A Revolution On Canvas (Frerard)

35: Everyone Is Stoned And Somehow It Doesn't All Go Horribly Wrong

It was motherfucking parents evening and Frank was shitting himself. It was just the fact that this happened to be Frank's first ever parents evening in which he was actually the teacher and not the student sat in a chair beside their parents regretting their entire life as their geography teacher rattled on about how they could be benefit from participating more in class discussions, and all that other generic feedback that teachers gave parents on parents evening.

The fact of the matter was, however, that Frank really just didn't know the generic feedback to parents responses, which perhaps left him to actually offering genuine criticisms and feedback based on the work of his students, which was perhaps a better idea, or well, it should have been. And indeed, it would have been an absolutely fucking fantastic idea if Frank didn't find himself in the situation of realising that they'd hardly done any work all year, and that they only criticisms he had on mind to offer his students were for that kid with the green hair to dye his hair a colour that doesn't make him look like he's going mouldy, and for Megan Clifford to stop pretending she liked the Smiths.

Megan's indie phase was somehow, fucking somehow worse than her 5SOS obsession, which was something that Frank had thought impossible: having heard her talk about Michael Clifford's hair for twenty six minutes straight once, which was certainly... well... Frank wasn't sure that impressive was the right word, but it surely was something.

It was just the fact that Megan was somehow convinced that the lead singer of the Smiths was called Michael Smith, which was something Frank simply dared not to question, and as he did in regards to most things regarding Megan, he just shook his head, took a step back and tried not to think about it.

After all, Frank definitely had bigger things to worry about on the night of parents evening than Megan's indie phase. Like, as to how good Megan actually was at English, for example, because in truth, he had no fucking idea.

"You're worrying again, aren't you?" Gerard made his way into the corner of the staff room which Frank was hiding in: offering him a reassuring smile as he placed two mugs of coffee down onto the table, and took his place on the sofa beside his totally platonic housemate, who he just happened to think was really cute and generally wonderful in every way.

"Mmm..." Frank gave a nod and a sigh, before leaning back into the sofa, and missing slightly as his head fell back onto Gerard's shoulder, but the thing was that really, neither Gerard nor Frank really minded. And it was just far too much effort to move right now. "Perhaps."

Gerard sighed, moving closer into Frank, and somehow that wasn't weird, or anything - that was just them: these two gay guys who lived together and practically cuddled sometimes but still weren't dating. Gerard wondered sometimes if he should try to make more of a move on Frank, but he definitely didn't want to risk upsetting him somehow, which was a very real possibility considering that the whole Max situation was still something very relevant in Frank's life, or ending up making it all awkward somehow, because he just scared about Frank far too much as a person to risk any of that.

"It's going to be fine." Gerard reassured him: having worked at the school for several years now and finding that he just what he was doing, well, in comparison to the rest of the teachers who worked there - not that that was really saying anything. "Just look at their grades and their targets and comment upon them. Be like, oh-..." Gerard paused for a moment, "who do you teach?- Megan. Oh, Megan's target is an A but she's a B, which means she's on the way but she just needs that extra little push. Does she do extra revision at home?" Gerard met Frank's eyes, "just that kind of bullshit. You can say the exact same thing to each parent if you want, no one's going to know."

"But that feels like bullshit. Megan's parents can see her grade by looking in her book, they don't need me to tell her that. They know she needs to revise. They don't need me to tell them that. I want to say something that actually means something, you know? Like, I work here but I don't want to be that shit of a teacher, like- I mean... I just don't know. Maybe we should have actually done some work in class." Frank let out a groan.