Chapter Text 2 страница. “Yeah,” Frank replied, leaning against the stone and flicking his hair out of his eyes

“Yeah,” Frank replied, leaning against the stone and flicking his hair out of his eyes. “This is her family plot, see? You can sorta see the wall around it, but it’s mostly gone. And I guess maybe they planted apple trees in it, on the graves – see, there’s one by each headstone, and they’re the oldest. I guess they spread from there.”

And yeah, now that Gerard noticed it, there were fallen apples strewn about the forest floor, patches of red and reddish brown, and in the trees the apples still hung low and heavy from the bows. Fruit actually growing on trees. Weird. Awesome. Gerard was yanked from his reverie about living from the land and trapping furs by Frank kicking a rotten apple at him. It rocketed past with a squishy thump and Gerard flung his hands in front of his face a split second later.

“Why!” Gerard sputtered indignantly, clutching his hoodie closer like a shield. “That thing probably had fucking wasps nesting in it or something!”

“Pay attention to me, asshole,” Frank said, sticking out his tongue. “I could see you drifting off again.” And then, as Gerard continued to glower, he shook his head and muttered something about Gerard being a giant baby, reaching upwards to an overhead tree branch and exposing a strip of pale, inked skin. Gerard edged a few steps closer, skirting past a small, square grave marker. He was just interested in what exactly the tattoo said, what the wrought-iron letters spelled. Not at all in the curling line of hair trailing down Frank’s belly and into his pants. Definitely not.

“Heads up!”

***

art by arabel

***

Through some miracle of physics, Gerard flailed his hands around spastically and managed to catch the apple just before it hit his nose. Frank did a golf clap, which Gerard ignored in favor of being hugely impressed with himself. The apple was still warm from hanging in the autumn sun, dappled red and gold, surface more uneven and rough than the fruit he saw in the grocery store.

“They’re pretty good this time of year,” Frank told him and watched Gerard carefully inspect the apple for worm or wasp holes before taking a self-conscious bite. It was good, Frank was right. Crisp and tart, with an undertone like honey.

“Anyway,” Frank said, looking away as Gerard blissfully savored each bite. Wild apples from a fucking abandoned graveyard. It was like a fucking storybook. Maybe they’d give him powers, let him talk to the dead. He dragged his attention back to Frank, who was rambling on again. “So, yeah. This is the Cartmill family plot,” Frank said, waving a hand around them. “It’s my favorite. What do you think?”

“Hey,” Gerard said around a mouthful of fruit, bending down to peer at another stone. “You can actually still see the names and dates on almost all of these. That’s weird. Most of the other ones we’ve seen were completely obliterated.”

“Different kind of stone,” Frank said, hands in his pockets. He was watching Gerard potter around with an expression Gerard couldn’t quite read—hopeful, almost, which didn’t make sense, so Gerard went back to trying to read the weathered stone. “Slate, I think, but what do I know. I’m not a rock doctor.”

“A geologist,” Gerard corrected absently, and Frank rolled his eyes hugely and muttered, “Beg your pardon, I’m not a geologist. ” When Gerard pouted, though, Frank grinned and called him a dweeb, but in this really proprietary, affectionate voice that made Gerard feel kind of hot and dizzy and delighted.

He went back to poking through the little family plot, trying not to blush, and then got genuinely diverted by deciphering the dates.

“Holy shit,” Gerard whispered, and crouched down on his knees by the last stone, apple sticky and forgotten in his hand. “They all died within, like, a fucking week of each other. You think there was an Indian attack or something? Maybe some kind of Mike Meyers vengeance killer going after the Cartmill family…” Gerard trailed off, story panels already falling into place in his head. Open with the overgrown cemetery, the fallen stones. Flash forward to a blood-soaked room.

“Nah,” Frank said vaguely, and slouched further down against a tree trunk, hands in his pockets. “Think they died in a flu outbreak or something.”

“Yeah?” Gerard said, slightly disappointed but still intrigued. Killer viruses were good too, just in a different way. He could work with a killer virus. “How d’you know?”

“Oh,” Frank said, hair blowing into his eyes. “Dunno, just a feeling. Probably read it somewhere.”

