bandomstuffsit

Title: Hold It In
Author:

mistresscurvy
Pairing(s): Frank/Gerard
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None.
Word count: 4,000
Summary: Gerard was trying to focus on his senior project for art school, he really was. It wasn't his fault Frank was so fucking distracting.

"Why won't you show us your stuff?" Frank asked, craning over Gerard's shoulder like he could see through the stack of papers Gerard had just piled on top of his actual work. It was two days after Christmas, and Gerard had been simultaneously dreading and hoping that maybe Frank would be away and wouldn't be hanging out with Mikey all the time like most weeks. No such luck.

"Because it's not ready, Frank. I don't really like showing my stuff until it's finished," Gerard said, hunching over his desk and covering the papers with his arms in case Frank really did have x-ray vision. Although if that was the case he'd probably be able to see through Gerard's arms, and his clothes, and that was not a mental path Gerard was willing to head down.

"Aw, come on. It's not like it won't be great. I mean, I've seen your other stuff." Frank tugged a bit at one of the papers.

Gerard quickly grabbed the whole stack and opened a desk drawer, stuffing the papers in and then shutting it. "Yeah, but that was just sketches. My senior project actually matters." He looked up at Frank through his bangs, aware that his cheeks were flaming red, and Frank had taken a couple of steps back, his hands out in front of his body.

"Hey, okay. Well, at least let me guess what the story's about." Frank rested his elbow on his arm, stroking over his chin as he pretended to think. "I'm betting there's a kid who gets lost in an alternate dimension and has to find his way back home, except he doesn't really want to return. But that's only until he finds out about the aliens who are coming to destroy earth completely!"

Gerard stared back at him. Were his ideas really that unoriginal? "I—how did you know?"

Frank spread his hands wide. "I am just that good, man." He giggled suddenly, the sound bursting out of him as he hunched over into the laugh. "Or, you know, Mikeyway told me."

Gerard leaned back in his chair, heart pounding. He was more relieved than he could say, which was stupid and gullible of him, but that seemed to be the impact Frank's presence had on him most of the time. "Well, yeah. So that's pretty much what it's about."

"It's really cool." Mikey finally joined the conversation from his place on Gerard's bed, not looking over at them while he attempted yet again to rescue some hostages in GoldenEye. "I don't know why you're worried about it, Gee."

Gerard tried not to fidget, but he was never particularly good at sitting still, especially when he was unexpectedly the center of attention like this. "Well, I mean, normally this sort of story would take at least a year, with a separate writer and artist and inker and all that. And I'm trying to do it in six months, all by myself."

Frank flapped a hand at him. "You'll be fine, Gerard. You can draw really fast and still make it good." He walked the two feet to join Mikey on the bed, completely unaware of how his casual vote of confidence had just made Gerard's entire body flush with pleasure and pressure and anxiety, all at once.

"Well. Thanks," Gerard finally said, his voice weak and unconvincing even to his own ears. "Well, speaking of, I should really get back to it—"

"Let me just finish this and I'll leave you alone," Mikey said, hands clacking on the controller. "I need to call Alicia anyway."

"Oh really," Frank said. He leaned into Mikey's shoulder, pressing up against him with an ease Gerard couldn't even imagine having had with his friends in high school. "You gonna see her tonight?"

"Yup." Mikey's hands and wrists twisted up as he finally escaped the warehouse with the hostages, the game's music swelling triumphantly. "I think she's gonna come over to watch a movie or something. Upstairs," he added, glancing over at Gerard.

Gerard had no idea how it was that Mikey actually had game, at least for a skinny bespectacled nerd, but he did. On the other hand, Gerard reflected, he was Mikey. Who wouldn't want to hang out with him?

Frank nudged Mikey's side and pointed up at the small window near the top of the wall, the snow already piling up against the windowpane. "You really think now's the best time to invite someone over? The storm's getting bad."

Mikey shrugged as he saved his changes and then shut down the N64, a small smile tugging at the side of his mouth. "I don't know, maybe she'll have to crash here for the night. Accidentally."

Frank snorted and pushed Mikey over, almost rolling him off the narrow bed altogether. "Always the player, Mikey."

