Liar, Liar, Pants....Aflame?

[AN: I got the idea for this and had to write it. I haven't left 'Learning', just so you know, kay? Remember to R&R, because, c'mon, you love me.]


"Frank?"

"Yeah?" Frank turned to look over his shoulder, taking his cigarette from his mouth. Gerard had already reached out and grabbed the top of his head though, shaking it about. Frank laughed.

"Hey stop! You're screwin' up my hair!"

It was Gerard's turn to laugh. "Screwing up your hair? It's not even styled," he said, sitting himself down next to Frankie. They were at one of the patio tables of the tiny cafe inside the venue they were playing tonight. The sun was beaming in through the windows, the late afternoon slipping into night. Outside, fans were lined up in the baking heat, pressing their faces to the barrier fences and anxious to get in. The boys from MCR had already done their sound check twice. Gerard looked up. Mikey and Ray were watching Bob spin his drumsticks on stage, laughing as one nearly hit him in the eye. Frank glanced over his shoulder to watch as well, hearing their laughter.

Gerard reached out, taking a cigarette from Frank's pack. He lit it, taking a drag and settling back in his chair. Frank had turned around again, watching Gerard's fingers as they moved. Gerard glanced over. Frank dropped his eyes. He felt a slight blush grace his face, though he was certain it was most red in the tips of his ears. Gerard smiled to himself, letting his long eyelashes drop across his pale cheekbones. They were already heavy with mascara and deeply rimmed in black liner for the show. Frank shifted in his seat and opened his mouth as though to speak, but said nothing. Their arms brushed against one anothers. Frank went to move his, but Gerard reached out with his fingers and set them on the back of his hand.

"Hey boys!"

Gerard's fingers instantly jumped back and up to his cigarette, and Frank turned around in his seat so fast he nearly stood up. "Heeeey...baby," he said, smiling. Gerard didn't have to look up to know the forced look on Frank's face. He always made that face when Jamia appeared. The short, black haired girl threw her arms around his neck and they kissed, pushing their lips out in a brief peck. Mwah! Gerard breifly wondered if his eye twitched whenever he heard that little noise. She sat herself down on Frankie's opposite side.

"Hey," said another female voice. Gerard did look up this time. He smiled. Chelsea sat herself on his other side, waving. Chelsea was one of Jamia's best friends. They didn't see her a lot, but she was a nice girl. Gerard thought she was really funny, and she knew the drums, so Bob and her talked a lot. She shifted her backpack around, setting it down next to her feet.

"Big crowd," said Jamia, reaching out and running her fingers through Frank's bangs, smoothing them against his forehead. He nodded.

"Oh yeah?" asked Gerard, trying to fill the empty air. He never really knew what to say when she was around.

"Line all the way around the place," said Chelsea, nodding. She pushed her own hair out of her face. She was blonde, with freckles. Sometimes, Gerard got the faint feeling Mikey liked her. She was obviously cute. Some people were just blessed with that. Chelsea was definately one of them, even down to the charming gap in her teeth. She continued. "Some of the girls were so nice too. They wanted to know what you guys were like, and if you really had a girlfriend Gerard," she said, grinning and nudging him. He actually smiled a little. Well, not really....he thought to himself, glancing at Frankie.

Frank looked like he was a kid in the middle of an adult's conversation. It hadn't always been that way. He and Jamia used to hang all over one another. Gerard had lost count of the nights they had wandered off to suck on each other's faces. He had watched as Frank ran his fingers through his girlfriend's hair, his open mouth pressed against hers. He had this way of kissing. He would start at her mouth, spill down her neck and bury his face near her collarbone. And Gerard wished it was him instead. He hated it. Hell, he hated Jamia. It always made him feel guilty. Had made him feel, anyway.

Everything had changed by now. It just happened one night after a show. Frank grabbed Gerard, pulling him in for a kiss and pressing their bodies together. It had been safe, dark, and alone. Gerard had barely time to register what was going on before Frank had run off someplace, too embarrassed to stay. They kind of laughed about that now. They only allowed themselves time alone though. In front of everyone, is was business as usual. Fortunately, it wasn't hard to find excuses to be alone. All either one had to say was he was going for a walk, or back to the bus early.

When they were alone, it was easy to slip their fingers together and kiss down one another's necks. Frank wasn't even embarrassed anymore to press his hips against his best friend's during their fantic make-out sessions and feel the ridgid hardness through Gerard's skin-tight jeans. Gerard was more than happy as he traced over and over Frankie's tattoos, sitting in silence on the couch while Frankie watched TV and enjoyed the attention.

