Stray

Ray has an old, well cared for volvo v90 which has been serving him faithfully since he was still in high school with Gerard, and which belonged to his mother’s boyfriend before Ray restored it from its almost-not-running glory. It smells like buttered popcorn, always. Something which consistently confuses every single passenger.

The sun is hugging the clouds on the horizon like a blanket of ash after vesuvius. The sky can’t decide if it wants to be blue and the trees which forgot to lose their leaves are giving in. The evergreens on campus remain unchanging.

It takes ten minutes to haul their things back to the student parking lot, and the lot’s already half empty for the holidays that most of the kids well enough put together to have their own vehicles go home for, which is lucky. Because no one gets to see their frustrated attempts at simultaneously keeping their belongings out of the snow while also warming and digging out the car.

Eventually, Ray gets fed up, raises his hands and summons a wide, hot burst of sunlight across the hood of the car which melts the snow and ice enough that the scraper can get the residues off enough to actually open the doors. The trunk is a little trickier, and takes two more acute bursts of sunlight and heat from their very own Apollo divinitykid to open and unlock through the ice, cold, and general complaining of an old car stuck in snow.

Frank lights another cigarette while Dewees steals his guitar and sits on the back hitch, doing a few exercises and the others argue over the idea of going back into the dorms and seeing what’s worth saving. Frank trots around the car and up to Ray, stealing his car keys out of his front pocket and opening the driver’s door of the volvo to start the car and let some heat actually find his bones. He stopped feeling his fingers three minutes back and doesn’t particularly enjoy the idea of being in the cold any longer. Ray doesn’t seem to mind, just glances at him, then continues arguing with the Ways, saying that the stuff they’re leaving is important even if they don’t want it to be.

Lindsey and Dewees join Frank in the car. It’s another twenty minutes before they get anywhere, Ray actually loses the argument for once, but only because everyone wants coffee and it’s too early for this bullshit.

Frank thanks fuck for the warm car, and for Gerard’s shoulder warm against his back. He tries not to think about how much he likes Gerard. He tries not to think about Mikey’s hands sneaking along Gerard’s thigh months back.

He just wants to be out of the cold. Something about the first biting, bone-wrenching cold always gets Frank caught in the doldrums.

When he was still in high school, his mom called it sad, or SAD. Seasonal affective. Winter depression. Frank always figured it was just the cold weather and the snow. It doesn’t feel like the depression he’s had before, it feels like the world is trying to choke him. He figures that’s just human instinct.

The frozen water across his shoulders melts in the heat of the car and he can feel Gerard’s fingers through his jacket, rubbing the wet spots into his skin where they’re bound to freeze again the second they leave the car.

Frank shivers and plucks at his gloves while he leans into Gerard and Gerard leans forward to rest his chin on Frank’s shoulder. There’s something warm about it in his gut and where the breath settles hot on his neck. Frank looks at Mikey, searching for direction.

Mikey smiles, soft, small at him. That everything-is-okay smile. That smile that only Mikey can smile and the smile that makes Frank shiver and feel solid again.

Colorado Springs saunters by the window like a fake winter wonderland and leaves tracks of dirty slush on the volvo’s clean windshield. They end up parking in the dismally cold parkinglot outside Cthonic Coffee and Gerard groans underneath him.

“We don’t have to go to my work for coffee, you know,” he growls to Dewees, who’s snickering in the front seat as he undoes his seatbelt. The volvo starts dinging at him about not wearing it. Dewees flips off the dashboard and Ray scowls at him.

“We make better coffee than Le Petit Chat,” Lindsey points out, opening her car door, “And it’s cheaper. Plus, Bra’s probably working. And he’s always good at refills no-questions-asked.”

“Mmn,” Gerard hums in defeat into Frank’s neck. Frank can feel the vibration of his lips. It sends a deep quivering through his gut as he opens the door and scrambles off of Gerard and to the trunk, where he retrieves his skateboard with trembling fingers

The sound of the wheels hitting concrete and jostling the trucks as he takes the few moments to the door are exactly what Frank needs.

Cthonic Coffee is warm on the inside. The first time Frank was ever here, he was scoping Gerard out, examining the difference between his real face and his face in pictures. He’d been different, more like how Frank sees Mikey. Less like how Frank imagines some overarching concept of death.

He’s pushing himself to not get stuck in his head like he usually does in the cold. He’s trying to convince himself that today won’t go badly. Something in his head says it will.

