Wishing You Were a Ghost

Poison Oak

Until now, Frank's 'friendship' with Aspen had been patchy at best. Between work and all the shit he's still wading through with Gerard, he's got a habit of sort of checking out for far too long at a time.

Aspen, however, is the world's most nonchalant, roll-with-the-punches type of person that Frank has ever met, and he adores that about them. They take up no issues with the way things have progressed up until now, because-

"The past is in the past, Frankie. All we can do is move forward. How about I take you to a concert with me on Saturday?"

And what a fucking concert it was.

They'd jumped around in a pit of sweaty strangers and exchanged sober kisses in a bar bathroom before walking their blistered feet up to the surface street above the basement venue to catch a cab back to Aspen's apartment. Frank had found it to be some delightful mix of urban-faerietale-bungalow, and so- so delightfully Aspen, like so many things just are.

That's the best part about their budding relationship, Frank thinks. Things with Aspen just sort of are. There aren't expectations or complications, they just are, and it's a relief to just be for once.

Even with the background of Frank's whirling emotional state, and his busy work hours, and Aspen's work hours, things remain uncomplicated. They play things by ear, they hold no expectations aside from texting at least once a day to check in. They try their best for a date a week, but some weeks they don't manage, and that's alright too.

Aspen sits and draws sketchy little abstract pieces in charcoal (because of course Frank would find love with an artist twice) while Frank plucks away on a guitar. They take Lois on walks, and eat breakfast in the mornings because Aspen works nights, and Frank works days, and their shifts somehow almost always manage to leave them time for brunch at a coffee shop somewhere in the city.

It's easy and goddamn does easy feel fucking good.

Especially when easy is accompanied by soft skin, and gentle kisses to Frank's jaw when he's been awake too long. Dulcet tones urging him to bed, and fingers in his hair to lull him to sleep, just in time to be woken up by those same hands wandering his body.

Frank finds it all intoxicating. And maybe it's the New Relationship Energy that Aspen keeps telling him about, but he's not sure he cares. He'll go with the flow for once, instead of overthinking fucking everything, because it never does him an ounce of good anyway.

Even on his lower days, he'll roll with it.

Like one afternoon in late July, when Frank and Aspen go to hang out with Mikey, and Gerard shows up and takes one look at the ethereal creature with their legs laid out lazily across Frank's lap, the mass of their hair sweeping the floor where they're nearly upside down reading a magazine, and looks like he might vomit in the doorway.

"Nice of you to call," Mikey muses from his armchair, scrolling lazily through movies on Netflix as Gerard shuts the door quietly behind himself.

The second he meets Frank's eyes, Gerard averts his own, and he focuses on his brother instead. "I texted you and told you I was coming by. You didn't tell me not to."

"One of these days you're gonna do that and regret it," Mikey says easily.

"If you're fucking your boyfriend and leaving your front door unlocked, I think there are other things in life you need to worry about," Frank offers to his friend.

Aspen lifts their head from the edge of the couch with a bubbly laugh, "Personally I always make sure to triple lock my doors and also put a sentinel outside when I'm fucking my boyfriend. Just in case."