I'd like to apologise for this chapter being uploaded a hell of a lot later than I was expecting. There were some ~ unforeseen circumstances~ that delayed me a little.
Frank never mentioned Logan.
It wasn't like he didn't want to know who he was, because he really fucking did. He wanted to know everything about him, who he was, what he was doing, what the money was all about, why he was bothering Gerard…
Fucking everything.
But he didn't ask.
Because he didn't want to sound rude.
So he just let the questioning thoughts sit there, grow old, start to go stale and leave a stench to tease through the air. They were never brought up, but they were always there, twisting around in the background.
It was a couple of days later Gerard asked if he wanted to go into town for drinks. Frank had been bemused by this- not only was there no way in hell he would ever get served at a bar, but why the hell would Gerard want to go out for drinks with him? Did they not spend enough time together already? Was Gerard not sick of his puny little face?
Apparently not.
He had never been to a bar before though, not really. He was quite sure that somewhere in his faintest memories he had perhaps stumbled into a bar with a friend, drunk and downright obliterated, only to be thrown out straight away by the laughing bar tender.
He didn't think his parents had ever taken him to one either, never even as a child to sip soda while his parents drank wine. No. They had never really been like that. They liked to deny the fact that they drank. They liked to pretend they were sensible, clean, respectable. And they were. Being an alcoholic was disgusting. Binging on straight vodka at the weekends was vile, but if the first thing you do when you come home from work ever night is crack open a bottle of wine and continue to drink it for the remainder of the evening until you pass out on the sofa, well, that was completely acceptable.
It was all about reputation.
Reputation however, was something Gerard appeared to be unaware of.
Not including kerb-calling, Frank had never seen Gerard go out the house in drag (he did hate using the word 'drag' as it felt like a very fake word, very synthetic. It made him think of boys putting on their sister's dress for Halloween, which was very far from the case for Gerard) but today was a different case. He wasn't quite as dramatic as he would usually be for work- a black pencil skirt hugging his hips, a band t-shirt loosely tucked in with a set if heavy boots adorning his feet- but he would certainly still turn some heads as he strutted down the street.
Not that he cared.
Frank had never witnessed Gerard receiving any abuse due to the way he dressed, but there was a first for everything, and as they made their way that afternoon to the bar, Frank was struggling to count the number times such disgusting slurs as 'faggot' and 'tranny' were thrown at him. He felt almost sick, and he wasn't even the one receiving the spite. There was Gerard, this beautiful, graceful creature, being degraded from all angles, and Frank could only watch with his jaw hanging wide.
"Why do you do it", Frank inquired after one particularly hateful blast, "Why do you dress in women's clothes if you get so much shit for it?"
Gerard laughed in response, which surprised him a little. Frank wasn't really sure if in all the time he had been living with Gerard if he'd ever confronted him about the way he dressed. He wasn't sure if he'd confronted him about a lot of things.
"Well, for a start, it's not really women's clothing, is it? It may have been designed for a woman, but I bought it. It's my clothing, not a woman's", Gerard chuckled lightly to himself. He could imagine Gerard lying in bed alone at night unable to sleep, and thinking of the joke and not being able to wait to use it. It felt like something Gerard would do. "Besides, a couple of insults aren't going to put me off doing what I want to do. This is how I feel confident, Frank. Like this, or in a dress, or even just with a bit of makeup plastered to my face, that's how I feel beautiful. You can't blame me for wanting to be beautiful, can you?"
Frank certainly couldn't blame him for it as he perfectly understood what he meant. When Frank saw his own reflection now, with his haircut and piercing and borrowed shirts, he felt beautiful. He felt like this was how he was supposed to look, as opposed to the creature his parent's had created him to be. Maybe he didn't look perfect- there would always be little things he wanted to change about himself, but he just put that down to being human- but this was the closest he'd ever been.
Several minutes passed in silence after that, until eventually, on the corner of a crescent shaped street, nestled between a vintage clothing shop and one selling old records. The street had a distant feel to it, like it wasn't really part of the city. It was like someone had cut a chunk out of somewhere cultured; Paris maybe, moved it and stuck it in the middle of the grimy, graffitied streets of Jersey.
There was a buzz in the air. Something electric. It was odd, like some sort of absorbing power was oozing from the sandstone bricks that shaped the buildings. It was like that tiny little corner of the world was an escape, like it was island, millions of miles from anything else, so far from civilisation it was untouchable.
The inside told a story very much the same.
It wasn't like any other bar Frank had seen- it wasn't a hectic nightclub filed with music and dancing, nor was it an empty old seedy bar with aging men passed out over the counter as they attempted to wash away their nights with the bitter taste of whiskey. No, it was something else.
