#teoja

Chapter 10 & Chapter 11 of The Elite of Just Alright :3 happy pride everyone!!

"Oh, fuck!"

Gerard pushes Frank off of his chest and holds him out shoulder-length, sort of stabilizing him on the slippery wet tile, "Careful there."

Frank glances back at the guard and he's staring off to the side, somewhere else.

He turns back to Gerard and his eyes immediately land on the little droplets of water rolling down his chest. He's totally soaked and looking a little flushed himself, but he just smiles politely and says, "I heard you were sick all day. You look fine to me, though."

Frank's starting to feel hot all over and then woah, he's only got a towel on and so does Gerard.

He screws his face up and lets out a shaky laugh, "Uh, no. I mean yeah. I was sick but now I'm good—I mean I feel fine. Food poisoning I guess."

Gerard narrows his eyes at him, "Huh—except we all eat the same thing, remember? Maybe you just had a bad batch?"

Frank narrows his eyes back at him but he's still trying desperately not to think about the fucking dream and the towels and the water running down his chest—holy fuck. So it loses its edge pretty much immediately, "Yeah, maybe."

Gerard takes one long, slow look at him up and down. Then he glances over Frank's shoulder for a second before stepping past him, dragging a light, quick finger across the small of his back as he says, really fucking quiet:

He feels itchy again—like being cooked alive over a campfire except worse. Worse because Gerard's pressing the side of his boot up against Frank's sneaker and actually being really subtle and nonchalant about it. Well, not subtle to Frank because holy fuck his mind is racing. But subtle to everyone else 'cause they're in the back of the classroom and nobody's gonna look at their fucking feet anyway.

Though, after a few seconds Frank sort snaps back to barely functioning and starts to feel more of the anger from before burning up again. He wants to kick him back hard like take that! for being such a hot-cold asshole about everything. It's been almost two days and nothing but weirdness and avoidance and more nothing. And that's pretty fucking lame because he's supposed to be the one to—

—uh...

Gerard chuckles under his breath, "What, scared?"

The nervousness slips into anger pretty much immediately after that. Gerard smirks at him too which is probably a part of the whole Jedi-fucking-mind trick thing he's got locked down.

Frank considers leaving him there just like he'd done yesterday—all breathless and what the fuck—but he decides the pettiness is not worth losing out on the potential almost-moment. So he grits his teeth and forces himself to get in on the other side of the car, "Fuck no."

Gerard snaps his head up but doesn't flinch away. Then Frank says, in a totally unnecessary whisper, "It's fine."

Gerard gives him a confused look, "What's fine?"

"I dunno—whatever's going on in your head right now. We can talk about it after. Just, fuck—just let me kiss you, fucker," Frank says, pawing at his side with the other hand. He's probably being a total dick about this but he can almost see Gerard falling down the overthinking mind-vortex, so somebody's gotta grab him by the shirt and yank him back out.

He moves his hand up and then yanks Gerard by the collar of his shirt literally. Self-actualization—he thinks. Or maybe it's more like 'if you can dream it, you can do it!' or whatever.

Gerard rolls his eyes as he stumbles back into a tree, laughing a little, "I can take you, Spank."

"Yeah? Then let's go. Right now," Frank says, cracking his knuckles like those guys do in the movies.

All the adrenaline from before is pooling up inside of him so he's totally ready to go. He's been waiting for this moment since like, the second he called him Spank weeks ago. He totally deserves to get hit—especially after the bullshit attitude and the I don't wanna be friends and kissing that fucking girl. He needs to hit him like he needs to fuck him.

It's one and the same.