it was fucking awkward to stare into someone’s eyes, he didn’t know what all the movies and his aunt’s collection of romance novels were all about. It was awkward, and weird, and filled with this expectant waiting, and Gerard wound up having to huff and look away and feel like a necrophiliac.

Was it even necrophilia if you weren’t attracted to the body, but to the, uh, spiritual material? What the fuck was Frank anyway? A strangely solid nimbus? Could Frank even have sex?

“Like you don’t have pizza sauce all over them anyway, asshole,” Frank muttered, peering at the panels in the dimming light. He glanced up at Gerard, then looked down again quickly, fidgeting with the binding on one issue and, Gerard noted indignantly, crumpling the pages.

“On, like, one page,” Gerard pointed out, and then sighed in defeat. Comics were for enjoying, anyway, except maybe first editions and special editions, and okay, so maybe Frank couldn’t really fuck them up any worse than they already were, unless he did some kind of ghost ninja reading kung fu with them and then dropped them in a river.

“So, seriously, who told you?” Frank asked. He still wasn’t quite meeting Gerard’s eyes. “Or did you figure it out all on your lonesome?”

Gerard was a little sheepish that he hadn’t figured it out on his own—if anyone was going to uncover an undead ninja ghost zombie, it should have been him.

“Thought we weren’t talking about it anymore,” Gerard grumbled and stared at his muddy Converse. He could practically hear Frank rolling his eyes. “Ray was lecturing me on the evils of the forest,” he said reluctantly. “And your name came up.”

“Yeah?” Frank said companionably, and Gerard could hear him leafing through pages. When he glanced over out of the corner of his eye, it took a moment to register Frank as anything more than a pale blur. Peripheral vision, Gerard thought. They’d talked about it in biology, how you saw things differently from the side than you did head –on, something about rods and cone cells and the color purple.

“Yeah,” Gerard said, swallowing around a strange lump in his throat, and forced himself to lean against the cool solidity of Frank’s shoulder. “Apparently you scared the shit out of Ray and his friend Patrick five years ago. He’s still all shaken up about it.”

“Five years?” Frank said, finally looking up, a small frown on his face. “I don’t… really, it was five fucking years ago?”

“I guess,” Gerard said, slowly. “Ray said he was twelve, when he saw you. I guess Patrick was maybe ten or eleven. So, yeah.”

“Doesn’t seem that long,” Frank said slowly, scratching his chin. “Or it seems longer. I dunno. But I remember, yeah, little Ray Toro and his friend, sneaking around the woods with their flashlights. Five years, wow.” Frank hunched his shoulders and stared back down at the bright, glossy pages. “I didn’t mean to scare them, you know?” he said softly, flipping the pages. “I was just trying to say hey.”

“I don’t think they saw you really well,” Gerard offered hesitantly, and Frank shrugged.

“Probably not,” he said, then shook himself, grinning up at Gerard. “Fucking kids, man. They come in every now and then, all Are You Afraid of the Dark, with flashlights and s’mores and shit, and get all shocked when I actually show up.” Frank gave a big, shark-like smile, all teeth. “Hey, I aim to please. Sometimes I even steal their shit, their comics and whatever.”

“Low, Iero,” Gerard whistled, and made himself shake his head in mock-disapproval.

“Oh, whatever, some kids love it, right?” Frank said, which Gerard had to concede was probably true, for the most part. “If they didn’t want to get dicked around with, they shouldn’t have come in the motherfucking haunted woods. I have a duty to scare folk shitless. It’s like a moral imperative.”

“Mmm. Justify your petty theft all you like,” Gerard said, snapping open a back issue of Miller’s Batman. “You’re just as bad as Peeves, man.”

