FIC: But I’m A Rockstar, by Mary and Claire
But I’m A Rockstar By irradiatedsoup and sharpest_rose

[MCR/FBR/MSI AU] Ray/Frank, Lyn-Z/Gerard, pg-13, Cracky, 5,800 words.

Considering one of us writes for a living and one of us does not, it’s fairly easy to tell who wrote what, but I hope the flow is still okay and you guys enjoy it anyway!





As far as most seventeen year olds go, Ray Toro has it pretty okay. He's smart; gets decent grades. He's polite and neat, so the adults love the shit out of him; and since he's started playing guitar for a local garage band, he hasn't had to forfeit his pants at recess for months.

So he's unnerved, more than a little, when this one Monday his parents drive right past his high school, and leave him and his duffel outside a giant purple house with a statue of a pissed-off looking Jesus by the front door.

It takes him twenty-eight minutes to decide it isn't a joke and to go inside. Another three minutes pass before he wishes he hadn't; only it's too fucking late anyway, because he's being ushered into an office by an creepy-eyed orderly wearing a Marky Mark t-shirt.

The office is covered in pictures of people making out, getting married, and holding babies. There is picture of a grizzly, baring its teeth, with a caption that says "KEEP IT NATURE REAL!"

Ray has no idea what that means.

He's slowly getting an idea of what is going on here though; he thinks maybe he even watched a documentary about a place like this once, where they kept a bunch of anorexics locked up and made them eat. Except Ray isn't anorexic, and he doesn't really think anyone here is going to be. When Counselor Beckett (tall, pinched face, immaculately styled hair) turns up, she tells Ray that he's a perverted homosexual who needs to be put on the right path.

Ray is conflicted emotionally. Even though he guessed it right and all, he probably wouldn't have said it like that. More importantly, there was kind of a crucial factor being overlooked.

"I'm not gay," Ray states firmly, once she's stopped saying it. "I shouldn't be here."

Beckett's lips quirk ever-so-slightly.

"Of course. You watch Gilmore Girls for the tits."

Ray opens his mouth; he's all ready to tell Beckett how he actually watches it because he likes the way they talk really fast, but she's already waving him out so he lifts his chin resolutely and pretends it's a yawn.


--


"This is the common room, where we like, hang out and whatever."

Robert, the boy with the lip ring and hair falling all in his eyes, points around the room as he speaks.

"That's the couch, that's the fridge, that's the cupboard. Right there on the carpet is a stain, but I don't know how it got there."

Ray tilts his head slightly. "It looks like ketchup."

Robert nods thoughtfully.

"It could possibly be ketchup."

They stand there for a little while, not saying much of anything. It's less creepy in here than Beckett's office, and Robert seems nice, even if he does speak in a weird sort of monotone, but Ray is still kind of twitchy and annoyed. And he thinks the bright blue and pink walls are stupid.

"I can show you where the boy dorms are now, if you want?"

Ray nods, adjusting his grip on his suitcase.

"Sure. Hey Robert--

"Bob."

"Bob, sorry" Ray re-iterates. "Are you homosexual?"

"Watch out."

Ray doesn't quite know why Bob said that, and thinks he might have accidentally offended him. So he apologises.

Bob is looking sort of confused, when something hits Ray heavily in the back and scares the shit out of him.

Only, it's not really something. It's a someone. A human person who has jumped on him, has their legs wrapped around his waist, and is now holding on so tightly to his neck it feels a little like that time at his cousin's wedding where his brother did up his tie too tight. Ray had passed out in the car on the way to the church and his parents had thought he was playing around. So when he'd woken up moments later he was glad he was still alive and all, but his brother was laughing at him and his Pa had taken his Nintendo privileges for two months for being a jerkoff.

Ray turns his head; he can see a tattoo and some messy dark hair, and he sort of shakes his arms and shoulders a bit, hoping to politely dislodge whoever it is. There is a high-pitched giggle in response.

"That's Frank," Bob tells him, tiredly. "He jumps on people."

Frank leans his head against Ray's ear. His breath smells like cigarettes.

"Wanna suck my dick?"

Ray frowns, his face getting kind of warm. He had no idea gay people talked like that. Ever. Anywhere.

