A fair amount of time elapsed before the front door clicked shut. Upon hearing the cue, Frank sprang to his guitar case and put the instrument away.

"How did it go with Mikey?" he eagerly inquired.

Gerard chuckled a bit then asked, "You've been waiting all this time to ask that?"

"Well, yeah. I wasn't going to ask while Mikey was here. I'd be too worried that he'd hear us."

Taking a seat next to Frank on the bed, Gerard began to summarize the encounter. "He seems pretty okay with it. Oh, and I'm staying for dinner."

"Thank fucking God!" Frank threw his arms around Gerard and pulled him into a grateful hug. "I was not looking forward to spending time alone with him tonight."

The force of Frank's embrace toppled the smiling Gerard into the wall at the head of the bed, giving him a direct view of the room's solitary dresser.

"What's that?" he questioned.

"What's what?" came Frank's reply, muffled by his companion's shoulder.

"The letter," explained Gerard as he took the envelope in his hand.

When Frank pulled his head up to look at the object, he was surprised.

"I had forgotten about that." Gerard handed him the letter. "It's from my parents."

"Your parents send you letters?"

"This apartment doesn't have a functioning phone line."

"Living in high class, I see."

"I haven't read it yet," Frank said as he tore the envelope open and began to pour over the contents. Then his mouth dropped open.

"They're coming to visit," he explained, practically choking on the words. "Fucking shitfuck."

Gerard looked reasonably perplexed at this reaction. He understood not being thrilled about a visit from parents, but Frank looked genuinely frightened. More words came spilling from Frank to quell the curiosity.

"My parents," Frank began, "have a tendency of really not paying attention to anything I do. When I was a kid, I could be running around subway stations alone poking homeless people, and they wouldn't bat an eye. They only care what I'm doing if it's on their list of things that make them look bad or feel uncomfortable, not because it's good or bad for me, so if they are taking an interest in me, that means they're about to mess things up. It's like they have a fucking radar scanning for you, though. This is what happened the last time I knew you. You know, when I had to stop hanging out with you."

Frank's reaction to the letter suddenly made perfect sense.

"I can't lose you again, Gerard."

With one motion, Gerard pulled Frank back into his chest. The smaller boy surrendered easily.

"I wonder what they think I'm doing this time," Frank mused cynically.

Night fell and dinner came shortly afterward. Living up to Gerard's request of "something good", Mikey had brought home Chinese take-out. After distributing the food, Mikey took a seat on the arm of his shabby couch; he looked as if he had chosen the perch based on how quickly he could remove himself from it. Also feeling the tension acutely was Frank who intentionally leaned against a wall in a spot far removed from the two brothers. He wanted to give everyone space, but Gerard wasn't willing to allow it. When Gerard, as the last person to get his plate, moved into the living room, he took a seat on the floor right against Frank's leg.

The troops assigned to their posts, the battle began. It was fought subtly below the surface level of questions about work or someone's day, but the goal was in sight. There was to be a peace agreement by the end of the meal. Frank hoped it would involve him being able to live with Mikey without every conversation being this tense.

"Frank, you're thinking about college, right? Mikey could use some outside input," Gerard suggested. He had been working the hardest to keep the dinner remotely casual.

"Uh, yeah," answered Frank. "I figured I'd take a break year and then head off, but it sort of turned into two… Well, almost three. I'd like to go, though."

"This is the first semester Mikey hasn't enrolled in any classes. He wants to drop out for me, but I can't let him do that."

"Hey," Mikey protested, "I'm part of this band too. You have everything invested in this right now, and if you're going to be out of school putting everything into the band, I want to be there with you."

"But I also have a lot invested in my little brother, and I can't promise you a good future out of dropping everything to start a band."

Frank saw that Gerard wanted him to be a part of the conversation. In spite of the nagging feeling that a kid who was pushing college off for a third year had no qualifications to give life guidance, Frank offered his best commentary.

"It seems pretty good," he said. "I always did well in my classes; they were interesting. The only problem was the other students, but everyone is always saying what an amazing change college is in that respect."

Mikey replied encouragingly, "The rumors are true, for me at least. School is a totally different place once you've weeded out the jerks who don't want to be there. I was doing pretty well, but I want to be around for My Chemical Romance."

"I'll probably go back home and enroll at the end of the year," Frank commented, not noticing Gerard's slight wince at the words.

Mikey concluded, "I just want to focus on music for a semester or two. If it doesn't work out, I can always go back to school. Okay?"

The three had gotten pretty comfortable with each other for the duration of the meal, but Frank felt a creeping fear as they said their goodbyes. As Gerard stood in the doorway and gave his brother a parting hug, Frank found himself mouthing so only the one Way brother could see, "Don't go." Of course Gerard had to leave, though. Mikey went off to bed with few words spoken, and Frank took to washing the forks they had used and disposing of the stray trash. As he shoved in the last Styrofoam takeout container with its greasy remnants of noodles, he found the trash full, so he decided to put off sleep a while longer and trudge down four flights of stairs to take out the trash. Besides, he might catch Gerard on the way out.

