Stray

The world is fucking ending. Frank is 110%, no, 120% sure of it. That’s the only explanation for that much snow in one night. He can’t see anything out the tiny dorm room window except white.

“It’s so fucking cold,” he groans into Mikey’s shoulder. He’s not letting go of Mikey, has his arms wrapped tight around his middle from the back while he attempts to sit up in Frank’s bed. Frank grips tighter.

“Frankie, jesus christ, let go,” Mikey manages to at least prop himself up on his arm, feeling around for his glasses on the bedside table.

“No, too cold.”

Mikey keeps fumbling and Frankie disentangles one arm from his captive to reach out and grab the glasses Mikey keeps missing. Mikey takes the opportunity to struggle free and onto the floor while Frank hands him the glasses.

“Ugh,” Frank mutters, curling up tighter under the blankets. Mikey stands after he’s put his glasses on and looks around for something to toss on besides the half-turned-around-his-hip blue and black boxers he’s wearing. Frank’s room is a mess and Frank doesn’t care because that’s the world outside the blankets, and that world is cold and unforgiving. Blanket world is where it’s at.

“Get up, asshole.”

Frank opens his eyes again to glare at Mikey, who’s pulled on Frank’s jacket from last night and has his hands stuffed into the pockets, taking inventory, and the jeans he’s been wearing for three days. Mikey pulls out Frank’s pack of red 100s and waves it between two fingers, quirking an eyebrow. He grabs for the pack but Mikey takes a step back.

“Can’t have a morning smoke until you get out of bed, Frankie.”

Frank tries to glare literal daggers and fails. After rolling over twice more while Mikey looks on, nonplussed, Frank finally drags himself out of bed and into not-blanket-world.

Not-blanket-world is very, very disappointing. He’s freezing and wearing only pajama bottoms and he shivers, looking at Mikey in the most indignant, pleading way until Mikey sighs and hands over his jacket. Frank slides his fingerless gloves out of the pockets while Mikey steps out of the room and into the tiny hall dividing their two rooms from the tiny kitchenette and living room. Coffee smell fills the dorm not a minute later, by the time Frank’s put on real clothing (or at least the clothing he could find on his floor) and a hoodie under the jacket and his gloves and two pairs of socks and his big boots. He zips everything once he’s put it on. He’s taking no chances whatsoever with the weather. Colorado weather doesn’t fuck around.

Frank stands in the hall while Mikey fixes himself coffee and then moves out of the way so Frank can have at the pot. Mikey’s already buried himself in his phone, looking at his blog or tapping out text messages or doing whatever mysterious phone-related metamagic the minor god always seems to do when given two seconds of free time with his hands. Frank doesn’t mind, just leans in to plant a soft kiss and nibble at his jaw to distract him for long enough to let Frank step on his toe trying to get around him in the tiny kitchen.

“Fucker,” Mikey murmurs.

“Mm-hmm,” Frank hums back, sipping his coffee, he walks over to stand by the door, his pack of cigarettes already in the same hand as the handle of his coffee mug, his fingers twitching at the pack’s paper top.

He waits, expectantly for Mikey to follow him, but Mikey’s too engrossed in his phone, so Frank sighs and pulls his own out to check the time and the class schedule Ray did for him a few weeks back when it became evident Frank really, really sucks at time perception and realizing when he’s got class.

“What the fuck, Mikey, it’s like seven AM, why the fuck are we awake?” he groans indignantly, flipping his digital planner pages to December first. He doesn’t even have class today and his shift at petco’s at five thirty and he’s actually pretty pissed that he’s awake this fucking early.

“We’re going on a walk,” Mikey says, distantly still. He taps out something on his phone, taking a long swig of coffee, then reaching for the bottle of jack on top of the fridge.

Something uncertain and a little nervous sparks in Frank.

“Too early?” Mikey asks, catching Frank’s expression before it even crosses his face. Frank can’t read whatever he’s feeling but he knows it’s not bad.

“Too early,” Frank says, with a calm, definitive nod. Mikey lets his hand fall and slides his phone back into his pocket.

“Where are we walking to?” Frank asks, then, as he lets himself slip across the room and right up against Mikey again to pull a bit of sleep out of the corner of his eye.

“I figured we’d smoke and then figure that out, hm?” Mikey says, with a touch of that firm-and-confident voice which always makes Frank snap to attention. (This early in the morning and in this setting, it only hardly gets his dick’s attention.)

“Then I want to go shopping,” Mikey says.

“Why don’t we just wait until Monday when Ray goes into town? He’ll give us a ride.”