"Um, no. Thank you."

Frank (thankfully) slides off Ray's back.

"That never works." Frank says, with a shrug. Now that Ray can see all of him, he can see that Frank is very small. Possibly even a midget. And probably deranged.

"Lyndsey said yes." Bob points out.

Frank makes a face, like he's having stomach pain or something.

"She told me if I pulled it out she'd bite it off and use it as a Christmas tree ornament. Apparently her Dad is like, senile or whatever and wouldn't even notice."

Bob grimaces, turning his attention back to Ray.

"Lyndsey's a lesbian." he explains. "They hate penises."

Ray nods cautiously. Candy-up-his-nose included, this is probably the worst day of his life.


--


Lyndsey is the next person Ray meets. Bob leads him to the kitchen, where two kids sniffing at the bottles on the cleaning shelf experimentally.

"Do you think this is non toxic?" the girl asks, gesturing to an open can of Ajax as the guy beside her takes a cautious gulp of oxy-action detergent. "Or will it make me vomit blood and die horribly on this tasteful linoleum pattern before they can call the paramedics?"

"Um." Ray shakes his head. "I don't know. Is there a warning label? I wouldn't risk it."

"Oh, good!" she says brightly, and tips a mouthful past her bright red lips. Then she spits it out, making retching sounds, and runs for the tap. "Omigod, that's DISGUSTING. Why can't they make a lethal poison that tastes like something good?"

The boy, whose hair is shaped into vertical spikes with something that looks and smells a lot like the Dove handsoap that Beckett's office smelled like, blows a large detergent bubble out one of his nostrils. "We've decided to die in a murder/suicide pact," he tells Bob and Ray. "But we can't decide who gets to be the murderer."

"Me," the girl finishes for him. "It's more awesome that way." She sticks her tongue out, contorting her face in an effort to get a look at it. "Is it blue or anything? That stuff was completely foul. I'm Lyndsey, this is Jimmy."

"Lyndsey's a lesbian," Bob reminds Ray. She nods gleefully.

"Actually, I'm a militant separatist determined to destroy the patriarchy by any means necessary. I'm only a lesbian because all men are scum-sucking leech vampires draining the life from the world. Doesn't leave many other options but girls if I want to pick up on Friday night. Oh, and I do plaster-cast sculpture sometimes, but I'm not allowed to here anymore after I asked for supplies to make a death mask of Iero."

"Hey!" Jimmy scowls. "Take that back."

Lyndsey looks confused. "But I really do plaster cast! I was in a show at the community art center last fall."

"No, I meant the part where you said all men are scum-sucking leech vampires."

"Oh. No." She shakes her head.

Jimmy shrugs. "Bitch." He pours another puddle of detergent onto his tongue. Ray feels vaguely ill.

"The courts said Jimmy had to come here or go to juvenile hall until he turned forty," Bob says.

"I was courting the pink dollar," Jimmy explains.

"He even painted them. So you could tell the pink ones," Lyndsey adds. Jimmy ignores her.

"I had a kissing booth at the school fete -"

"- you had a sign hanging around your neck and you stood at the exit gate of the ferris wheel -"

"And what kind of business would I be if I cut out half the potential customers?"

"He kissed all the guys before they could get away and then demanded they pay fag tax or he'd commit a hate crime on them," Lyndsey explains. Ray is starting to wonder if she and Bob have ever considered careers as sports commentators.

"Also, it turns out it's illegal to spray paint money pink," finishes Jimmy. "I'm a freedom fighter. An activist."

"No, I'm an activist. You're just a freak," Lyndsey corrects him. "So you guys want to try any of these cleaning things? Something's gotta taste good, right?"

"Are you killing yourself in a homosexual political protest?" Ray hazards. Lyndsey shakes her head.

"Nah. Just bored. See you guys at dinner."


--


"Bob, you left your weird grandpa socks--, " The skinny boy sitting cross legged on one of the bright blue beds stops talking when he notices Ray; giving him a real look-over and not even for one second pretending he isn't .

"--Hi"

Ray grunts out a vague noise in response, and waves. Frank pushes past him and jumps onto the skinny kid's bed, something spilling out all over the blankets.

"Jesus! Fucking watch it, Iero!"

