FicWad

There are three of them.

Frank is sitting on a plaid sofa with cushions too enormous to be comfortable. He's wearing black boots with thick straps running up and down them, and the tops of the boots are hidden under the bagginess of his pants. His short-sleeved shirt exposes the black armbands on his wrists. His brown hair is cut choppily.

To his left, a woman in her sixties is sitting in a plaid armchair that matches the sofa and has equally large cushions. Her hair is stark white and curled tightly against her head. Her fake fingernails drum against one of the arms of the chair suspiciously, watching the third party with narrowed eyes.

The other person has removed a lamp from a table to place it haphazardly on the armrest of another chair, and is moving the table in front of a sofa that directly faces the one Frank is sitting on. He gives his accomplishment a satisfied glance before turning and falling onto the sofa unceremoniously and puts both feet up on the table.

"See now, if this hotel would just the lobby up correctly," he says to Frank from across the table, "a lot more customers would walk away happy." His hair is black and lined with strips of blue, and it reaches his shoulders.

The woman's gaze is murderous at this point. "Young man," she says sternly. The boy looks over at her as if just noticing she's there. "Put that table back immediately. You shouldn't touch things that don't belong to you. Like that lamp." She points a long fingernail at the lamp on the nearby chair. "It could fall and break, and you would have to pay for it. Put it back."

"No," the boy says without pausing to consider her commands. "I like it this way."

"You will have to put everything back," the old woman tells him fiercely, her eyes flashing dangerously. "Mark my words. The people who own this hotel will be very angry."

The boy sighs, clearly bored of talking to her. "Oh, I don't think they will," he says. "My father owns this hotel. I can do anything I want as long as he doesn't see me do it."

This only helps to infuriate the woman further. "That gives you no right to-"

"What's your name?" the boy interrupts, looking at Frank now. "You've never been here before. You can grab one of the tables if you feel like it. You know, move stuff around. No one really cares." He ignores the old woman as he says this.

"Uh, I'm Frank," Frank answers, his eyes darting over to the woman uncertainly. She looks like she could easily beat someone over the head with her purse if she wanted to.

"I'm Gerard," the other boy says, looking pleased with Frank's response for some reason. His fingers go up unconsciously to play with a piece of his hair. "Are you waiting for someone? I'm not, I'm sort of grounded. You see I got this really old lady to pay me for a palm reading, only she didn't like what I told her and she cussed me out really loudly, and we couldn't get her to shut up until my dad came and said I have to sit in the lobby for the rest of the day before I drove him to suicide."

"What did you tell her?" Frank can't help asking.

"I don't know." Gerard shrugs, still messing with his hair. "Some bullshit I made up."

"Watch your language," the woman barks suddenly, making Frank jump a little. Gerard doesn't seem phased. He looks at the woman lazily.

"What's wrong with my language?" he asks. He doesn't wait for an answer before saying, "Hey, how about you, would you like a palm reading? I'll do it for ten bucks, no bullshitting. Oops." He grins. "Sorry. It slipped out."

"No," the old woman snaps, her fingers clenching the purse in her lap. "I wouldn't."

"Are you sure?" Gerard's gaze returns to Frank. "How about you?"

Frank starts to shake his head, but Gerard's already pulling his feet down from the table and heading over to where Frank is sitting. "Of course you do," Gerard says. "I'll do it for free because I like you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Frank asks.

Gerard isn't listening. "Give me your hand," he orders, and grabs Frank's hand as he sits down next to him on the sofa, either not noticing or simply not caring how close they are. Frank tries to back away a little, but there isn't room. Gerard can't get much nearer without sitting on Frank's lap.

"Now let me see," Gerard says speculatively, tracing the lines in the palm of Frank's hand with his finger. His other hand is gripping Frank's wrist too tightly for him to resist. "Interesting." He jabs the skin of Frank's hand.

"What?"

"This one means that you're new to this city. This one means that you can't stand old people who won't mind their own business." He views Frank's palm carefully. "And that one means that someone will probably ask you out soon."

"Load of crap." Frank smiles and pulls his hand away. Gerard lets him. "You're weird."

"Hey. Normalness is overrated," Gerard says, and leans back, finally giving Frank some space. "My father thinks I'm a complete psychopath. I do have this habit of saying whatever comes to mind. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, is it?"

Frank shrugs, not knowing what to say.

"Of course it isn't," Gerard answers himself. He puts his arms up behind his head, relaxing even without a table on this side of the room to put his feet up on. "So, Frank," he says, as if having a conversation with someone he's known all his life. "Which way do you swing? What's your sexuality?"

"I refuse," the old woman interrupts to Frank's relief, jerking up from her seat, "to sit here and listen to this."

Gerard looks over at her and blinks, as if having forgotten she existed. "Then by all means," he tells her, "leave. There are some very nice vending machines in the hospitality room you can retreat to." He waves in some unknown direction. "And there's the restroom, of course."

The woman scowls at him, looks as if she's going to say something and then changes her mind, and storms away. Gerard watches her go with a puzzled expression, like he can't understand why she's so irritated.

"Glad to be of service," he calls after her. Then he faces Frank again. "See? Helpfulness at all times. My father would be proud."

Frank shakes his head.

"So anyway, answer my question."

"What question?"

"You know." Gerard grins. He knows Frank's avoiding answering him. "I asked you what your sexuality is. Like, are you gay? Straight? Bisexual? Pansexual?"

"Um," Frank says. "Uh, I'm gay."