Mikey's smile grew a little bigger as he finally stood up, stretching his back. "Speaking of, shouldn't you be heading home yourself, if the weather's that bad?"

Frank shook his head, settling back onto Gerard's bed. "Nah, my mom doesn't expect me home until tomorrow anyway. Plus I need to ask Gerard something."

"Kay." Mikey didn't seem to find that anywhere near as odd a thing to say as Gerard did. "Well, don't distract him too long, he's got a lot of work to do."

"What happened to me not needing to worry?" Gerard asked, flustered and disoriented by their entire conversation.

Mikey shrugged. "Doesn't mean you don't need to work."

"Don't worry," Frank said solemnly. "I won't keep Gerard from his work for too long. Scout's honor."

Mikey snorted. "Like you were ever a Scout," he said as he ascended the stairs.

"Fuck you, I could have been! If I had been a fucking loser," Frank called up at him as Mikey left the room. He looked over at Gerard, who had no idea what to say.

The moment stretched out between them, moving past awkward to comfortable and then back to even more awkward. Gerard finally cleared his throat, running his hand over the top of the back of his chair. "So uh. You wanted to ask me something?"

"Oh! Uh, yeah." Frank looked more uncomfortable than Gerard had ever seen him before, his knee jiggling as his leg bounced up and down rapidly. "So, I was just wondering if you had any, you know, advice."

"Advice about what?" Gerard was completely lost, like Frank was restarting a conversation Gerard had slept through accidentally. Which was possible, he supposed, but he still needed some help, either way.

"Just, you know, about things. Like, okay." Frank wiped his hands down his legs, making eye contact with Gerard for a brief moment before looking away again. Gerard wasn't sure if he should be saying something, or if Frank was still in the middle of a thought, but before he could figure out something new to say Frank had finally started talking again. "How do you, like, show someone you like them?"

Gerard laughed before he could stop it, covering his mouth with his hand as if it would help at this point. He tried to reset his expression when Frank glanced over at him, but he was pretty sure he just looked like a spooked animal. "Uh. Are you sure you want to ask me this?" When Frank nodded, looking back down at his hands, Gerard tried again. "I mean, I think that Mikey might be more help on this topic." Also potentially less likely to suggest filling his crush's locker with frogs as a seduction technique.

He's pretty sure that Frank would somehow make that endearing and not disastrous, though.

Frank shook his head furiously. "How the fuck do you get advice from someone who's a born natural? You don't, okay. That's like asking a genius for help with your SATs. Nothing they say is going to do shit for you."

Gerard could see the logic there, he guessed, but it didn't really help him at all. "Well, usually I've just gotten drunk and waited to see whether anyone would approach me at a party."

"Does that actually work?" Frank was looking at him again, his eyes a little less bleak.

Gerard shook his head. "Maybe, but if it did I don't really remember it all that well." Frank giggled a bit at that, and Gerard went on, trying to remember how he had actually started dating his high school girlfriend. "I usually try hanging around a lot? Laughing at their jokes, um. That sort of thing. I'm pretty lame."

"What if that's not working?" Frank asked. His focus on Gerard's face was somewhat unnerving, but Gerard pushed on, recalling what he'd read in various women's magazines his mother gets. It's not something he'd cop to, but he found them fascinating in almost an academic way: this is how the rest of the world aspires to live.

"Maybe, I don't know, you could ask them to do things you know they're into. You know, go see a band they like, that sort of thing," Gerard said, his brain cycling through the advice that he'd read over the years and then completely failed at using himself. "And I think you're supposed to make physical contact, you know, like on the arm or leg or whatever. Get into their personal space. You're an affectionate guy, that shouldn't be too hard for you."

Gerard ignored as best he could the settling pit in his belly at the thought of Frank trying to cuddle up to someone else. He wasn't going to be that creeper. Frank needed a friend right now, not some old dude perving on him. It's not like he was in the running, anyway.

He thought for another minute and then snapped his fingers, remembering one of his favorite theoretical tips. "Oh! Compliment them on what they can do, not just how they look, you know? Show them you pay attention and all that." He spread out his hands, feeling even more pathetic at his total lack of help. "That's pretty much all I've got." Frank nodded slowly, his earlier energy suddenly gone. "You feeling okay?"