"What the hell?!" Frank backs up, a sudden howl of glee escaping his throat. "Coffee in bed now Mikey Way? I think I'm going to ask Beckett to stage an intervention."

"Get off my bed, fag."

Ray bites at his thumbnail, watching interestedly as Mikey picks up his now empty paper cup and pitches it at Frank, who actually cackles and jumps across several beds at once. He is, Ray has decided, totally fucking deranged. When Frank settles, Ray walks over to one of the beds on the farthest side of the room and puts his suitcase on it.

"This one is free?" he asks, and Bob nods, because as far as Ray can tell, Bob kind of knows everything.

"So, why are you here?" Mikey asks, arranging a bunch of tissues into a neat pile over the coffee spill.

Ray blinks at him.

"I guess my parents think I'm a homosexual."

"Duh," Frank says, and Mikey snorts.

"He means, what did you do?" Bob supplies.

Ray fiddles with the buckle on his suitcase, thinking of how to put it delicately.

"I don't know." he says finally. "I'm not gay."

It wasn't like he had anything against gay people or anything. Ray was open minded, he'd watched like two and a half episodes of the L word, and he knew all the words to 'Candle in The Wind'. He liked gay people just fine, he just didn't like being accused of being one when he really wasn't.

"I'm in a rock band." Ray yells suddenly. "I'm a guitarist!"

It's kind of maybe the stupidest thing he's ever said, and everyone in the room is looking at him like it's the stupidest thing they've ever heard. Ray sits down on his bed and instinctively apologises again. Eventually, the one with the glasses -Mikey- must pity him or something, because he presses his lips together and then says:

"Well, at least they care or whatever. My Mom sent my brother and me here because summer camp was full."



--

The orderly in the Marky Mark shirt is named Gabe, and is in charge of meal times. This seems to mostly involve arguing Justin Timberlake vs the Backstreet Boys with a guy dressed in several different paisley and plaid patterns and what seems to be a cowboy kerchief, and telling everyone to keep their elbows off the table.

What's especially gay about elbows, Ray's not sure, but he's always had nice table manners anyway so it's no big deal for him.

"Gabe." Lyndsey stands up in her chair. "I want a vegetarian meal."

Gabe rolls his eyes. "Sorry, no way. Trust me, kiddo, I went through this program twice when I was your age. Herbivores are strictly verboten. You eat the steak or you go hungry."

Lyndsey picks the steak up in one hand -- her expression makes it look like she's being forced to handle dog droppings -- and throws it at Gabe.

Gabe blinks in surprise, and then peels the thin serving of meat off the now gravy-drenched Funky Bunch. Then he loads his spoon up with the dry, powdery packet-mix mashed potato that everyone is shoving to the edge of their plate, and catapults the dollop back at Lyndsey.

It misses her, landing amongst the spikes of Jimmy's hair like a snowball in a briar patch.

"Eat the food, throw the food, I don't care," Gabe tells them all, before anyone can retaliate. "But you're not getting a vegetarian meal, you're not getting a vegan meal, and only the girls have a low-carb option available. I know it sucks being here and I know you all hate me now, but you'll thank us for all this later. We're giving you the chance for a happy, normal life. Take it."

Gabe doesn't seem all that happy -- or all that normal, if he's in the habit of throwing mashed root vegetables at teenagers -- so Ray isn't sure that the guy makes an especially good walking testimonial.

"Do you think Gabe's really cured?" Ray asks the guy sitting next to him, a dark-haired kid deep in a conversation about Transformers with Mikey. "Do you think people can really just... switch like that?"

The guy shrugs. "Don't ask me, man. If I had the answers, you think my parents would've shipped me off here?"


--


Ray has a dream that his Aunt Maria is screaming angrily at him, demanding that he grab her breasts and get well again. Ray's never been any good with people yelling at him and he caves and reaches out. They feel bumpy and hard like pinecones, which he thinks is probably not usual.

When he wakes up Frank is perched on the end of his bed, staring at him.

"Bad dream?" he asks.

Ray nods in a way he hopes doesn't look impolite, but gives the impression of someone who was just asleep and doesn't really want to talk right now.

It doesn't work.