“Huh,” Gerard said, and started rummaging through his bag, coming up with his sketchpad and Derwent pencils, and then he jumped about a million feet in the air. “Fuck!”

“What?” Frank asked, staring at him.

“Did you hear that?” Gerard said, looking behind himself nervously. “I thought… nevermind. It was just the wind.” But he could have sworn he’d heard someone laughing, in his ear. Right next to him. Just the wind, though. Right. Way to act like a spaz, Gerard. He pulled his hoodie closer around him. The afternoon light was all warm and gold now, slanting through the empty branches, but it was still cold, chilly enough that he wished he’d worn a long sleeve shirt beneath his hoodie instead of a t-shirt.

“Hey, do you mind just standing there a moment while I draw you?” he asked Frank diffidently.

Frank had been looking at Gerard contemplatively, but at this he promptly struck a bizarre, Egyptian pose and started singing Vogue. It was painfully adorable and completely at odds with the atmosphere Gerard had been hoping for—suitable for a doodle, but not really an in-depth study.

“Jackass.” Gerard rolled his eyes, manfully resisting the urge to sing along. “Can’t you just stand there? Look, I dunno, contemplative? Look like you’ve got the flu.”

Gerard settled with his back to Sally’s tombstone and spread out his supplies on the ground beside him, flipped to a clean page in the book. He glanced back up, charcoal pencil next to the paper, and Frank stared back at him, waggling his eyebrows dramatically. Biting his lip, Gerard returned his eyes to the paper, starting off with quick sure strokes of the outline of trees, the shadows of the tombstones, a white island in the left side of the paper where Frank and his tree would be.

The river was rushing past and filling the graveyard with water-sounds, roars and ripples; Gerard could see it froth white beyond the last edge of the trees and tombstones. Frank was half in shadow, and something made him want to add in the Cartmills, Sally Cartmill a distant column of smoky charcoal, with the faintest hint of a face. He blew at the page, charcoal dust lifting, and picked up his red and burnt sienna watercolor pencils, his burnt ultraviolet and black pine, and shaded some of the leaves, edged some purple shadows beneath the tombstones. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was laughing. He kept twitching and looking over his shoulder, but nothing was there.

When he stretched, looking back up again, Frank was looking at him oddly, gaze intense and penetrating.

“Uh,” Gerard said uncertainly, and looked over his shoulder again. Nothing. What was Frank looking at? Had he gotten charcoal on his face? “Sorry if that was boring. Wanna see?”

Frank approached slowly through the tall dead grass and leaves, coming right up to Gerard’s feet before stopping, face still strangely blank. Gerard turned the sketchpad around and Frank started, reached out a hand to touch the page. When Frank laughed suddenly into the quiet river-noise, Gerard actually could feel his heart sort of stutter before getting back on beat.

“Fuck, Gerard, you did this in like fifteen minutes and it’s the most awesome thing ever. Damn,” he whistled, shaking his head, still chuckling.

“Yeah?” Gerard said, and felt his cheeks flush. “You like it?”

“Fucking—yes, I fucking like it, moron,” Frank said, still cradling the sketchpad carefully, like it was a tiny paper baby. “The fucking leaves blowing across everything. The, whatsit, the perspective. You made me look so badass, dude. I look like a fuckin’ necromancer. And hey, you even got Sally. Gorgeous, dude. Can I have this?”

“Of course, yeah. I drew it for you,” Gerard said, still blushing as Frank carefully tore the sheet out of the book.

“Lemme go put this away before it gets crinkled and shit.”

“I can just draw you another if it does,” Gerard offered. Seriously, Frank was totally overreacting.

Frank waved him off and started loping towards some crumbling stone buildings on the edge of the river. “I know it’s kinda late, but it’ll only take a second. I’ll get you home on time, princess, don’t worry.”

A rabbit startled away from them as they crashed through the underbrush—Gerard didn’t know what the fuck people were talking about when they said the grandeur of nature made them feel small. Gerard always felt like a fucking water buffalo lumbering around out here. But the rabbit was a dark glossy brown with a white flashing tail and Gerard, charmed, followed it with his eyes for a few moments before he lost sight of it again.

