FicWad

Frank vomited on the rug, hungover.
He felt the bile tear at the walls of his stomach and it made his eyes water, subtle stinging pain in his head and neck muscles from the strain of retching.
He blinked a few times and let himself grow adjusted to the light. The notion of being shirtless sunk in a few seconds later, when he felt the cold bight in and the feeling of fresh bedsheets against his chest. He was holding them up with one hand, the other wiping his mouth.
Movement and consciousness were slow, albeit not surprisingly. He breathed in through his nose a few times before glancing around and realizing that he wasn't in a bed, nor a room, he was familiar with. Which meant he'd either ended up in someone he didn't know's pants, or he'd whored himself out to pay back whoever he owed money to.
Both options were (extremely) plausible, and Frank felt the quiet desperation that came with waking up start to slip inside his bones. He decided to laugh about it this time. There was no use in curling up in a ball and wanting to die: that could've waited an hour or two. Or five, depending on everything, like it always had.
Swallow the sadness with a kiss from the White Lady. Swallow it down, lock it all up. Let it eat you from the inside out, let the tears corrode your lungs and muscles instead of your cheeks and eyes. Let the heart collapse, let the outer shell be intact.
Die on the inside and swallow all the pills. It'll be as if you never existed.
He snapped those brittle, nagging thoughts out of his mind in a heartbeat and decided to concentrate on the closet right in front of him, white and gray and made of wood. It was modern and fresh, and he knew nothing about it, except that it was white and gray and made of wood, and that it looked modern and fresh.
He smirked to himself and realized how much of an entire fucking mess he'd become.
"'Morning." someone whispered. A man, an older man.
Frank looked up. There was someone leaning into the doorway, someone holding a steaming mug of coffee, someone who was staring at him curiously but also smiled.
Frank sensed he should've apologized about the rug, but the tiny nagging voice in his head started acting up. He stared at the man. The man looked at him.
"It's okay about the rug."
"Okay. Okay. Sorry."
"I just said it was okay."
Frank stared at his hands as his brain signalled that it needed something but obviously didn't make it clear what it was.
He remembered he was supposed to ask why he didn't have his shirt on, wether they'd fucked and that he also needed to call Sam. His head hurt, but his mind had already detached itself from his body long enough to make it so he knew it was happening to him but wasn't extremely affected by it.
He hated the morning sadness and daze, needed an upper to snap himself out of that and the never-ending fear of actually being crazy. He knew far too well that the drugs had made him that way, and he suddenly felt trapped. Paranoia blossomed inside of him, but he made sure to keep it hidden.
The man showed him the mug.
"Coffee?" he asked.
Frank forced himself to nod and took the drink with slightly trembling hands, which didn't go unnoticed, which he was used to.
He took a long, hard look to whoever had taken him in for the night. The man was older - much older - than he was, and for some reason his appearance struck a cord somewhere deep inside him.
He'd already seen him, but couldn't recall where.
He went back to staring at the mug and rich dark coffee inside of it, a relatively safer object than the task of having to dig through his memories.
"Did we--" he croaked after a while.
"No. No. Don't worry."
The man handed him his shirt.
"Nothing happened, you took it off yourself when you fell asleep."
"Oh. Okay." he replied, not sure about what else he could've possibly said. His eyes fixated on the man again.
"I guess I should say thanks."
"It's not a problem. By the way, I'm Gerard."
Gerard.
"Gerard? Gerard. Ge--Oh my God. Oh Jesus shit. Oh, fuck. - Frank abruptly stood up, snapped out of his daze, avoiding the vomit - You're the bag guy. The college professor."
"And you're the kid."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm the kid, of course I'm the kid."
He quickly slipped his shirt on.
"Jesus, it's you again. Jesus, fucking, Christ."
"What's so wrong about that?"
"I don't believe in fucking coincidences, that's what's fucking wrong."
Gerard smiled, warm, sad eyes shining.
"Believe it or not, this one is."
Frank stumbled around the house, looking for his coat and shoes which he promptly slapped on once he found them.
"You won't last a day on your own out there-"
"I've lasted my whole fucking life." he hissed before opening the door. Gerard intrigued him and threw him off his feet, in ways he didn't really care about understanding.
For now.
"Wait--"
Gerard didn't know why he had decided to give him the book. He could've let him go, forgotten him. A moment of light in an otherwise dull existence.
But he had grabbed "The Catcher In The Rye" instead, slipped a hundred bucks inside of it.
"Just take this."
Frank eyed him suspiciously.
"Why should I?"
"Why not?"
The younger one reluctantly grabbed the book, flipped it open, saw the money. He licked his lips and looked up.
The professor smiled at him.
"I wish you the best of luck."
A buzzer in the kitchen dinged, and Frank's stomach rumbled. He lighted a cigarette to silence it, thinking about the fact that some asshole had stolen his bag again and that a hundred bucks were a good thing right now.
But there was food getting prepared, and that meant saving another five bucks that could've been spent on things of more vital importance.
Gerard noticed his hesitancy.
"Care for some pasta? I'm not the best of cooks, though."
Frank thought about it for a second, and realized that if something was going to rape him and kill him, it certainly wasn't going to be a middle-aged college professor.