Archive of Our Own

A wolf-whistle, low and piercing, splits through the sacred serenity of Frank’s pre-show cigarette. It’s coming from the parking lot that he’s loitering by the edge of, smoking on the curb. He doesn’t have to look up to know who it is.

“I like that skirt, baby,” calls Bert. “Show me what’s under?”

Bert McCracken is currently being dragged to West Stage by his tired-looking band, his face leering behind his curtain of stringy black hair. He’s leering at Gee, of course, who’s standing beside Frank and stubbing out her own cigarette. 

“Hmm, I dunno,” she says. “What’s in it for me?”

Frank’s too busy rolling his eyes to catch the surely pornographic gesture Bert’s making in response to this. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I’m worth a lot, mister.” 

Bert just grins. “Flash me,” he says. 

“You first,” says Gee, and when Frank turns, incredulously, to look at her, she’s batting her eyelashes down at Bert like Betty fucking Boop. 

That spells disaster. “Don’t try him,” Frank warns at the same time Quinn’s grabbing for Bert before his hands, which had been directly en-route for his belt and, therefore, junk, could reach their destination. He gets real fucking close but Quinn’s faster. Used to this, probably. 

Frank reconsiders. Definitely.

“Thanks, Gee,” Quinn says, yanking Bert along while the man laughs and laughs, belt now dangling open and clinking with his every step, “always a delight to see you, break a leg Frank, catch y’all later.” 

Gee, serenely, blows back a kiss. 

When the peace is restored and The Used are safely inside of the venue, Frank stubs out his cigarette which had long since burned down to the filter. “I don’t know how you put up with him.”

“Aw, he’s harmless,” says Gee, character broken. She’s smiling her crooked Gee smile down at him now, the familiar one that shows all her little, strange teeth. “He’s a nice guy, just fucking around.”

Fucking around with you, thinks Frank, getting up and dusting off his knees. He doesn’t say that. “Weird way of being nice.”

“Don’t be jealous, Frankie,” says Gee, kicking Frank lightly in the calf with her ratty Converse, “it doesn’t suit you.” 

She’s leaving back towards the trailers before Frank can think to insist that he’s not. 

*

Gee’s like no one Frank has ever met before. 

She’s a little scary, honestly, especially on stage, where she’s a fucking powerhouse. She screams, she prowls, she crawls on all fours, and Frank can get caught up in watching her the same way he gets caught up in playing music. She knows how to put on a show. 

Their show that afternoon was awesome. The crowd was already hyped, shouting along and moshing– that’s what Frank really appreciates about music festivals. There’s just a vibe . Everyone’s just excited to be there, to see as many bands as possible, to get caught up in the music and the festivities. 

Gee’s a little ball of fire onstage, and when they get off she tackles Mikey in an impromptu piggyback. “Hiyah!” she shouts, kicking his sides as if spurring on a horse. 

Mikey, his hair sticking to his face with sweat, shakes a little as if to dislodge her, even as his hand lays steadying on Gee’s arms. “Get off,” he complains. “You always do this.”

“Carry me into the sunset!” Gee says, laughing into her brother’s hair as gives in. He carries her out of the venue and back into the parking lot, wheezing a little as he goes, Gee’s sneakers buzzing around his side like flies. She cranes her head to see Frank and the others and gives them a wave. “Bye, fuckers! I’m off into the sunset.”

“With your ever loyal steed,” says Mikey, stopping to hop Gee further up his back, “who says you need a shower. Seriously. I saw some stalls inside.”

Gee kicks him in the side. “You need a shower.”

“Fine, me first,” Mikey says, and then they’re too far away for Frank to hear their bickering which, of course, animatedly continues. 

He turns to Ray, who’s sliding down onto a box of cables next to some dilapidated amps, and gives his shoulder a punch. “Lookin’ good out there, man,” he says, feeling his face split in a grin. 

“You’re not so bad yourself,” says Ray, and hands Frank a cigarette to bum without Frank even needing to ask. God damn, Ray is the best. 

*

They don’t actually get to shower before they’re herded off into a “signing thing,” as Brian so eloquently put it. Frank feels like he’s marinating in himself. Ray had baby wipes, and there’s, like, Porta Pottie sinks dotting the Warped Tour landscape, but that’s not really doing much for anybody. Frank’s hair is all flat and his mouth feels so dry his tongue’s getting stuck to his palette. He needs water. Enough water to drown in. 

Gee’s fixing the tie around her neck as they approach the makeshift barricade. There’s about a hundred teenagers there waiting for them, flailing up various signables and limbs for them to mark with the Sharpies that are being suddenly pressed into their hands, and even though Frank’s face is melting from tiredness there’s enough joy that stirs in him at the sight that he feels himself start to smile. 

A few minutes in and several questions dodged about new albums, new girlfriends, new boyfriends, anything these teenagers could think to ask, Frank looks over and sees Gee’s mascara is smudged. It kind of looks badass, running down her face like a black tear. He makes a note to tell her later. 

The impermanence of the barrier setup begins to show its flaws. Some people start trying to climb the fence or push through the cracks between the metal and soon enough the band is being shooed away by some burly bouncer-looking dudes. Frank waves and Gee blows kisses– he’s sad to go, almost, even as ruckus gets louder and louder. 

And then some kid jumps up and gets one of the bodyguard dudes in a headlock. There’s brief scrambling as everyone rushes forwards, and Brian’s turning to look at the band, shouting “Go! Go back to the trailers!” like they’re suddenly in some zombie movie and have to be running for their lives from a snarling pack of walking dead. 

Mikey puts his hands in his pockets and trudges forwards at an accelerated rate and Frank and the others follow. It’s not until about fifty feet away from the fray Frank notices they’ve got no crew with them. The ruckus sounds like it’s getting more extreme.

“What the shit,” asks Bob.

“You ever seen that happen before?” says Frank.

“No,” Ray says. 

“Jeez,” says Mikey. 

Frank looks back. The guards are getting it under control, maybe, but Brian’s still making frantic flapping hand gestures at them, so he turns back around. 

“Man, it’s like those kids are zombies,” says Gee, “trying to tear that guy’s neck out.”

“That’s exactly what I thought!” says Frank. 

They aren’t far from the trailers, now, walking along the side of some brick building that runs parallel to the street. They’re in an alleyway, and that, Frank thinks, is definitely contributing to the zombie-ness of the situation. Urban apocalypse. His favorite.

Mikey, Ray, and Bob are walking faster now, talking about what Brian’ll say about this when he gets back, and Frank falls into step with Gee.

“Dawn of the Dead,” she says, and gets a kind of dreamy look on her face. 

“Shit, yeah,” Frank says. “Hey, d’you think Brian would be the type of guy in the zombie movie to get bit and then try and hide it until like, way too late?”

Gee snorts. “That seems kinda mean.”

“No, I mean like– you know how he pretends to be all tough sometimes, he’d be like ‘I’m fine, I just gotta walk this off.’” 

“With a gaping wound in his side.”

“Exactly!” 

“Well, maybe,” Gee says. “I don’t think he’d try to hide it, though, but he’d for sure try to push through it when it isn’t push-through-able.”

“Ray would do the same.”

Gee shudders. “I don’t wanna think about Ray dying.”

“Oh, but talking about Brian’s fine, then?” 

“Hey,” someone else says. “Hey, I like your tie.”

Gee stops walking and turns. There’s two guys hanging around the corner of the brick building, right where the edge of the alleyway reaches street. The one who spoke has got a cigarette in his mouth, and he takes it out again with black under his fingernails to speak again. 

“You in a band?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” says Gee at the same time Frank snaps, “what’s it to you?” 

“Relax, bud,” says the guy. His friend smiles, puts his hands into his pockets. They’re both in their twenties with short, partly buzzed hair. They wouldn’t be overly threatening if they weren’t hanging around in an alley, clearly more than a little tipsy. “We know there’s some bands in town, been meaning to go to some shows, that’s all.”

“Yeah, we’re in a band,” says Frank. He steps forward and tries both to push Gee behind him while also pretending that he’s not doing that at all. He knows how she gets when she thinks he’s being Macho Man, he knows she can handle herself. 

“Explains the clothes,” says the guy. “Hey, what d’you play? My buddy and I do some jamming sometimes, guitar and drums, nothin’ serious. Maybe you can coach us on our image.”

