The Science of Sleep

Chapter 9

One week later, and Frank finds himself sitting back where this entire mess started; Starbucks. He's got one of the nice sofas and a table to himself with a newspaper open and a red pen in his hand as he circles potential adverts.

The door opens and Frank automatically looks up to see Bob walk in. He waves to Bob and then goes back to his search while he waits for Bob to get his coffee and join him.

"Job listings?" Bob asks when he sits down with a giant steaming mug of -

"Are you drinking tea?!" Frank asks in disbelief as the smell reaches his nostrils.

"What?! Not all of us can consume coffee like water without horrific side effects, unlike you and Gerard."

"Yeah but... Earl Grey?! Really?"

"It's a delicacy," Bob sniffs, taking a sip.

Frank grins. "You'll want to stock up on that; I never once saw anyone with a teabag out in the Zones."

"I'll remember that," Bob says dryly. "You know I'm still not a hundred convinced you're not a raving lunatic."

Frank smiles softly and takes a sip of his own coffee.

"Speaking of," Bob says, putting down his mug and looking at Frank with a serious expression. "How are things with all that?"

He doesn't need to clarify what he means by 'all that.'

"Yeah, I'm good," Frank says. "I slept for, like, twelve hours after I got out the hospital and woke up still here!"

He doesn't tell Bob that he was so scared of going to sleep that night that he had a full-blown panic attack and ended up scaring the shit out of Gerard in the process too. Gerard had insisted on Frank staying at his that night; the official explanation for Frank's hospital stay had been that he'd been having trouble sleeping, realised he'd accidentally taken too many sleeping pills and called Bob. Gerard said that he was determined to take care of Frank, but Frank suspected that there was that darker thought on everyone's minds that the 'overdose' might not have been entirely an accident.

Gerard had done the best he could that night and tried to comfort Frank but there was no way that Frank could ever explain why he was so scared to fall asleep – what if it didn't work? What if he woke up back in 2019? What if something had gone wrong and the 2019 Frank had ended up a vegetable?? Worse still, due to his apparent "accidental overdose" he wasn't allowed to take any kind of narcoleptics on doctor's orders and what with the whole 'recovering alcoholic' thing on Gerard's part, Frank just didn't feel comfortable drinking himself into an early coma.

Eventually, Gerard had curled himself around Frank and tried to soothe him to sleep, wiping away the tears and whispering comforting words and somehow, it eventually worked because the next thing Frank knew, he was waking up... and he was still in Gerard's bed with Gerard snoring softly in his ear, and he actually felt like he'd actually slept.

And that was it.

Frank refused to let himself dwell on how things were between Fun Ghoul and Party Poison. If the portal had closed successfully, then they'd be fine. They had each other now.

And that was all Frank would let himself think on the matter.

Meanwhile, the conversation Frank and Gerard had the following morning in 2011 hadn't been particularly fun either.

"Look, Frank, I get that you keep a lot of what you're feeling bottled up but I'm worried about you," Gerard said. "Something is clearly wrong and I just want you to fucking talk to me about it, because, seriously, I don't know what to do or how to help you."