“Gerard, why aren’t you wearing pants?” Brad asks, upon their party’s bumbling entry. He looks genuinely concerned and Gerard just smirks, pushing past him to walk around the counter and start making coffee.

“The dorms flooded,” Lindsey offers as she comes through the door behind him.

“Okay but why isn’t Gerard wearing pants?” Brad asks, again, still obviously confused. Frank crosses to sit on the counter, laying his board out over his lap.

“The dorms flooded,” Gerard reiterates, sliding the first cup of coffee to Frankie and giving him a look which says ‘I see you there, feeling a little something, I’m here’. Gerard is really good at that. Frank tries not to think too hard about how much he likes that. Brad seems to drop it, and Frank decides he’s pretty chill.

The next cup of coffee goes to Mikey, who’s sat down at the corner of the long counter, and looks at home from the second he walks into the room. His hands are full of phone and he doesn’t look up when the mug slides to a stop against his outstretched fingers.

Gerard lets Lindsey let Brad make her a cup properly after he’s procured one for himself and he gives Dewees the ‘you’re on your own, buddy’ look. Frankie can’t help but chuckle at the look of mock-betrayal on Dewees’ face.

Some part of Frank realizes it, then, how much of an outsider he feels. Mikey’s his boyfriend, yes, and these are Mikey’s friends. This is Mikey’s family. Frank just feels like the dog. The way he forces himself to keep laughing so no one catches on is thinking about the irony of being a literal dogseal’s child and feeling like a dog. Gerard looks at him for a second too long and Frank drops his eyes to the bottom of his deck splayed across his lap so he doesn’t have to meet his eyes.

Frank’s mom bought him this deck when he left for living in the dorms. It’s decorated in red, a splatterpainted wolf howling at the nose of the board. Frank traces the design with his fingertips and only looks up once he’s watched Gerard turn away in his periphery.

A tiny bit of Frank misses his mom. So he leaves the cafe early to sit in Ray’s car and call her.

“Hey mom,” he says, when he hears static on the other line, he leans back into the passenger seat of the car, letting the smell of buttered popcorn fill him and encompass his senses.

“Hey honey,” she says, in that way that says she’s smiling, “Is something wrong?”

“The dorms flooded,” Frank says, scrubbing his eyes with his free hand.

“Oh honey… Do you need somewhere to stay? I can see if I have any friends…”

Frank stops her, “Wait, is there a reason I can’t stay with you?”

She laughs over the line, an awkward, embarrassed laugh. One Frank’s heard before. It’s a guilty laugh. It’s an offering for him to turn around now and never know. Frank briefly thinks about how he should definitely be saying ‘it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me’ right now.

“Mom, tell me,” is what Frank says instead. Frank’s mother makes a sound caught between another guilty laugh and a sigh. The line’s static has a field day with it.

“I’m spending the week in Utah, with a guy I’ve been seeing.”

Frank nods. He tries to feel something about that, like he would have if he were only four years younger than he is now. But he can’t. He feels numb and a twinge of distaste.

“Can I use the house?” he asks, finally, because he doesn’t want to comment on this being his mother’s first time being open about seeking male company for almost as long as Frank can remember.

“Oh honey…” she says again, in that voice that she’s used since Frank was little, that voice that makes Frank feel stupid for even asking.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she’s reassuring in that way that means she thinks the opposite of what she’s saying but she’s being nice, “But I can’t have a bunch of college kids alone in my house. You know how much work I’ve been doing on the carpetting…”

“Yeah, of course, sorry,” Frank murmurs into the phone, he shakes his head, “Thanks for talking to me. I’ll find some friends to stay with or something.”

“I love you,” is all Frank’s mother can manage to get in before he hangs up. A little pain pooling in Frankie’s stomach turns sour and he has to open the passenger side door to spit. That’s when he sees it, out of the corner of his eye, a huge, shaggy dog with light fur, overturning a trash can in the alley across the street.

It looks like a golden retriever, with ears half-flopped and too-big for its head, but it has a dark muzzle, which Frank figures might be a result of habitual garbage-rooting-through.

He stands up and closes the volvo’s door, shoving the keys into his pocket while he skirts the parking lot until he’s reached the edge of the road.

From the alley, the dog picks its head up, one long limb picking up, the front paw poised close to the chest, waiting for Frank to get close enough to warrant running. From here, Frankie can make out the all-too-beaten collar, rugged and worn to white around the bits where it bends most. He can almost hear the jangling of tags.