“A bunny, dude!” Gerard said, hustling to catch back up with Frank and banging his shin on a dead stump. Another bruise for the collection, whatever. Gerard had a theory that eventually he’d just become impervious to pain entirely, and that day was gonna be awesome. “Did you see it?”

“I see them all the time,” Frank said, bemused. He’d stopped to watch Gerard watch the rabbit. “I know you may not have noticed, Sasquatch, but we are in the woods. Bunny country.”

“Did you see its little nose?” Gerard sighed, hugging himself and wondering if the fur had been as soft as it looked. “Fuck, I want a bunny. Frank, catch me a bunny.”

“What am I, Daniel Boone?” Frank laughed, and pushed aside some branches covering a door into one of the dilapidated stone houses and making a grand sweeping gesture, motioning Gerard forward. “Home sweet home. Cool, right? They had some archaeologists out here a while back, identifying all this shit, but they didn’t stay long. ”

Gerard stayed put. He felt a little iffy on the sweetness or the hominess of the building. He also felt a little worried about the stability of the infrastructure.

“So, this is the mill house. No one comes out here, not since that archaeology thing, anyway. Guess it’s supposed to be haunted or something.” Frank laughed and looked at Gerard’s sketch, grinning crookedly. “I sorta fell into hiking when my parents moved out here, found this place and set up camp. Nothing much else to do, you know, besides sit at home and scratch your balls, and here my parents weren’t always yelling about money and shit.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Gerard said, still hovering outside the door, despite Frank rolling his eyes and pushing him towards the door. “If you hadn’t dragged me out here, I’d probably have just slept until my mom got home. It’s nice to not be in that house, all the time. It’s not my house, it’s just… I dunno, it kinda creeps me out sometimes. And it’s always so empty.”

“Empty sucks,” Frank agreed quietly, and then shook himself. “Fuck, it’s getting late. C’mon, you coming in or what?”

Gerard batted away some cobwebs stretched across the door and peered warily into the shadowed room. Frank finally just swore and tugged Gerard inside by the wrist, because “It’s fucking fine, you pansy, it hasn’t fallen yet.” Gerard stuck out his tongue to the back of Frank’s head and let himself be pulled.

“When’d your family move to Glen Fell, anyway?” Gerard asked, edging inside after him. Maybe the roof wouldn’t cave in.

Frank was rustling around in a corner somewhere, futzing with a ratty backpack.

“Oh, a while back,” Frank said absently, emerging from the bag with a dusty-looking can of Diet Coke. “Thirsty?”

Gerard accepted the can cautiously—seriously, it was offering a Grand Sweepstakes Prize to go see the *Nsync World Tour. This can had probably been made when Gerard was still, like, in diapers or whatever. The aluminum had probably leached heavy metals and poison dye into the soda by now. Possibly when he opened it, an airborne killer virus would escape. He cautiously popped the top and puttered around the room for a while, fake-drinking and making swallowing gestures. Where the hell had Frank gotten this shit? Was he raiding the backrooms of warehouses or something? But Frank had gone into sullen, non-communicative mode, so Gerard bit his tongue on his questions for now.

Half the building was roofed only by tree branches and tiled with rubble and sapling trees. On the other side there was a blackened fireplace with a sleeping bag tucked up next to it, Gerard’s copy of Doom Patrol on top of the pillow. Another stack of tattered comics rested on a makeshift log shelf, and a guitar case leaned drunkenly next to it, and a hand-crank radio/flashlight, along with an assortment of lighters and candles littered the ground by the fireplace.

Frank’s only attempt at decoration, it looked like, was the row of colorful glass bottles he’d lined along most of the windows, sunlight casting bright shadows on the floor. Old, warped cloudy jugs and beer bottles and medicine containers, Gerard guessed, and an assortment of water-smoothed fragments that glittered in the afternoon light. Greens and blues and murky whites, ambers and deep reds, dark browns.

It was an awesome set up, in terms of looking totally badass and like a fucking lair or something, but Christ, if Frank were actually spending the night out here for more than a day or two at a time, it was a little subpar. Gerard stirred the glass shards with his hand, the water-worn edges smooth against his palm, deep in thought. He had to be spending the night, right? Just camping trips or whatever. He couldn’t actually live out here, could he?

