Chapter Text
“Don’t chicken out on me, man” Frank complained, sending Pete his most disappointed look as he flicked his cigarette to the side of the road. They were standing at the bus stop in light rain, late Friday afternoon and finally, finally weekend.
“Fuck you, I’m not chickening out. You were the one who got me that detention anyways, I can’t help my mom’s pissy” Pete shot back and crossed his arms. “You know I fucking want to go but I also kind of want to not being skinned alive by my folks”
“I didn’t get you any detention” Frank said and tried to sound offended, though he couldn’t help breaking into a smile. “I can’t help I’m better at hiding than you”
Pete winced at the mention of it. A few days earlier, Frank had with all kinds of dirty tricks such as puppy eyes and promises about bumming cigarettes convinced Pete that it would be a good idea to sneak into the teacher’s lounge after school and spraypaint the anarchy symbol onto one of the walls, for no other reason than to see how pissed off the principal would get. And it had all gone very well until one of the substitutes had shown up to look for her forgotten scarf and Frank had been way faster to quietly mouth ‘fuck’ and crawl underneath one of the couches while Pete had been caught like a deer in the headlights of a car with a can of paint in his hand. He had gotten a week of detention and Frank had laughed so hard he almost cried afterwards.
“I’m never forgiving you” Pete stated and shot Frank a judging glare.
“Of course not” Frank giggled. “But you should totally sneak out anyways”
“I can’t, Frank, god dammit, if I get caught sneaking out one more time they are gonna put surveillance up in my room or something” Pete complained and let his cigarette follow Franks.
“You suck” Frank said and Pete shrugged. The both started moving towards the road as the bus appeared in the distance.
“You suck harder” Pete said and couldn’t help but snicker too.
***
If anyone had asked Frank in the past week, this would be the most epic show all year and everyone should get their lazy asses out of bed and go see it, but when it came down to it, he very well knew that it wasn’t going to be much better than all the other local shows he went to every other week or so. But he said that every time there was an upcoming concert, and this time was no exception. And anyways, there was beer and mosh pits and music so of course it’d be cool.
He had called Pete one last time and begged him to go, once again just ending up with Pete complaining about his parents, so in the end he just went by himself. It was okay though, because he hadn’t even gotten inside the venue before a well-known voice sounded across the heads of all the people making their way in.
“Well, if it isn’t Frank Iero”
“Gabe, hey” Frank greeted as Gabe made his way through the pushing crowd, and slung a long arm around Franks shoulders. A couple of minutes later they were approached by a few of Gabes friends that Frank didn’t recognize, as Gabe was barely out of high school and already knew more people than any adult Frank knew, combined.
Gabe and his friends accompanied Frank inside, of course, after Gabe had called Frank out on his briefly applied eyeliner and bright colored sneakers, and he was handed someone’s beer within 5 minutes which Frank appreciated cordially since he was not nearly tall enough to buy alcohol himself. And he didn’t leave them either until the band went on stage and people started moshing right in front of the stage. He’d always been a massive sucker for the pit and beers and friend or not, he had to get down there.
In Franks bummed out experience, an hour and a half passed really fast when he was sweating and shoving and dancing and pushing, and it felt like not even ten minutes had passed by when the band suddenly thanked the audience and left the stage.
Personally, Frank could’ve kept on going anyways, but the crowd started to break up and go their separate ways to the back of the venue or the wardrobe or the bar, so he reluctantly followed. He tried to find Gabe and his friends but soon assumed that they had already left, since you could usually tell on a 400 feet distance, by the level of noise, if Gabe Saporta was in the house or not. So Frank went home, as he didn’t really know anyone else except for a couple of girls from his school that he briefly said hi to.
Frank was not anything near intoxicated as he walked down his own street, having only downed three quarters of the beer Gabe handed him, but he still felt a really good kind of dizzy and sore in most of his muscles. A thing he loved about the venue he’d been at tonight was that they were never cheap with the bass amps, and the vibrations from them always made everyone feel kind of high, kind of turned on.
It was probably because he felt slightly drunk on the concert and probably also because it was almost 2 am and he was tired, that he almost passed the house next to his without noticing that the lights was turned on in the whole ground floor, which was pretty fucking weird to Frank since the house had been standing empty since the officious old lady that had lived there all Franks life, had died a few months back.
He stopped walking, and stared at the house for a while. He couldn’t see anyone in there and was kind of creeped out, since he didn’t recall seeing anyone moving in the past few days. And he was sure that no one had lived there a week ago, since he had sometimes crashed on the porch if he’d been fighting with his mom and didn’t want to spend the night at home, the last time being last Saturday after a party. But his curiosity easily overpowered his discomfort because he quickly scooted closer to the fence that surrounded the front yard and started looking for some kind of movement.