The Douchebag Brothers chuckle at that, and Frank’s getting pretty fed up already. 

“Yeah, maybe not,” Frank says, and then turns to leave. 

“Hey, girl, you a singer?” the guy calls out. Gee stops. There’s a twist of annoyance on her face. “The chicks are always the singer, that’s how you pull crowds.”

“Shit, that’s what we're missing, our image, man– something to look at,” says the other guy, guffawing grossly. “When you’re done playin’ around with this faggy band here, why don’t you join us for some sloppy seconds?” 

Frank’s lurching at him before Gee can grab his arm to pull him back, and the guy jerks back sloppily with all the uncoordinatedness of a drunkard, hitting his head on the brick wall behind him. 

“Frank!” Gee hisses, but Frank doesn’t even touch the guy, just gets up in his space– a hard thing to do when he’s 5’6, but this guy’s not exactly Shaquille O’Fucking Neal, and the fact that he’s drunk off his ass makes him easy to intimidate. 

“Don’t fucking talk about her like that,” says Frank, and Gee’s saying his name again but he’s still not touching the dude, just has a finger shoved in his face.

The guy puts his hands up in a mockery of innocence. “Woah, woah, didn’t mean to offend your girlfriend– it was a compliment to her, can you just take it?”

“Can you just take a dick?” says Gee, still trying to pull Frank away. 

And the other dude, the one not cowering under Frank’s All-Mighty-Finger-Point-Of-Wrongdoing, must really have a death wish because he says, “that was rude. Why don’t you keep your bitch on a tighter leash?” 

Gee jumps at him. Frank shoots out an arm to keep her back but it’s futile because he himself is about to jump this fucking douche, and he makes it one satisfying shoulder-shove in, watching the dude’s head bounce once off the brick wall behind him and then he’s going in for a punch before there comes the authoritative sound of Brian’s voice, distinctly angry: “What’s the issue here?” 

Frank barely pulls himself back. His fist shakes where it’s clenched, and the dude just clicks his jaw with a swallow, staring him down with his chin jutted up. The head bounce didn’t seem to affect him any. Maybe there were no more brain cells left to lose. 

“These fucking assholes,” he says to Brian, not looking away from the Chief asshole in question. 

“That may be,” says Brian, voice tight. “But I believe I had given you clear instruction five minutes ago to head back to the lot.” 

Frank’s eye, honest to God, twitches. 

“Yes, Brian,” Gee says. She never got as far as Frank did, from the looks of it she never got her hands on anybody, but now she wrenches her tie from the grip of the Second-in-Command asshole, who lets it go with a smirk that makes Frank’s guts churn. “Sorry, Brian.”

If Brian clocks her overly-sincere, bull-shit tone, he doesn’t comment on it. “Frank,” he says. 

Frank turns on his heel and follows her. Neither of them look back. 

The rest of the band had stopped walking where they’d made it all the way across the street about a quarter of a block away before they seemingly noticed they were walking alone. Ray looks worried, catching sight of them and a stormy Brian trailing, and Mikey looks unreadable behind his glasses which reflect the glare of the orange sunset. 

Gee stomps ahead, and Frank follows. The rest trail silently behind. 

“Don’t need you to fight my fucking battles,” she says, which is a sentiment entirely expected and entirely unfair. She’s whisper-yelling. As if the band isn’t downwind of them, catching every word. 

“You know it’s not like that,” Frank snaps. “They were being assholes.”

“It’s your ego. You can never let anything just fucking go.”

“I don’t want to let shit like that go!”

“Nothing would’ve happened if you didn’t stir them up.”

“You don’t believe that. They saw you and they thought they could get away with making a comment, you know they were being assholes from the start.”

“Maybe,” Gee seethes, “but you’re not my knight in shining armor, okay, I’m used to that shit. People are dicks. You just wanted a reason to protect somebody’s valor.” 

“That’s not true.” 

She walks faster. Her legs are shorter than even his, he outpaces her easily in normal circumstances, but now he lets her have this. He walks sandwiched between her growing distance and the rest of the band who follow quietly, waiting, no doubt, to be explained what went down. 

When Frank gets back to the trailer, Gee’s black tie is in a heap on the ground, and Gee herself is nowhere to be found. For such a small area, she’s found a knack for becoming and staying hidden for as long as she cares to.

Frank reaches into the mini fridge for a beer. He knows that can be a real long fucking time. 

*

Even though they’re camped out for the night, they don’t get a hotel. That happens sometimes, scheduling, maybe. That’s one of the main problems with getting a shitload of bands together in the middle of nowhere, the tiny hotels get overbooked quick. So they’re camping in the trailer. 

It could be worse. Ray and Bob and some of the others are heading out to parties or bonfires or other various social events that the bands put on when everyone’s stuck together like this, but Frank’s not super up to going out right now. He’s got an opportune quiet environment to spend watching Shaun of the Dead. 

The sound of crickets and cicadas and music outside is constant, lulling. Mikey’s asleep in a beanbag chair to the left of Frank on the couch. It’s rare to see him on the bus so late– Mikey’s not exactly a social butterfly, but the guy gets around. When there’s something happening, he’s always somehow there. So maybe it’s making Frank feel better that right now he’s nowhere, dead to the world in the trailer with a Coke can dangling precariously from his sleeping hand. 

Gee reappears as soon as the movie’s cast arrives in the apocalypse-ridden pub. Frank jolts to see her. 

“Sacrilege,” she says, looking at the screen. 

“Satire,” he returns, still reeling. “Brilliance. Hilarity.” 

Gee tilts her head like a cat, considering. “Fine. Scoot over,” she decides. 

Frank does. She smells like the venue soap from the showers (score!!) they had inside, something unisex and inoffensive but broadly pleasant. Her hair is still wet. 

He turns the volume up, just a little. If Mikey hasn’t woken up yet, it’s doubtful he will now. 

And he’s enjoying the delight in the knowledge that Gee’s not angry with him anymore that he isn’t even that upset that she quickly becomes the second dead-to-the-world Way sibling in the lounge room of their tour trailer. She’d offered enough appeasing chuckles through the good bits, and Frank knows that she’s pretty beat. He can never stay mad at her– not, of course, that he ever even was. 

He stands to switch off the DVD player when the movie ends and kicks back to the main menu, but there’s somebody’s copy of Scary Movie sitting right there inside the TV cabinet and he doesn’t know who brought it there or why on earth they’ve left it, but suddenly he’s craving a double feature. He replaces the DVDs, smiling secretly like he’s doing something forbidden.

There’s no audience to witness or to care. When he turns back around with the disk whirring behind him, he looks at Mikey leaning back in the beanbag and Gee slumped over the armrest, her bangs flopping into her face and rendering it curtained off, all shadow. Mikey’s still holding the Coke and he’s snoring, head tilted up so his glasses don’t slide off. 

Frank slides back onto the couch. He turns the volume almost all the way down, leans his head back too, and the next thing he knows his arms are tingling back to sense and his neck feels like it has a plastic crick stuck into the base of it. 

He tries to move his head to the left– sunlight. Goddammit. His neck cracks. God dammit. He’s really not that old, there’s absolutely no reason why falling asleep sitting up should make him this fucking creaky, like a decrepit rocking chair. 

What a depressing thought. Frank looks down and, oh. Gee’s head is on his thigh. 

Frank’s hand is on her back, fingers splayed out, like he’s comforting Gee who’s curled in on herself in almost fetal position and, principally, laying her head on his thigh. It’s the way she was sitting before but rotated ninety degrees. She’s breathing steadily, slowly, and every time she exhales a little piece of black hair lifts from her nose before falling back down with her inhales. Her nose, which is nestled against Frank’s knee. 

She’s really warm. 

“Oh,” says Mikey. “Shit.”

Frank looks up to see Mikeyway standing over him caught as if in a snapshot of action, one arm and one leg outstretched like the fucking Sasquatch. He’s looking down at Frank with a weirdly unguarded expression of surprise, very un-Mikey like. His hair is sticking up in at least three new and different directions, an improvement on the stupid scene kid hair, and he’s looking at Frank like he’s just broken a very important ancient artifact in a very important ancient history museum. 

Frank looks back. His hand on top of Gee is asleep. 

“Hm?” Gee murmurs sleepily, in fact, she’s probably still mostly unconscious. She rubs her face against his leg. Frank’s fingers pinprick and tingle with static. 