But that was definitely what it looked like was going on, and he really couldn’t think of a better explanation for Frank being out here all the time, for Frank never leaving the woods at all. Fuck, Gerard had to get him out of there, somehow. He could totally drag Frank home with him, at least. What could be so bad that living out in the woods was better than being in an actual house, an actual home? Gerard’s house might suck at the moment, but at least it was warm, and out of the wind.

“Found those in the river,” Frank said from behind him, making Gerard jump and drop the shards with a clatter. “I kept thinking I’d do something with them, but I can never think what to make. I’m not artsy and shit, like you.”

“Yeah?” Gerard said, and bit his lip, thinking. “I have some good adhesives and frames at home, packed away somewhere, I could probably make you a pretty nasty mosaic. Stained glass, you know.”

“Really?” Frank said, beaming from ear to ear. “That’d be so fucking sweet, Gee. Anything you make would be awesome, honest.”

Gerard puttered with the glass some more, waiting for his cheeks to cool, then after getting the go-ahead from Frank, he pocketed some of the shards to show Mikey later. Frank was grinning at him, leaning against the windowsill overlooking the river.

“Found those bottles the other summer on the island,” Frank told him. “There’s a lot of cool stuff washed up there, all these bones, and some crazy buttons, and nails. I like the glass best though.” He snorted. “I’m pretty great at decorating, huh. Whatcha think, I need some goldfish to fix my chi?”

“Nah, maybe a rabbit,” Gerard said absently, staring out the window and trying to imagine what it’d be like to live out here, how starved you’d be for attention, if this was your home, this broken house from three hundred years ago. No television, just the piping of birds, the sound of the river and trees. And it got so dark at night, and cold. It wasn’t even winter yet, but it was already chilly—not to the point that frost was on the ground in the morning, but close.

Gerard wanted to say something, something like how long have you been out here, are you okay, let me help—but Frank couldn’t be planning to stay out here, like, permanently. That’d be insane.

“You and that bunny,” Frank said, shaking his head, laughing. “Bunnies are fucking vicious, you know that right? They have giant teeth, and claws. Monty Python don’t lie.”

“We’ll name him Tim, then,” Gerard said, lounging against the windowsill and staring out at the sky, streaked with high cirrus clouds. Frank looked sort of jittery, and he was fiddling with a lighter, flipping it on and off. Fuck, Gerard was going to have to say something.

“Look, I don’t wanna pry, Frankie,” he started nervously, staring at his hands, then over at the pathetic sleeping bag, the crumbled remains of a fire. “But… I mean, it sorta seems like you’re living out here. But you’re not, right?”

“Can we not talk about this right now?” Frank said, voice small. Gerard cut his eyes over at Frank, who was all in shadow now and pressing himself into the wall, like he could make himself disappear. “Just... not today?”

“Okay,” Gerard said readily, a little ashamed of how relieved he was to let the subject go. “No, that’s cool. Just, do you need anything? Like, a place to stay, or food, or something? My mom wouldn’t mind, I—”

“No! No. Thanks, though,” Frank said, voice quiet and unhappy. “You’re—it was nice of you to ask. I can’t, though.”

“I mean,” Gerard said in a rush. “It’s not like I’d tell anyone you were here or anything, or judge, or whatever. We’re friends, right? I mean, I totally like you, like, um. A lot, and if there’s anything I can do to help—”

Frank had the strangest look on his face, eyes wide and staring and he wasn’t saying anything, Jesus Christ, it was like torture. Gerard could not get himself to stop talking, it was like an out-of-body experience.

“And you totally don’t have to tell me now, or whenever, I just want you to know that, um, I’m here for you, uh—” Oh Christ, he’d really just said that. He was like a Lifetime Romance Hallmark card. He finally just shut himself up with the soda, before remembering the whole Soda of the Ancients thing and then he stood there for a second with his cheeks bulged out with flat, dead soda, trying to decide if spitting or swallowing was the better part of valor. Maybe he could pretend to be overcome with emotion and turn around and subtly spit out the window. Frank finally burst into laughter, and the weird terrible awkward stillness finally passed. Gerard swallowed and made an unhappy, dying sound.

