Devil's Work (Frerard / Priest!Gerard)

Twenty Eight

Chapter Twenty Eight

The moment me and Ray were alone he ambushed me with questions.

Luckily this did not happen until we got back to the house and he followed me into my room, meaning I'd bought myself valuable time to try and think of a valid excuse to explain my actions. Of course, I knew nothing except the truth would truly explain everything that had happened in that short space of time, but that simply wasn't an option for me. 

"So" he tapped his foot impatiently against the ground, standing in the doorway of my room "are you going to explain what the hell happened to you last night?" I'd never actually seen my cousin angry before, so it was a weird adjustment to say the least. He still wasn't in any way threatening or even scary, but I was weary of him all the same. 

"Look Ray i'm really sorry that I left so suddenly-" 

"Cut the crap and tell me what happened Frank" he surprised me by interrupting me mid-sentence, making me go quiet for a moment. 

"I told you. There was all that confusion, and then I bumped into one of my other friends. I really didn't want to have to come back here, so I agreed to go crash at his place" I was panicking as I spoke as it was obvious he didn't believe me. My voice rose in pitch and I started to toy nervously with my sleeves "I shouldn't texted you sooner - phoned you even - I just couldn't find you in the crowd that's all." 

"What friend?" he spat "I was standing with all of your friends. Hell, we were all searching for you for about ten minutes! We even tried to get back into the venue but they wouldn't allow it. Jimmy tried to push past the fucking security because we thought you could be trapped inside a potentially burning building. And where were you? Crashing at an imaginary friends!" He spat almost venomously. 

Guilt flooded through me like a tidal wave. I hadn't thought about how they might have presumed it was a real fire. I just assumed that everyone would just consider it an inconvenience at the most. The thought of them worrying over me when I had in fact been the one to pull the allarm made me squirm internally, wishing there was a way I could tell Ray any aspect of the truth. 

"Oh so now you go quiet" he scoffed "we were all so fucking worried, Frank. And then I get that tiny, two lined text from you acting like everything's absolutely fine. I tried to call you back and yet you couldn't even be bothered to pick up your phone. Honestly, I don't know why I bothered lying for you today." 

"Ray please-" 

"No. Unless you're going to tell me where you really were and exactly why it was so important that you couldn't even manage to turn your phone on, then forget it. I don't want to hear any more lies" he shut me up as i scrambled for some sort of lie that would suffice and make him believe I had a genuine reason. 

I wished I could just tell him the truth, but I think he would have considered that the most elaborate lie of all. What teenager in their right mind would believe that I of all people was fucking a priest? He'd probably believe the drug story over that one. Even though I had no history with drugs of any description except the cigarettes hidden in my bag, that didn't mean people didn't automatically class me under that label. 

Sometimes the moment you do one thing wrong, everyone just assumes you'll have signed yourself up for everything illegal along the way. I'm not saying people were wrong to make these sort of assumptions about me as I would probably do it myself, but sometimes I wished that they wouldn't. 

"I'm sorry" I just sighed in defeat "I promise i'll tell you. I swear. I just... can't right now" I glanced up at him to see he was shaking his head at me, arms crossed over his chest in a defiant stance.