“Shit,” Mikey repeats. “Um, sorry.” 

And then he jolts forward like a newborn foal, and, in a spectacular display of Chekhov's gun, kicks over the can of Coke he’d left last night next to the beanbag, spilling bubbling carbonation everywhere. 

*

Once everybody's given up on trying to clean the new caramel stain out of the tour bus carpet, Frank joins Gee outside for a smoke. 

He’d left her dozing on the couch to get some coffee while Mikey scrambled for paper towels, waking up the rest of the band and the crew in the process. Frank and the others had already made up their minds that trying to clean was pointless about thirty seconds into the insufficient wiping attempt, but Mikey was adamant that he was making a difference with the towels and he scowled so menacingly when anyone tried to remove him from the scene that Frank decided he was not needed and just left. 

Gee’s smoking on the steps of the trailer, yawning around the cigarette. 

“Hey, ‘s that your breakfast?” Gee asks as Frank’s sleep-clumsy hands fumble to work the lighter. 

“Mmm,” Frank affirms around the cigarette in his mouth, and then his eyes lock on to a little plastic bowl Gee’s holding in her other hand. 

“Want some Lucky Charms?” 

She blows smoke in his face when she turns to look at him. He grimaces. 

“Sorry.” She takes the cigarette from her mouth to rifle around in the bowl with chipped silverish nails, tossing grains and marshmallows in instead and crunching loudly. “They’re a little stale but still good.”

“They’re always stale,” Frank says, and eyes the bowl with more awake distaste. “Also that shit is so not vegetarian.”

“What- ever,” she says, crunching on some more. “It’s probably not even real marshmallow anyway, it’s like ninety percent sawdust, no real gelatin. I bet you’re fine.”

“You’re not really making a good argument for them,” he says. But he takes some anyway. And grimaces. Again. 

She smirks. “Told ya.” She puts the cigarette back to her mouth. 

Frank casts a look behind him at the trailer door. “I want more coffee,” he says, “but your freak of a brother is freaking me out in there.”

“What, cause he’s cleaning?”

“He never cleans,” Frank agrees. 

“Yeah, well.” Gee lets out a decisive puff of smoke. “I dunno, maybe he’s embarrassed.” 

“Hah.”

Gee makes a face. “He does get embarrassed, you know, if he just hides it better than most people.”

Frank doesn’t really have anything to say to that, so he doesn’t. 

“Did he really stay here the whole night?” Gee asks quietly. “I conked out kinda early.”

“Yeah,” says Frank, “as far as I know. Passed right the fuck out with his soda about fifteen minutes into Shaun of the Dead.”

Gee nods. And then she nods again, pushing the hair back from her face and staring off into the middle distance, and oh, that’s not a good sign. 

“It’s weird, but it’s not bad weird. It’s good weird. For Mikeyway, at least,” Frank says. He doesn’t say maybe he’s worried about you. He especially doesn’t say he was watching me this morning, looking downright afraid when he saw you fall asleep on my lap. Gee hates knowing people are concerned for her, even though they often are, and probably justified in it, too. 

“Good weird,” she repeats. And now that look in her eyes is definitely Big Sister Concern. 

“He knew you were upset,” Frank hedges, “so he stayed in. That’s all.” 

“He shouldn’t have to worry about me,” Gee says instinctively. 

“Watching out for you isn’t the same as worrying, not the same as thinking you can’t take care of yourself.” 

Frank kinda realizes he sounded like an asshole right after the words come out of his mouth, but Gee just looks at him with a new kind of seriousness and scoots a little closer to him on the steps. “Hey,” she says. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“No, no, you shouldn’t have to be sorry.”

“I am, though,” she insists, getting dangerously close to eye rolling. “And I know I don’t have to be.” 

Frank should just keep his mouth shut. He nods minutely. “Okay.”

“I was an asshole to you. You stood up for me and I yelled at you like a jerk.”

“I understand why you were upset. I was fuckin’ upset, too. And you know what, you’re allowed to be angry at the way I handled that situation, cause I was also being kind of a dick.”

“You were,” she says, lips quirked. “But not to me. They had it coming.”

Frank grins. “Fuckin’ right they did,” he says. “If only Brian hadn’t been there to hold me back.”

“Hold you back? He didn’t even touch you. And you didn’t even throw a punch.”

“I would’ve. I was about to.”

“Yeah, alright. But us, against the two of them? We wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“You’re five foot six.”

“I think my attitude and also general disregard for my physical well-being puts me up at least another…” He trails off, trying to be realistic in his estimate. “...Four inches.”

“Four?” She raises her eyebrow and not-so-tactfully looks down. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Hey,” he says, flushing. “Hey. Just cause I’ve lost more fights than I’ve won doesn’t mean I couldn’t have done some serious damage. If only to their egos.”

“Losing to you has got to hurt,” she says, very solemnly, and they just look at each other. And then start to laugh uncontrollably. 

“You’re so mean,” he says, pushing her shoulder while she snort-cackles, Lucky Charms spilling out of the bowl she still had clutched in her hand. “I’m kicking you out of the band.”

“You would never,” she says, shoving back, “plus, you know, you don’t even have the authority, you’re not even a founding member.”

“I was close enough. My arrival made the band a band.”

“We can get another guitarist.”

“I’m irreplaceable,” Frank declares, stealing another handful of Lucky Charms. 

Gee snorts, looking up at him through her floppy bangs and smiling her strange, lopsided smile. Frank really wants to kiss her. 

Fuck. Shit. He wrenches his eyes away from her mouth but then he’s just staring at her upturned, sharp nose, like a little pixie, and that doesn’t help even a little bit. God, he needs to get over himself. There was adoration there, sure, when he first joined the band, because she’s fucking talented and maybe kind of exactly his type, but he thought he was over that. He’s been trying to get over that. She should be like his sister. 

Gee’s pulling a last drag out of her cigarette before dropping it and crushing it into the pavement, oblivious. “We could bring it to a vote,” she says. 

“You and I both know this isn’t a democracy,” Frank returns, but his voice is a little shaky. 

“Right,” she says, picking out the last marshmallow in her bowl and popping it in her mouth, “I forgot. I’m the evil dictator overlord and you are all my subservient lackeys, trapped within the machinations of my evil plot to take over the world.” 

Frank swallows. “Right. Of course.” He looks around suddenly, wildly. “I think it’s safe to go in now. D’you want more coffee?”

Gee slumps back against the railing of the steps and suddenly she’s just Gee again as Frank’s always known her, not a summation or an ideal, just her, tired and in need of caffeine. “You should never even have to ask,” she says, and Frank rises then to his feet, chest beating, trying to remind himself in a mantra of sister, sister, sister. 

*

They play another show a day or so later and it manages to be just slightly less banging than the one last. It’s a hot day– mid July in the mid Americas gets that way sometimes– and Frank’s sweating like crazy but trying to let himself get caught up in the music. When he gets caught up in the music, everything’s better. But even though the show is going well, Frank catches Gee fidgeting throughout, and during the end of the set she’s continually unsticking her shirt from where it sticks to her chest in the heat and rolling down the hems of her mid-thigh jorts. 

As soon as the tech takes his guitar he’s walking up to her, but Mikey swoops in beside her before he can. Frank hangs back and tries not to feel like a creep for listening to their conversation. 

Mikey says something to her quietly as they filter through the tents that make up the backstage, but the humming of fans and the chatter of the crowd and crew and the distant ring of tuning instruments all do a good job of blocking his words out. Gee doesn’t look too upset from under her sunglasses and as they reach their trailers, she smiles clearly at him and says, “well, sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

“Only if you wanna,” he says, and she ruffles his hair. She really has to reach for the top of his head. Frank imagines it’s a movement that was easier achieved when they both were younger. 

“Let’s do it,” she says. 

Brian appears a second later and all eyes are instantly on him. He clears his throat and pulls an envelope out from where it was sticking out of his front jean pocket. “Hotel night, guys,” he says. 

Ray claps. Frank whoops. It seems appropriate. 

“Back on the trailer by eight,” he says, and that’s so far from now that Frank can hardly comprehend how absolutely exhausted he’ll be to be moving again in, like, sixteen hours. 

Brian hands out the keys and then once he’s chatting to some roadie, Mikey is suddenly directly behind Frank and speaking to him. 

