Chapter Text 3 страница

“Oh, whatever, some kids love it, right?” Frank said, which Gerard had to concede was probably true, for the most part. “If they didn’t want to get dicked around with, they shouldn’t have come in the motherfucking haunted woods. I have a duty to scare folk shitless. It’s like a moral imperative.”

“Mmm. Justify your petty theft all you like,” Gerard said, snapping open a back issue of Miller’s Batman. “You’re just as bad as Peeves, man.”

“Okay, one? It’s not petty theft,” Frank said, and stole Gerard’s comic and waved it under his nose. “I need comics! For my mental health. It’s extenuating circumstances or some shit. And two,” he said, leaning back and narrowing his eye, “Did you just call me a perv? Because I’m pretty sure that camp of girls were over eighteen. And I wasn’t, uh.” Frank started to stammer as Gerard glared. “I didn’t do anything!” Frank backpedalled. “There were right there! Changing! And I’m all cold and shit so their nipples were all hard, and then I guess I made a noise or something and they ran away screaming like fucking banshees. Tits all over the place.” Frank drifted off dreamily. “I miss sex,” he said a little sadly, and then Gerard choked on his own spit, and decided the better part of valor was to attack Frank’s appalling pop culture ignorance.

“Peeves,” Gerard said faintly. “Peeves is the poltergeist in Harry Potter.”

“The what in the who, now?” Frank said, frowning, and that was Gerard’s afternoon sorted out. By the time it was getting dark, Gerard had about caught Frank up to the Half-Blood Prince —around the Goblet of Fire he finally thought to ask if Frank wanted to actually borrow the books and read them himself, or whatever. Frank stared for a moment before bursting into laughter—which, whatever, stupid ungrateful fucker—and motioned Gerard to continue with his super-awesome condensed version. While he talked, Frank played quiet lilting melodies on the guitar and finished off the rest of
Gerard’s cigarettes, occasionally piping up with questions and what he obviously thought were extremely witty comments about wands and horcruxes.

It was actually easy to forget Frank was dead, most of the time. It just seemed so normal, and then it’d hit Gerard all over again like a fucking brick to the head. Dead. Frank was dead. People went somewhere after they died, obviously. They didn’t just disappear. It fucking blew his mind.

When Gerard had to leave at the end of the day, Frank walked him to the edge of the woods, and then looked at Gerard with a strange, bemused expression. Then he leaned in, wrapping a hand around the back of Gerard’s neck.

Gerard had a brief heart attack.

“Hey,” Frank exhaled, nose to Gerard’s. “Hey, you.”

“Hey,” Gerard squeaked, and almost thought he felt Frank’s lip ring cold against the corner of his mouth. The wind was blowing, just enough to cut through the last of the day’s warmth and scatter dead leaves from the trees above. Wisps of fogs were coalescing in the fields and curling along the entrance to the path in the twilight, damp around their feet, and Gerard thought that probably this was as perfect a moment as his life would ever provide, with Frank’s mouth inches away.

“Thanks,” Frank said, and Gerard tried not to go cross-eyed looking at him.

“For what?” Gerard asked, voice hoarse and nearly soundless, hopeful, and then suddenly Frank shook himself, and stepped back. Gerard made a low protesting noise in his throat before he could stop himself, and then felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment.

“For being, you know, not a screaming girl or whatever,” Frank mumbled, gnawing at a fingernail. “You should probably go.”

Gerard stared, but it wasn’t like he could call Frank out. Because, okay, that totally seemed like the set up for a kiss, but what if it wasn’t? What if Frank had forgotten the bounds of normal behavior out in the forest, living with the rabbits and ducks and campers?

Maybe ghosts didn’t even kiss people. Maybe kissing a ghost killed you. Who the fuck knew. Frank probably didn’t even have a sex drive. He was dead.

“It’s not like boys don’t scream too,” Gerard pointed out sullenly. Fucking tease asshole of a ghost. He had to have known that was the set-up for a fucking kiss, he had to. “But, yeah, I should get going. Mom’s probably waiting for me.”

“You could come back later tonight, though. If you wanted,” Frank said nonchalantly, and now he wasn’t looking at his shoes, he was looking at Gerard’s shoes. It would be just Gerard’s luck to have a crush on a dead guy with a foot fetish.

“I could,” Gerard said, and stuffed his hands in his pockets, trying not to scowl. “I guess. I mean, if you want.”

“Yeah?” And Frank was peeking up through his bangs, the asshole. Gerard tried to glare at him, but from the way Frank beamed he suspected it had come out as more of a dopey smile. Goddammit. “So what time do you want to meet, then? Visiting hours at the hospital end at ten, right? You could come out after that. I can make a fire and shit, it’ll be awesome.”

“Um, yeah,” Gerard said, a little surprised Frank remembered about the visiting hours. “Sometimes Mikey gets the nurses to let us stay later, though. I dunno, I could probably be out here at maybe… midnight? Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay, what the fuck else am I going to be doing,” Frank said, rolling his eyes. “Hate to break it to you, but midnight isn’t actually the witching hour. I’m not off, like, possessing pumpkins or Ouija boards each night.”

Gerard could feel his eyes get huge.

“I didn’t even think of that!” he exclaimed in a hushed voice. “Oh man, are you affected by the time of day? I mean, you were all insubstantial that one night, right? I was sort of drunk, but I think I remember—” Oh fuck. If everything that night had actually happened—fuck. He buried his face in his hands. “Shit, I threw up through you!” he moaned. “Oh, Frank, that’s so gross, fuck. I’m so sorry!”

“No kidding,” Frank muttered, but he was smiling as he said it, a funny crooked half-smile Gerard glimpsed from between his fingers. “No sweat, I forgive you.”

“I can’t believe I threw up through you,” Gerard repeated dolefully, and the only thing that kept him from sprinting off through the night and never coming back was that it was equal parts horrifically embarrassing and awesome. “So does that mean you can walk through me?” He reached out and thumped Frank’s arm, but Frank remained stubbornly solid.

“Christ, Gee,” Frank said, and shoved his shoulder. “You’ll have to find out later, fucker. When you come back. You’ll be back, right? To see me walk through walls if nothing else.”

“Really?” Gerard said, clutching his hoodie closer to himself and beaming. “Through walls?”

“Walls, trees, your face. Whatever.”

“ Really?” Gerard squeaked, and Frank rolled his eyes.

“Oh my god, fucker, go, you’re going to be late!” he said, and Gerard totally was, and his mom was going to kill him, so he made himself start jogging off, away from the forest and towards the lights of the school parking lot. He kept looking over his shoulder, though, and Frank was still standing there at the edge of the woods, hands in his pockets.

Gerard waved—like a giant dork, but he was too excited to really care at this point.

“Bye, Frankie!” he hollered. “See you later! Don’t fuck up my comics!”

Even from the parking lot he could tell Frank was flipping him off indignantly. He couldn’t stop grinning, not even when he got home and his mom looked at him weirdly and started muttering about the apocalypse again. Oh man, he could not wait to see Mikey. They had so much research to do.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23