Archive of Our Own

There was another message from Mikey on Gerard's cell when he got off work that night, and he felt bad about ignoring it, he did. But Mikey, their parents, they thought Gerard was in the city making something of himself; they thought he was working on his art, when in reality, he worked data entry. Fucking data entry, sitting on his ass at a computer for eight hours a day, typing numbers into identical little boxes for corporations he’s supposed to be fundamentally against. His desk was next to a window, which was nice, he lucked out, but sometimes he’ll see something out the window, a bird or an interestingly painted bus down on the street below, and his fingers will itch for a pencil. He only seemed to want to draw when he couldn’t; when he was at home after work, on his days off, when he had the time and means to draw, nothing seemed to come. He didn’t even write anymore, all he could bring himself to do was stick a frozen dinner in the microwave, make a pot of coffee and try to sleep. He smoked more than he ever had before, each morning waking with a tense back and fingers twitching for a cigarette. He was on his third pack that week, it was Wednesday morning.

His alarm was shrill, piercing, because that was the only way he could wake up, when he had no choice. Getting ready for work was as monotonous as the day itself, always the same white shirt, always the same brownish-grayish-blackish suit, a selection of five professionally dull striped ties. His old faithful leather jacket, the worn jeans he used to wear every day, they were shoved in the back of his closet; it’d been a while since he could do anything on his days off besides sleep and stare at a blank canvas, paints in hand but inspiration nowhere to be found.

He made a full pot of coffee every morning, drank the whole thing, the little dregs of coffee grounds that slipped through his cheap, store-brand filters swimming in the bottom of his cup. He noticed them every morning, noticed how cool they looked and maybe sometimes he itched to paint them, but by that time, he’d be running late and need to be off.

Gerard took the subway to and from work because no one in New York drove, and besides, he couldn’t exactly afford a car. Some days he loved it, all the people to watch and things to see. But most days, most days he hated it. It was weird, to be invisible in such a crowded place, people constantly looking through him and never at him. Sometimes he’d think he was being noticed, checked out even, but there was always someone behind him, someone hotter or less, well, Gerard.

Work was full of people who, like him, were unsatisfied with data entry, but they all seemed more content than him. They all wanted a promotion, and everyone did their job diligently, never showing their discomfort, and sometimes Gerard wondered if he was mistaken for thinking they didn’t like their job but then he’d remember it was fucking data entry; who would like it? They laughed at their supervisor’s bad jokes that Gerard never got, looked at Gerard like he was a freak when he stayed silent. He’d gotten good at faking smiles and everyone at work thought he was this stoic guy with no sense of humor. It kind of sucked.

Gerard dreamt in numbers now, the vivid colors and shapes and characters of the past no longer residing in his sleep addled brain. He woke up with spreadsheets in his eyelids, and every number he saw, he felt the need to catalog. Data entry fucked with his head, the numbers on the microwave dancing into shape while he waited for his pop tart to toast. The route numbers on the subway weren’t always in chronological order, but Mikey’s cell phone number was. Where he used to notice shapes and hues, there were numbers and identical little boxes. Sometimes, it felt like data entry was killing his fucking soul.

---

It was one of the days he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, that he’d just pack up his shit and take a ferry home and live in his mom’s basement and be fucking done with it all. His neck was killing him and if he stared at the screen for one minute more, he was sure his eyes would fucking bleed. He turned his head, looked out the window; there was a tourist bus down on the street, a few birds on the sill of the window across the way, a guy in the office behind it.

He had black hair and big eyes, his lip pierced and tattoos showing as shadows through his crisp white shirt. Gerard thought he was kind of gorgeous and he maybe stared for longer than he should have, because the guy looked up and Gerard’s eyes widened and he looked away, suddenly guilty. He looked back a moment later, and the guy was staring at his screen again. Gerard sighed and the guy looked back again, inquisitive face pointed at Gerard. Gerard looked behind him, but there was no one else there, and he turned back to the guy, who, after a moment, looked away, wrote something down and held up a sign.

