"Are you okay?" Mikey asked him for the billionth time, just after the pilot announced their final descent.
Frank growled in frustration. "I'm fine, Mikey. I don't want to talk about it."
"But you usually do," Mikey adjusted his glasses. "You usually do, to me."
Frank sighed. "It's nothing personal, man, I'm just sick of being a walking Dear Abby. I want a break from that for a while, okay? Let's just - tell me about you and Toro, okay? What's happening with you guys?"
"I'm not sure." Mikey kept his voice low - they both did, because Ray was asleep in the seat behind them. "I mean, we talked about it a little, but so far all we've really done is have like, Doom Sex. You know?"
"Doom Sex?" Frank grinned. "What, like it's all in the first person and you have to kill off a big Cyberdemon? Kinky."
Mikey shoved him with his arm. "Jackass. You know what I mean."
Frank laughed. "Well, no doom now, right? Do you still wanna have sex with him?"
Mikey made a thoughtful face. He struggled up in his seat and eyed Ray speculatively over the headrest while Frank muffled his giggles in his sleeve. Eventually he sat back down and said, "God, yes."
Frank cracked up, folding forward and banging his head on the seat in front of him. "Ow," he rubbed his forehead, turning back to Mikey. "So go for it, man, why not?"
"I don't know." Mikey was all smiley, it was disgusting. He had dimples. "I've never really had a boyfriend before."
"Boyfriend?" Frank teased, fluttering his eyelashes. Mikey rolled his eyes and Frank cracked up again.
"You're just jealous," Mikey said loftily, and then looked horrified. "I didn't mean-"
"Just promise me," Frank talked over the top of him so they couldn't get into the guilt. Frank wasn't okay, not really, not at all, but he would never get there if Mikey couldn't help him just act like it. "Promise me you'll still tell me all about it even though I know him."
Mikey looked both suspicious and relieved at once. It was a lot of facial expression, for Mikey. "Promise," he said.
They shook on it to seal the deal. After that it was a blur of baggage claim and finding a cab and deciding who was sharing with who, and then before he knew it they were turning onto his street and pulling up outside the house Frank grew up in, and best of all, best out of pretty much anything else in the whole wide world, Frank's Mom opening the front door and beaming at him, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
"See you when I've slept for a month," Frank said to Bob and Brian, and then he climbed out of the cab, dumped his bags on the sidewalk, and ran through the front yard, up the steps, and into his mother's arms.