There was something fresh about it. Maybe not in décor- there was no real plan in the furniture, everything quite disjointed or mismatched or looked second hand, such as the recycled wine bottles taking the place of candle holders- but in atmosphere, it was something quite striking. Something about the way conversation fluttered through the air like a flurry of moths, spiked by the clinking of glasses or a particularly shrill laugh. Or maybe it was the way daylight bubbled through the set of large windows that lined the back wall of the room, creating blurs of sunshine and obscure shadows.
Or perhaps it was just the people in general. That was the first thing Frank noticed about the place- that unlike other bars, it wasn't just filled with the one kind of person, everyone was different varied. At one table a girl in her early twenties sat sipping a beer and writing in a notebook, while the one next two her three young men laughed loudly over inside jokes and spilled drinks down their shirts. Across the room a family sat, the parents sharing wine while their two children scribbled their way through a colouring book.
The air was potent with the scent of the fresh wax that coated the tables and the musk of the old books that lined the walls in heavy sets of shelves and the of acrylic paint that was thickly applied to the canvases that adorned the walls.
The place just had atmosphere.
"So, drinks?"
Gerard grins down at Frank as he motions him towards the bar. Frank follows with an edge of caution, but doesn't hold back, meeting his every step.
"Hey, Gerard! How you doing? Who's this you're with?"
The man at the bar eyes Frank up with a smile. He's tall, lanky- almost in a goofy fashion- with mousy brown hair pushed back from over his eyes. Tanned, Frank also notices, with an outbreak of summer freckles scattered across his nose, though these are starting to fade with the coming autumn chill. His accent is rough and dry like the Arizona desert.
"John! Oh yeah, this is Frank, he's my roommate, bunking with me for the moment, y'know? And oh, um, this is John; he's an old friend of mine…"
Frank's pride swells pink with the mention of the word 'roommate'. Roommate. Being Gerard's roommate. It was a word he had never considered using to describe their relationship, but now it had been brought about it lingered in the air like the scent of sweet cologne. It was nice. It felt comfortable.
On the other hand, the relationship between John and Gerard felt a little more than comfortable. It was just something about the way they smiled at each other across the bar that hinted towards them being a little more than 'old friends'.
And Frank wasn't really sure how he felt about this.
Jealous maybe?
"Aw right! Nice to meet you, Frank!"
"Yeah, nice to meet you too!"
"So, how about I get you guys two beers on the house?"
Gerard laughs heartily. "If you're offering then who are we to deny them?"
"So who's John?"
Gerard laughs as he places his beer to his lips, glugging back an ample dose. They had been at their table for several minutes now, discussing simple things, sipping at their drinks, before Frank's curiosity built up to a pressure he couldn't stand, forcing him to ask.
(He wouldn't ask about the other mysterious character that had appeared in his life though.)
"John, oh, he's just a friend…"
The smirk in Gerard's voice was too pungent to ignore.
"Really?" Frank's eyebrow rose in suspicion.
"Okay, well, not exactly", Gerard giggled slightly between words, "He's an, ummm… I'm not sure how to put this nicely, but he's a client of mine, y'know?" He pauses to take a sip of his beer, sniggering into the bottle, "We've known each other for a couple of years now, and he's became a bit more than a regular customer…"
The sharp slice of jealousy striking Frank's heart leaves a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach.
"So are you like… a couple?"
The awkward tension in the air is eradicated with the spitting of a drink and the bellow of Gerard's laugh. He composes himself, wipes his chin and continues.
"No. No we're not. John's straight."
"What?"
Frank doesn't understand. How can he be straight if he pays for sex with another man? It just goes beyond all boundaries of common sense.
"I know, it sounds crazy, but honestly, he is! He has a girlfriend and everything, he just… I'm not sure how to put this delicately, but he likes to take dick up the ass basically, and I don't think she's willing to use a strap-on, y'know what I'm saying?"
Frank laughs at Gerard's explanation, yet nods in agreement.
"To be honest, these days, it's more for the company…" His smile becomes sombre for a moment, slightly melancholy "He's having a tough time at the moment, y'know? His mother's really ill and stuff, has been for years, and he's getting the brunt of it. None of his siblings want to help him out, and his girlfriend's being all obnoxious because he isn't giving her so much attention…" He pauses, considering how to place his next few words. "He tells me a lot of stuff, tells me what's happening in his life. He says he's not sure if he loves his girlfriend anymore, or if he ever really has. He says that he wants to leave her, leave everything behind, but he can't. He's got responsibilities, y'know? He's got his mother. He says if she wasn't there, he would be gone. But he can't leave her, he simply can't. He can't just let her be forgotten…"
Frank knew exactly what Gerard meant- he'd seen care homes, those big grey buildings with grimy windows and even grimier people inside- staff that couldn't give a shit about their job and more notably the mass of elderly, deranged and packed into the buildings like sardines into a can. He'd always hated those things. He hated the thought that someone could just completely abandon a family member- a mother, a father, a grandparent- and pass the burden onto someone else.