“Soda a little out of date?” Frank snickered. “Sorry, dude, I wasn’t thinking, I never drink that stuff.”

“Shut up, asshole,” Gerard said, pained, tongue gone all fuzzy and gross. He totally should have spit that shit out. He was probably going to get E. coli., but it was sort of worth it, to see Frank grinning again. “Oh my god, that was so gross.”

“Shoulda spit it out,” Frank said, still snickering, shaking his head. “You’re fucking nuts, you know that? Anyway, we should get going before it’s dark.”

Which was true. Gerard dumped the rest of the coke out the window and smashed the can, shoved it in his hoodie pocket to recycle later.

“Hey, um. Thanks,” Frank said awkwardly as they left, shuffling through the late afternoon sunshine back towards the woods. “For being understanding or whatever. I promise, I’ll tell you the whole story one day. Soon. Just, there’s stuff about me you don’t know, and I—fuck, later, right?”

Frank turned his head to look up at Gerard hopefully, and Gerard looked down and hated his brain, because now was totally not the time to think about leaning down three inches and kissing Frank’s lower lip, but that was definitely the one image at the forefront of his brain. Frank’s lips, pale and pink, and he just wanted to press Frank into the sun-warmed grass and see what he tasted like. Probably better than expired Diet Coke. Probably like cigarettes.

Meanwhile, while his brain derailed and pondered Frank’s flavor, Frank was looking at him and waiting for an answer. Great.

“Oh, yeah,” Gerard said, and de-snagged his sleeve from a bush that he’d wandered into while on autopilot. “Yeah, later. No rush, dude. I trust you.”

Frank blew out a gusty sigh and then grinned at Gerard, and Gerard sort of didn’t mind if Frank never told him the whole story, only he did mind, because something bad had happened to Frank, Gerard knew it, and he just wanted to fucking help. But Frank kept shooting him disbelieving, delighted looks, like he’d gotten a reprieve at the gallows or something, and if he wasn’t flirting with Gerard then he was a total fucking tease. He kept bumping his shoulder against Gerard’s and brushing their hands together and Gerard was about to explode with confusion and giddiness. Frank was totally flirting with him, he had to be, or Gerard was completely and utterly out of his mind.

The sun was slowly setting and the forest seemed—not darker, but the colors had changed: cooler, shot through with purple. It was weird how different the forest could look through the course of a day. Probably it’d look like a different place entirely in winter, no bright red and gold of leaves on trees, just dark branches and white snow. And in spring, damn. Gerard really couldn’t imagine this place in spring.

He wasn’t looking forward to the rest of the walk home in the dark forest, though, even with Frank leaning against him, rambling on about Gerard’s Bowie hoodie and how The Man Who Fell to Earth was pretty much the zenith of modern cinema. Gerard tended to agree, but he was starting to feel pretty damned tired; he hadn’t really paid attention to the fact that they’d been heading downhill earlier, other than to note that dead leaves were slippery and that he didn’t want to careen to his death, but every bruise on his body sure as hell noticed the trail sloping upwards now.

Mikey would never make it out here to see these ruins—fuck, he couldn’t even make it up a flight of stairs. A hill like this, covered in leaf mold and dirt and god knew what other irritants… it was stupid to think about, anyway. Asthma aside, Mikey wasn’t any more of an outdoorsy guy than Gerard was, and it wasn’t like he had a crush on Frank that would make him want to torture himself with evil thorn bushes and mud puddles and physical exertion. Or hopefully didn’t. Wouldn’t. Whatever. But it would have been nice to have the option to drag Mikey out here, to have someone to sympathize and complain with.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Gerard said, groping for a change in subject when Frank stopped mid-rant and looked at him strangely, like maybe he’d noticed Gerard’s expression shifting. “I might go to a concert this weekend with some guys from school, but I guess you can’t come?” Frank nodded, didn’t say anything or meet Gerard’s eyes and Gerard hastily continued. “They’re good guys, I like them a lot. They’re all in band. Bob Bryar and Ray Toro, and some band kids named Patrick and, um. Worm? They’re pretty cool. Ray likes Bowie too, he’s—”

“Toro?” Frank interrupted, eyes huge. “Little Ray Toro?”

