bandomstuffsit

Title: Choose Your Own Adventure
Author:

kiki_eng
Pairing(s): Frank/Gerard
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: No standard warnings apply
Word count: ~3,000 words
Summary: So, when Frank came to the Enchanted Forest he was supposed to have an adventure, he is pretty sure. There was supposed to be some kind of thing where he would, like, prove himself, and, well, Frank's pretty sure that the folks back home aren't going to go for Gerard's whole "Reading is the best adventure you can have!" thing.

So, when Frank came to the Enchanted Forest he was supposed to have an adventure, he is pretty sure. There was supposed to be some kind of thing where he would, like, prove himself, and, well, Frank's pretty sure that the folks back home aren't going to go for Gerard's whole "Reading is the best adventure you can have!" thing. He's pretty sure he was supposed to, like, kill seven nightshades in single combat or rescue a princess or find a shitload of gold or something. He's pretty sure that he's supposed to have left the Forest by now, not, be completely settled in, and living in this giant-ass library with Gerard and his brother Mikey.

Frank's, well, he's pretty sure he's done the whole Enchanted Forest thing all wrong. Wrong in an awesome way, but still. He just doesn't think that when he goes home and people ask him about what he did that they’re going to be thrilled when he tells them - about the sound of the edge of a page scraping against its neighbour and the way the archives deep in the bowels of the library smell or about the way Gerard's face lights up when he's doing his Saturday morning reading circle for children or how Bob, the Library Fines and Other Infractions lion is a total softie when he's not doing his whole stern guardian thing, or the way Mikey can't be trusted with anything before he's had his coffee in the morning, but is, like, the all-knowing library ninja, and the way Ray always knows what book to recommend someone. Frank thinks that he's found himself, here, with these people, but he worries, because this isn't how the story went for any of the princes in his lessons.

He loves the Forest. He loves it's springy moss and huge trees, even if he spends most of his time inside, and he loves the friends he's made here, but it's time for him to go home. It's been time for him to go home for a while, because he's found himself, okay? That is totally a thing that is supposed to happen. Mission: accomplished. He knows it's maybe not what anyone was expecting, but it's him, and everyone's just going to have to- they're going to have to deal.

So, he's ready to go home, and he's tried to go home, okay? He packs, he says goodbye to everyone, he leaves and then he gets to like, halfway out of the Forest and just, it hurts. It physically hurts, and Frank gets this pain in his chest and starts coughing and he knows, Frank knows that he gets sick easily and he has to take that kind of thing seriously, so he goes back to the library to recover and then when he gets there he feels fine, and, just, Frank doesn't know what is going on. He feels like it's all in his head, but it's not - when he feels like he's hacking out his lungs in a random meadow of catnip or by the side of a lime-flavoured stream it's real. The sick thing is real, so he thinks that he's been cursed, maybe, so that he can't leave the Enchanted Forest, and Frank doesn't know what he did wrong! He was so careful! He followed all of his tutors' advice! He doesn't know how he got enchanted, and it's weird, so weird, I mean, what kind of enchantment is "can’t go too far from the library"? It's not a cursed book! They checked, after the second time, and just, Frank doesn't know, man! It's frustrating.

He's really glad he's stuck here, though, if he has to be stuck somewhere. Gerard gives him cuddles and pets his hair when he's sad and sometimes when he's complaining and moping and worrying about not being able to go home Gerard gives him a blowjob and it's great. Frank's friends are awesome.

They're closing down the library early today so that they can all go and support the opening of the Enchanted Forest Historical Museum a few clearings over. Everyone is really excited.

Gerard makes jazz hands as he twirls in his spinny chair behind the circulation desk.

"Archivists," he breathes, kind of dreamily, as Frank checks out books for a young firewitch, stamping the due date onto them. Frank likes the way the wooden handle of the stamp feels in his hand when he gets into a groove, likes the way everything connects - the heft of it and the kind of crunch-squelch sound it makes marking the paper, the way the wood heats in his hand and sometimes rubs up against his ring and presses it into his skin when he's wielding it with that hand. It's very zen for Frank; he likes it.