Frank snapped his eyes up to Gerard. "Oh yeah, I'm fine. Just, you know. Trying to figure out how to not be a total dumbass."

Gerard felt like a piece of shit for not being more encouraging. "I'm sure you'll be fine, dude. You're awesome. Who wouldn't want to date you?"

Bending over to grab a back issue of X-Men, Frank smiled a little wanly and settled up against the headboard of Gerard's bed. "Thanks. Uh, I'm just going to read for a bit—you can work more on your project. I promise I won't try to look."

"Okay." Gerard turned back to his desk, sneaking a glance at Frank as he curled up on the bed, focus intent on the comic. He wasn't really sure he was going to be able to get much actual work done with Frank right there, but he really did need to try to make some progress this week, and he wasn't about to ask Frank to actually leave. He took out the section he had been working on, looking at the half-sketched panel and trying to get his brain back into that world.

He had been working for maybe ten minutes, struggling to find his groove again, when the windowpane above his head rattled intensely, the wind battering at the glass. Gerard looked up at it, shivering even though the room wasn't that cold, and he glanced over at Frank.

The issue of X-Men was at his side, clearly forgotten as Frank twisted to look up at the snow blowing against the window. "Storm's really picking up."

Gerard nodded. "First bad one we've had so far this year." He watched the patterns on the window shift and change with each gust, the snow illuminated by all the Christmas lights on the houses lining the streets. "Kind of reminds me of Hoth."

"This room kind of smells like a Tauntaun, it's true," Frank said, grinning wide when Gerard flipped him off. "'I thought they smelled bad on the outside!'"

"Oh fuck you, if it's so bad you can just leave," Gerard said, sniffing a little. He totally did laundry like three weeks ago, it was fine.

"And head out into that? No way, man." Frank hesitated a moment, then looked straight at Gerard. "We should watch Empire."

"Now?" Gerard asked, already standing up to get the VHS down from the top shelf of his bookcase.

"Yeah, I mean, it's kind of perfect weather for it, right? And it didn't seem like you were getting all that much done on your project, so," Frank said, moving over to make room for Gerard once he'd popped the tape in.

"I really fucking wasn't," Gerard agreed, fast-forwarding to the intro. "I'd rather watch this anyway."

Frank smiled at him for a moment before focusing on the screen, and they sat in silence as the intro scrolled up over Gerard's shitty-ass TV screen.

Gerard was trying really fucking hard to actually focus on the movie, but it was hard when anytime anything happened, Frank seemed to press up even closer to him. He commented every thirty seconds about something, Leia's kickass braids and Han being a badass yet again and how fucking different Mark Hamill's face looked from his accident. Each observation or exclamation was punctuated by poking Gerard in the side or on the leg, Frank's hands and eventually his entire body not staying on his side of the bed at all. While Gerard had absolutely no expectation of anyone watching this movie without commentary, he couldn't respond to anything Frank said out of fear that he would just start to squeak.

He drew up his legs a little, trying to disguise the impact Frank's constant attention was having on his body, but Frank just took that as an opportunity to move even closer, tucking his feet under Gerard's calves.

"Are you cold?" Gerard tried, but Frank shook his head.

"No, but if you are we can pull up the blanket," Frank said, reaching down to the foot of the bed and drawing it up over both of them.

"No, I—" Gerard cut himself off, having no idea what to say. Suddenly they were both covered by the blanket, and even though Gerard knew that he was being ridiculous, he felt like anything could happen.

He could feel himself starting to sweat, sure that Frank could tell, and every time he shifted it seemed to bring him into even greater contact with Frank, his body right up against Gerard's side. They watched in silence as Han slit open the Tauntaun and shoved Luke inside.

"I bet you could make a really great model of a Tauntaun out of clay, Gee," Frank said, his voice low and right next to Gerard's ear.

Gerard shook his head a little. "I'm not really all that great with three dimensional art." He swallowed, the sound loud and obvious in his head.

"Well, I bet you could draw it then. You're a really amazing artist," Frank said.