"Oh really, so am I." He goes back to playing with a few wisps of black hair that have fallen into his face. "My mom wishes I would at least be bi, and my father wants me to just be straight like my brother, but I just can't, you know what I mean?"

Frank blinks and hesitates.

Gerard laughs at him. "Of course you do. Where are you from? How long are you staying?"

Frank notices that Gerard's black-and-blue hair is falling into his face again against his cheek: cue Gerard reaching up and brushing it back, and twisting it around his fingers. "I'm from Canada," Frank answers, "but I stay with my mother most of the time, and she flies around the states a lot from place to place, and she finally sent me to live with my aunt, who lives here. That's who I'm waiting for."

"Really?" Gerard looks interested. "So you're moving here?"

"Yeah. Till I turn eighteen."

"How old are you now?"

"Seventeen, next month."

"I'm seventeen. Almost eighteen." Gerard finally pushes his hair behind his ear, as if to force himself to stop messing around with it. "That's cool, then. Have you ever thought of getting a piercing?" he asks abruptly.

"What?" Frank says, looking at Gerard strangely.

"Like in the cartilage of your ears, maybe. Or your eyebrow. Yeah, that would look good." Gerard is viewing Frank's face thoughtfully. "Don't you think?"

"No." Frank shakes his head. "No way."

"You should. Seriously. It would look cool." Gerard probably senses that he's making Frank uncomfortable for staring at him so long. He looks away for a moment, but he doesn't stop talking. "I got a tongue piercing a year ago. I was living with my mom then. She was… a little bit angry." Gerard smiles. "I thought I was going to die."

"You did?"

"Yeah. Want to see?" Gerard sticks out his tongue without waiting for Frank to answer, flashing a silver barbell though the middle.

Frank grimaces. "That's gotta hurt."

"Not really," Gerard says, shrugging carelessly.

"It'll take the enamel off the back of your teeth, you know."

"No, it won't."

"Yeah it will."

"No it won't."

"Yeah it will."

Gerard casts Frank a look of amusement, then laughs again. "Come on, Frank. You know you think it's sexy."

"What?" Frank says, raising his eyebrows.

"Frankie?" a new voice breaks in. Frank looks up to see a middle-aged woman in slacks approaching them, a purse slung around her shoulder.

"You know you say 'What?' when you don't know what else to say?" Gerard observes, his eyes still laughing at Frank. 

"Frank?" the woman says again. "I'm your Aunt Katherine. Remember?" Her brown hair is tied in a knot on her head.

"Oh. Oh yeah. Hi." Frank stands up and shakes hands with her. Then she throws her arms around him, catching him in a tight hug.

"It's so good to see you, Frankie," she exclaims. "Why, I haven't seen you since you were… since you were four years old, since you were just a baby!"

"Heh. Yeah. Well." Frank hugs back awkwardly before struggling out of her embrace. "That's just great."

Gerard gets up lazily, watching the other two.

"And who is this, Frank?" Aunt Katherine asks, releasing her nephew with reluctance and eyeing Gerard's unusual hair coloring. "Did he come with you?"

"Oh, no, he's not with me," Frank says hurriedly. "He's…"

"Gerard," the black-and-blue-haired boy interrupts, and holds out his hand for her to shake. The look of amusement is still evident in his eyes when he looks back at Frank. "I sort of live here at the hotel."

"Oh," Aunt Katherine replies, then brightens. "Well, I'm so happy that you've already made a friend, Frank."

"Uh," Frank says articulately. "Yeah."

"Of course," Gerard says. "I told him he should get an eyebrow piercing in his spare time one day. And I gave him a completely bullshit-free palm reading."

Aunt Katherine blinks. "Excuse me?"

"Didn't I, Frankie?" Gerard's eyes meet Frank's again.

"What?"

"That's right. Of course I did," Gerard says, looking pleased with himself.

"No, you didn't." Frank forces himself to speak, even though his aunt is making him uncomfortable. "No one's asked me out yet."

Gerard laughs. "Good. That was an invitation. You heard him, didn't you?" he asks Aunt Katherine, who is just watching and blinking. "Good," he says again. "So…" He steps between Frank and Aunt Katherine. "You do want to go out with me, don't you?"

Aunt Katherine coughs several times and clears her throat, but Frank ignores her. "Um… yeah. I do."

"Good," Gerard says a third time, and pushes back his hair again. It's already found a way to fall into his face. "Very good."

"Frank!" Aunt Katherine exclaims. "You don't even know this… this… this young man!"

"Of course he does," Gerard tells her, and blows her off with that. "Give me your hand again." He seizes Frank's hand like he did earlier and pulls a pen from his pocket.

"What, another palm reading?" Frank snorts.

"No. My number." The look of amusement returns to his face as he writes numbers onto Frank's hand. They spill out partway across his wrist. "Now get out of my hotel," he says, releasing the hand. "Before your aunt tries to kill me."

"I won't allow you to speak this way," Aunt Katherine says, bristling. "You-"

"Hey," interrupts Gerard, holding up his hands. "Be nice to a poor soul who's been condemned to the lobby."

"Come on, let's just go." Frank takes his aunt by the elbow and leads her to the doors. Aunt Katherine is still looking at Gerard and opening her mouth as if she wants to say something, but doesn't. She walks out reluctantly.

"I'll see you later, right?" Gerard asks Frank, one eyebrow raised.

Frank half-grins. "Yeah." The lobby door closes.
________________________
I think it's cute. 

I was bored. I have no friends. Just my imagination. 

I'm tired. 

-Sam