"I think I really like you Gee," Frank would always whisper, his face pressed into his neck and his eyes turned up to search his face.

"Good. Because I know I really like you Frankie," he would answer. Inside, Gerard felt it was a poor substitute for what he really wanted to say, but blurting out how much he loved him didn't feel right either.

Frank flicked his eyes up at Gerard. He shifted again in his chair. "Uh, hey, I'm gonna go outside for a minute. Babe?" he asked warily, standing up and putting his hand on Jamia's. He pulled, telling her he wanted her to come along. She looked at Chelsea, who nodded. "No, no, go ahead," she said, gesturing for her friend to go. Jamia smiled, rolling her eyes and following Frank out, their hands clasped together between them. Gerard was probably the only to notice the subtle stiffness in Frank's arm.

Once outside, Jamia dropped Frankie's hand, pushing her hair back from her face. Frank reached for another cigarette. It annoyed him, the way she constantly played with her hair. He tried not to even look anymore. He flicked his lighter, taking a drag and blowing out his nose. "So?" asked Jamia. She lifted an eyebrow, smirking.

"So?" asked Frank blankly.

"What'd you wanna say to me?" she asked. She leaned back a bit, putting herself along the side of the building. Her jeans were tight, and one knee was ripped and fraying. Despite the heat, she had an old hoodie on over an even older T-shirt sporting the slogan "We do you right at Mattress Warehouse". Frank knew her inside and out for the most part. Dating since high school did that. His eyes fell on the ring on her left hand, even as she jammed them into her hoodie pockets as she swayed her back back and forth against the wall.

"What makes you think I wanted to talk?" he asked, smiling.

"Alright, you pulled me outside for sex." She grinned.

To break up with you. Now, break up! Frank noted to himself this would not work like a magic show, no matter how much he thought it worked in his head. Or thought about top hats. Top hats were so kick ass....

Jamia. He looked over at her and reached out, messing up her hair. "Stoooop!" she protested, moving. He was avoiding the task at hand. He had to end his relationship with her. It wasn't just his decision, really. Gerard had asked him to do it.

"Frank please," Gerard had said one night.

"Why? She doesn't know. She doesn't have to know. It's just our business, Gee, just us."

He had shook his head. "Frank, I feel bad. You know I've never liked her very much, but it's not her fault. And lying to her is just really fucking with my head now." No matter how he put it, Frank had known he would have to eventually. He knew how he felt. He was very certain that he was, in fact, 100%, very, very in love with Gerard. He thought. Maybe. More like 99% sure. He had always thought he had loved Jamia. He did. He still really loved her. The only thing missing was the 'in'.

He wasn't in love with her.

In high school, she had been a really great girlfriend. She was funny. She was attractive enough. She was "one of the guys", so easy to talk to and hang out with. She was all Frank knew. He had never thought about....men. Gerard hadn't happened overnight. It had been a really long infatuation until Frank found himself obsessed with thinking about him. He watched him when he sang. He watched him when he was laughing. He watched him eating, drinking, and sleeping whenever the chance came up. The more and more he thought about him, the more the thoughts became sexual. And well, when he finally acted on them (as bad as that kiss really had been), he was relived to find his bandmate in the same place.

Now that left Jamia.

Inside, Gerard found himself left with Chelsea. She asked for a cigarette and he obliged, pushing he ashtray between them. Now, what was he supposed to talk about? She smiled. "How's Mike? I didn't wanna bother the soundcheck," she said. They both turned to look at the stage. Mikey was screaming about something frantically. His bass was currently being shoved into Bob's pants by Ray and a stagehand. "Yes. Because it's important to test your sound from your drummer's underwear," said Gerard in total embarrassment. He sighed heavily, putting his face in his hand.

She laughed. "It's cool. At least no one's getting hurt- oh wait, never mind."

"How's work?" Gerard asked, pulling one of his feet up into his chair.

She shrugged. Chelsea, last Gerard had heard, was in the business of concert promotion for very underground bands that didn't want to be so underground. He liked the stories she told about teenagers and punks and people puking into instruments. "I just met this band of boys...Ugh, I cannot remember what the hell their name is, but all of their songs are nursery rhymes. Their music is pretty so-so, but the lyrics really have something going."

"Cool. How old are they?"

