Chapter Text
"Gerard, you do know you have to actually get up from time to time?" Pete asks, standing in the doorway to Gerard's bedroom, watching as he attempts to shrug - and fails - from his position stretched out on the bed, face pressed into the pillow.
"Sleep is better," he finally responds, turning his head to the side so that it comes out as slightly more than an incoherent mumble, not bothering to open his eyes.
"You're gonna end up starving, dude. This is an all time record, I'm sure. What is it, three days, now?"
Gerard half-shrugs again, "Who cares. Sleep."
"Wow. Really articulate," Pete says, rolling his eyes, "don't make me open the curtains."
Gerard opens one eye at this, "You wouldn't dare," he says, squinting up at Pete in the darkness, "or you'd get a punch in the face if you did," he adds, as an afterthought.
"Just cause I'm shorter than you-" he pauses to move to the other side of the room, taking less than a second to position himself next to the window, his speed making Gerard feel tired just from looking. Okay, sure, he can move just as fast, if not faster thanks to Pete's midget-legs, but that doesn't mean it doesn't look exhausting after spending three solid days in bed, "-doesn't mean I'm not stronger than you."
Gerard sighs, twisting himself round into a sitting position and scowling at his roommate, "Fuck you."
Pete just grins at him, disappearing out of the room, just to reappear a second later, "If you go back to sleep again so help me I will set all your comics on fire," he tells Gerard, disappearing for a second time as Gerard slowly climbs out of bed, picking an old and probably dirty t-shirt off of the floor and pulling it over his head.
"And he rises from the dead," Gerard hears Patrick comment as he stumbles into the kitchen, reaching blindly for the coffee pot, not bothering to try and figure out what Pete and Patrick are doing with a bunch of nonsense spread out across the coffee table.
"Yeah, I wish," he replies, finally wrapping a hand around the handle of the glass pot, quickly deciding that the coffee inside is still vaguely warm enough to drink, then pouring it into one of the chipped mugs lined up on the counter, "more hunting?" he questions, raising an eyebrow when he sits in the armchair across from the other two.
"Yeah, vampires suck."
"Thanks," Gerard and Pete say in unison.
"Oh shut up, you guys know what I mean. The vampires that like to start gangs and kill a shit ton of people suck, rather than the ones spend weeks at a time in bed or watch crappy reality TV shows like you two do."
"They're not that crappy," Pete protests, just as Gerard says, "I doubt we're normal cases."
"Whatever," Patrick says, "vampire still suck, and yeah, Pete, they really are that crappy."
Pete frowns at him, pulling a face. Gerard rolls his eyes at both of them, "You should've seen what it was like before everyone knew about us. Like, there was so many more killings because it was easier to get away with. I bet Jack the Ripper was a vampire."
"Jack the Ripper wasn't a vampire, Gerard," Patrick says, sounding exasperated, which he tended to 90% of the time, when around Pete and Gerard.
"How do you know?" Pete asks, "You weren't alive then."
"Yeah, neither were you, dumbass," Gerard counters.
"Shut up, I was trying to defend your point, old man."
Gerard scowls at Pete again, trying to keep his threatening look while taking a sip of coffee, which just ends up with him almost spilling half of it down his front. So much for vampires having better coordination or more agility, neither of which Gerard has.
"We've gotta go," Patrick says suddenly, nudging Pete and standing up to shove some of the things scattered across the table into a bag, "before the others start complaining again."
"Okay, yeah, yeah, whatever," Pete says, following Patrick towards the door, stopping to turn back to Gerard after he's grabbed a jacket and shoes. "Try and like, go outside or some shit, or, I dunno, socialise?"
"Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Ever."
"Why not? Who knows, you might finally meet the love of your life again," he says with a smirk, managing to shut the door fast enough to avoid the book Gerard had thrown at his head. Which, he thinks, was actually a pretty good shot and would've hit Pete if he hadn't decided to move.
Gerard sighed, swallowing down the last dregs of his coffee and standing up, walking round to the kitchen to dump his mug in the sink, before going back to his bedroom and maneuvering through the mess on his floor, ready to collapse on the bed again. His phone buzzes on the nightstand just before he gets the chance, sighing when he realises that it's a text from Pete. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he picks up the phone and reads the message, "You better not be going to sleep now or I'll kick your ass when I get home."
Gerard sighs again, typing out a quick reply of, "I'm gonna sleep and there's nothing you can do about it," before throwing his phone down somewhere on the mess of the floor and finally lying back down in bed, burying his head in the pillow.
He only gets a few moments of peace though, because minutes later his phone is ringing, shrill and loud, too loud to tune out, and he knows Pete won't give up after one call. He drags himself round to the side of the bed, leaning over without sitting up and managing to find his phone again buried under a pair of jeans. Which, Gerard thinks, makes no sense whatsoever because he knows for a fact that the jeans have been there at least a week, while his phone only a couple of minutes.
"You can't stop me from sleeping. I'm a grown man," Gerard says the second he picks up.
"I can definitely stop you from sleeping," Pete retorts, "seriously, man, socialise. I don't know who you even talked to before I forced my way into your life and dragged Patrick, Joe and Andy along."
