25 Reasons Why I Hate You

“-so, he's basically left babysitting his little brother,” Lindsey takes a breath and that’s Gerard’s cue to butt in and finally say something after listening to her for around thirty minutes non-stop. It’s kind of hard paying attention to someone talking to you when you’re in a house flooded with people and more of them are coming constantly. The music is loud and decent and the air is reasonably healthy to breathe, but Gerard probably hasn’t heard about seventy percent of the things Lindsey has been waffling about for an eternity.

“What about Frank? I haven’t heard from him in a few days,” he notes.

Lindsey sighs loudly and eyes him carefully. “You miss the little idiot, don’t you?”

“He’s a pain in the ass and a literal volcano of ‘touchy’, but I still like having him around. I don’t know why.” Gerard furrows his brow a bit, his attention focusing on the back of Bert’s head. He is talking to someone, Gerard can’t see clearly, but the person is shorter than Bert so he can’t see the top of their head either. Anyway, it looks like he’s pretty busy.
Gerard doesn’t exactly know why Bert even asked him to attend this party [not like he regrets it – the drinks are nice and Audioslave is currently blasting in the background, so he considers it as a reasonable win actually] but it was really weird. When Gerard asked Bert who the person who spread the rumor about them being together is, Bert was all like ‘what rumor?’ so Gerard isn’t counting on Bert’s assistance in that particular field of study. There’s something about all that, something bugging Gerard in the whole thing. It’s not like he doubts anyone, or thinks someone wants to set him up or anything, but there’s something really odd about all of it. But hey, Gerard is still the kid who couldn’t find Canada on a map in fourth grade – so it’s nothing really unusual for him to be missing something.

“I know.” She leans her head on his shoulder. “He is one fucked up son of a bitch. But he’s really sweet, and nice, and kind… and literally every good thing a person can be. But when he’s mad or sad or simply really fucking upset he will do and say a lot of stupid, mean shit.”

“I know,” Gerard says, remembering old times. He knows that Frank really is a great person… somewhere. Like deep, deep inside.

“Let’s go get drunk, yeah?” Lindsey smiles at him widely. “Just… put Iero aside for one night. You’ll get him eventually. But let’s get some fun first, shall we?”

Gerard grins happily, stands up and holds his hand out. “Miss Lindsey Ballato, would you care to join me at my noble quest of getting batshit wasted and forgetting about everything currently on my mind?”

She laughs cheerily and puts his hand in his, letting him pull her on her feet, “It would be my pleasure, kind sir.”

*

After about two beers and three shots, Lindsey’s phone starts buzzing.

“Linds, you’re vibrating,” Gerard looks at her funnily.

“Wait, what?” She laughs, but then she realizes her pocket actually is vibrating, and pulls her phone out. “Hey, baby, just let us get out of here; I can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”

When they safely jump over a few passed-out people in the hallway and avoid several couples groping each other on the porch and by the door, hide in the shade of some suburban-dad style of car, Lindsey finally talks into the phone again. “Hey. Uhm, what? Wait, why is he there? Okay, wait, I’ll put you on speaker so Gee can hear what you’re saying, too.”
She shuffles around her phone for a second, muttering a few swear words and finally making the shit work. “Okay, talk.”

“Hey, Gerard,” Ville starts with that.

Acceptable, Gerard thinks. “Hi.”

“I believe Frank would say ‘hi’, too, but he’s sleeping currently,” Ville says in a slightly distracted voice.

“What happened? I mean, why is he there? I mean, did anything happen?” Gerard pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, okay? I’m just a bit tipsy, yeah.”

“It’s alright. Anyway, I can’t talk about that over the phone. It’s kind of a big deal. The only thing I can tell you is that I stopped him from doing something really stupid.” Ville’s voice is still calm, but just slightly distant, like he’s afraid of what they might say, and Gerard is literally as scared as Lindsey looks.

“What did he do?” Lindsey says; her voice completely opposite of Ville’s.

“Come to my house. It’s just me and my brother here.”

“No, I can’t, it’s too far,” Lindsey sighs, “We’re both slightly drunk. My mom is working the graveyard shift; do you think you can drop him off to mine? You are the one with the car, after all.”

He makes a sound as if he’s thinking, and then sighs. “Yeah, I think I can pull that off. See you there in fifteen minutes?”

“Okay,” Lindsey sighs and hangs up. “Okay, I’m not sure if it’s the alcohol, but I’m seriously shaken right now and I don’t even know what’s going on.”

“It’s okay,” Gerard tries to comfort her [and fails epically], “It’s nothing grave. He probably just got drunk and tried to rape your boyfriend or something.”

“Shut up,” Lindsey rolls her eyes, but grins anyway, “he’s got his own boyfriend here to fuck, he should leave mine alone.”

Gerard lowers his look and hops up, grabbing her hand in his. They walk to Lindsey’s house in silence, both scared as hell as they’re pacing on the cold concrete. When Ville’s car pulls up on the driveway before they’re about to open the front door, Lindsey literally leaps in Ville’s arms and Gerard carefully opens the door of the back seat. From there falls out a sound-asleep Frank, with a bandaged wrist and his arms around a pillow. Instead of doing something normal, like getting Ville’s attention and asking him to get Frank in the fucking house, Gerard almost gets a tantrum of worry, then pulls Frank into his own painfully unstable hug and carries him inside bridal style while Lindsey is looking at him like he’s batshit crazy.