“Okay, one? It’s not petty theft,” Frank said, and stole Gerard’s comic and waved it under his nose. “I need comics! For my mental health. It’s extenuating circumstances or some shit. And two,” he said, leaning back and narrowing his eye, “Did you just call me a perv? Because I’m pretty sure that camp of girls were over eighteen. And I wasn’t, uh.” Frank started to stammer as Gerard glared. “I didn’t do anything!” Frank backpedalled. “There were right there! Changing! And I’m all cold and shit so their nipples were all hard, and then I guess I made a noise or something and they ran away screaming like fucking banshees. Tits all over the place.” Frank drifted off dreamily. “I miss sex,” he said a little sadly, and then Gerard choked on his own spit, and decided the better part of valor was to attack Frank’s appalling pop culture ignorance.

“Peeves,” Gerard said faintly. “Peeves is the poltergeist in Harry Potter.”

“The what in the who, now?” Frank said, frowning, and that was Gerard’s afternoon sorted out. By the time it was getting dark, Gerard had about caught Frank up to the Half-Blood Prince—around the Goblet of Fire he finally thought to ask if Frank wanted to actually borrow the books and read them himself, or whatever. Frank stared for a moment before bursting into laughter—which, whatever, stupid ungrateful fucker—and motioned Gerard to continue with his super-awesome condensed version. While he talked, Frank played quiet lilting melodies on the guitar and finished off the rest of
Gerard’s cigarettes, occasionally piping up with questions and what he obviously thought were extremely witty comments about wands and horcruxes.

It was actually easy to forget Frank was dead, most of the time. It just seemed so normal, and then it’d hit Gerard all over again like a fucking brick to the head. Dead. Frank was dead. People went somewhere after they died, obviously. They didn’t just disappear. It fucking blew his mind.

When Gerard had to leave at the end of the day, Frank walked him to the edge of the woods, and then looked at Gerard with a strange, bemused expression. Then he leaned in, wrapping a hand around the back of Gerard’s neck.

Gerard had a brief heart attack.

“Hey,” Frank exhaled, nose to Gerard’s. “Hey, you.”

“Hey,” Gerard squeaked, and almost thought he felt Frank’s lip ring cold against the corner of his mouth. The wind was blowing, just enough to cut through the last of the day’s warmth and scatter dead leaves from the trees above. Wisps of fogs were coalescing in the fields and curling along the entrance to the path in the twilight, damp around their feet, and Gerard thought that probably this was as perfect a moment as his life would ever provide, with Frank’s mouth inches away.

“Thanks,” Frank said, and Gerard tried not to go cross-eyed looking at him.

“For what?” Gerard asked, voice hoarse and nearly soundless, hopeful, and then suddenly Frank shook himself, and stepped back. Gerard made a low protesting noise in his throat before he could stop himself, and then felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment.

“For being, you know, not a screaming girl or whatever,” Frank mumbled, gnawing at a fingernail. “You should probably go.”

Gerard stared, but it wasn’t like he could call Frank out. Because, okay, that totally seemed like the set up for a kiss, but what if it wasn’t? What if Frank had forgotten the bounds of normal behavior out in the forest, living with the rabbits and ducks and campers?

Maybe ghosts didn’t even kiss people. Maybe kissing a ghost killed you. Who the fuck knew. Frank probably didn’t even have a sex drive. He was dead.

“It’s not like boys don’t scream too,” Gerard pointed out sullenly. Fucking tease asshole of a ghost. He had to have known that was the set-up for a fucking kiss, he had to. “But, yeah, I should get going. Mom’s probably waiting for me.”

“You could come back later tonight, though. If you wanted,” Frank said nonchalantly, and now he wasn’t looking at his shoes, he was looking at Gerard’s shoes. It would be just Gerard’s luck to have a crush on a dead guy with a foot fetish.

“I could,” Gerard said, and stuffed his hands in his pockets, trying not to scowl. “I guess. I mean, if you want.”

“Yeah?” And Frank was peeking up through his bangs, the asshole. Gerard tried to glare at him, but from the way Frank beamed he suspected it had come out as more of a dopey smile. Goddammit. “So what time do you want to meet, then? Visiting hours at

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 748