The Chasing of Moons

Hate/Hate

"Frank?" Gerard asks, looking directly at Frank which makes his tongue lose all traction and sense.

"Who's Frank?" Frank asks.

"You're Frank," Brendon tells him.

"I'm Frank," Frank says, like it's a question.

"I told you to act natural not like you didn't know who you were," Brendon says, rolling his eyes, and questioning how he could have possibly gotten himself wrapped up in all of this.

"Frank, what a crazy random happenstance," Mikey says, stalely.

"Aren't you just quoting Dr. Horrible?" Gerard asks him, looking at Mikey quizzically.

"Maybe."

"Okay so this wasn't at all staged though was it?" Gerard asks, and Frank turns pink.

"What? Staged? What does that even, uh, mean?" he asks, with a painfully fake laugh that makes Brendon want to crawl under a rock for Frank.

"Frank, what are you looking for?" Gerard asks.

"What am I what?"

"What book? What book are you looking for?"

"What book...?" Frank repeats suddenly forgetting every book that has ever existed on the face of the planet. He cannot remember a single author, a single book, a single name, a single word, or the name of the planet that he is currently standing on.

"He's looking for," Brendon starts but then seems to have a change of heart in the middle of his sentence and instead says, "nope, not going to try to make an excuse."

"Thanks," Frank says, through gritted teeth, "I'm glad I decided to bring you along."

"Where's Pete?" Mikey asks, looking around, hoping to find him between the bookshelves, and instead making eye contact with the girl who was, a moment ago staring at Brendon's ass, but has now moved on to evaluating Gerard, trying to figure out if he's worthwhile or not, which makes Frank feel like a mother lion protecting his cubs, which is to say he wants to tear her throat out and feed her carcass to the buzzards.

"He's better than I am apparently," Brendon says, "because Frank called him first."

"I told you, that's not the reason for why I called him first."

"Yeah, but who wants to say that they're referred to as an asshole on their friends phone?"

"Not just an asshole, a big asshole," Frank corrects.

"Fuck you."

"Yeah, I can get in on that, fuck you Frank," Gerard says.

"No, you can't just get in on my fuck you, you have to get your own," Brendon says.

"Alright fine. Fuck you Frank," Gerard says.

"Fair enough," Frank nods.

"So Pete's not here?" Mikey asks for clarification.

"No, he's doing something better," Brendon replies.

"Are you implying that this isn't enjoyable?" Frank asks.

"Yes."

"Well, you're an asshole and I hate you."

"Great, so now that that's clarified, I'm going to walk away," Gerard says, and he turns on his heels, Frank quick to follow.

"Why are you following me?" Gerard asks, leading him to the dank and dark corner of the shop where they keep all the old comic books, which just makes Frank make an 'awwing' sound internally to himself. He kind of sees watching Gerard as looking at a puppy, because he's adorable and wants to marry the son of a bitch so much. The feeling he gets in his stomach right now just looking at Gerard is the same one he gets when he watches YouTube videos of cats. He wants to cuddle him so much and be his best friend and love him to death. It's quite infuriating.