The Pocket Universe Effect - the feeling that nothing else outside your little bubble of reality can quite matter at all. One am on a Friday in June, admist quiet neighbourhoods of New Jersey, the Ieros are away on a night out and Frank and Gerard are sprawled out across Gerard's green anorak, without the capacity to care about anything other than the night sky and the way the stars reflect in each other's eyes.

Frank is a hopelessly short, hopelessly desperate, and just generally hopeless highschooler, whose only friend is the amazingly tall kid with the 'fro: Ray Toro. School is mundane, school is just, well, school: Lindsey Ballato is a goddess, Pete Wentz is a MySpace whore, and Brendon Urie totally deserved getting kicked in the balls last summer, but then Mikey fucking Way turns up and before Frank knows it he's over at the Way household and swooning over an unfairly hot older brother who has totally just made out with an overly casual Lindsey Ballato. And that's not even to mention Gerard's past and sort of ex-boyfriend Bert McCracken who he kind of did, kind of didn't leave in the old town he and Mikey just moved from, but what is for sure is that Gerard Way can't help but stare at Mikey's sort of best friend, Frank, just a little too much. But Gerard is older and sort of world's away from Frank's league: he's like Lindsey Ballato - unobtainable and godly, and most definitely a member of the elite sex club that Frank reckons Lindsey's involved in. And this elite club of people who've seen Gerard Way naked? Let's say, Frank Iero wants in... to Gerard's pants. However Mikey thinks that it's less of a club and more of a support group.

Gerard was late, and it was fucking raining. He'd missed the bus and it was fucking raining, and he was totally going to get dropped from the play if he was late again and he was so fucking screwed, but honestly Gerard wasn't all that keen on it when he'd heard the only main part he'd managed to get in this damn theatre group was of a fucking crossdresser. For someone who was supposed to be in the closet, he was doing an awfully bad job of it. Frank Iero was Gerard's favourite punk ass skater dickhead, that he was currently working on eternally denying to himself the crush he had on Frank, which totally didn't exist of course, but Frank was really cute, and Gerard was really stupid; stupid enough to think that he could totally pull off pretending to be a girl in order for heterosexual Frank Iero to fall for him. Surely, this was truly the worst idea Gerard Way has ever had.

Dan is different. He's learned to accept that. Well, as best he can anyway, considering he's never really had much of a choice. It's been this way for as long as he can remember, the constant runaround process of trying to feel normal. His life is built around it, trying to trick both himself and everyone he interacts with into seeing him as your average person. The isolation as he desperately tries to keep others from finding out, the bitterness that wells up inside of him each and every time he's reminded that he'll never be like everyone else, the fear that nothing will ever change. He's fated to be this way forever; a misfit from society. Isolation can only go so far though, so when he's struggling to make ends meet and he's faced with the option of looking into a serious job or taking on a roommate, he opts for what seems like the easier option at the time. It doesn't seem so easy ten failed roommates into the process, or when he sits down at a table to meet with prospect number eleven and ends up with a coffee spilled all over his lap. Potential roommate number eleven, Phil, turns out to be an insufferable optimistic ball of sunshine that Dan wants nothing to do with. His options are running out though, as are the savings he's been using to pay his rent, so he finds himself begrudgingly agreeing to let the other man move in. Neither of them have any way of knowing just what they've gotten themselves into as they shake on the matter, but time will tell.

Frank is twenty eight: he's mentally stable for the most part, and well nobody has to know about pills he takes twice a day, do they? He's normal now, he's a person now, he's a fucking adult with an office job and he fucking hates it and that's fine, because he got out of the mental hospital three years ago, and these past three years of mundane nothingness have been the best three years of his life. Ten years ago, or so, Frank was in love with a boy called Gerard with fiery red hair and the personality of a switchblade knife, and ten years ago that boy called Gerard had killed himself. Frank still saw him though: hallucinations, as he knew them to be now, and it took him years in a hospital he never thought he'd get out of to convince himself of his newfound sanity, but he was okay now. Twenty eight year old Frank Iero had been officially 'okay' since he was twenty five. He hadn't seen Gerard again, and he didn't even think about the guy - he was just normal, and he was almost painfully content with being the secretary to someone with a five figure salary. But of course, on one fateful morning in December, that has to go and change, doesn't it? (Technically a sequel to Summertime, but I wouldn't say you need to have read Summertime to understand and enjoy this)