Chapter Text
Frank had been thinking about third spaces recently. He’d read somewhere that you needed to have a space besides work and home that you could go and feel comfortable to optimize your success, or some bullshit like that. None of it sounded real to him, but as he stared out of the window at the gas station he worked at, something clicked in his mind that this was no way to live.
7:45. Fifteen minutes left. He itched at the fresh tattoo on his arm. Well, not really itched. More swatted, pressing the coagulated blood and ink into different shapes under the second skin, wondering why he’d even got the damned thing when he could hardly afford rent with his roommate, Ray. At least he could make himself pretty, to an extent. It might be his only real hobby left anymore besides guitar.. Photography had turned into making covers for his unreleased music, which had turned into never taking photographs unless he was at shows. Drawing had turned into doodling ideal guitar setups, which had turned into never drawing unless he had the motivation and money to get new shit for his guitar. Even watching movies had turned into a time-skip for him to dissociate and waste time getting prettier. That was all he thought about anymore: making himself prettier. He either played guitar to make himself pretty or made himself pretty to play guitar. He was a nothing person besides these things.
To the extent of rent, tattoos, and being able to be on his feet unquestioned for hours at a time, he was glad he had a job. The shift he worked ran from midnight to eight AM, Monday to Friday. It dragged on and on each time he went, dressed in his stupid uniform and stocking shelves or checking people out, mopping up coffee spills or going out for a smoke. His sleep schedule had become abnormal, to say the least, ever since starting his job, though. He’d sleep from when his classes ended until 11:30, get up and get ready, go to work, get home and play guitar until 9:30 when his classes started, and then go to class. He never did schoolwork, tried to not have time enough to eat, though he got too tempted at work too often. His fingers would dance across rows of sugary candies and his eyes would dart along the line of greasy, godforsaken pizza, and then he’d settle for the mess hall between classes. It was there that he either did well and earned his spot in the world, or that he cursed himself for the rest of the day and spent some of his guitar time on the walking pad he had gotten himself. There was a salad bar, at least. Black coffee. Not good coffee, but better than the shit he sold to people. But alongside these pure, heavenly foods that felt safe and would leave him with less guilt, there were cookies and pasta and burgers. He almost drooled at the thought. He hated his own temptation in ways he couldn’t fully explain. Being hungry meant it was working, yes, but it also felt like it meant he was weak. It always seemed so easy for everyone else.
His coworker walking in stopped his trance dead in its tracks. He grinned mildly and patted his coworker, Pete, on the back as the man walked back to the employee only area. Pete looked a little rough, as always—messy hair, uniform haphazardly put on over a band tee, tired eyes. It was like the gas station had a type. Tattoos, piercings, messiness. He was pretty sure Pete even played music too. He had the hands for it, lithe, strong hands that Frank couldn’t help but envy when he looked to his which seemed feeble in comparison, at least to him. He knew his sense of self was distorted, just not by how much, and how was he supposed to be able to tell? It was a dilemma, constantly wondering if he was lying to himself and looked exactly as his mind told him, or if the comments others made about his attractiveness could actually hold water. He’d bite his breath in the meantime and keep chewing on his lip piercing, which Pete noticed and teased about.
"That damn thing’s never gonna heal if you keep eating it.” He remarked, earning a glare from Frank, who was too sleep deprived and hungry to hear it.
“Shut the fuck up. Do you know how hard it is not to? It’s like it’s begging me to” He mumbled, grabbing his bag from the back room and taking off before Pete had any extra time to annoy him. He couldn’t tell if Pete thought they were friends or if he was just like that or what, but sometimes, when Frank hadn’t eaten in too many hours and had slept too few, he was unable to control his flashes of anger. It made him feel like a piece of shit, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help how his emotions felt too big all the time, how he lashed out, how he reeled back, waned like the tides and ebbed into nothingness. He couldn’t help anything, not even himself. Not that he deserved it.
He pushed his key into his shitbox of a car and sped home, not caring if he got pulled over, feeling his stomach growl. How long had it been now? He’d last eaten at 1 pm the day before, so it was just under twenty hours. He wanted to aim for that, even though it felt pathetic. All he wanted to do was get home and play guitar for the fleeting hour he’d have before he had to get ready for school. After pulling into the lot, he hurried up to his apartment and fumbled his key into the lock. Ray said something that Frank ignored as he walked in and hurried to his room, the first from the door, and as Ray left to go to class. He felt like a dick for it, but Ray got it, balancing work and school too, though Ray seemed to be better at it, cope better with it. Ray seemed to have his shit together, and it kind of made Frank hate himself.