"You were making these really funny noises, like when my old dog needed to pee and the back door was closed."

Ray nods again, a little harder this time. Frank just keeps talking.

"My first night here I dreamed the Jesus statue out the front came to life and taught me how to apply eyeshadow. I told Beckett and she said that was blasphemy and I would go to hell and like, burn there forever or something, but it's not like you can control dreams, right?"

Ray pushes his hair out of his face. "Why are you telling me this?"

"And anyway, I said to her, you know, like fuck, who said Jesus even cares whether boys wear eyeshadow? Maybe in heaven people put makeup on their legs and armpits, how would you fucking know?"

"It's kind of late." Ray says slowly. "I think I should go back to sleep."

"Oh, sure man, I just thought you should like, tell you or whatever."

"I-- I don't really go to church. I don't even think I was baptised."

"No man, not the Jesus thing." Frank sort of shrugs, and when he opens his mouth again all the words come out really fast. "Um, look. You don't have to--. We're all in the same shitty boat, so we all look out for each other, you know?"

Ray opens and shuts his mouth slightly. No one has ever really said anything like that to him before. Anyone who ever looked out for him did it because they felt bad for him, or it was their job, or because they needed a designated driver. Ray thinks of his parents, driving away and leaving him here, without even looking back once.

He shakes his head.

"I can take care of myself."



-



The next few days they have lessons. Ray likes this, because he knows how to learn just fine; how to hide his head in it and ignore everything else. In high school, before the small bit of cred the band had earned him, he'd escaped most of the bullshit just by being the one no one noticed or cared about; blending into the back of a classroom.

He'd started guitar lessons like that, and then he'd pretty much become obsessed with it. It didn't seem to matter that no one wanted to hang with you, when you had a thrumming, breathing sound right there against you, making everything seem bright and meaningful or whatever.

Ray really misses his guitar here, so he avoids thinking about it, --and about creepy, tiny Frank Iero sitting on his bed in the middle of the night-- by concentrating on learning how to stop being a rampant homosexual. It's challenging on account of how he isn't actually a rampant homosexual, but Ray takes it as an opportunity to learn how to become a more convincing straight person; which Beckett says has a lot to do with finding Jesus and playing sports and shooting things.

"If you go to a firing range--," she's saying, "--that can make you feel manly and virile--. Peter, get your hands off your nipples."

Ray writes 'verile' down in his notebook.

Beckett points to Mikey's older brother. "Mr Way, what other activities can you think of that might make you feel manly and virile?"

The room gets kind of quiet. Ray can only see the messy black hair on the back of Gerard's head, but he thinks he knows what is coming next. It happens pretty much every lesson.

"I will not pander to your notions of conventional masculinity, Miss Beckett." Gerard grits out, and then he gets to his feet, tilts his head back and screams: "YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME!" at the ceiling.

Beckett rolls her eyes. A boy with a hat – Ray thinks his name is Patrick, – claps slowly a few times.

Ray writes 'Destroy me' down in his notebook. Then, after some consideration, he writes 'Please.'



-



They're playing kickball in the bedroom. Pete has the ball, and for some reason Mikey is on Bob's shoulders.

Ray had only gone away for a few minutes to brush his teeth and take out his contacts, but apparently that was enough time to pick teams and colour coordinate.

"Hey Toro, you're on my team." Patrick says, waving him over. And Ray has a few thoughts about how this is against the rules, and how he's in his pajamas, but he doesn't say any of them, because he's already been picked and everything.

"I haven't really played this since grade school." Ray says absently. I'm not sure I—"

"Just pass the ball to me then," Frank snits under his breath. "If it's too fucking hard for you."

They lose the game. Mostly because Ray and Frank spend the whole time violently kicking the ball at each other.


--



Ray has been forced to revise a lot of the things he used to think about the world lately, but he's still pretty sure that seeing Gerard sit in one of the common room armchairs with his knees drawn up and a feather boa draped limply around his shoulders while an album of Judy Garland torch songs plays on the stereo is out of the ordinary enough for him to comment on.