Frank didn't ever want to get to that stage in life. Get to the stage that he was so ill, or so mad, that he was literally tearing apart someone else's- that they might need to get rid of him in order to live.
Frank would make sure someone shot him before then. Right between the eyes.
"I don't know why I just told you all of that", Gerard continued, giggling slightly, "It's not really my story to tell…"
"Do you like John, like as in more than a friend or a… customer?" Despite Gerard reassuring him that there was nothing going on between the two men, Frank still felt a pang of jealousy, subtle, but undoubtedly there.
"No Frank, I don't. I don't think I could ever be in a relationship with John, and I would never want to."
Frank let the words settle in the air, let them stew and become musky. There was something about them that seemed unsure, uneasy perhaps.
"Are you in a relationship?"
Gerard guffaws at this, even resorting to wiping a stray tear from his eye.
"Well, do I look like I'm in the position to be in a relationship just now?" He shakes his head, sniggering as he downs the last few droplets of his beer. "My job doesn't exactly attract matches, does it? And anyway, when was the last time you saw someone coming round my flat?"
(Frank remembers but he doesn't think Gerard does.)
"I don't know, stop being mean to me, dude, I was just wondering! So… Have you been in many relationships?"
Gerard raises an eyebrow as he watches Frank take another sip of beer, the bitter sting slipping so easily down his throat. "What's with all of these questions all of a sudden, kid? That drink isn't getting to your head, is it?" He chortles lightly at his own joke.
"No… I'm just wondering. I don't really know that much about you, that's all."
Gerard nods in agreement. "That is true. I haven't told you all that much about myself, have I? A bit odd really, since you're living with me and, well, I guess you could say I'm a bit of a shady character." He smiles sheepishly at Frank, which is met with a grin. "Well, I haven't been in a relationship for a while now, and any I have had in the past haven't been sustained for long. They were all pretty insignificant- nice people, lovely, beautiful people, but none of them could quite handle the fact that there boyfriend slept with people to get his money. I don't blame them, really."
Frank watches Gerard, just watches him for a moment- watches how his eyelashes flicker as he fidgets with the placemat on the table, rolling the sheet of plastic between his stubby, bitten fingernails. He imagines Gerard meeting these people that he speaks of, maybe even in this exact bar, of him falling for them, of him kissing them and caring for them and just wanting them, and then going out that very night to blow greasy men behind dumpsters and get fucked into the mattress in some sleazy hotel. He imagines how much it'll break his heart to do it, but it's the only way he can find to make ends meet. And then his current love interest- that person he was growing so fond of- would leave just as quickly as they arrived, gone from the picture with little to no trace.
But for now all he could do was watch Gerard. Watch him be forever alone.
Frank didn't know much about Gerard. But that's what he saw.
He wanted to know everything about him. Every single little insignificant detail.
"I don't even know what age you are…"
Frank hadn't realised that he had been thinking out loud until Gerard replied.
"Well, what age do you think I am?"
Frank thought this over for a moment, kneaded the question around in his mind. "I'm not sure… Older than me, at least, right?"
Gerard nodded bluntly. "Yeah, that is right. How about I give you a clue?"
Frank urged Gerard on.
"I'm older than that guy over there…"
Gerard pointed across the room to where a sulky teenager sat with his parents. A choppy fringe covered one eye, topped with grey beanie, his ears stretched to an almost painful level. He looked older than himself; Frank guessed eighteen, maybe nineteen at a push.
"…But I'm younger than that man over there…"
The second man was standing at the bar ordering a drink from John, a cocky smile plastered across his face. His hair was short yet scruffy, sticking up in all angles and directions, and a checkered shirt hung from his torso. He looked quite a bit older than Gerard- his face somewhat more mature, aged. Frank guessed he was in his late twenties, perhaps even in his early thirties.
"Are you… twenty three?"
Gerard grins wildly, profusely.
"Very close actually! I'm twenty four!"
Frank laughs. Gerard having an age just doesn't feel right. Something about it sat awkwardly in the air. To Frank, Gerard had always been this immovable force, something that and been there for the whole of eternity- ageless and permanent.
But now it was different. Now Gerard was something as opposed to everything. He had a life and a story. He had a beginning and inevitably would have an end.
That scared Frank a lot.
And he wasn't quite sure why.