Mikey stares at him, incredulous behind the blank.

“Because it’s Monday, Frankie.”

Frank growls and makes a sound of indignance as he pushes his way through the front door, tired of waiting and Mikey follows him. There’s a note stuck to the outside of their door, which
Frank grabs and investigates. He’s only just turned it around in his hands when he hears the
loud clang from a few doors down. Frank shoves the paper into his pocket and looks at Mikey to find the same look of vague confusion on his face. Then after a moment of still, where they’re both deciding that yep, everything’s fine.

“What the fuck?” from down the hall, it’s Gerard’s voice, muffled by the wall between them.
Mikey’s eyebrows raise and he and Frank turn to investigate when the sound is repeated just inside their door and they both freeze.

“What the fuck?” Frank echoes, opening the door, and inside the lighting panels in the ceiling have started leaking water, not a slow drip but a steady stream.

“It’s fucking raining inside what the fuck,” Frank mutters, crossing the room to examine the water. Mikey looks confused, uncertain, and a bit concerned, but says nothing. That’s when the walls start leaking.

“What the fuck,” Frankie says again, for emphasis. He retreats to his bedroom and starts shoving his electronics and school books in a bag. Because that’s the expensive shit.

Mikey peers in, sees what he’s doing, nods, and goes to his room to do the same.

Between them, they rescue a carton of cigarettes, Frank’s skateboard (they leave the extra deck, to Frank’s chagrin), the bottle of jack, two laptops (with chargers), three and a half phone chargers, sixteen text books, eleven keys, two student IDs, two wallets, three pairs of headphones, a binder and a folder of ‘important adult things’, two bags of weed, a pipe, a roll of papers, four lighters, a bass, a guitar, a pack of guitar picks, Frank’s spare piercing, Mikey’s spare glasses, the four of Gerard’s drawings and Gerard’s notebook which is on their table and already damp, and, for some reason and with no explanation or origin in either of their minds, a pink giraffe figurine which ends up in one of the three bags they drag it all into the hall in.

That’s when the hall starts leaking, too, with another hollow clang. Frank groans and Mikey sighs and Frank grabs one of the backpacks and the satchel and his board and starts his way down the hall. Ray and Gerard seem to be having a harder time grabbing the important shit and going because Gerard’s arguing from the doorway whether or not they really have to save all his canvases.

“They’re fucking expensive, asshole,” he’s shouting, in that ‘just-woke-up, havent-had-coffee’ yet voice.

“Gee,” Mikey says, and Gerard turns around, his hair clinging to his forehead and his mouth set in a frown, “We’re going outside, need us to take anything or come back and help you?”

“Yes, fuck,” Gerard growls, and turns back to his argument with Ray, who emerges with his own guitar, which he, gratefully, hands to Mikey to hold with the other instruments.

“Textbooks, Gerard,” Ray says.

“Ugh, maybe if I let them drown I’ll get off having to do that shit for the rest of the year,” Gerard says, but he turns and walks back into their dorm, already a few inches deep in water, to retrieve an open calc book from the table and throw it at their pile of things outside the door.

While Ray helps load a few shopping bags full of food and six packs (Ray definitely has his priorities straight) onto the trucks of Frank’s board, Gerard finally gives up on saving all the canvases and shoves one each at Frank, Mikey, and Ray, then takes one himself.

It’s a struggle making it downstairs. Other dorms are obviously having the same problem and there’s a line of wet students with bags of stuff around the corner from the elevator, so Frank elects that the stairs are best and he pushes to the front of their little quartet to shove through the stairwell door. It’s surprisingly dry and quiet in the stairwell, but Frank doesn’t trust it, so he only pauses for a second to appreciate it.

They manage to get out onto the front lawn with the growing crowd of other drowsy college kids who look like drowned rats dripping and shivering in the foot and a half of new snow, and no one really seems to know what happened. Only maybe four of the eighty or so clustered loosely around the dorm on their cell phones look like they were previously awake and most look genuinely surprised at the white stuff on the ground.

It’s seven fucking thirty and Frank’s about to make a point that no one else was awake either but he realizes that Mikey’s dissolved into the crowd and Gerard’s left him by five feet to talk to Lindsey, who’s dripping wet and looks exhausted. So Frankie goes back to people watching after pulling out a cigarette and airing out the damp paper for the whole point two seconds he can manage before he fits it between his lips.

It’s really kind of hilarious the amount of college kids who said ‘fuck it’ and just left all their stuff in their rooms, opting for a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes. Also the amount of them who forgot to get dressed, among the number of which Gerard is; he’s wearing boxers and an ugly sweater and a pair of converse without socks and he’s standing calf-deep in fresh snow, Frank watches goosebumps rise on his skin.

