FicWad

A/N: This was written for this: http://www.ficwad.com/story/200194 I suggest you check it out before reading this, just so you know what's going on.
And I live in Finland, so... Yeppers peppers. On with the oneshot.

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The cold Northern wind blew past them, creeping inside their thick clothes and making the journey even more difficult than it already was. Gerard cursed out loud as he tripped over and landed face first in snow.

“Are you okay?” Mikey asked, helping his brother up.

“Why does it have to be so cold?” Gerard complained.

“It’s Finland in wintertime. What did you expect, honestly?”

Having lived in Los Angeles for the past few years, the gentlemen of My Chemical Romance had gotten quite accustomed to the year-round warmth. Well, everyone except Frank of course, because he had chosen to stay in New Jersey. Still, New Jersey was still quite far from the Northern part of Finland they were staying in. Why on Earth did they choose the North, though, when they could be much more comfortable in the Eastern parts of the country? Well, Frank decided he wanted to experience some genuine Finnish winter.

It was a long hike from the spot they left their car to the cottage they had rented. But when they reached it, Gerard was already frozen solid. Ray and Mikey were still functioning just fine, but Frank was a different story. The deep snow was no match for the man as he jumped and ran and cartwheeled and swam himself through the snow banks.

The cottage was just a small one, with one big room downstairs and one upstairs, and a sauna with a small dressing room. Yes, they were all going to share that small cottage. It was only for two nights anyway. They got into the cottage, got a fire started in the fireplace to heat up the place, and got settled in.

For a moment Gerard, Mikey and Ray made the mistake of thinking that the warm, cosy cottage was actually kind of nice. All of their illusions about a comfortable vacation in the middle of ice and snow were shattered when Frank whipped out a notebook from his backpack.

“So I’ve got this list,” Frank began as they were sitting in front of the fireplace, all huddled together on the floor with blankets and pillows. Immediately the three others groaned. They knew that what was starting to seem like a pretty good two days was about to become a nightmare. Frank was merciful and allowed them to sit in the cottage while he went to prepare the upcoming activities.

Frank returned to the cottage about an hour later, covered in snow and dirt, and his other sleeve had been half burned off. This should’ve been a clear warning for the rest of the group, but no, for some reason, they followed Frank to the other part of the building. The sauna.

“Alright guys, get naked!” Frank cheered, already stripping in the small, crowded dressing room. Soon enough he was standing there, butt naked, proudly showing off his equipment, while the other three still stood there, completely befuddled by what was happening.

“You want us to get naked? Frank, we’ve talked about this, the fanfiction means nothing! Just because people write about us having sex with each other, it doesn’t mean we have to do it,” Gerard said, sighing tiredly. That particular conversation was one they had repeated far too many times.

“This isn’t it! We have to be naked for the sauna!” Frank insisted, opening the wooden door to the hot room. “Now don’t be so shy. We’ve all seen each other naked before, this isn’t such a big deal. Besides, everyone knows that what happens in Finland stays in Finland.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s Las Vegas...” Gerard muttered, but began to strip anyway. In the end he, Ray, and Mikey settled for keeping towels around their waists while Frank sat completely nude.

The four men sat on the upper benches, with cans of beer that Frank had kindly provided, sweating like they were in hell itself. Earlier Gerard had cursed the cold snow and wind, now he would’ve given anything to be out of this hot room, even if it meant being out there in the snow.

“This beer tastes like dishwater,” Mikey pointed out, putting away the can of Finnish beer.

“My list says we have to drink it,” Frank said, thrusting his bottom lip and chin out, and Mikey groaned, picking up the beer again.

“This heat is killing me,” Gerard huffed. He was the nearest to the sauna stove, the source of all their discomfort. Actually, that’s incorrect. The naked man sitting among them was the source of all their discomfort.

“My hair is wilting,” Ray said, touching his fro gently. He had great concerns for how the fiery hell he was in was affecting the glamorous poofiness of his hair.

“You guys are such crybabies,” Frank said, rolling his eyes. “But don’t worry, we’re halfway through!”

Yes, the worst was still to come. Frank whipped out what seemed like a pile of branches from a birch tree, but you can imagine their shock when he began to whip Ray, who was sitting next to him, on the back with the branches.

Frank was so concentrated in beating that he didn’t realize Ray was screaming.

“What the fuck?! Frank! Stop that!”

“What?” Frank asked, finally ceasing the abuse, a look of pure innocence on his angelic face.

“What are you doing?!”

“Finns do this! I swear! They hit themselves with birch branches in the sauna! It improves blood circulation! And the scent of birch is pleasant!”

“I’ll tell you where you can stick -”

“Enough!” Gerard shouted. “Can’t we just move on to the next thing?” he asked, excepting the next activity to be less painful, not to mention less like a fiery pit of hell. Needless to say, Gerard might not have said those words if he had known that in the next five minutes, he would’ve been running back into the sauna.