“There’s a party tonight. Some dude in Senses Fail knows a dude in wherever we are, says he wants to hold a soiree for bands at his place. His apartment, ” Mikey says, like it’s the height of luxury. Which it kind of is, Frank has to admit, after being on the road for so long. 

“Are you gonna go?” asks Frank, even though he knows that’s what he was just telling Gee about, which means Gee’s going, too. Which Frank’s going to pretend means about half of what it really does to him. 

“Course,” says Mikey. “So’s everyone. You in?”

Frank is in such a light mood he avoids telling Mikeyway that sometimes he sounds like a teenager in a bad movie in which high schoolers talk in ways they definitely don’t in real life. “Course,” he returns, which makes Mikey grin, just a little. 

“Cool. Me and Gee’ll be at your room at nine,” he says, and then turns away towards the bus.

For a second, Frank feels like the teenager in the bad movie about teenagers. He clutches the room key Brian gave him (sharing with Bob, because of course) and feels an illogical, reckless excitement that makes gathering up all his belongings to throw into one beat-to-hell duffel bag feel just a little more glamorous than it is. Hotel night. A party. It’s not senior prom, but right now, it feels kind of close. 

*

“Frank, stop being a girl for two seconds in there, I have to piss,” says Bob, banging on the door. 

“That’s sexist,” says Frank, opening the bathroom door with the iron clutched in his hand, his product-damp hair steaming and hissing. “A dude’s gotta look pretty, too.” 

“Fine, stop preening yourself like a bird, then.”

“You wear makeup too,” Frank accuses. 

“Sure I do. I’m just not excessive about it when there’s only one bathroom.” 

“Well,” Frank says, “I’m finishing up now. All I need’s the mirror and this plug for the iron.”

“Dude, get out. I said I have to piss. Are you for real?”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Frank says, and Bob rolls his eyes and grumbles and shoulder checks him as he walks by. Carefully, of course, so Frank doesn’t burn his eyebrows off, which is nice. 

“Fuckin’ privacy,” Bob says on his way to the toilet, “that’s what I miss.” 

Frank ignores him. It’s not like he’s looking, and plus, like any of them have the right to complain of lack of privacy. There’s no such thing as personal space or secrecy when you’re living on the road stuffed into a bus with like nine other people. And also, he’s in a time crunch. It’s about 8:45 and the right side of his hair keeps falling flat where he’s trying to get it spikey. He rarely gets to use the flat iron when they’re on the bus. With just a little extra time, he’s trying to look nice. 

Mikey knocks on their door three minutes early and when Frank’s about to start throwing hair products and his flat iron at the mirror, seven years of bad luck be damned. He opens it after sending the aforementioned bottles into a spinning clamor in the sink, deciding fucking whatever, he looks like he always does, which’ll have to be fine. God. Maybe Bob’s right, he is kind of a girl sometimes. 

“Ready?” asks Mikey. 

Gee’s behind him, rolling back on her heels. She looks a little nervous but she’s dressed up nice in a black shirt with jeans, her bangs scene-kid straight, which is further proof that Mikey hadn’t dragged her out tonight. If Gee doesn’t want to go somewhere, she makes it pretty obvious. Now, she smiles at him. 

“Yeah,” Frank says, grinning back. 

“Is Bob coming?”

“Bob!” Frank yells into the hotel room, one hand braced on the doorframe. “You coming?”

“Nah,” is the response. Bob’s easing himself onto the bed furthest from the door, beer in hand. “You crazy kids have fun.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Frank says, but he’s stepping out of the doorframe and into the hallway. “You never wanna do anything.”

“I do plenty of things,” says Bob in a way that invites a great deal of mystery. 

Frank doesn’t have time to unpack that. “Well, have a good time jerking off alone in there,” he says, and closes the door. 

“I will,” promises Bob.

Mikey’s making a face when the door clicks shut. “You better hope he’s not charging that pay per view to your card.” 

“He wouldn’t,” Frank says, but checks his pockets for his wallet just in case. He finds twenty bucks cash. Shit. No card. 

There must be some horror in his face, because Gee says, “he probably wouldn’t, right?” 

“Probably.” Frank looks back at the door. He can’t go back in for his wallet. His pride is at stake. 

“You’ll find out one way or another,” says Mikey, and grabs Frank’s arm to pull him along. “C’mon, I don’t wanna be late.” 

*

“Where on earth is this party?” Gee grumbles some minutes later. 

It’s still fucking hot outside. And it’s humid, too, go figure. Frank’s sliding a hand desperately down his hair in the front parts, trying to stop it from trying to frizz over. He doesn’t know why he cares, but suddenly, he’s almost a little bit concerned with looking presentable. 

Presentable, of course, would be impossible. Presentable implies a button down and slacks, meet-the-family, business casual, but more importantly, the concept of being presentable is impossible without someone to present to. And there’s nobody, so then that’s not what he’s doing.

Mikey’s leading them ahead quickly, turning around occasionally to make sure his company hadn’t wandered away or gotten lost, like an exceptionally skinny gun dog traipsing ahead of its hunting party. “Around here,” he says unhelpfully, and ducks quickly around a corner in the road. 

The sidewalk crunches under Frank’s sneakers. The area they’re in is quiet, rows of businesses and office buildings interspersed with the occasional apartment complex, all buildings looming blobish and unspecific in the nighttime. It doesn’t seem like there’s a bustling party scene happening here, but Frank’s admittedly not good at understanding cities he hasn’t lived in his whole life so there’s a nonzero chance that he’s just missing something.

Mikeyway is never wrong about parties. He has a sixth sense about them. If Mikey says there’s a party worth being at, then Frank will be there. And if he says it enough and with enough conviction, Gee will be there, as well, which is just a bonus. 

“Through here,” says Mikey, leading them through an archway between two large buildings, passing through a glass door, and suddenly they’re in the lobby of an apartment building, staring at the gray slab on the wall of apartment buzzers. 

Gee makes a noise. “You didn’t even write down any directions,” she says. 

“312,” Mikey says, and they’re heading up. 

*

It rapidly becomes apparent that this party is quite similar to the ones Frank remembers from high school. There’s beer pong and a heated Foosball game and he even thinks he spots some emo girls passing around an Ouija board alongside their blunt. There’s a mountain of alcohol on the kitchen counter that no one seems to be keeping a good constant eye on. There’s rock vague enough to be inoffensive but bass-y enough to inspire some dancing pumping over some speakers. The only difference is that this party is composed of sweaty, scruffy band dudes that Frank recognizes more often than not rather than pimply teenagers. 

Frank’s chatting to Kenny from The Starting Line and someone he vaguely recognizes as one of their roadies when Bert makes his appearance. 

“Hi, there,” he says to Gee, putting his arm around her and kissing her cheek. “How’ve you been?”

“Look at you!” says Gee, kissing his cheek in return. “Out and about in the land of the living. At a party, no less. What’re you, civilized now?”

“I could say the same to you.” He squeezes her to his side. 

Gee giggles. It’s a nasally giggle, almost snorting, and her eyes are bright. 

“I got you a drink,” says Bert. He steps back and hands her a cup. Red Solo cup– Frank’s just drowning in high school cliches tonight. “Well, actually, it’s mine, but I don’t want it anymore. Vodka Red Bull. Not my thing, but I know you love ‘em.”

“Did you just come over here to offload your shit?” Gee teases, but takes the drink. 

“Course not, I’m just saying it made me think of you,” says Bert. “Plus, I wanted the view.” 

“View of this corner?” 

“And other things,” says Bert. “You getting a lot of guys hitting on you tonight? Anyone I need to be on the lookout for?”

“Maybe, but I scare ‘em off on my own,” she says. 

“You are a little scary,” agrees Bert. “Scary hot.”

“And yet you’re undeterred, I see.”

“Baby, I’m undeterrable,” he says, slinking closer to her. “That’s my whole thing.” 

She pushes his face away, laughing, and then she says something too soft for Frank to hear that makes him grin. 

Frank doesn’t realize he’s craning to hear and see until Kenny’s glaring at him. “Dude,” Kenny says. Frank becomes aware that he’s just been missing the better part of a conversation about guitar pedals. 

“Spaced out,” he says unconvincingly. 

