Frank's tongue flicked into Gerard's surprised mouth. The initial shock of the kiss had left Gerard's jaw slightly slack and allowed Frank entry.
"I guess this means we're on good terms," Gerard surmised once he broke contact.
The morning following the gig and the subsequent night of celebration had cried out to be spent sleeping. For Frank, though, that was not an option. He had dragged himself through the motions of getting to the restaurant and preparing for the lunch rush, giving vague smiles and generic positive responses when his uncle asked him about the performance. No amount of coffee could pull him into full consciousness, but seeing Gerard waiting outside his door when he came home on his four o'clock break wasn't caffeine. It was so much more effective.
After some deliberation, Gerard had arrived at the top of the stairs in Frank's hallways with a single objective. He wanted to know what was to be made of the night before, and luckily for him, it was Frank's kiss that answered the question.
Frank kept one hand on Gerard's chest as he reached around to unlock the door, and once it was open, he used that hand to guide Gerard inside the empty apartment. The keys were dropped on the counter. Gerard reached out, pulled Frank's waist into his, and engaged him a kiss. To compensate for a slight disparity in their heights, Gerard had to crane his neck slightly downward and direct Frank's head upward with his index finger. This new kiss was not broken; instead, it was extended by a series of increasingly deep exchanges as the two young men's tongues found each other. Frank's hands slid up Gerard's firm chest and fell into place behind his neck.
The rhythm from the night before had been regained. Frank and Gerard pressed into each other with a sweeping intensity, and without realizing it Frank's back was pushed into the end of the jutting kitchen counter. It wasn't a problem that lasted long because Gerard easily lifted him onto the tile platform, briefly breaking the mouth-to-mouth contact but resuming it with his lips on Frank's jaw line. The smaller partner, left straddling Gerard's waist, was growing hard when Gerard ran his right hand down Frank's jean-clad thigh and rested it on his knee.
"We should really straighten this out," Gerard mumbled into Frank's neck. A low moan was the only response given. "Really, though," he continued and pulled his face away from Frank's, "what is this? Am I – are we – gay?"
Frank, though disappointed that Gerard's mouth was now being used just to speak, shook with a small laugh at the sudden question.
"I guess? I don't know," he answered honestly.
Gerard began to rapidly fire out words. "It just sort of hit me that if anyone ever knew about this, especially Mikey or someone I really care about, I don't know how I'd tell them. How is a person suddenly gay? I've just been with girls and –" Frank cut him off with a swift kiss.
"You're panicking," observed Frank.
Gerard sighed, "Sorry."
"It's okay." Then with a grin he added, "It's pretty cute."
"You, for the record, seem unreasonably calm."
"Really? Huh, I guess it's just that I've been through this before." Gerard gave him a perplexed look. "Well, I've had to think about my sexuality in the past, and it's come down to this: I wanted to kiss you in the hall, so I kissed you. It worked out. Labels get messy. I just know what I want in any given moment… but I understand the fear of letting anyone know. I've never told my parents that I'm anything but straight."
Gerard wondered briefly about why Frank had needed to question his sexuality. Was it just over that one crush on him? Both boys did nothing for an excruciating minute. Then Gerard cupped Frank's face in his hands and pulled him in for a kiss. Frank cocked an eyebrow once Gerard pulled away, probing him for some sort of answer.
Gerard simply explained, "I wanted to."
The two gladly fell back into their rhythm, engrossed in the new sensation of being tangled in one another. Time, however, wasn't on their side. Rapidly approaching them was Frank's return to work to prepare for the six o'clock evening opening of the restaurant, but after Frank slid off the countertop, he left Gerard with promising words.
"Come back tomorrow," he suggested. "It's my day off."
The encounter was ended reluctantly on both sides. Thursday was anxiously awaited, and when Frank got back home at eleven, it was the first thing on his mind. Mere hours separated him from his next meeting with Gerard, but it was difficult to wait with it gnawing at his brain. He felt compelled to do something in the present, so he settled for cleaning up the apartment. Only a few cushions could be moved in the main room if he was going to avoid touching Mikey's stuff. That left Frank's bedroom.
The floor of Frank's bedroom consisted more thoroughly of dirty jeans and socks than the dingy carpeting underneath them. Frank began to scoop up the clothing in his arms, but he was quickly confronted by a major problem. He had no place to put the laundry. Normally he just left in on the floor and stuffed it into plastic bags when he had a chance of claiming the one functioning washing machine downstairs. Now he needed a home for his clothing purgatory. The room was small, though, only accommodating a full bed that measured four and a half feet across and one three-drawer dresser. Clothes in hand, Frank skimmed his eyes across the room for a hiding place that didn't exist.
While Frank was caught in the middle of his dilemma, Mikey absentmindedly as ever pushed open the door and came inside; he had stopped knocking a few days prior to then.
"You got a letter from your parents," Mikey said.
Frank muttered thanks as he took the envelope in question from his roommate's hands, checked the return address, and set it down on his dresser.
Mikey stuck around to ask, "Am I the only one who's hungry? We should get some food."
"Well, it's almost midnight, and I ate at work but I think you can find some sandwich bread in the fridge," replied Frank.
"Is there anything to put on the bread, though?"
"I'll make no promises."
Mikey wandered out of Frank's room as casually as he had wandered in, and Frank was left with his previous task. Struck with inspiration, he relocated his meager supply of clean clothing to the top two drawers in the bureau and shoved into the bottom drawer the unclean mass of cloth that had been strewn across his floor. The letter was left ignored during this process, and it was further neglected when Frank chose to go to the kitchen and see what Mikey had found.
It turned out that there in fact weren't sandwich toppings. Mikey was picking apart a slice of plain bread, barred from forming a sandwich but too lazy to make anything more complicated. Frank wasn't too disappointed. A lack of food wasn't what was on his mind as he watched Mikey pull apart the fluffy bread; he was too busy being struck with thoughts of his roommate's brother who with any luck would be back the next day.