*

When Frank wakes up he fidgets and almost punches Gerard in the face, but he moves his head at just the right moment and Frank stiffens, probably because he realized he’s had Gerard’s arm draped around his waist the whole time he’s been sleeping.

“What the fuck?” He croaks out. When he turns around and sees Gerard, his eyes bawl out. “What are you doing here?” He spits and tries to fidget his way out of Gerard’s embrace. “Go hang out with your fucking boyfriend or something-”

Gerard just pulls him back. “Bert isn’t my boyfriend. I have no idea why that fucking rumor is going round. It’s stupid. Bert isn’t the one I like.”

Frank looks dumbfounded for a few seconds, but gathers himself soon enough.“Who do you like, then?” he frowns, but quits squirming and settles normally into the hug.

“I think you already know that,” Gerard breathes slowly. He rubs his palms across his cheeks and realizes there are more tear stains on his cheeks. It’s not like he can go through Ville telling him and Lindsey how Frank was about to throw himself off a fucking bridge without violently sobbing like a retarded infant.

“I do?” Frank tries not to smile.

“Yeah,” Gerard bites his lip.

And with that, Frank falls back asleep, dreaming better than he has in a while – but he’ll never admit that it’s because he feels safe with Gerard’s arms around him.

*

“I’m not going to ask you why you did it,” Lindsey says to Frank in a disapproving tone, “but I’m going to ask you something else.”
Gerard is still there, behind the counter in Lindsey’s kitchen [he’s totally not eavesdropping on Lindsey and Frank’s private conversation]. He crossed his fingers behind his back when he said he was going to the bathroom, so it’s okay. Very adult of him, he’s aware of that, but he just can’t help it, he wants to fucking know. It’s not like he can just ask Frank, the little douche still doesn’t trust him.

“The thing is…” Frank starts, sighing. “It all started with Gerard and Bert supposedly, y’know, ‘dating’,” he forms quotation marks with his fingers and Gerard turns slightly more furious. Who the fuck spread that rumor, even?

Lindsey gulps, “Uhm, let’s get to that one later? I need to ask you something really important before that and I need you to be honest with me.”

“Yeah?”

“How do you feel about Gerard?” She looks at him, biting her lip.

Frank sighs, loudly, making Gerard’s heart sting because he doesn’t have a really good feeling about this. “I… I honestly don’t know. One part of me hates his guts. That part of me wants to punch him so bad, y’know? But the other one wants to hold his hand and cuddle him and never let him go.”

Gerard is now surprised, overjoyed and confused all at once and he wants to go over to Frank and tell him he’s totally allowed to punch him if he’s going to hold his hand and cuddle him later on. But he doesn’t, because he’s not that much of an idiot. Or maybe he is, he just has a whole lot of newly discovered self control today.

“I knew it,” Lindsey puts her arm around Frank, “and now, I want you to promise me something.” Now she looks like she’s about to cry and Frank is looking at her questioningly. “Never, ever try to do that to yourself again. Please. You nearly killed me, and I’m serious. You nearly killed Gerard. Ville was scared and worried as fuck even though you two aren’t that close. Please.”

Frank swallows and hugs her, “I promise, okay? It’s like… I have a feeling it was all just a dream. It doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it should, and that’s scary as hell.”

Lindsey chuckles, tears prickling out of her eyes. Gerard suddenly feels itching on his cheeks so he tries to scratch them, but it’s no use because it’s no mysterious rash or anything – he’s fucking crying again. He wipes the tears off himself and whimpers silently.

“Yeah, and, Gee?” Lindsey’s voice reaches Gerard’s ears and he feels like he’s fucked up so bad. “You can come out from behind that counter now and join the hug if you want.”

Gerard stands up, looking completely dumbfounded and awkwardly marches a walk of shame to the couch they’re both sitting on. “I’m sorry, I just really wanted to hear what you had to say and I know Frank doesn’t-”

“Oh, just fucking shut the fuck up already, moron,” Frank rolls his eyes and pulls him into their hug.

*

“NO!” Gerard screams, tearing Lindsey’s, Frank’s and Ville’s eardrums. “FUCKING NO! DO YOU SEE WHAT HE CAUSED WITH THAT? WHY DID HE EVEN DO THAT, JESUS HELL? WHY?”

“Gerard, calm down-” Frank tries to reason him, but Gerard cuts him off. He’s pissed as hell.

“No! Do you fucking see what he did? You could’ve died, Frank. You wouldn’t be here. Simply because of his fucking prank and his fucking mean words and that’s making me want to kill him and oh- God.” Gerard exasperatedly sighs and falls onto his knees, still sighing. “The rumor doesn’t even make me that pissed, you know? I can deal with pranks; the truth would come out one way or another. But fucking hell, he said really mean stuff to you. And that’s what I can’t deal with, okay? I really can’t,” he’s yelling again and Frank comes over to him.

“Gerard, it’s okay-” he tries again, but in vain.

“No, it’s not!” Gerard is practically crying now. “It’s not…” he leans into Frank and starts sobbing again. Frank hugs him, not knowing what else to do, and strokes his hair while he’s wailing into his shirt.

Notes

I have many excuses, but I doubt you want to hear them, so I'm not going to list them. Anyway, I'm really sorry, it's shit and it wasn't really worth the wait, but I tried.

If ya have anything to ask me, I made a new ask.fm account like yesterday [http://ask.fm/ARTeryjazz]. And if ya have anything to ask Rogue, she has one, too [http://ask.fm/whotheFisjackbarakat].

I think I better go now, yeah

- Milo