Kenny takes a sip of his drink. “Word to the wise? Tone down the ogling. Tends to freak girls out a little, god knows why.” 

“Ogling?” Frank repeats innocently, but there’s a rising voice inside of him that feels a lot like bile and it’s saying man, you’re just as bad as the rest of them.

*

Frank stumbles out for some air sometime later. He couldn’t find a balcony or anything at the party and his head was buzzing. He needs a cigarette. 

He’d slipped some shooters into his jean pockets from the party like an alcoholic, so they rattle around as he fishes for his box of cigarettes and a lighter. It’s not often he finds free booze on Warped. He’s allowing himself to feel a little like an alcoholic if he can justify it by being resourceful. 

He thinks, infuriatingly, about Gee as he sits down on a hard metal bench, cigarettes successfully fished for. He wonders where she went. If she’s going off with Bert. 

It’s stupid, but he wants to text her. Tell her to come out. Because now he just really wants to leave, but he’s not leaving until he knows where she’s sleeping tonight. 

Like he’d willed it, his phone buzzes. Frank puts the cigarette in his mouth and reaches for it, perhaps too quickly and perhaps too shakily, but when he stares at the screen it’s just a text from Mikey. 

Were u @, reads the text. 

Smoking, writes back Frank. Then he sighs and types again– he can never manage to be as concise as Mikey is. Didn’t leave just outside. Why? Is it wrapping up in there?  

There’s nothing for another minute, then his phone buzzes again. G wants 2 go. Her phones ded. 

Gee’s phone is always dead. And reading that text, Frank feels strangely relieved. No Bert, then. Hallelujah. U know how to get back. Idk where we are. U staying? 

Ya, texts Mikey, and then rattles off a list of directions back to their hotel laden with Mikey-speak. Frank squints at his phone. They’re followable. And Frank’s got some cash, he’d rather not take a cab, but if Gee doesn’t want to walk, he can spare the expense. Mikey’s text saga ends with, sendin her 2 u. 

Frank stubs out the cigarette decisively. K, be safe. 

U2. Txt me whn shes in the room. 

Will do. Frank grinds the cigarette into the sidewalk, feels bad about littering for a second, and then stares back down at his phone. Mikey’s words: sendin her 2 u. It feels like an endorsement. Obviously Frank shouldn’t need validation that Mikey trusts him around his sister, but, well, he knows Mikey, and he knows Mikey’s sister. There’s trust there, from all angles. It’s nice. 

Just as Frank stands in preparation to leave, the apartment lobby doors open and out stumbles Gee, her hair a mess, waving her phone.

“Fuckin’ died,” she says to him, and stumbles on. She’s drunk, obviously. Which is a little strange considering that the last time Frank saw her, she was mostly-sober and chatting to some punk rock girl friends, but that was over an hour ago. “Fuck. I’m tired.” 

“Let’s get you to bed, then,” says Frank, and of course he’s fucking drunk, too, which is his excuse for the poor choice in words. He hopes desperately that Gee won’t comment.

Of course that hope is futile. Gee looks at him, halfway successful to putting her (dead) phone back in her jean pocket, before cackling with laughter. “Oh,” she laughs. “Oh, that’s not even the worst come on I’ve heard all night.” 

“It wasn’t a come on,” Frank insists, but Gee just straightens up and walks the rest of the way over to him, still laughing. 

“I know,” she says, patting his arm. “I set you up. But god, you wouldn’t even believe. I had to get out of there.” 

“Are you okay?” Frank asks. 

“Yeah, yeah. Fine.” She gets quieter. “Nothing happened.”

Frank can read between the lines. Gee’s face is expressive all the time but when she’s drunk that dials up to eleven. She can’t hide shit. This is about Bert. 

“Okay,” he says. 

Her eyes flick up to him. Then back down.

Frank clears his throat. “Are you good to walk?”

“Yeah, fine,” she says again. They fall into pace beside each other, Frank keeping his phone open with one hand to check every now and again. “You got a smoke?”

“Oh, yeah,” Frank says, and puts his free hand in his pocket. The plastic of the shooters rattle around and Gee gives him a sidelong look. 

She doesn’t say anything though, just receives the Marlboro box gratefully. “Thanks.” She taps her own pockets. “Goddammit. You bring your lighter?”

“Yeah,” says Frank, and gives it to her.

She stops walking to light it. “Girl pants have no fuckin’ pockets.”

“So I’ve heard,” says Frank. 

She laughs. And then it’s silent between them.

Frank’s trying to remember if any of these streets look familiar. It’s a bit harder to gauge with the sun fully down and the streetlights on, and Mikey’s directions leave a lot to be desired. Maybe he should’ve got a cab. But the breeze ruffling through his sweaty hair is nice, and out of the corner of his eye he watches Gee bob along, twisting the ends of her hair, blowing smoke towards the weeds wrapping themselves around chain link fences down by her feet. It’s a warm evening. The sound of distant highways is lulling. 

“I didn’t– sorry if I’m dragging you out of the party,” Gee says. “It’s only, like, twelve. That’s practically seven o’clock on Warped time.”

“Warped time,” Frank repeats, just to try it out. Okay, so maybe he’s a little drunk. Sue him. “No, no, you didn’t drag me anywhere. I wanted to go. It’s nice to see people, but it gets to a point.” 

“Yeah. I couldn’t– I had to get out of there.”

Frank looks at her. Her face is carefully blank. She said that before, but this time, it sounds a lot more serious. “What happened?” 

She smokes. Looks at him, notices him looking, shakes her head as she blows out smoke. “It’s nothing.”

“Was it Bert?” Frank asks before he can stop himself. 

Gee “hah!”s very suddenly. A quick nod, and then she goes quiet again. Walks a few more paces. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” she says. 

Frank bites down the sudden vitriolic reply of you sure looked like you did. He doesn’t mean that, he doesn’t think of Gee as anything other than what she is, who she’s always been. He wishes he lit a cigarette now, just so maybe he’d have an idea of what to do with his hands.

“It’s not– I like him, I really do, but tonight he just said something. Like we were talking about touring, how it feels so open and so claustrophobic at the same time, I swear he just gets things in ways nobody else does, and we were talking about tour buses. And bunks. And out of nowhere, he just says, when are you gonna let me get you in my bed, for real?” 

This sounds exactly like Bert to Frank. Unsurprised as he is, he catalogs the way Gee’s hand shakes as she raises the cigarette again. 

“I didn’t know it was really like that,” she says.

“He tried something?” Frank says, because he feels like he’s a step or two behind– honestly, he kind of figured he and Gee were sleeping together, or at least fooling around. He’s seen them kiss, seen the way he looks at her. But when Gee looks up at him, her eyes are dark and shiny. 

“No,” she says. “No, and it’s not like– I laughed him off, and he didn’t, like, touch me– not really, anyway. Oh, God, you probably think I’m the dumbest girl alive. Like, even after all of this, I somehow didn’t consider that he just wants to fuck me.” 

Frank shoves his hands in his pockets. And nods, even though Gee’s not even looking at him. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, truthfully. It feels like the right thing to say. “I don’t think you’re stupid, either. That’s a shitty thing for him to do.”

“It never felt like I was promising something, or withholding something, but that’s probably what it was, right? I felt that when he said that. The way he phrased it, like he was just waiting for me to give him what he deserved.” She’s babbling now, syllables getting lost to her lisp, to the booze loosening her tongue. Her eyes are wild and so is her hair because she keeps rucking it up, tugging at it, gesticulating with her hands still tangled in the strands. “Maybe I'm the idiot. Maybe I’ve been, like, leading him on– we flirt, you know, and I don’t mind that, seriously, but it’s– different, this expectation, and I thought he understood.” 

Frank feels violently angry. And also like he’s about to puke. “It’s not your fault for not fucking him,” he says. “You didn’t promise him shit. You don’t owe him anything. He’s an asshole. I could– God, Gee, you didn’t do anything wrong, your relationships don’t have to be fucking transactional . ”

“I know,” she says, and it’s so quiet, so jarring, that it stops his sudden rage. “I just didn’t always think it could happen to me.” Her voice somehow gets even smaller, ant-like. “I’m so fuckin’ new at this.”

She stubs her cigarette out on an ashtray as they pass one, atop a green garbage can overflowing with pizza boxes. The way she crushes it is meditative, smothering it with her shiny fingernails. Frank doesn’t know what to say so he just watches her.