Frank didn't catch Gerard while taking out the trash, but despite his hopes, he hadn't really expected to see him. When he made it back to the apartment feeling slightly winded from the workout the stairs gladly provided him, he went straight to the bathroom to wash his hands, splash some water on his face, and brush his teeth. Sleep wasn't a terrible option, even though he doubted it would come easily that night. He shuffled to his bedroom but was halted when he turned on the lights and illuminated Gerard's black-clad figure sitting on his bed.

"You said not to go," Gerard explained.

Startled, thrilled, nervous, and a little turned on, Frank made the first logical move: to mentally check that nothing had happened to make his appearance go to hell since he and Gerard had parted. Unable to think of any such problem, he continued the interaction.

"Thank you," Frank almost whispered. They were going to have to be quiet with Mikey sleeping at the end of the hall.

"No problem. I believe I still owe you something from earlier."

Frank moved toward the bed.

"You're not the one who owes anything," Frank said. Gerard raised his eyebrows incredulously. Frank continued. "You stayed for dinner. I know that couldn't have been any easier for you than it was for me, probably worse. I wouldn't have minded if you had gotten out of dodge."

"And leave you stuck here with my awkward brother? No. Someone had to diffuse the situation."

"Well," said Frank, resting his hands on the bed on either side of Gerard, "that doesn't change the fact that something is still unfinished."

When Frank leaned forward, Gerard accommodated his presence on the bed by inching himself farther back onto the mattress. Frank was quickly straddling Gerard, lips firmly attached to his. Gerard barely noticed him rocking before his pants were unreasonably tight, but the way Frank was gripping at his shirt, it didn't seem as if clothes were going to be a problem for long. The leather jacket that always seemed to be hanging from Gerard's frame had been cast off before Frank had even come in, so when Gerard's hands moved up, it was only to pull away a black shirt.

It was then that Frank pushed Gerard's back onto the mattress. Frank's old Misfits shirt still remained, but Gerard went to work solving that problem, nudging it farther and farther up his chest until Frank got the hint to take it off. When Frank descended back onto the boy in his bed, he ground down harder than before. His hand made an attempt at sliding directly into Gerard's pants from his chest, but to his dismay he had to take the time to undo his belt. It was gone soon enough, and sliding away after it were the pants it had been holding in place.

Frank's heart beat up into his throat. He was seeing Gerard naked, something he had thought about so many times – sometimes willingly, sometimes not. The full stretch of his pale skin lay beneath Frank, and Frank laid a kiss softer than the rest on Gerard's lips before going any further.

With the new arrangement, Frank stopped grinding, but it still wasn't long before Gerard had a full erection. Recognizing the need to move forward, Frank reached up to the container of lotion that was the sole object on his dresser aside from a box of tissues. He was an atheist, but he mentally pleaded with any powers that may have been out there that Gerard wouldn't ask any questions about that. He pumped some out onto his hand, and moved on to his true focus. Wrapping his hand around Gerard's hardened cock, he began an action he was all too familiar with performing on himself; it wasn't too difficult to figure it out on another person. He just did what he liked. As he moved his hand along Gerard's dick, he continued to take his thumb and run it over the tip. That always felt good.

Gerard held on fairly long, but in the midst Frank's tongue in his mouth and hand at work, he prepared for the end. He focused on muffling any noises as he came into Frank's hand. It may have been dumb, seeing as how this was where things were inevitably going, but Frank felt a glimmer of pride when he saw Gerard's face contort slightly with the orgasm and the effort to stay silent.

Gerard's body hummed in the aftermath while Frank wiped his hand with one of the tissues he hoped had gone unnoticed. In fact, he took advantage of the moment to swiftly conceal both the tissue box and the lotion in the dresser's top drawer to avoid further embarrassment. He collapsed back onto the bed at Gerard's side.

"I like staying for dinner," Gerard remarked and caused Frank to blush. The lights were still on, and now that their bodies had parted, Frank was feeling exposed, even if he wasn't the one with no clothes. Gerard himself rather hastily and awkwardly pulled his underwear back onto his body. The confidence he had expressed in his single comment was more for show than actually existent; he had never done anything sexual with a man before that night. It was unfamiliar, disorienting, but he would never wish for a minute that it hadn't happened. He had been the one to come back, after all; he was going to enjoy the result.

"I have work tomorrow," Frank muttered. Then he caught himself and added, "I swear that's not me blowing you off. I'm just thinking out loud." He internally kicked himself. Everything had actually gone well, and then he had of course said something like that and sounded like a complete ass.

"Yeah, Mikey's here too. I should probably get out of here before we have another one of those delightful confrontations," agreed Gerard, moving to re-apply the rest of his clothing. As he pulled on his shirt, he peered down the hall. "Hope he didn't hear anything."

Gerard paused in the doorway. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

Both Frank and Gerard froze with locked eye contact. Then Gerard swooped in and pecked Frank once on the mouth before walking away, jacket in hand. Frank rolled onto his side and began the fight for sleep on a night when his heart never stopped racing.