"Are you okay?" he asks Gerard, feeling nervous. Last time he talked to Gerard, Gerard started explaining that British people were very pure. Then he drew two thick black straight-edge crosses on the back of his own hands. Then he smoked three cigarettes, and asked Ray if he'd ever read Kill Your Boyfriend by Grant Morrison and how it demonstrated that heterosexuality could be outside the dominant hegemony too, even if it did do that through incest, but fictional incest wasn't the same as real incest, it was okay if fictional incest was hot, like in Star Wars. Then he'd wandered off.


"Bert got sent home," Gerard answers morosely, wrapping his boa tighter around his shoulders and sighing.


"Oh." Ray's not surprised that Bert's the first person to leave since Ray arrived. Bert's always begging kisses off the other guys, and getting yelled at by Beckett for it. Ray's seen Bert and Gerard making out more than a few times, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. "Did you... like him?"


Gerard scrunches his face up. "I guess. It was meant to be an in-your-face thing against this place, you know? We were trying to be challenging. Then he starts talking about how I'm really cool and interesting and how he wants us to hang out when we get out of here, and I freaked out, and I...." Gerard bites his lip, giving Ray a look that's pretty conflicted and a little guilty. "I told Beckett there was porn under Bert's bed."


"Oh," Ray says again, but Gerard's still talking and doesn't notice.


"Now he's gotta go stay on his friend's couch or something, because his parents don't want him back --"


"That's... that doesn't sound too bad. At least he had somewhere to go," Ray hazards, stilling the increasingly violent flailing of Gerard's hands with his own. "I mean, it's lousy his parents didn't want him to come back to them, but at least he's got somewhere."


"It was supposed to make things easier." Gerard sounds sullen and confused. "When he was gone, it was gonna all make sense again, but now it's all even more fucked up."


Ray doesn't know what to say to that, so he leaves Gerard to Judy Garland by himself.


--


They hear the new guy before they see him, a few days after Bert leaves. Ray can't make out the muffled words getting gradually louder and closer, but he knows enough to realise that it's a song. The common room gets quiet and kind of thick with excitement at the prospect of new blood. Especially new blood that is totally singing in the hallways.

"Is that--, is he singing Prince?" Pete asks, and shoves his magazine under the couch. Alicia runs across the room and leans out the door. When she turns back, she looks thrilled.

"You guys, he's wearing a dress!"

The anticipation in the room goes up several notches, and Frank pretty much bolts out the door. Ray frowns.

"I was going to wear a dress," Gerard grumbles from the other side of the sofa. "It was going to be a powerful political statement."

Ray doesn't answer, he just pulls the comic he was reading so close to his face that he has to rotate his head a bit to read it.. He doesn't really understand people like that; who draw attention to themselves like they want people to be embarrassed for them, or to make fun of them, or something. Ray barely has to do anything to get people to make fun of him, but at least he tries to be like everyone else.

"Look, I'd like to, honestly…" The new guy is saying when he walks in (Ray still can't see anything because he's staring intently at The Hulk crushing a trash can with his fist) "…but I have this nervous twitch where I can bite down at any given moment – Hey, I know you!"

It takes a second for Ray to realise he's being spoken to, and when he peers over his comic, he's greeted by the sight of a (sure enough, familiar) guy in a pink floral dress, with Frank attached to his back.

"Oh, yeah." Ray says, remembering; "You were in my music class sophomore year. You… wrote a song about passing gas."

"James," he supplies quickly, and then to the room at large; "You can call me Reggie."

That night during bedroom kickball, James/Reggie suggests it's time for a secret excursion.


--

Ray is sitting at the bar, and on his second apple juice, when James asks him to dance. He hesitates slightly, because he doesn't know if James is gay or not and doesn't want to give him (or anyone else) the wrong idea. But James is grinning at him like a mental patient, or a serial killer or something, and he is a really nice guy, so he says yes, okay, one dance.

It's only really them out there dancing, as everyone is really just milling around. Except for Pete, who is trying to convince the bartender to sell him and Patrick some beers. Christa is out there too, with Frank, but it's not so much dancing as it is Frank standing on her feet, and her energetically swinging him around.

Christa his done her hair up in braids, and she looks really pretty. James must think so too, because after about a minute, he angles Ray in their direction and asks to cut in.

Ray tries not to feel as though he may have been used soley for, an admittedly clever plan. As they dance away, Frank turns around to him and extends his hand.