A short moment later, the group of men were standing outside. They were still mostly naked, only wearing their shoes and the towels around their waists (except for Frank who went both shoeless and towelless). The cottage was located by a lake, which at the moment was frozen. Frozen in all places except for the irregular-shaped hole Frank had sawed into the ice.

“So... Get in,” Frank said, gesturing towards the hole in the ice. it was large enough for all four of them to fit at the same time.

“Frank, tell me, when you were crawling around in that snow earlier, did you happen to hit your head on a rock or a tree?”

“Guys! This is a part of a genuine Finnish experience! If we don’t do this, we will forever be marked as cowards for not going into the icy lake!”

“You know what? We’ll go in if you go in first,” Gerard promised. “Go on,” he added after Frank glanced at the hole in the ice warily.

“Uh... Are you sure you don’t want to -” Frank’s words were interrupted when Gerard and Ray grabbed his arms and pushed him into the lake, not so hard that he would’ve fallen face first, but still forcefully enough that he had to go in.

Frank’s screams echoed in the rural area as he howled in horror. “Oh shit! Oh fuck! Shit fuck! It’s cold! Holy fucking god it’s cold! My balls! I can’t feel my balls!” After the screaming subsided and Frank simply stood there in the shallow ice water, feeling with a hand his numb balls underwater, the rest of the band decided to hold on to their promise. Finally abandoning the towels, they slowly descended into the ice pit. None of them went shoulder-deep, and definitely none of them put their head underwater, and they had to admit. The water was cold. And what Frank had said was true. It did have a certain shrinking, numbing effect on the testicular area.

For a full minute they could stand the icy water before dashing back into the comforting warmth of the room they had earlier deemed to be the fiery depths of hell itself.

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“Now are we done with the torture?” Mikey asked after they’d left the sauna and returned to the living parts of the cottage.

“Yes. In hindsight, perhaps swimming in ice-cold water wasn’t the best move,” Frank admitted. “But not to worry! Next we will have some delicious dinner!”

Gerard sighed. He had a bad feeling about this. “Frank? Is the delicious dinner Finnish?”

“Of course it is! All the finest traditional cuisine!”

Frank made the three of them sit by the table while he prepared the meal in the small cooking area. When he was finished, the three men were not surprised to see something very disgusting on their plates.

“What you see here in your glasses is a fine example of a Finnish liquor, it is a special mix of my own of two popular liquors, made of cloudberry and salmiak, and -”

“Let’s just cut to the chase,” Gerard growled. “Why are you serving us dog shit?”

The piles of dark brown mush on their plates did closely resemble something one might assume was dog poop. “It’s not shit,” Frank insisted, however. “It’s a traditional Finnish Easter cuisine!”

“They eat shit?”

“It’s made of rye! You people are so not nappreciative of other cultures.”

Mikey pushed a fork into the mush and swirled it around. That did not help the appearance of the food at all. “Trust me, it’s not the culture we have a problem with...”

“Fine. I also have an alternative. It’s a dumpling soup made of the blood of a pig.”

In the end, the three of them decided to go hungry rather than eat that crap, while Frank emptied all four plates with good appetite.

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They were getting ready to go to bed. In fact, Mikey and Ray were already snoozing upstairs on the large bed they would all share, but Frank had dragged some blankets outside to the porch. When Gerard was about to climb upstairs and hit the hay, he looked outside and saw Frank huddled out there, alone on a tree stump he had cleared of snow. The man must’ve been cold and shivering, but there he sat, looking up at the night sky.
Gerard prepared two mugs of hot coffee and joined his friend.

“Thanks,” Frank said, accepting the mug.

“What are you doing out here?” Gerard asked. Less than a minute of being outside, and he was already frozen solid. How Frank did it, he had no idea.

No words were needed. Frank simply pointed a mitten-covered hand at the sky, and a smile spread on Gerard’s face as he looked at the direction he was pointing at. The dark sky had swirls of green and red, and it looked like it was ripped out of some fairytale.

“Wow,” Gerard said, whistling, and sat down on the tree stump next to Frank. The guitarist wrapped the blanket around him, and they sat there for a long time, just staring at the Northern Lights. As bad as this whole experience had been, Gerard felt like this made up for it. The place was serene and peaceful, and the nature around them was absolutely beautiful, not to mention inspiring.

“There’s just one thing I don’t get,” Frank admitted, breaking the long, comfortable silence.

“What is that?” Gerard asked.

“Where are all the Angry Birds? I haven’t seen any, and I thought they lived here like in nature and stuff.”

Gerard smiled. “Frank, if I didn’t think you were actually trying to kill us here, it would actually be a pretty nice trip.”

“Thanks man,” Frank said, smiling brightly. “And I already have tomorrow all planned, we’ll go dog-sledding and we’ll pet reindeers and find a shaman and lick some mushrooms - Where are you going, Gerard? Gerard?!”

Yeah, you know that famous straw that broke the camel’s back? That was it for Gerard.

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A/N: One last thing. Angry Birds is Finnish, if you didn't know. Now you do.