"Thanks," said Gerard, his voice only shaking a little. He was concentrating hard on Luke floating in the water tank, wondering if that was actually how people were treated for hypothermia or whatever. When he turned to Frank to ask if he knew, Frank was already looking at him. "What?"

"Your advice kind of sucks, Gerard," Frank said, and before Gerard could ask him what he meant Frank had reached up with both hands and pulled him in for a kiss.

Gerard flailed a little before resting his hands on Frank's shoulder, tentatively pressing back into the kiss. When Frank pulled away, Gerard tried to put his thoughts together, but all he could come up with was, "Really?"

Frank nodded, his face a strange mix of cocky and shy. "Yeah. I figured, who better to ask about how to seduce you than you?"

"Clearly anyone," Gerard answered, and Frank laughed a little before pulling him back in for a second kiss. This time Frank was less restrained, his tongue stroking in next to Gerard's almost immediately, and Gerard responded in kind, turning his body towards Frank's. It was already hot under the blanket, their legs moving against each other as they kissed, and Gerard's entire body buzzed with nerves and arousal.

The soundtrack of Han yelling that he could use a good kiss echoed in the back of Gerard's head, and he couldn't believe that Star Wars and kissing Frank were happening at the same time. He felt suddenly smug as he moved closer to Frank, limbs intertwined as they made out. Han Solo would be totally jealous of me right now.

Gerard's momentary self-satisfaction and composure disappeared in an instant when Frank shifted a little and his thigh pressed tight against Gerard's half-hard cock. He broke the kiss and gasped, feeling awkward and like he was the kid still in high school, not Frank. For a fleeting second he thought that this would never work, he'd never actually be enough to keep Frank's focus—

His attention returned fully to Frank when he scratched down Gerard's back, tugging him closer, and Gerard's worries were drowned out by how much he wanted Frank. Gerard stroked his hand down the back of Frank's hair, the buzzed section under the longer top layer prickling against his skin. Frank made a small sound in response to his motion, and Gerard repeated it, finally sinking his hand into the longer hair and tugging.

Frank broke away from him and gasped, his neck long and pale when he tipped his head back, and he scrabbled at Gerard's waist, getting his hands up under his shirt. "Oh, fuck," Gerard said, moving closer again to lick over the skin of Frank's neck as Frank's hands stroked over his stomach.

"Yeah," Frank said, turning his head and kissing Gerard again. Their mouths fit together perfectly, like they'd been doing this for months already instead of barely five minutes, and Gerard reached down to Frank's ass, pulling him towards Gerard as he thrust a little, searching for friction.

"Fuck," Frank mumbled against Gerard's mouth, and so Gerard did it again, digging his fingers in under the pockets on the back of Frank's jeans and tugging him closer.

"Yeah?" he asked, aware of his hard-on pressing up against Frank's, both of their bodies giving off so much heat.

"Fuck yeah," Frank said, pulling his hands out from where they had been tugging on Gerard's nipples. Gerard made a small sound of disappointment that quickly shifted to a groan when Frank managed to get one hand down the loose waist of Gerard's jeans, the other working at the button and zipper. His hand was hot and tight around Gerard's cock, and Gerard rolled over on his back, letting his head drop onto the pillow.

"Holy shit," he said to the ceiling, and Frank followed him until he was mostly covering Gerard's body with his own, hands still getting his pants down. "Frank, that's—"

"What?" Frank asked, starting to stroke Gerard's cock tightly, the other hand pressed up against Gerard's upper thigh, thumb brushing next to the base of his dick.

"Fuck, just like that," Gerard said, tugging Frank down to kiss him as he jerked Gerard off, tongue sloppy and rough in Frank's mouth. Frank's hand was stripping him fast, tight and steady, and Gerard's hips were pushing up into the strokes without his conscious input, ass clenching as he worked to follow Frank's rhythm. He could feel the orgasm building already, his muscles tensing as he made small noises into Frank's mouth, any thought of being cool completely out of the question.