"Want to?"

Ray hesitates again, but this time it's not because of uncertainty. He crosses his arms over his chest.

"I don't know Frank, it might be too fucking hard for me."

Frank's eyebrows get real close together. "Fine."

He starts to walk away, and then he spins around on his heel and hisses "I hope you choke on your stupid fucking hair in your sleep, you giant baby."

Ray's face feels hot. "I'm not a baby!"

Attention is starting to slide in their direction. Frank doesn’t help by waving his hands around like a crazy person.

"You're scared of everything! You're scared of kickball! You won't even dance with me!"

Ray storms forward, angry, and grabs Frank's hand. "Fine, you shit! I'll dance with you!"

And really, at this point it's not really so much dancing as it is a lot of grappling and pushing around. Ray is trying to lead, but so is Frank and it just keeps turning into a shoving match with intermittent glaring. It must look as bad as it feels, because finally Mikey cautiously sidles up and asks; "Do I have to get Bob to manfully separate you two or something?"

Ray shakes his head quickly, and Frank says. "We're fine."

But that's kind of bullshit, Ray doesn't really feel fine at all. He breathes out, finally exhausted, and lets his arms fall lightly around Frank's waist.

"I'm not scared, I'm just not like you."

Frank looks up at him briefly.

"Yeah, you are. Do you think your parents would even care if you were gay, if you were like, captain of the football team or prom king or whatever?"

Ray can feel his face getting hot again, and this time his throat tightens up too.

"I have been thinking about what I did wrong, so I can fix it when I go home. But, I don't-- I can't remember."

Frank doesn't say anything, he just curls his arms around Ray's stomach, and sways awkwardly to the music. If Ray didn't know better, he'd think it was a hug.

--


Ever since the thing with Gerard and Bert happened, Ray's gotten better at noticing when actual gay stuff happens among the other kids. Not like when Gerard and Lyndsey paint a mural of a rainbow being fed into a meat grinder by a blue and pink pair of toilet-stall male and female silhouettes, but like when he finds Pete and Mikey and Patrick and Bob playing spin the bottle together after their night out, and on Pete's turn it lands pretty squarely on Bob but none of them look surprised when Pete yells 'ha, Mikey, got you AGAIN!' and lunges at him lip-first.

"Mikey's going to get rug burn on his elbows," Bob commentates helpfully. Ray leaves before he's sure, but he thinks that Bob and Patrick might've been holding hands.



--


Tuesday is family day.

Beckett wakes Ray up early to tell him that his parents aren't coming because his heterosexual brother's wife is having her baby.

"Maybe if you work hard enough here, one day you'll be able to impregnate a woman and make your family proud."

Ray stares at her until she goes away.

Later, after he's showered and dressed, Ray heads out into the yard. Frank is leaning against the fence right down the back, having a smoke.

"Your family can't make it either?" Ray asks.

"I don't have a family." Frank says.

"Oh."

Ray doesn't really know what to say. He hasn't ever met an orphan before. In fact all his knowledge of orphans had come from the film version of Annie, and he was pretty sure that was fairly unrealistic.

"I'm in between places." Frank continues; his voice is flat. "This place was a parting gift from my last foster folks."

"Well," Ray says slowly, trying to think of an upside. "At least you get to see lots of different places."

Frank snorts "They don't send you to Paris to get fostered, Toro."

Ray nods. It was a pretty lame upside.

"It's not always bad," Frank concedes. "I had this awesome foster sister this one time; Jamia. Every time I won Super Mario Cart she would spaz out and punch me in the legs."

It's not his fault he doesn't know awesome siblings don't do that, Ray thinks, he's got nothing to compare it to.

" ...Cool."

"She still writes, sometimes. When I told her I was in here she told me she was going to send me a birthday cake with a big purple dildo baked into it."

Ray's eyes widen. "Are you serious?"

Frank chuckles, and nods.

"So, when is your birthday?" Ray asks.

"It was last month, so I guess she forgot or something." Frank shrugs, and stomps on his cigarette a bit. "Want to go watch Gerard yell at his parents about being oppressed?"