He didn’t have to look long because it didn’t take more than a couple of minutes before the front door was opened and two men stepped out of it. They didn’t seem to notice him, and just headed for a van that was parked in the driveway, which Frank hadn’t noticed before due to the darkness, so he just watched them for another while.
The taller one of the men opened the back of the van and handed a big box to the smaller man before getting one for himself too. It wasn’t until they casually started walking back towards the house with the boxes that Frank realized that they were moving in.
“That’s a weird fuckin’ time to take over a new house” Frank blurted before he could help himself. And as he drew attention to his presence, the smaller man shrieked and dropped his box in shock, and what looked like kitchen utensils and cutlery scattered out on the ground. The taller one barely moved out of his spot.
“Fuck, shit” the man who’d lost his box dropped to his knees and started picking things up, before raising his head and looking somewhere in Franks direction. Frank couldn’t really see it due to the darkness. “You scared the livin’ shit out of me. Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Frank. I live next door” he said and then after a while, “Why are you out in the middle of the night? Are you like, vampires or something?”
The taller one seemed to think about it for a while, and then he shrugged. “Maybe. But you’re out in the middle of the night too”
“I’m just on my way home. I was at a show” Frank explained with a honest expression that he doubted that any of them could spot in the dark.
“How do we know that you’re not actually the vampire? You could totally be lying about the show” the tall one said, but with a kind of joking tone to his voice. Frank wasn’t really scared of any of them anymore. Actually they seemed cool. Cooler than the old lady that lived there before at least.
“You’d never have a chance of knowing” Frank grinned.
“Wait, you said you were at a show” the guy on the ground asked. His voice sounded genuinely interested, and Frank wished that the light from the open front door of their house reached all the way out here so he could see who he was talking to.
“Yea, I did”
“Was it the one at the harbor venue, kind of post-hardcore, female drummer, uh-“ the guy continued before Frank cut him off.
“Yea that was totally the one. It was awesome”
“Fuck, I told you we should’ve gone” he said, turning his attention to the man above him. “Why couldn’t we just have done this tomorrow”
“I have stuff tomorrow” the tall one simply shrugged, before heading back towards the house.
“Well, you’ve got cool music taste Frank” the small one said after his friend disappeared inside. “And I guess I’ll see you around then. I’m Gerard by the way”
“Yea, see you, uh, Gerard” Frank said, before turning away from the fence and heading for his own house, quieting down his steps the closer he got to it as he didn’t want to wake up his mom.
***
“You were home late, weren’t you?” his mom asked as he entered the kitchen the next morning, just out of the shower and with a tired look on his face.
“Not particularly” he lied.
“I went to bed at 11 and you weren’t home by then” she argued and Frank shrugged.
“It wasn’t more than half an hour later than that, it kind of dragged out with the science project, but we caught up on it pretty well” he explained smoothly.
“Oh, that’s nice honey” she said before turning back to her magazine, and not speaking any more of it. His mom usually wouldn’t let him go to concerts and parties because, as she said, he wasn’t responsible enough to keep it under control, so that was why he made up The Friday Study Group, which he excitedly told his mom about every Saturday morning after he’d been out doing whatever with his friends, and he still couldn’t believe she actually ate it all up.
He’d told Pete about Study Group, just to be sure that if his mom suddenly asked Pete about some math assignment that Pete didn’t know anything about because it didn’t really exist, he could always play along and save Franks ass.
In reality, Frank rarely did any kind of homework, and mostly survived senior year on improvising and trying to stay invisible in the back of the classroom. It had gone pretty well so far, but then again they were also barely a month into the school year.
And to say the least, if Frank rarely did homework, then Pete had never picked up a book, and he didn’t really have to either because he was the star of the soccer team and could get into a few colleges just by telling them that.
Frank himself, didn’t understand how Pete managed to be the best player on the whole team when games always were Saturday around noon and most weekends he and Pete had been out getting drunk on Fridays and were massively hungover the next day. But it was kind of admirable.
And sometimes Frank showed up to watch Pete matches, always at least halfway through the game because he was slow to get out of bed and shower and get all the way from his house to the football fields, but none the less he was almost always there, cheering half-heartedly and laughing whole-heartedly whenever Pete fell over and things like that. And in exchange Pete would be there every time Frank got on stage with his guitar on lame school open mic nights, and he would always yell something offensive if the room went quiet and afterwards they would both laugh because the teacher’s faces clearly expressed what they thought of Franks lyrics.
And so Frank ended up on the bleachers this Saturday too, and waited there until Pete came back from the locker rooms, damp skin in the cool weather and a shit eating grin across his face.
“You saw that goal? Coach said it was the best he’d seen in a while” Pete bragged and settled next to Frank.