When he came he tore his mouth away from Frank’s and turned his head, panting into his shoulder as he pulsed all over Frank's hand and his t-shirt and probably the blanket still covering their bodies. Frank's breath was ragged in his ear, his hips hitching against Gerard's side, and once he'd rebooted his brain Gerard turned back to Frank, catching his mouth for a kiss as he reached under the blankets to undo Frank's jeans.

"Yeah, yeah," Frank babbled against his neck, his cock twitching the second Gerard touched it, skin hot and smooth against his fingers. Gerard didn't waste any time, stroking Frank root to tip and spreading the pre-come over the skin before he started jacking Frank fast. He loved feeling Frank moving against him, his hands twisting in Gerard's shirt as his legs kicked out. They were in a little blanket cocoon, the layers tight around them, and it was uncomfortable and broiling and perfect, Frank's mouth open and eyes closed as he licked over his bottom lip, dick swelling just a little more in Gerard's hand.

"Come on, Frankie," Gerard said, focusing more on just the head of Frank's cock, thumb pressing up right underneath, and suddenly Frank's body pulled forward, his torso curling inward as he came, dripping down Gerard's hand and onto the filthy sheets.

Gerard let go of his cock and wrapped his arms around Frank, holding on as Frank panted against him, chest contracting with each breath. Once he seemed to be able to breathe normally again Gerard kissed him, slow and relaxed, savoring the way Frank moved into the kiss. His lips were so fucking soft, only the slightest hint of stubble on his chin, and Gerard lost himself in the give and take of it, chasing Frank down when he pulled away a little and letting himself be drawn back in when he was the one to move back a bit.

Finally Frank pulled away completely, letting his head rest on Gerard's shoulder as he pushed down the blankets, exposing both of them to the air. "You're going to be cold in a minute," Gerard told him, stroking down Frank's back with his hands and then dragging them back up.

"Well, then I'll pull it back up in a minute. You're a fucking furnace, man," Frank said, voice hazy in Gerard's ear.

"It's true, I put off a lot of body heat," Gerard said. "I'm like the opposite of a snake."

Frank snorted against his neck. "Right, that's exactly what I tell everyone about you."

Gerard's chest felt a little full at the idea of Frank talking about him at all. He started saying the first things that came into his head to distract himself. "I'm sneaky like a snake, though. Clever and sly and all that."

Frank patted his stomach. "You keep telling yourself that. I mean, case in point, if someone doesn't tackle you, you don't get laid at all. How is that clever?"

"Well, you have to admit it was a winning strategy for me today," Gerard said, still unable to believe it himself. "Because I was sneaky. And I would have caught on eventually."

Frank propped himself up on his elbow, making an incredulous face. "No, you wouldn't. We could have finished Empire and then sat through all the Ewoks and you wouldn't have gotten it. We could have watched the fucking Christmas Special and you wouldn't have noticed."

Gerard pulled a face. "Why would I think someone who would subject me to the Christmas Special actually liked me at all? That's more like being tortured by my worst enemy." He frowned for a moment. "And I think that people really under-appreciate how good Jedi actually is, Ewoks and all, okay?"

Frank slapped his forehead. "Okay, yes, I didn't actually want to get into a debate about whether the Muppets ruin the power of the complete trilogy." Frank sat up and grabbed the blanket, pulling it back up over them before tucking himself against Gerard's side again.

"Then you shouldn't have brought it up," Gerard said reasonably. "And I told you you would get cold."

"Are you always this annoying after you come?" Frank asked.

Gerard thought about it. "Pretty much."

"Okay then." And rather than jump out of bed and attempt to leave, blizzard and all, Frank just yanked the blanket up higher, tucking it in under their chins. "I guess I can deal."

Gerard blinked up at the ceiling, still trying to figure out how this all happened. "Hey Frank?"

"Yeah?"

"If you want, I can show you my sketches after the movie's over." He turned towards Frank a little more, brushing his bangs out of his eyes. "I don't mind."

Frank looked back at him, eyes bright and clear in the glow from the TV. "You sure?"

"Yeah." Gerard hugged him closer, heart pounding already at the way Frank's hand curled up against his side. "Anytime."

A/N: Thank you so much to my betas. You made this story immeasurably better. Also thank you to the mods for running this exchange!