“Uh, that dude isn’t little,” Gerard said, looking down at Frank pointedly from his two extra inches of height. Gerard had a freakishly tall little brother; he knew to savor what he had.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Frank said dismissively, and lifted a blackberry bramble out of the way for Gerard, which probably Gerard shouldn’t glow over. “He still play guitar? That kid could shred like a motherfucker.”

“I guess so,” Gerard hazarded. Fuck, they were at the creek again. Maybe he could just jump across. “Yeah, he said something about working out some songs with Patrick on Garageband.”

“Yeah?” Frank said wistfully. “Fuck, I miss jamming with the kid. But, um. Don’t tell him you saw me or anything, seriously, Gee. Please.”

“Huh?” Gerard said, startled, and tried to remember if he’d mentioned Frank to Ray yet—no, he’d just talked to Bob and Patrick, he thought. “Oh, uh. No, sure. S’cool. My lips are sealed.”

Frank punched him gleefully in the shoulder. “You’re totally my dog,” he said solemnly.

“I am?” Gerard asked, beaming and playing with his hair before he could stop himself. “Awesome. So, uh, is it okay for you to maybe meet me tonight at my house? I mean, it’ll be dark, probably no one would see you or anything, right? And my mom totally goes to sleep at like midnight, passes right the fuck out. She’d never know you were there, honest.”

Frank stared at his feet, and then stared out towards the distance.

“No, uh. That’s not really a good idea,” he said, not meeting Gerard’s eyes.

“We could be really stealthy?” Gerard said hopefully. He’d anticipated resistance on Frank’s part, and had already planned out a counterattack. “I’ve got all the special edition Sam Raimi films on DVD. We could have a marathon. With pizza. And, uh.” Gerard pondered his mental catalog of alcohol. “Gin and tonics. And a carton of cigarettes. Or just coffee, if you want.” He made his eyes as wide as possible and waited.

Frank made a frustrated noise and waved his hands.

“Dude,” he said unhappily. “I can’t. ”

Well, shit, if Frank could resist the allure of campy zombies and the Necronomicon, then Gerard had nothing. He wondered how Frank got food if he never fucking left the forest. He narrowed his eyes. Fuck, if Frank was a fucking boyscout and, like, hunted for his food, Gerard might have to disown him. That shit was not cool.

“Fine,” he grumbled, and stared morosely at the crumbling, vermin-infested bridge over the Creek of Doom. “But when I die visiting you out here in the darkness with all the hidden stones and fucking, I dunno, chupacabras, you’ll totally be sorry.”

“So melodramatic,” Frank teased, and shook his head. “I’d never let you die, Gee. I’ll fight all the chupacabras with my bare hands. My teeth. Those fuckers wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Gerard couldn’t stop beaming at that, not for hours, not even after he’d fallen in the creek and sloshed home, dripping muddy and happy on the porch in the fading light. It did sort of suck that he’d dropped his bag in the fucking creek, though, even if Frank had fished it out in time for only a few of the things inside to get wet. Ah, well. He’d gotten sort of used to using Mikey’s bag—he’d just transfer his notebooks over until his own dried out and stopped smelling slightly like foot.

Anyway, the point was, Frank was his knight in grungy armor. It was awesome.

His mother was less pleased. She clearly hadn’t anticipated her son metamorphosing into Tom Sawyer overnight, staring at Gerard in slack-jawed disbelief.

“You fell into a what? Hell no, you’re not coming into the house like that,” she told Gerard finally, hands on her hips and blocking the doorway.

“What, you going to hose me down on the porch?” Gerard asked cheerfully, and squelched past her into the foyer. He at least had shucked his dead Converse on the front step, but his too-long jeans left a muddy slime trail behind him as he headed upstairs to change. His mother hovered behind him with a towel, grumbling.

“Hey, you’re the one that said I needed to get out more,” Gerard pointed out airily, and left her muttering to herself darkly about the signs of the apocalypse. He closed the door to his room, peeling off his rank jeans and shucking off his hoodie. His clothes were actually more damp than wet by now, but it was still fucking freezing outside, especially with the wind blowing. Dry clothes were totally a necessity, even if it did make them a little late to the Center.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23