It said, in thick black marker, scrawl messy and hurried, pictures last longer. Gerard flushed, feeling embarrassed and rude, but the guy’s face lit up and his body shook with giggles. He held up another that read, im kidding, then one more, frank. Gerard scrounged around his desk for a marker and paper, ended up with a thick sharpie, the kind that would make his coworkers hate him for the smell, and an old spreadsheet. GERARD. , he wrote in careful block letters. Frank grinned, big and bright and fantastic and scrawled out, awesome! nice meeting u! . Gerard wrote back, NICE TO MEET YOU TOO.

---

When he got home that night, he dug two pushpins out of his kitchen junk drawer and pinned the two sheets of paper up on the bare wall behind his empty easel.

---

The next day, Gerard looked out the window and Frank was there, shuffling through papers. Gerard smiled a little to himself, signed onto his computer and entered about twelve numbers before caving and looking over. Frank was looking at him, grinning. He held up one finger and picked up a sign, morning! . Gerard started responding on a piece of paper, stopped, tried again, stopped again, and finally settled: Hey Hi Good morning.

Frank grinned, wrote something, held up: hey, what do you do?

Gerard answered: Data entry. You?

Frank made a face and wrote, marketing. bleh. And to punctuate his sign, he made another face. Gerard laughed and that day, when he ate lunch at his desk, for the first time it wasn’t because the lunchroom intimidated him.

---

On Friday morning, Gerard was greeted with a sign that said, happy friday! with a smiley face. Gerard drew Frank a vampire and Frank grinned, wrote, that’s awesome! can u draw me as a zombie? . Gerard did and Frank smiled again and when Gerard got home that night, he had four drawings to pin to his wall, next to the signs from the past three days. He slept well that night, and woke in the morning fully rested and ready for work, before remembering it was Saturday. He was disappointed and stupidly missed Frank, so to distract himself, Gerard took out his paints. He painted his favorite subject, the zombie apocalypse, and took a picture with his phone, texted it to Mikey. A response came four hours later, three hearts and the words how are you. Gerard typed back, good. I’m good. And he meant it.

---

Two weeks later found Frank and Gerard in the middle of a game of hangman. Gerard had lost on the word zombie and lost again when Frank chose predictable next. Gerard fell out of his chair on dismemberment, trying to lean over to make out Frank’s latest letter (he had a habit of making his e’s look a lot like r’s) and Frank fell out of his chair laughing at the look on Gerard’s face. When Gerard’s coworkers looked at him like he was crazy, he wrote to Frank, hey, it’s better than normal. least they see me now. Frank replied with a sadface on paper, mimicked by his own frown. Gerard just shrugged.

---

Twice, Gerard had come to work and Frank wasn’t in his office, but a piece of paper was taped to his window, meeting, a frowny face and, miss u! Gerard blushed and didn’t stop till well after Frank got back. For once, he was glad of the distance between their two offices.

---

Sometimes one of them would point out something on the street, a tourist, a fight, and once, an Elvis impersonator. did we move to Vegas and no one told me?? Frank asked, and Gerard laughed, No, he wrote, the King Is Back and no one told you. Frank stuck his tongue out and Gerard just drew him as a vampire to make amends.

---

One morning, Gerard came in to work and Frank greeted him with a wave, a smile and a sign that said, morning! how’d you sleep? Gerard replied, fine, you?

Not good. Frank replied, Nightmares. 7 8 9. with another frowny face. Gerard stared for a second, mouth moving as he reread the sign. When he got it, he burst out laughing and had to leave the room to calm down, slapping a quick, be back, ohmygod against the glass.

---

It was a Thursday when Gerard went into the office and found Frank looking up from his window anxiously. Hi he said.

Hey, Gerard said, what’s up?

Frank picked up a small stack of paper, and So, the first said, dude. Frank fumbled and dropped the papers and it was another minute before he was standing at his window again, papers in hand. He cycled through them, pausing hardly long enough to let Gerard read: What would you say if I told you that I’d been looking at you for three weeks before you finally noticed me?