"I knew people," Gerard says, pouting despite the fact that no one could see him, "now I have you and the other guys, so I don't need to bother making new friends."
"We're not gonna be here forever," Pete says, sounding way too serious for Pete fucking Wentz.
"You are."
"Shut up, you still need to talk to people. You haven't left the apartment in months, I'm sure."
"I went downstairs for the post, like, just last week."
"Out of the building, then."
"Okay, that's besides the point."
"Whatever, go talk to someone. You say you're always looking for this guy-" he says, pausing when Gerard interrupts to remind him that they're not always a guy, "-okay, whatever. You say you're always looking for them, but you haven't spoken to anyone outside of me and the three other people that sometimes come to our apartment. There's no way you're gonna find them if you just sleep for most of your life."
"It's been over half a century, Pete. What makes you think I'll actually ever meet them again?" Gerard asks, not being able to help that he's started to get a bit frustrated. When he was younger - a lot, lot younger - and still human, he met this guy, Frank, and the two of them fell in love quicker than Gerard could've imagined. They had to keep it a complete secret from their families - homosexuality in the 1700s definitely wasn't a hugely celebrated thing - even having to marry other women their families had arranged them to. Frank had even stayed with him after he had been turned, amazingly, since vampires were even more feared than gay people back then. Frank had died way too young from tuberculosis, leaving Gerard depressed, in an unhappy marriage and stuck with a family that mostly hated him, after finding out about his and Frank's relationship after his death.
Gerard had completely given up, even though he and Frank didn't have much time together - barely a decade - he still couldn't think how he'd go on without him. He ran away from his family, his marriage, even his brother, the only person that actually cared about him. He found other vampires, spending most of his time hunting or sleeping, completely forgetting any kind of moral code he thought he'd have as a vampire when he was still with Frank. He killed; humans, other vampires if they got in his way. Anyone. More people than his conscience can now take. What finally stopped him was others vampires, enemies he'd probably built up with his actions, finding his brother, Mikey, and threatening Gerard with him. He had tried to do anything to stop anything from happening to him, but just ended up with a vampire Mikey being dumped on his doorstep.
They had stuck together for a while; Mikey trying to stop Gerard from still being depressed about Frank's death. A couple of decades after he'd died though, Gerard met him again. He'd been freaked out for months after, until he finally got the courage to talk to him again. He was still Frank, he was younger, he looked slightly different, but still recognisably Frank. He didn't understand what it meant, didn't say anything to him. He told Mikey, because he had recognised him too, and neither of them understood it. It was still definitely Frank. His name, looks, and the fact that he and Gerard ended up in yet another secret relationship could be put down to coincidence, but anyone that had known the old Frank, would hardly be able to tell the difference. They both talked the same, acted the same, made the same kind of jokes. They were the same person, somehow.
Gerard tried not to overthink it too much, just being thankful that Frank was with him again. Though, another few decades after this Frank's death - this time he'd died in his late 30s, which was pretty impressive for then - he met him again. He kept coming back, as Frank's and Franklin's and Francesca's and Frankie's. Once Gerard realised what was going on, reincarnation or whatever, he'd spend the majority of his time when he wasn't with Frank, trying to find him. Except now. The last time he'd met Frank, was back in the 40s, they were both soldiers, and met while fighting abroad. They didn't know each other for long, and Frank died in battle. The worst part was that he had died trying to save Gerard. He didn't know about him yet, and Gerard was about to be shot, which he would've survived, because, you know, immortal, but Frank pushed him out of the way, jumping in front instead, and died within minutes.
This made it all worse, because now Gerard hadn't found Frank again since, and had given up on trying a while ago. He complained to Pete constantly, and it was fair enough that he'd started to get fed up with the fact that Gerard didn't even bother to try and find this guy he never seemed to stop thinking about.
"Don't think like that," Pete says, sighing slightly.
"He could be in fucking England for all I know."
"Or he could be sitting in the Starbucks across the street."
"If you're trying to get me to go there, it's not gonna work. We have a perfectly good coffee machine at home."
Pete sighs again, "What about your brother? You never talk about him anymore."
"Yeah, last time I checked he hates me."
"Okay, uh, what about that guy upstairs? Didn't you say he was cool?"
"I said he had cool taste in music, because I can hear it like 90% of the time. I've never actually spoken to him. And he's human."
"Yeah, so are 3 out of 4 of your only friends. And the guy you're always obsessing over."
"Shut up, that's not important. Everyone knows about vampires know, it's harder to actually make friends with humans, unless you were before, like you."
"Okay, whatever. Tomorrow, we're going out to a bar or something. If you say no I'll search the entire fucking country until I find Frank and then I'll tell him to avoid you at all costs."
"You have his first name, that's it. He might not even be a he. Or a Frank. You don't even know what he looks like."
"Oh, I've seen your notebook with all your sketches and photos of him. It's very sweet."
"Fucking hell, you went through my shit?"
"You leave it lying everywhere, dude, it's not hard."
"Fuck you, I hate you."
"I know you do," he says with a laugh, and then the line goes dead.