The Chasing of Moons

The Wooing of Gerard Commences

Frank wakes up in a cold sweat from a very peculiar dream. It's more of a memory than anything else but usually when you have a dream about fucking someone it doesn't feel like you've just woken up from a dream about being chased by Chuckie.

Frank looks around the dark room trying to calm his breathing, wondering why on earth it bothered him so much. Maybe it was because of the fact that he knows it's never going to happen again and that feels like a stab in the gut. He wants it to happen again. He wants to make out with Gee again and spend a weekend with him, and do everything with him. Frank has no idea why he feels so strong so quickly. He shouldn't and he knows that and he hates that he knows that because it just makes him feel guilty about it. He can't change the fact that there is something about that guy. There was just something about Gee. This glimmer. There was such a weird gravitational pull of some sort about him that kept Frank close, made him cling, and now he's gone.

Frank's stuck here, the same old high schooler in the same old dumb bedroom, in the same old bed sheets, looking back at the same old faces on the same old posters on the same old walls. Nothing's changed. He knows that nothing has changed. He looks around and he sees everything the way it was a week ago, but everything is different. It's like the opposite of tainted, everything that is in this room, was seen or touched by Gee. Frank looks at the pillow beneath his head and he remembers when Gee's head was there, right where Frank's head is now, his head was here, but now it's not. If Frank breathes in deep enough he can smell him. He can smell Gee. He'd smelled like cinnamon, and like soap, and like coffee. It was nice, he felt warm.

Frank looks at the red light from across the room where his clock shows the time, and he feels a groaning sound come from him when he realizes it's four in the morning. He's tired, he feels his bones protesting to go back to sleep, but he knows that nothing will actually come of it. He's awake, he knows he is. He would really rather not be. He would rather be blissfully dreaming about clouds and jelly beans, but he's awake and there's no point in trying to get back to sleep if he's going to have to be awake soon anyway.

That's why Frank finds himself being pulled by his body out of bed, which he would really rather not do, and wandering into the bathroom, which he would also really rather not do, to take a shower, which he is actually kind of okay with.

Frank tries to wash away this panging feeling in his gut that he's never going to see Gee. He knows that's true, but at the same time there's Gerard. But he's not the same person, and even though Frank knows that, he still feels like that's untrue. Gerard is Gee, he has to be, but even if he's the same person, he's different because he has different experiences to Gee.

If Frank's guess is right and Gee really is Gerard somehow from the future, then he has different memories. He has a different view of the world, different knowledge, different wisdom, and different memories. He's probably a completely different person than Gerard is. And the sad thing is that Frank wants to be with Gee not Gerard. He doesn't want Gerard, Gerard is a different person in Frank's mind. He wants Gee.

Frank's mind drifts to the reality of Gee's words, because then he starts to put the pieces together. Gee married his high school sweetheart. It's not really cheating. It's not an open marriage. It's a unique situation.

Frank has this moment where he just stops thinking, barely even feels the water falling over his head, because it finally makes sense. Gee, the Gee that Frank met, he was married to Frank. Frank from the future. Future Frank was married to Gee who was Future Gerard, and Frank should stop calling him Gee because he's really just future Gerard.

"Fuck," Frank frowns, looking at the water swirling down into the drain below him. Now he can't stop his mind from wandering because, wow, it's kind of creepy that he slept with a guy who'd seen him naked before. He doesn't know why that's what bothers him, literally while he's standing naked in a shower, but it does. Then he realizes that the exact same thing happened yesterday when he saw Gerard, because the guy is the same person. He just is. He's got a bit of a different temperament, but he's the same person. Frank's being somewhat hypocritical about the whole naked thing, but it's still weird.