Gerard’s mind went blank for a second, because shit like this just didn’t happen to him; guys like Frank just didn’t happen. When he could think again, he wrote out, I’d say: would you like to meet? He held it up, hands almost covering the first and last words where he was clutching the page, but Frank was talking to a big blond man in his office. He shot an apologetic look over his shoulder as he followed the man out and Gerard was left alone.

Frank didn’t come back the rest of the day, and when Gerard got off work, he took the paper home and that night, he rewrote it about 8 times, changing the wording and trying to make his penmanship perfect. He went as far as trying to smile in the mirror, but then realized that was a little pathetic, even for him, and stopped, going over to his easel and working on the lighting on the unicorn he was painting for Mikey.

The next morning, Gerard woke up before his alarm, got ready fast, drank an extra cup of coffee even. He was at the subway station fifteen minutes early and texted Ray until the train came. It was one of the days that he loved watching people on the train, and he caught himself grinning a couple times. He felt on top of the fucking world, and Gerard walked into his office, step not springy, but definitely happier, prouder, than normal.

He got to his desk and waited all of ten seconds before looking over at Frank’s window. His heart fell; Frank’s desk was empty, computer gone, papers gone, little drag queen G.I. Joes gone. The office was empty, and Gerard couldn’t help himself, he just stared. He stared for a solid five minutes before someone entered the room, but it wasn’t Frank, it was a tall gangly guy who was dressed like a gay cowboy, suspiciously sparkly bandana included. He wasn’t Frank. Frank was gone and Gerard didn’t know what to do.

---

When he got home, he noticed that the entire wall behind his easel was covered in half-conversations with Frank, drawings for Frank, games of tic-tac-toe and hangman with Frank, and Gerard didn’t much feel like painting.

---

It started to rain the next day, and didn’t stop till Friday morning. It was Halloween, and Gerard thought it was all too cliché, the gloomy weather matching the holiday and Gerard’s mood. It was overcast and dreary and Gerard’s back was tense every morning that he woke up, neck aching and he had to physically force himself into work, mainlining coffee the whole day, actually planning on going home that weekend, just to get out of the fucking city.

It was noon, but the cloud cover made it seem like twilight, rain having finally stopped, for now, but Gerard’s mood no lighter. The monotony of data entry was almost worse now that he knew how fun his day could be with Frank there, and each spreadsheet was blending in to the next. He was tired, he was sore, and he was hallucinating. The last five minutes, there’d been a red dot on his keyboard, hovering over the shift key. He closed his eyes, rubbed his knuckles into them and when they reopened, they naturally followed the dot to the window, where a thin, barely visible thread of red light connected the building and up in a big window two floors above Gerard’s, Frank stood, grin huge, holding a laser pointer.

When Gerard looked at him, Frank’s grin brightened and he jumped on his toes. He held up a sign, GOT PROMOTED!! I AM BOSS!! And he pulled out another piece of paper, this one saying, ALSO, AM OLD!! TODAY’S MY BIRTHDAY!! Gerard grinned because Frank was fucking back now, incomplete sentences and overly excited punctuation included. And smiley faces, as Frank pressed a big grinning smiley against the glass. Gerard scrawled on another old spreadsheet, Happy Birthday! and then steeled his nerves, and wrote on another: Want to celebrate? In person? Frank’s body shook like he was laughing and after a minute, two more signs: Dude. and fucking finally.

Frank jumped up and down a bit and then scurried from the room, and after a moment, Gerard followed suit, taking the stairs down two at a time, too impatient to use the elevator. His lungs were not a fan of this maneuver, and he was wheezing by the time he got to the street. The stoplight was green, cars were rushing by, but he could see Frank on the other side, bouncing on his toes and when the light turned, they both rushed in to the street, meeting in the middle of the crosswalk and Gerard shared Frank’s sentiment, fucking finally.

When only a few feet separated them, Frank took a breath to speak, but Gerard shook his head to stop him, pulling a paper from behind his back to hold in front of his face. Hi. it said and Frank closed the distance and smashed his mouth to approximately where Gerard’s was, still covered by the paper. Frank giggled and tore the paper from Gerard’s hand, kissing him full on this time.

He mumbled against Gerard’s lips, “Shut up” and Gerard did.

end.