She scrunched up her nose. She really was cute. "I think the youngest is 17 and the oldest is...20? 21, maybe."

"Nursery rhymes?" Gerard asked. Chelsea nodded. "One of the songs is called Jack & Jill, and another is Hey Diddle-Diddle, you know? It's mostly the titles, but some of the lyrics are as well. You know when you were young and kids would say stupid shit...like, oh...um, oh yeah. 'I'm rubber, you're glue'?"

"Bounces off me and sticks to you, right? Yeah," he said, nodding with a smile.

"Yeah, they say that."

"Sometimes I wish I could still say that to people and get away with it."

"Oh yeah. Hell, it used to solve your problems when you were a kid, right?"

"No kiddin'," he said.

Chelsea tucked some of her hair behind an ear. "Or something about going to sit on a tack...."

"Or how fat you are."

"How fat your mom is!"

"Or..liar, liar, pants....oh shit."

"On fire," finished Chelsea. Gerard had suddenly stood up instead of finishing his sentence, dropping the lighter he had been playing with in his fingers. "Ack!" He stepped on the hem of his pants, tearing some of the hem off. She blinked at the smoke coming off some of the threads. "Did you just light your pants?"

"No."

"Liar."

They both looked at one another. She grinned. "I won't tell anyone you lit your jeans aflame on accident if you don't tell anyone I'm smoking in here. I'm supposed to be quitting."

Gerard sat back down. "Deal." She smirked. "Well, if that happened to more people, there'd be a lot less bullshitters runnin' around."

He nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I'm sick of fakes. People just say whatever they want it seems like nowadays." Chelsea shrugged kind of. "I think everyone kind of lives their own little lies," she said pointedly. Gerard swallowed a bit. "Not big ones all the time. Sometimes people just aren't true to themselves. Then again, you have the fakes, the wannabes....the cheaters," she said softly.

"Yeah. Cheaters," Gerard murmured. He didn't know how long they sat there in their silence, absorbed in their own worlds, their own thoughts occupying them. The door opened though, bringing Gerard back to himself. Frank and Jamia came in. He felt his heart sink. They were still holding hands. Her head was on his shoulder for a moment, her smile back on her face. Damn.

"I guess I'll see you later then?" Frank was saying. Jamia grabbed her bag from the chair she had been sitting in. Chelsea came back to life, standing and getting her backpack from the floor. Gerard stood as well, coming closer to the door. "Not staying?" he casually asked the girls. Chelsea shook her head. "Please. We need sleep, not loud music and screaming girls all night." Jamia jerked her thumb at her friend. "What she said." Frank opened the door again and Chelsea walked out.

"Bye Gerard, good seein' you again. Tell Mikey I said hey," she called. Jamia walked past Frank, and they both paused a moment. Frank carefully leaned in, but she only gave him a tiny peck on the tip of his nose.

They watched the girls cross the darkening parking lot towards Jamia's car. Gerard looked at Frank. "You didn't tell her?"

"I really was going to, I promise."

"But you didn't. What did you do?"

Frank twitched his mouth a little. "Talked about the knee surgery her aunt's getting Monday."

Gerard sighed and touched Frank's hand. "They're not even in the car yet," Frank said, his eyes still on the two figures. "They're not watching," said Gerard. Frank said nothing. "It's okay. Just do it next time Frankie," he said. He watched his lovers face in the setting sun. He reached out, pulling his bangs to one side. Frank finally looked at him. "Yeah. Next time."

Across the parking lot, two doors slammed.

"You have to do it eventually. And you promised it would be today."

"I tried, but it's just so hard."

"It's the whole reason we came up here," said Chelsea, looking out the window. Jamia looked at her. She had her lips pressed against her knuckles. She did that when she was thinking or upset. She was probably both right now. Jamia looked in the rearview mirror in time to see Frank and Gerard go back inside. Oh Frankie. He was so cute and fun. Like, hanging out with a girl sometimes. Only she didn't wanna have sex with him or kiss him or....like, be with him.

She ran her arm around Chelsea's waist and moved over enough to kiss her ear. "I'm sorry baby."

Chelsea turned her face and caught Jamia's lips. Her hands came up and placed themselves on her cheeks, turning away from the window and towards her girlfriend. She pulled away, her lips lingering over hers, their foreheads pressed together.

"Just do it next time, please?" she asked quietly.

"It'll be easier next time I bet," Jamia said, nodding. Chelsea smiled, just a tiny bit.

"Liar."