“I didn’t date in high school.”

“Me neither,” Frank says, puzzled. 

“Not everyone does, but. I don’t think I ever understood how to perceive myself, like in a girl way, with myself, attractively. It’s– I’ve never walked into a party expecting to be hit on. There’s creeps, there’s always been, but. I don’t mean to be self-pitying, I just mean that I never thought I was someone particularly worth paying attention to. Worth waiting for.”

“You are so fucking worth it,” Frank says, and literally stops walking, because shit, he doesn’t mean it like that. “Not worth transactional relationships– you’re worth the attention, I mean. Not like that. Fuck. People should pay attention to you. You’re fucking– talented, you’re funny, you’re more than these creeps could ever even think to perceive. You don’t have to explain your space, you don’t owe anybody anything.”

He’s floundering, but when he looks at her, he finds her suddenly a lot more calm. She’s smiling a little around the fingernails she’s chewing– a sly smile with only half her mouth but both her eyes. “Thanks, Frankie,” she says, softly. “You really do help.” 

He feels like the biggest fucking loser in the world. He feels like the grossest creep, worse than Bert fucking McCracken, even. He smiles back at her. “Anytime,” he says, and it comes out strained, uncertain, guilty. 

*

All good at the hotel, Frank texts Mikey once he drops Gee off at room 214. When he left her, she kissed his cheek and then rested her head on his shoulder in the doorway. Frank’s hands hovered at her waist, letting her breathe in the stale sweat on his neck. He was a little embarrassed about that, but she didn’t seem to care. She was slow to pull back, but she did soon enough, before saying goodnight, blowing a kiss, and shutting the door. She says sleep xtra tight if ur crashin on someone’s floor. 

Frank stood outside her room for an embarrassingly long time. Then he realized she could see him through the peephole if she looked, so he told himself to get serious, and then he walked away. 

He doesn’t go back to his own room. He doesn’t really want to talk to Bob or see if he really did steal his credit card information to pay for porn, even though a mattress calls to him like a siren at sea. He’s still drunk enough still that physical discomfort is something he can stand to put off, so he walks down around the back of the hotel. There’s a garden there, some fire pits, some couches. It’s absolutely deserted, probably because it’s 3am, and Frank’s grateful. 

He sits down on a bench, lights a cigarette, and twists open a vodka shooter. Because. Gee. Frank can try to protect her from every gross creep who’s vying desperately to sleep with her, but if he’s just as guilty in his mind of the same fault as the rest of them, who does she have left to trust?

Just as he’s settling down to his agitated, sexually-charged pity afterparty, his phone buzzes. Ur looking out 4 her, Mikey’s thumbs type out. Thx. U alwys do. Nite xx.

*

He wakes to someone shaking his shoulder. 

“Hey, man,” says a voice. A voice to go with the hand which is, nauseatingly, shaking him harder now. “Frank, you alright there?”

“Blegh,” says Frank, or something like it. His mouth’s the Sahara. His head is fucking spinning. Don’t even get him started on his neck. 

“Why on earth are you out here?” asks Ray– Frank can see it’s Ray, now, hair frizzed to hell in the morning humidity. “Jesus, man, everyone’s going ape trying to find you.” 

“Shit,” says Frank. “I didn’t mean– fuck, ugh, I’m dying. Coffee.”

“Take mine,” says Ray, shoving it into his hand. “Frank, you fell asleep holding your damn phone. You’re lucky you didn’t get robbed.”

“I don’t feel very fuckin’ lucky,” says Frank. He grinds the heel of his palm into his eye. 

“Dude. Come on. We have to go. Brian thinks you’re dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Frank stands. Even though every part of his body begs him to never move again except to maybe roll over in pain and die. “I wish.” 

“Dude,” says Ray, throws an arm around Frank’s shoulder, and half-carries him from the hotel garden back to the parking lot, where there’s a bus fucking running already even though there’s a few people still scampering and ducking around it like ants. 

Frank tries to drink the coffee and it burns his tongue. Because of course. Of course it does.

“Jesus, Iero,” Brian says when Ray carries him closer. 

“Yeah,” says Frank, getting on the bus with a push on the back from Ray that feels a little condescending but still helpful. “Sorry.” 

“Frank,” says Gee, from where she’s sitting on the cracked leather couch of the bus lounge. “Jesus Christ, where were you?” 

Frank sits beside her. His head fucking kills. So does, well, everything else. “Ah, fuck. This is why I can’t ever go camping. Can’t sleep outside for shit.”

“You slept outside?” says Gee, scandalized. He wishes she weren’t. Her disbelief makes his head pound worse. 

“Outside the hotel,” Ray confirms, walking in with Brian as the bus doors close. “Found him on a bench with vodka shooters for a pillow. Phone in hand. He’s lucky nobody recognized him or even stole anything.”

“Bob, please tell me you grabbed my shit,” Frank pleads while the bus erupts in disappointment and opinions on his sleeping/drinking habits. 

“You owe me,” says Bob from somewhere behind Frank. “I even packed your makeup. Dude, you didn’t even come back to the room. I would’ve thought you died but Mikey says you texted him saying you got back to the hotel.”

“He took me back,” Gee confirms. 

“And told me it was all good,” says Mikey. 

Good, the gang’s all here. How did Frank and his killer hangover ever get so lucky? 

“So then you walked into the hotel, walked back out, and fell asleep on a bench?” surmises Ray, voice rising with every consecutive word. 

“Nail on the head,” says Frank. It feels and sounds like a gurgle. He lifts the half empty paper cup in his hand. “Coffee. More. I need to sink and fucking drown.” 

The bus erupts in argument, Frank missing every word, until Brian steps in with a gesture or facial expression that gets everyone to shut up real fast. Frank wishes he could see but he’s closing his eyes now against the flooding battery of the sun. 

“I’m sure this will all be a funny story someday,” says Brain, very seriously. “But right now I think Frank needs to be hydrated and the rest of us should talk about what Atlanta’s going to look like.”

There’s the muffled groan of everyone getting back on track, the schedule clicking back into place. But people leave him be as he’s falling asleep again, now on this couch. There’s a cup of water placed in a cupholder beside him. He drinks it, curls up on himself a little tighter, and drifts off again.

*

When they stop for food, Gee stays on and re-joins Frank on the couch. 

He’s still half-asleep, so when she reaches out to touch his shoulder and encourages him to lay down, he follows easily. Her pajama pants are soft against the side of his face as he lies in her lap, nearly threadbare, the pair with all the pictures of cats dressed up as ghosts or candy corn and holding trick-or-treat baskets. It’s nowhere near Halloween but he thinks it’s unbelievably endearing that she wears them year-round. 

“Hey,” she says, and cards a hand through his sweaty hair. “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” says Frank, eating a mouthful of pajama pants. 

She hums. She’s just petting him now, little comforting movements through his hair, down his neck. 

“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to scare anyone,” he says. He’s falling asleep again, so calm he’s just melting. “It just kinda happened.”

“Okay,” she says. It’s thoughtful. “We’re just driving tonight. Don’t have a show for a few days. I think you’ve got a good idea with all this sleeping.”

He smiles. Her thigh is soft and warm under his head. “Yeah, I'm just full of ‘em.” 

“Full of sleep,” she counters, but it’s half-hearted. She lays her palm on his neck, still and comforting. “I’m just glad you’re safe.” 

That wakes him up, a little. He doesn’t want to shift from under her warm hand but he has to, now, has to sit up blearily and look at her. The headrush he gets from the movement is insane, but still he grits out, “I was thinking about what you said.”

She looks back at him. Her hair is pulled back into a tiny ponytail that pings out from the back of her head, freshly dyed, slick black like an oil spill. Maybe he’s still drunk but Frank thinks Gee looks like something he could drown in– her pale skin like the cream of ocean spray, her eyes wet and dark, the smoothness of her warm body in pajamas. She’s liquid and Frank’s a hopeless swimmer. 

“I really wish you didn’t have to deal with the shit you do,” he says. He opens his mouth to say more, to say something thought-provoking and meaningful, but finds himself wholly incapable. “You’re fucking awesome. Guys suck.”

She stares at him, and then she laughs. It’s her snorting laugh. Frank smiles along helplessly because it’s impossible not to, and also her hand is still tangled in his hair. “Oh, my god. I know. Guys suck. You don’t have to drink yourself into a coma about it.” 