“How could I have missed it” Frank said and handed Pete a cigarette as well as getting on for himself as soon as he’d made sure that the coach was nowhere to be seen.
“You couldn’t. So, did I miss out on anything great last night?” Pete asked, slightly regretfully.
“The show was pretty sweet. I got at least ten bruises and I ran into Gabe Saporta” Frank explained. “I also got new neighbors”
“What does that have to do with the show?” Pete asked and gave Frank back the lighter he’d stolen from his pocket a second ago, so Frank could light up as well. They both leaned back on the bleachers and blew smoke up in the air as Frank held a thoughtful pause.
“They moved in last night. In the middle of the fucking night. Weird types, I tell you” Frank said and Pete frowned at him.
“Why would anyone move in during the night?”
“Fuck if I know. I just asked them if they were vampires, oh yeah and one of them also liked the band I saw” Frank said with a shrug. “They’re kinda cool I guess”
“Hm. But, more importantly-“ Pete started and his expression suddenly turned excited. “I can totally go out tonight, and Joe is throwing this party and it’s gonna be epic”
“I’m in” Frank said almost before Pete finished the sentence. He would literally never miss a chance to go out and get drunk if he could avoid it.
Soon, the coach appeared from the door to the locker rooms and they both got up and hurried down to the bus stop before he could bust them smoking. The last thing Frank needed was a lecture from his mom on why smoking was bad because school had called and told on him.
They spent the rest of the afternoon at Franks, lazily playing Guitar Hero and discussing whether Frank owned Pete more cigarettes from the incident last week or if they were equal, which Frank was completely convinced that they were, while Pete thought that he needed at least a week more of cigarettes before he could forgive Frank.
Once in a while Frank curiously shot a glance out the window and over to the neighbor house, but the windows were dark and there was no signs of life whatsoever, even the van was gone from the driveway and for a minute Frank even questioned if it had even been a dream. That was, until he noticed a couple of forks still lying in the grass, where the guy who called himself Gerard had dropped them last night.
A few hours later, Pete went home to get ready and Frank went back to the game after shooting a last glance out the window.
Later that night, Frank met up with Pete in front of Joe’s house, both dressed up a lot more than when they’d been hanging out earlier. Frank was wearing his signature jeans that fitted as if they were painted on his skin and he felt fucking ready to conquer the world.
And unlike at shows where the bartender would just look at Frank with a semi-amused expression if he asked for a beer, private parties always equaled unlimited alcohol. Or at least enough to get him unconscious. So it didn’t take more than a couple of hours before Frank was in a very good, very yelling mood, moving his body to the tunes of the whatever really underground band had been put on the record player. He was circulating around on the dancefloor, drink in one hand and grinding against anyone who looked up for it while Pete had disappeared off to somewhere with someone. The only way this night could get better was pretty much if someone had some pot they were willing to share or if someone hot suddenly had an uncontrollably desire to have sex with him. But there wasn’t really any risk that any of that would happen tonight, so Frank took what he could get, which in this case was another fruity drink with way too much gin in it.
Frank didn’t know what he expected, but of course he ran into Gabe Saporta later, because Gabe could spot a party from a 10 mile distance, and suddenly Frank had a very tall, very drunk guy slung around his shoulders.
“Frank, you little motherfucker, we meet again” he slurred and Frank just nodded and kept moving to the music, as he couldn’t really dance as much as before with Gabe weighing on him. “Are you always wearing these clothes?”
“Only when I go out” Frank replied with a snicker. “You don’t have any weed, do you?”
“No man, it’s all gone. All gone man” Gabe said with a reluctant shake of his head and started swaying with Frank. “Why are you always wearing eyeliner?”
“I like it” Frank shrugged, and closed his eyes briefly before quickly opening them again. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t take him many more fruity drinks before he needed to find somewhere he could pass out.
“It makes you look-“ Gabe started but then he didn’t seem to remember the words.
“Hot?” Frank suggested and Gabe just laughed.
“It makes you look like you would make out with me if I asked you to” Gabe finally said and it didn’t really make sense to Frank.
“Are you hitting on me, Saporta?”
“Fuck no, sorry to break it to you kid, but I’ve totally got a thing going with the hot brunette over there” he explained while trying to point somewhere across the room, but he couldn’t keep is arm still for so long that Frank could actually get which of the girls he meant.
“Then why aren’t you dancing with her?” Frank asked and Gabe suddenly looked like he was thinking really hard.
“Shit, you’re right. I’m gonna go woo her, but if it doesn’t work out I’m gonna come back here and make out with you, just to prove my point”
“Sure” Frank said without really meaning it, while he moved on to dance with some girl he maybe had once had some classes with. He didn’t know. He didn’t really care either, he was just in a really zoned out state of mind and all he wanted to do was dance and maybe drink more. Yea, he most definitely wanted to drink more.