The Majesty of Choice

Want

Gerard doesn't know what time it is, but the sun set completely about half an hour ago, so he'd say it's pushing nine or ten at night. Their camp is very minimal, but fine nonetheless. As it turns out, there's only three tents. Hayley gets one to herself, making Gerard more jealous than he'd care to admit, and the other two are divided from there.

It would be super crammed in them if Frank hadn't specified that they should take shifts to keep an eye out for anything. Frank of course says shifts of two, and they'll trade off every couple of hours. Gerard doesn't even need to put any effort into guessing which two people Frank is going to choose to take the first shift.

"Gerard and I will have the first shift," Frank says, "and Travie, and Hayley will go after us, followed by Alex and Ryan."

"What about me and Patrick?" Pete asks.

"Um, don't take it personally guys but I really don't trust you two to not get us killed in case of emergency," Frank says.

Pete nods and makes a sound of agreement, "fair enough, I probably wouldn't trust me either."

There's a few minutes where everyone starts negotiating about who gets what tent and they settle on Pete and Patrick sharing with Travie because really, no one trusts the two of them alone together. Not in a sexual sort of way, but like, if an ogre or someone else were to attack them in the night, Pete and Patrick would die so fast you wouldn't have enough time to say 'run.'

Frank watches as everyone starts to settle in, the tents looking like they barely provide any cover, merely an illusion a privacy.

Gerard's slept in a tent once in his entire life, when he went camping as a kid. Mikey was there, and his mom was alive. Ray had spent about three hours trying to start a fire with magic to no avail, and almost just to spite him, Gerard's mom had found a spark rock and got it started in under a minute. Ray had moped for about an hour after that as Mikey and Gerard had laughed at him. Ray got back at them later that night by pulling the stick out of their tent and making it collapse on them. To be fair, they deserved it.

Finally, the night around them becomes peaceful as everyone's settled in, and Gerard knows that he can't do anything to escape being alone with Frank right now. He just has to deal with it. He's panicking a little, but he tries to focus on his breathing so that he doesn't completely pass out.

"Now, I think," Frank says quietly, "would be a good time for us to have that talk."

"Oh," Gerard frowns, even though he knew that this was to happen, he knew that it would likely happen soon. He had hoped he could prolong it, at least overnight, so that he could find purchase on his own thoughts and feelings of the matter.

Gerard takes a seat next to Frank, on the ground which is somehow both hard and soft. He looks at the flames from the fire pit, not as strong and large as they had been a little while ago, but still bright and warm. Much like Frank.

"I don't have anything in particular to say," Gerard says, when Frank just looks at him, not saying anything.

"Well, I guess I should talk then," Frank replies, and Gerard nods. "I'm not sure what really happened, if I'm being honest with you. I think, well, I know, that we were about to kiss. And you... didn't pull away."

"I didn't know what to do," Gerard says. "I just sort of froze."

"So you didn't want it to happen?" Frank asks.

"I didn't say that."

"You did want it to happen?"

"I didn't say that either," Gerard says.