He’s dealt with stray dogs before; whenever he sees one he stops and checks the tags and does his best not to want to steal the dog for whatever reason while the owner(s) show up.

The cars are relentless, and there’s no stoplight up the block, so it takes a good seven minutes of standing there, while the dog carefully, keeping one ear swivelled toward Frank, goes back to rooting around in the garbage, withdrawing scraps and lowering almost to the ground to chew on them before levering itself back up with hind legs to keep searching.

Then the cars stop, and the dog’s head picks up to watch Frankie pick his way across the street. Frank doesn’t use his board, though compulsive thoughts make his fingers twitch for it out of habit and comfort on wheels, he doesn’t want to scare the poor thing.

Scaring the dog seems out of the question, though, as Frank approaches and it starts, freezing, and backing up a few paces before turning tail and sprinting toward the dumpster further back in the alley. Frank watches as it jumps up against the metal, barely managing to scramble across the lip of the dumpster into it.

Frank follows, without thinking, and takes a running jump at the dumpster similar to the dog’s, swinging his legs over the side with momentum and sheer force of willpower. He hears the dog as clanging in the dumpster below him, but it’s too dark to see and he can only hardly feel the dog’s fur against his leg where it’s scrambling to find a way out that isn’t exactly where Frankie is standing. Some part of Frank feels a little bad for trapping the dog like this, but as he reaches down, runs his fingers against fur, he’s not focusing on that, but rather the necessity of finding where this dog is from.

His fingers catch on the collar and the dog’s head swings around to close heavy jaws on Frankie’s other arm. It’s a dull pain, then a sharper one, and Frank’s hands spring away from the dog as it scrambles back up, and out of the dumpster, and down the alley. By the time Frank’s gotten himself out of the dumpster, only its muddy footprints in the fresh snow remain.

Frank shrugs dejected shoulders against the wind and starts trudging back to the car. He left his phone in the passenger seat and took the keys so he hopes the guys aren’t too pissed at him for taking off like that. But they’d understand, right?

Ray’s leaning against the driver’s side door with a cigarette between his lips when Frank returns. Frank tosses him the keys, and Ray catches them but makes no move to open the car, so Frank shimmies his pack out of his pocket and pulls one out for himself.

“Where were you? You smell like you rolled in something,” Ray says with a chuckle.

“In a dumpster, chasing a dog,” Frankie says, through his cigarette while he points down the opposing alley.

“Of course you were,” Ray smirks that not-unfriendly smirk of his and takes the last few drags of his cigarette in silence. While not an awkward silence, it is a hungry, pregnant one which devours the thought of any conversation Frank has. He’s content to smoke until they’ve all piled into the car again and he’s climbing into Gerard’s lap. This time they’re going to drop Gerard and Mikey off at their mother’s.

Then it’s Dewees and Lindsey, dropped off at Jimmy’s, and Frank and Ray are alone together in the car.

“Where are you going, Frankie?” Ray asks, as he’s nosing the car back toward the dorms through two-foot-high snowdrifts.

Frank shrugs.

“My mom’s hanging out with some guy out of town and I can’t use the house. So I thought I’d go back to the dorms and see if anything’s still dry, then find someone whose couch I can crash on.”

Ray nods, looking thoughtful, then shaking his head.

“I dunno, I’d check with Cobra House, but I hear they’re pretty much packed for the holidays. I figure I’m gonna go see if Andy has any room at the co-op. I hear he’ll be staying there. Why don’t you text some people and if that doesn’t pan out you and me can go down to the co-op and if that doesn’t work we can see if my brother’s got any space, yeah?”

Frank looks up at Ray with a blinding smile, because it’s been all day since someone put that much thought to his well being and it feels nice. It feels nice to have attention on him and Frank doesn’t care how much of a slut he is for thinking about it that way.

“Thanks, man,” he says, through a smile.

By the time the sun decides to peek through the clouds, Ray and Frank are pulled up outside the dorms sending out messages between sips of the six packs Frank rescued from Ray and Gerard’s dorm.

Notes

Second chapter and it looks like we'll be doing every-other-day updates at this rate. Don't wanna jinx it with a guarantee though, so just keep your eye out. And as always, comments and subscriptions are appreciated! I love to hear opinions, on the story, on the weather, on what that mole on your back might be, man, just talk to me!