The buzzing of his amp seemed to electrify his body. He couldn’t feel his own digestion, or lackthereof, anymore, and he didn’t need to. Still feeling the anger from Pete, he began practicing a riff he’d been trying at for over a week now but never managed to get right. His fingers slid into place over his fretboard as he sat on his bed, knees aching from eight hours on his feet, and began plucking and strumming the strings, galvanized by the fuzzy tone he’d gotten when playing with the different knobs on his guitar and amp days earlier. The third or fourth pause after the third or fourth fuck up, he heard a banging at the door. His ears rang dimly as he got to his feet and walked lazily to the door, wondering if at last, the building manager’d had enough of his shit.
When he opened the door, it wasn’t the building manager at all; it was someone he’d never seen before, he was sure, because he’d remember someone like this. Gaunt and tall, he was hauntingly beautiful, with sharp features and tired, uninterested eyes. He looked to be a little younger than Frank, maybe just by a year or two, and was dressed in a Jaws shirt and striped pajama pants. His light hair reflected the sunlight seeping in through Frank’s open windows, his eyes focused on Frank, who he had to look down at to lock eyes with.
“Turn down your guitar.” Was all he said, before glancing over Frank and Ray’s shared space with an expression of vague disgust. “And clean your damn apartment. If we get ants on our floor it’s your fault.” His voice was calm and slightly high in tone, uncarefully measured, like he didn’t care how he sounded at all. But he sounded congested too, like he’d just woken up, and his eyes were puffy. He smelled like coffee though, in fact, the whole hallway did, but the man in front of him held a mug in his thin, beautiful hand, so Frank suspected that he was the culprit.
“Clearly you’re already up,” Frank was speaking before he even knew it, “Why should it bother you?” He asked, closing the door slightly to askew the man’s vision from the doorway. Yes, his place needed to be cleaned. Clothes laid all about, as did packaging from guitar pedals and picks and new cords because he and Ray broke every-damn-thing. The coffee table was covered in trash from Ray’s exorbitant take-out consumption and had their coffee mugs on it, as well as empty cans of energy drinks and beers, and packs of cigarettes, and lighters. He never really noticed his and Ray’s mess until someone pointed it out. He instantly regretted what he said when he saw the way the man furrowed his brows and his lip twitched in disapproval. So much for good first impressions.
“Some of us get headaches.” He replied blandly, shrugging lightly as his face returned to rest. Frank couldn’t help but feel like he was being examined by the man, whose gaze would travel up and down Frank’s face and then to his crumpled Misfits shirt and slightly too-big jeans. He couldn’t stand it. He was sure in his examination he’d already identified how thick Frank’s thighs were, how pudgy his upper arms, had seen the unflat stomach and the sheer ugliness of him. But Frank couldn’t close the door. Maybe it was the prettiness of the man in front of him, maybe their stark contrast in the sharpness of him and the softness of Frank, maybe that he just wanted to keep hearing his voice, maybe that Frank just needed to go outside and touch grass. But he couldn’t close the door.
“Have you tried water instead of coffee?” He retorted, chewing at his lip piercing again. He heard his stomach grumble and his hand absentmindedly drifted to push it inwards out of habit. It didn’t help, but he told himself he did. As he noticed the eyes of the man, who he had to assume was his neighbor, darted to Frank’s hand against his stomach, he panickedly pulled it away, like he’d been caught doing something. God, he was a mess. He hadn’t even gotten a chance with this guy and he’d already ruined it.
“Have you tried breakfast? It’s supposed to be really good for you.” The sneer that was invisible on his neighbor’s face was instead audible in the undertones of his words, and Frank almost flinched. “And stop chewing at your lip piercing. It’s bad for your teeth.”
“Just go back to your room. I’ll turn it down.” He lied, turning on his heel and hurryingly closing the door. So, he’d be cleaning his apartment that weekend. It wasn’t exactly what he had planned, but he suddenly felt the need to impress this man, to make himself worth something to him. Not that he could, by any means. His neighbor seemed too cold for being impressed, too stoic to admit such a thing, and too stubborn to let someone as annoying as Frank Iero impress him. But Frank wanted it, and Frank wanted it bad. He was already making things up about him in his head, like what he wore to classes and how his dorm room looked, if he had roommates. So he decided that if his neighbor wanted to be stubborn, fine: Frank could be stubborn too.