He Likes Me

Gerard woke up cold. The temperature had plummeted since last night and the open window let in a cold breeze that swept through the room and made Gerard shiver, wrapping the covers tighter around him.

Eventually though, he had to get up. After making his bed and smoothing out any wrinkles he saw, he shrugged his dressing gown on and headed for downstairs, turning on every light he passed as he did so.

In the kitchen, right where he left it the night before, was the 'Frankie' paper, folded and sitting on the table, the shadow of black ink just visible through the white, translucent paper. Gerard watched it for a moment; watched it just sit there and mock him, with all his hopes and dreams for a partner printed on the page in black and white. He had to stand there and know that it would never be real, and he would be lying if he didn't say it hurt.

He had overslept; probably an effect of getting up in the middle of the night to change Frank, to mould him into the perfect person. Gerard hated oversleeping. It meant his entire schedule was off course for the day. If he woke up late he'd eat breakfast late. Then he'd have to go out on his daily run late and come home late. He'd eat lunch late and he'd do the washing up late.

He'd call his parents late and he'd eat dinner late and watch TV late and go to bed late.

See? Change was undeniably bad.

Gerard thought about calling Mikey, but he didn't know what he'd say to him, and he'd probably only want to talk about Gerard's 'plans' - because there was no way his mother wouldn't have told the entire neighbourhood by now. Hell, she might even have written it on a sign and hung it over the door for anyone who walked past to see.

My son Gerard is not an unloveable freak after all! Let's celebrate!

Gerard shivered. Calling Mikey could wait, he decided.

Then he wondered if he should write something. It had been three years since he last wrote something. After you have a book published, and that book turns out to be insanely popular and make you rich in under six months, you feel a kind of buzz, a craze to write something else. You just want to churn out book after book after book to feed your ego, and Gerard was glad he stopped that before it could really begin. Second books were often a letdown, and he would hate to be seen as That Guy Who Couldn't Make It Twice. Better to be a one-book-wonder than a two-time-failure.

But it had been four years now. Four years of the same routine: of waking up early and going to bed late. Of drinking too much coffee and not throwing enough parties to do justice to his excessively large house. Four years was long enough. Gerard wanted to write, he wanted to write about Frankie.

***

After he had drunk his morning - or midday, as it was now - coffee, Gerard settled at the shiny, marble island in the middle of the kitchen with a sketch pad, an artist pencil and a magazine. Placing the magazine under the sketch pad for no other reason than it was habit by now, he began to draw Frank.

He had to make him look like he fit the description. He had to be punk, so maybe big hair and lots of piercings or tattoos, but Gerard wanted someone he could comfort, someone who would need him to look after them, so he had to also be cuddly. He had to be short - because Gerard was totally selfish and wanted his submissive to be shorter than him - but he had to be relatively muscular to pick fights with assholes. He had to be a killer at guitar and look totally badass, but he had to have soft eyes to show his kindness and caring nature.

What Gerard was left with was a short man with dark hair and pale skin that is almost completely covered in extravagant, colourful tattoos. Frankie had two piercings, one in his nose and one in his lip that Gerard could almost feel against his lips as he lent down and pressed a soft kiss to the paper - because shut up, Gerard totally wasn't weird. He had large, hazel eyes that seemed to look into your very soul as he stared up from the page, his pupils dilated. He had long, dark eyelashes and in his hand he held a white guitar with 'PANSY' written on the side in big, black letters. He was your totally average eighteen year old punk kid - hot, dangerous - but you had to look close to see the real beauty there. This kid was so kind that he couldn't even stand to harm animals, let alone harm a human being - except those assholes, because they definitely deserve it.

Gerard smiled and nodded because he really had created the perfect person. But now he needed a backstory for Frankie. What good was a person without any past?

Frank grew up in Bellville, New Jersey until he was fourteen, at which point his parents, Linda and Frank Sr Iero moved him to New York with them. He was bullied at school for his height and for other reasons - a popular trick was to stuff him in the lockers whilst nobody was looking. Frankie realised he was gay when he was fifteen, after a drunken sexual experience at a party with a guy a few years older than him. He didn't come out to his parents until he was eighteen however, at which point his parents overreacted massively and kicked him out of the house. They regretted it immediately afterwards but as Frank had left his phone at home they had no way to contact him. Frank returned to Bellville as it was 'home' to him. That was the same day Gerard decided to take a walk through the park and saw Frank asleep on a park bench. They got talking and soon after started dating.

Gerard sat back and looked at the page, resisting the urge to rip it up and scatter the pieces over the fish pond in his garden. It was just a rough idea, a storyboard, if you like, but Gerard was hugely embarrassed. Who writes a story about themselves anyway? He knew he could always change the name after the story was finished, but he had already told his family about Frank. He had introduced him as a possible boyfriend, and there was no way he could just explain that Frank was just an excuse to not visit them. They would see he was a freak after all; he was weird and messed up in the head. He could always change Frankie's name, but he didn't like that idea. Frankie was Frankie. He couldn't be anyone else - it wouldn't be right.

Gerard sighed in frustration and returned the sheets of paper to the table, placing them on top of the original 'Frankie' paper. He would have to skip lunch today if he wanted to get his daily run in.

Notes