Not for the first time in twelve hours, Frank feels like the world’s most obvious idiot. 

“Frankie,” she says, and her thumb is brushing the soft skin under his earlobe now. “I appreciate it, I really do. But you can’t, like, change the world by just getting angry.”

Frank huffs. He’s embarrassed. He can’t look at her face anymore, can’t stand what he sees there– the beauty, the resignation. He lays back down and she pulls him back into her lap.

“That’s what the music’s for,” she says softly, rolling her thumbs through his scalp. And he knows, of course, that she’s right. 

*

“Lipstick?” Gee’s asking distractedly three days later, pulling her eye down in the mirror to stab at her eyes with a dark liner. 

Frank looks up from the tie he’s muscle-memory knotting around his neck to scan the vanity she’s working at. There’s tiny bottles and brushes and cotton pads everywhere. 

“Uh,” he says helpfully. “Down– to your left.”

“Got it,” says Gee, snatching up a tube by her left hand and tossing down the eyeliner. “Thanks, Frank.”

She’s pursing her lips to dab the product on and Mikey scurries through the room, looking harried. “My hat,” he says. “Black one. I just put it down.”

“On the couch,” says Frank.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” says Mikey, beelining for it. 

Frank goes back to the tie. Playing find-my-shit for the Ways is always fun ten minutes before stage call. Mikey breezes past him and Frank realizes he fucked up the knot. Goddammit. What else is Catholic school good for anyway if not for this? He blasphemes a little and undoes the whole thing.

“How do I look?” asks Gee, spinning around to face him.

Frank looks up. And doesn’t have anything to say. 

“That bad?” Gee says, and frowns. “It’s over the top, it’s not like me, I’ll throw on jeans–”

“You’re just not so usually– femme,” Frank says, because there’s not another word for it, not a word that feels as fitting. 

It’s exaggerated, the girlishness. Frank gathers that from the skirt, the stockings, and the dress shirt deliberately unbuttoned down her chest. She has a black tie loosely around her neck, preserving just a bit of modesty there. There’s a performance, a commentary present, because it’s Gee , and Frank both knows that while also suffering acutely the damages of viewing the outfit in its simplest sense, which is that it makes her look really fucking hot. 

“I wanted to try it,” she says defensively. As if any of this needs defending. “I know it’s different, it’s not what people expect from me, but I have a point. I want to make it.” 

“It’s good,” he says, now rushing to explain himself. “It’s– intentional. Some people will get it. It’ll be like, you’re giving them this fantasy thing and it’s up to them to disassemble.” 

Her expression goes from guarded to a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it.” She turns to the mirror and bends over to thumb at her lips, softening the color. Frank has to look away, because– skirt. God. Guilt and want course through him. Embarrassment and desire. “It’s how they want me to be. Let’s see how they act when I’m giving it to ‘em.” 

*

It isn’t until they’re right behind the stage doors that he realizes he never re-knotted his tie. It hangs like a limp scarf around his neck. He’s surprised no one said anything, but. His hands are too shaky now to do anything but flex for want of his guitar. 

Gee catches him looking at her, because of course he’s looking. In the dim backstage light, she looks impish, dangerous in a playful, sexy way. She gives him a wink. 

*

The crowd fucking loves it. 

Gee’s electric and the rest of them are flailing to keep up– a good thing, if you asked Frank, but nobody in this whole outside venue is casting half a glance his way. Gee’s center stage soaking it up, dragging hands down her face, down her body, yelling “jump, motherfuckers!” and cackling with glee when they obey, all to the sound of one of the best sets they’ve ever played. 

She’s catwalking. She straddles the speakers. She lays on her front, kicks Converse up in the air so the front row gets a good view of the white stockings clinging to the pale meat of her thighs. They’re all straining to touch her, to graze her gauzy socks, to put a finger to her screaming seductress act. 

It’s her performance. He wants to say he’s falling for it, but, God, it’s just her. Insatiable, unstoppable. Dressed like Rockstar Barbie if Rockstar Barbie got recalled a week into being on shelves because she was too sexy for kids. Frank’s not gonna survive this. There’s no way. 

*

Halfway through their set, when Frank thinks he’s beginning to levitate a few inches off the ground from the sheer energy and sexual tension, Gee stalks her way over to him. She takes the microphone from her mouth in a devastating moment– right in the middle of a verse– and lifts her loose black tie over her head, placing it instead around Frank’s neck. It feels like a noose. It feels like a promise. The end of it flaps down over his guitar, his hand brushes it as he twists out a new chord, and Gee just smiles. 

She slides the untied one, the one Frank’d been too embarrassed to knot and also too embarrassed to take off, from around his shoulders and slides it over his own. 

The crowd sees this. They cheer. She picks up the verse where she left off, and as she slides into the chorus, she shimmies Frank’s tie around her shoulders like a boa. 

When nobody was looking at Frank, Gee saw. Her tie is warm around his neck and probably a little sweaty. It’s only muscle memory that he manages to keep playing.

When everyone in the venue was looking at Gee, she was looking at him. 

*

“Gee,” Frank says, desperate and broken-down, as soon as they get off that damned stage, that unholy ground. He doesn’t know where everyone else is, doesn’t care who’s around to hear him. He just knows his instrument is out of his hands and now he wants to do the exact thing with them that every motherfucker in a twenty-five mile radius wants to do, which is to get Gee Way between them. 

She looks at him over her shoulder. They’re walking through this labyrinthian basement, looking for a way out, and Frank knows he’s pathetic, knows his control is snapped, but he can’t help it. 

What she sees in his face makes her pace stutter and her eyes blink. It’s so fucking endearing, like a robot attempting a manual reboot, trying to compute something novel. Then she just nods, once, jerkily, and leads him out into the sunshine. 

Somehow it feels wrong that it’s mid fucking afternoon, like the sun’s sticking around like an unwelcome guest after Gee just rocked the universe on stage nearly to another Big Bang, like she didn’t just rip through all of space and time and karate chop Frank right in fucking half. He’s always had rules about this shit with himself, don’t bang your band mates, don’t touch Gee, she’s a supernova and he would never want to hurt her, take advantage, nudge her off the blazing course she keeps herself on. But he can’t. He can’t fucking stick to that. He needs Gee so bad he thinks the sky should be fucking purple because she is too amazing to exist under such a mundane, boring ball of helium blistering the pavement beneath their feat and causing Gee to blink and shield her eyes as she turns around to face him. 

“I’m sorry,” is the next thing out of his mouth as he crowds her against the linoleum siding on the left of whatever fire exit they escaped through, “but Gee, fuck, the way you were up there.”

“Why are you sorry?” she murmurs. She’s not touching him but it feels like she’s plastered everywhere over his body, her gaze sweeping over him, over and over. 

“I don’t– after everything, I don’t want to hurt you, take advantage,” he says, lamely. The moment’s paused. Eye of the storm. The moment before the rollercoaster drops off the cliff. 

She puts both her hands on the sides of his face. “It’s not taking advantage,” she says, slowly and clearly, “if I want you to.”

"Do you?" he asks, inching closer, even though he should probably back up, give her space. He just- he just needs to be sure. 

"You fucking moron," she says. "Yes, I want you."

A sigh. A dam breaks. God, he’s such a fucking moron. He puts his hands on her shoulders and she lets him. “You just look so fucking good, you drive me crazy. My tie–”

“You liked that?” Gee asks, and fuck yes he did, just the same way he likes the way the black dyed hair falls in her face as she asks it, like she already knows the answer, which of course she does. 

“Fuck,” Frank affirms, bending closer to her, pressing their foreheads together. Even that contact is so much Frank sighs, hot and desiring. “So much.” 

“We’re doing this,” she says, steady and not a question, and Frank goes cross-eyed watching her expression because he can’t back away for a second. Her hand twitches up Frank’s dress-shirt sleeve sticking to his forearm with sweat. 

As an answer to the question she didn’t ask, Frank leans down and presses his mouth to her neck, right above the collar which is flipped up on one side and sliding down on the other. 

She makes a noise as he groans against her skin. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard– kind of a gasp, strangled when it hits the back of her throat. He’s starving for more. Frank can taste her sweat as he mouths it off– salt and musk, powder from her foundation sliding down her face, God, Frank moans again in ecstasy. 