Frank’s begrudgingly decided that maybe Mikey getting him up this early was a good thing. He tromps through the snow, looking for Mikey and finally locating him talking to Alicia, trying to talk her into giving him her coffee. Alicia’s among the number who left her things (save a phone and phone charger) behind, and Alicia’s among the number of Mikey’s exes who Frank absolutely despises.

He turns on his heel when he sees her, but Mikey’s already caught sight of him and excuses himself after stealing her cup momentarily to down half of it.

Frank doesn’t watch Mikey follow him toward where Ray is attempting to find a dry spot to put the canvases and instruments.

“Hey, you didn’t save Steve, did you?” Frank calls out as he approaches. Ray looks up and rolls his eyes, although Frank can tell some part of him is trying not to laugh.

“Do you really think I wanted to carry a gigantic coffee machine down two flights of stairs when I had more important things, Frank?”

Frank chuckles and shrugs.

“Mikey’s trying to literally steal coffee from people,” he informs.

“Am not!” Mikey interjects, shoving in to help Ray prop the canvases against the lower branches of a tree.

“He was,” Frank insists. He toes a corner of the canvas out of the snow so it won’t get wet and takes a drag off his cigarette. It feels like it’s getting colder, but Frank figures that’s likely the dampness on his shoulders freezing to his skin. Which isn’t really all that comforting. He frowns.

“Hey, does anyone know what the fuck is going on?” James asks, sidling up behind Frank, stealing his cigarette.

Frank scowls and rummages for his pack to light another as he shoves his shoulder into Dewees.

“It started raining inside,” Mikey says, and James half-glares, half-stares at him.

“No fucking duh, Mikes, I meant does anyone know why it decided to do that?” Dewees takes a drag off of what used to be Frank’s cigarette and helps Ray push the guitars into the lowest branches of the tree to get them off the ground. Frank doesn’t bother pointing out it’s probably just as wet up there.

“It sounded like pipes rupturing,” Ray says. Frank nods. That makes sense, at least.

“Do you think they’ll open the steam tunnels this year?” Gerard asks, dragging Lindsey over by the cuff of her sleeve and leaning his head into her shoulder. Mikey moves next to Frank, lacing their fingers.

“Probably not. They don’t want people actually knowing about them I don’t think,” Ray says, he sighs, leaning back against the tree while James pokes at Frank’s shoulder. Frank shoves him and turns his attention back to Gerard.

“Yeah, so only the professor can be warm walking to fucking class,” Gerard mutters. He shakes his head and Frank leans over to take his hand with the hand not currently in Mikey’s. Gerard gives him that tired smile that says he didn’t sleep well and he’s not in a good mood.

“Hey,” Frank interjects, he looks at Ray, “Do you think your car will start in the cold?”

Ray shrugs like he hadn’t thought of it.

“Worth a shot,” he says, and thinks for a moment, staring at the canvases and instruments, “and we can probably fit this shit in there, too, so it’d be good to get it over there anyway. God knows the dorms aren’t going to dry out in this cold.”

“Dorm popsicles,” Frank agrees, hefting his board (with food and beer still attached) and bags again, going for one of the canvases before James grabs it first.

“If you let me come along to be outta the snow I’ll help you lug stuff over there. I left all my shit, doesn’t matter. Maybe if the textbooks are fucked up enough we won’t have to do textbook work for the rest of the year.”

Gerard shoots Ray a look that says ‘exactly, fucking hell why didn’t you let me leave my books?’ Frank watches Ray pointedly ignore him and take a headcount.

“Is Lindsey coming?” Ray asks Gerard instead of Lindsey, and Lindsey rolls her eyes.

“Lindsey is coming,” she says, mocking third person.

“Then Mikey’s gonna have to sit on Gerard’s lap,” Ray says, quirking an eyebrow.

“Um, fuck that shit, who said I want him on my lap?” Gerard asks.

Mikey snickers, “Your dick.”

“I can sit on someone’s lap. I’m smaller,” Frank points out.

“Mine!” James insists, grinning at Mikey’s questioning look, “Frankie’s ticklish, I totally wanna capitalize.”

“You mean capitalize on the fact I’ll fucking take out your eyeballs if you try anything?” Frank punches him in the shoulder.

“We can figure it out when we get there, I guess,” Ray says, shoving the canvases into James’ arms.

Notes

First attempt at posting a story which hasn't been posted anywhere else on here. I hope it's okay!