--


One of James' friends on the outside arranges for Gerard and Lyndsey's mural to be featured in an art magazine. Pete and Alicia fight over who gets to take the photo of the artists to send in for the feature -- Pete and Alicia both really miss being able to take photos of their pets for MySpace, an explanation which Ray thinks Gerard and Lyndsey should be more offended by.

Gerard writes 'Scum sucking leech vampire' on his neck, and after the photo's taken and Pete and Alicia go off to give the camera to James, Ray hears Gerard say "Wanna get married when we finish high school?" to Lyndsey.

She considers the proposal for a few seconds. "Because the cult of marriage refuses to acknowledge the validity of same-sex unions, we should make a mockery of their institution by hijacking it?"

Gerard nods a little too eagerly. "Yeah! C'mon. It'll be subversive performance art."

Lyndsey laughs, and kisses him on the cheek. "Sure. Let's go think up the best way to tell Beckett."

Ray wonders if he should warn Lyndsey about what happened with Bert, but decides there's no way to say it without making Gerard sound mean.


--



Ray was supposed to be studying the bible, but is actually half-asleep and drooling on his blanket when Frank throws a square white box on his bed, a few inches from his face.

"She fucking sent it!" Frank says in disbelief, opening the box and putting his hand in the middle of the chocolate cake inside it. While he's pulling it apart, Ray peels the card off the side of the box, and reads it out loud.

"Happy birthday loser, I spent all my fucking allowance on this thing so you better like it." Ray pauses, yawning. "I tried to bake a dildo into the first one but it melted and I didn't get caught but Mom is still ragging on me about why the oven smells like burnt rubber. Peace out. Jamia."

Frank stops, and pulls his hands out of the cake, licking the icing off one of his fingers. "So there's no dildo in this thing? Fuck, I could have eaten it!"

Ray laughs, and Frank is still grinning like a freak, obviously pretty happy with his cake regardless of the lack of sex toy inside it. There is icing all over his arms and misfits t-shirt and it's dripping on the floor now. He reaches back into the box and pulls up a lump of destroyed cake out, offering it to Ray.

"Thanks, but that's really unhygienic." Ray says.

Frank snorts; leaning down and giving Ray an icing moustache with the gunk left over on his fingers. He claps his hands together when he's done.

"There!" Frank grins "Now you look sassy!"

"Right." Ray licks a bit of icing off his upper lip. "Huh, --this is actually pretty good."

"You called her didn't you?" Frank is looking at him different now, a kind of soft expression on his face.

Ray's ducks his head, and pretends to be invested in Bible-reading. He hope Frank doesn’t notice that he’s staring at a blank page at the back of it. "No," he says, quickly.

"Bob told me, man." Frank says, his voice tinged with amusement, "He thought you were talking to your girlfriend, Jamia."

Ray keeps looking at the blank page.

"Toro, I really want to like, kiss your face off right now."

Ray's face feels warm, and kind of sweaty. It's weird. He should be freaking out right now, he should totally be freaking out. But instead Ray closes his bible and looks right at Frank and says "What, you think I'm scared or something?"

When Frank kisses him, he's smiling and his teeth sort of bang against Ray's. Then it's all lips and tongue, and Frank's all soft and sticky with icing, and Ray's not exactly sure if he's doing it right, but he isn't freaking out, and it's really nice. Frank sort of hums appreciably against his lips and then breaks the kiss to tell him, sincerely, that this is way better than a dildo in a cake. Ray tugs Frank close and kisses him some more. He doesn't say it out loud or anything, but he totally agrees.

The door flies open with a crash, and Ray pulls away from Frank abruptly. Pete and Patrick sort of fall, one after the other, into the room. Patrick is flapping his hands excitedly, and Pete must have seen them kissing or something because he’s totally got this weird, unsettling smile on his face.

"You guys, you have to come! Bert is here!" Patrick says breathlessly. "There’s an uprising. Reggie’s got Beckett and Gabe locked in the office, and Lyndsey and Gerard have made these costumes, and there is talk of taking down the Jesus statue!"

Frank claps happily, and instantly gets to his feet. He starts to follow Pete and Patrick, but stops halfway across the room; smiles back at Ray, and holds out his hand.

Ray doesn’t hesitate.