“Shit, Frank,” she says, breathy and unenunciated, and Frank yanks his mouth from her throat to kiss her instead. 

She sags underneath him although she’s giving as good as she’s getting with her lips and tongue, her other hand not nestled in Frank’s cuff sliding up the back of his head. He’s not much taller than her, but still, with her hips pressed against his as she leans in, he feels like he’s encompassing her somehow, encasing her. Frank goes all shivery when her hand passes over the short, coarse hairs at the base of his neck. Her spit is coating his mouth and he can’t get enough, keeps licking over her tongue for more, more. 

“Right here,” he’s mumbling against her lips, “right the fuck here, lemme have you, please.” 

“How?” she gasps, and that’s the hottest question Frank’s ever heard in his life. 

Frank has ideas. Her face is flushed as he pulls away and her dark eyes nearly roll back as he sinks to his knees.

“Frank,” she says, a hiss. “Oh my fuck.” 

He’s looking up at her, hands on her hips over the pleated skirt, waiting for permission. His mouth is pooling with saliva, brain buzzing. He needs her. He needs her so bad he can’t think about the pavement burning his knees through his jeans, about the sweat slicking his hair to his face, about the fact he hasn’t taken a full breath in hours, since he saw the white stockings cling sinfully to her legs. 

“Need you,” he says. 

“Shit. Please,” she says, as if he’s the one indulging her, and he reaches to flip up her skirt. 

He doesn’t take nearly enough time to drink in the sight of her panties– lacy at the top, white to contrast the dark hair peeking through– because he will literally die if he doesn’t get his mouth on her, so he kisses the top of her stockings, the skin right above where there’s a little red line from where they dig in, and when he nudges apart her legs to nose at her inner thigh Gee makes a desperate noise and puts both her hands in his hair. 

“Oh God,” she’s muttering as he pushes the skirt higher, his hand coming around the other side of her, right over the swell of her ass and now he groans, kissing the inside of her right thigh where the taste of her sweat is the strongest, and fuck even as Frank’s going slow he can’t force himself to be gentle. He catches the meat of her thigh between his teeth and Gee cries out, hips stuttering into his face. 

He kisses there again and Gee’s hands tighten in his hair. “Frankie, please,” she begs. “Oh fuck, you giant fucking tease.” 

Frank is not a tease. He hikes up her skirt higher, turns his head, and places a kiss over her panties, sucking the cotton into his mouth. 

Gee trembles so bad Frank’s afraid she’s about to fall so he lets go of her skirt in favor of hiking one of her legs over his shoulder, forcing her to lean, pressing her panties into his face. God, the taste of her– even over the underwear it’s intoxicating, heady, girlish and musky. He’s never been more turned on in his life.

Her skirt falls around him but he doesn’t care, hands sliding around to hold her, to feel the curve of her ass as he sucks at her clit over the cotton. She’s soaked, he can taste it, and it’s gratifying and overwhelming at the same time. 

The sounds she’s making– heavy breaths ending in throaty huhs, they dog him on as if he needed any further encouragement. “Oh shit,” she says, one syllable, a breath, ohshit , and he lifts his hand to thumb the panties to the side and licks a stripe up her, bare. She whines and her thighs shake around his head, pressing into him, holding him there. Frank can’t breathe without tasting her, can’t breathe without having to gasp for it, but fuck it he doesn’t need oxygen, so he lets her headlock him and kisses what he can taste under his tongue is her clit. 

Her “oh God”s climb in pitch as she rocks her hips against his face, herself against his tongue, and he wishes he could see her face, see what he’s doing to her, but he settles for this, for letting his hand lock harder around her hips while the other slides up her body for her tits and she moans, high and loud, way too fucking loud. 

“Frankie,” she whines, “fuck, don’t stop, I’m close, I’m gonna–”

The rest is incomprehensible, only gasps, and a reedy cry as her hips stutter, pulse out slowly, slowly as he kisses her through it. 

When he pulls his head away it throws her off balance because the leg around his shoulder stumbles away and Frank is blinded by sudden light and the sight of a debauched Gee, her skirt hiked up in the back and her dark bra obvious through her mostly unbuttoned shirt.

“Shit,” she says, and falls back against the wall. But her shaky legs don’t hold her up so she slides down it, coming to rest with her butt on the pavement, breathing heavily.

Frank’s still kneeling. He licks his lips. It’s mostly unconscious but her eyes track the movement. 

“Fuck, Frank,” she says, head hitting the wall as she throws it back to look at the sky, and he’s crawling towards her. God, she’s so beautiful, exhausted like this, flushed because of him.

“So fucking pretty,” he says, voice rough. He’s breathing through his nose, the air out here is thin, it doesn’t feel like enough. He crawls over her and she looks at him, eyes dark and half-lidded. He kisses her again and she opens for him, melting and pliant. “And you taste so fucking good.” 

Her lazy hand slides up his thigh, down to his achingly hard cock and he groans against her mouth, ruts against his hand, and quickly he comes just from that, from her hand over his pants, from the taste of her on his lips. 

They breathe heavily together for a moment before Frank remembers where they are. Outside. In a parking lot. A back entrance, sure, but there was absolutely no guarantee of their privacy out here. And also–

“Shit,” Gee says, still out of breath. “They’ll be looking for us.” 

“Shit,” Frank agrees. He climbs off her and collapses against the wall beside her. He gropes around for his phone and finds it, predictably, swamped with text messages from Brian. He drops his hand in his lap and groans. 

“It’s okay,” Gee says, and turns her head to kiss him slowly, mostly chastely. “We’ll just tell them we got lost.”

Frank laughs. She grins back, lazily, and thumbs at his mouth.

“Your face is wet,” she says.

“Your fault,” he says, just to watch her blush. 

It’s achingly difficult to get himself to stand but he does and extends a hand for Gee. “Should we stagger our re-entrances?” he asks, dusting off his pants and wincing. Yeah. Wet underwear. Gross fucking feeling. 

She catches his wince and it makes her grin widen. “Why bother?” she says. “We’re late anyway, why make it worse on ourselves?”

“Oh, it’ll be pretty bad anyway,” Frank says. 

“They can’t prove anything.” 

“Innocently late until proven guilty.” 

Frank leads Gee back to the fire exit they escaped from, but when his hand goes for the doorknob, he finds it ajar. He looks back at Gee. Gee looks at him. 

“That wasn’t like that,” Frank says lamely. 

A pause, and then they collapse in stupid, hysterical giggling. 

*

Brian is pretty pissed, but the buses aren’t leaving for hours anyway, and the show was really fucking good. Gee doesn’t say anything to him, just walks onto the bus fixing her hair and just about whistling under her breath. Frank stops to say hi, chat some bullshit about the mic levels. He can tell Brian’s putting pieces together, he’s not sure how they’re fitting, but hey. If Gee doesn’t care, he doesn’t either. 

Ray gives him a Look and Bob just nods– okay, so they weren’t subtle. Frank catches Gee’s eye and sees nothing but warmth, humor, and something bone-deep like satiation. It thrills him just as much as it brings him comfort. 

Mikey plops down beside Frank, nose shoved in his phone, when Frank puts on Evil Dead that evening. Ray’s kind of moping in the back, he wanted to play Guitar Hero, but Frank feels unexpectedly delighted enough that any discomfort in the bus is secondary to him. He didn’t realize, but he’s been kind of waiting for Mikey– for permission, for his fucking blessing, whatever. 

Mikey looks at Frank over his glasses and Frank realizes he’s been staring. One of his eyebrows is raised. Mikey knows. He knows everything. He always does. 

“How many times have you seen this movie?” Mikey asks, and looks back down at his phone. Frank knows this is his blessing, if Mikey was capable of blessing at all. 

“Not enough,” says Frank. He’s buzzing. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been this happy. Not since this afternoon, anyway, when he had Gee with her back against the venue wall, legs splayed open so he could see the soaked white cotton of her panties under her rucked skirt, her face full and shining, sated. 

Mikeyway’s thin lips pull up to one side where he probably thinks Frank can’t see them, obscured by his phone. 

And when Gee pulls him aside in the bathroom later, giggling a laugh that Frank quickly smothers with a kiss, a kiss she returns with passion, he’s starting to think he’s truly got a good thing going here.