"Archivists are so cool," Gerard says, grinning up at the firewitch. Her lips twitch upward a little, and her eyes twinkle, but she doesn't say anything except "Thank you" to Frank when she leaves.

They've got ten minutes until closing and Frank is maybe not quite as excited as Gerard is, but he is still pretty excited. Archivists are cool. They also like rigorously organising musty things and community outreach. (Maybe they will be friends with them!) The King's going to be there, too, which is pretty exciting for Frank. He hasn't met the King yet, even though he's been living in the Enchanted Forest for over two years now.

A couple people emerge briskly from the stacks. When one of them looks back over their shoulder Frank follows their gaze and sees Bob sitting at the end of a row, tail twitching impatiently. Frank loves Bob. Bob is a gift and the reason that they always close on time and have so few overdue books and outstanding late fees. The whole Guardian of the Library thing means that he's not coming with them to the museum tonight, but he really doesn't seem to mind. Frank thinks he probably has a date. So does Frank; he's going with Gerard, who's probably planning on wearing all the shiny things he owns and drinking lots of fancy juice. They managed to talk him down from making them all wear matching outfits this time.

Frank's gone to a lot fewer formal events since he moved to the Forest. Big events tend to be logistically difficult because the Forest moves around so much, so people mostly don't bother, but when they do Frank's noticed that they tend to go all out and get really excited, which is a lot of fun.

Ray wears his best tunic and ties his hair back and Mikey wears his new boots. The opening is actually pretty chill, for all that everyone's pretty decked out for it. The King makes a short speech and cuts the stripey purple ribbon across the oak doors with Cecilia, the official ceremonial opening scissors, after she's finished giving her own speech. Afterwards everyone heads into the building and mills about looking at it and some of the work that the museum staff has already managed to throw together - there's this whole section on notable people that have stepped on slowstones - it's kind of cool and Frank feels kind of smug about the whole thing, well, except for his own mysterious enchantment, but, still slowstones. Slowstones, are, like, the Enchanted Forest equivalent of paying attention to fast-moving carts and being especially polite to dragons. Slowstones are basic, Frank at least got hit by something weird.

He asks the King about it when they're making small-talk over the vegetable platter.

"Hmm...," he says. He studies Frank and plucks at something invisible in the air. "No," he says after a moment. "There's nothing stopping you from leaving the forest; you can go, you just have to take your spouse with you."

"....'Spouse'?" Frank asks. He can feel his eyes widening.

"...'Husband'?" The King returns after a moment, like it's the word choice that is throwing off Frank, who is apparently married to some dude, what the fuck. Frank has kind of a lot to process here.

Someone in an orange doublet pulls the King away while Frank is still reeling and then Frank is just standing there holding a plate of vegetables, munching on a carrot, and wondering what the fuck happened. When he pulls himself together a little it turns out that the King was called away on urgent business, and Frank is, Frank is going to bed, okay? This day is fired; he will deal with its bullshit later.

~*~

The next morning Frank is absently moving the fiddleheads that he's frying up around their pan with a wooden spoon when he remembers. "Guys," he says, turning to Ray and Mikey. "Guys. I got married. When did I get married?"

"Dude," Mikey says. "Did someone put a spell on you? Do you have amnesia?"

Frank just stares at him.

"Wait, no," Ray says. "Are you just figuring this out now? Motherfucker. This means I owe Bob twenty copper coins and a magic goose. Where am I going to get a magic goose?"

"I- What?" Franks says.

"You live together," Mikey says, flatly. "You share a room. You were his date to the museum opening last night. You are always his date. How is this news?"

"No! No! Officially married! The Forest thinks I'm married!" Because the King had done that handwave-y thing with the faraway look in his eye that meant he was basically, like, communing with it. Frank is married. "....My mother is going to kill me."

Ray reaches up and pats him consolingly, as they all sit in silence.

"Married," Franks says again, distressed.

"You and Gerard do have those rings," Ray says thoughtfully, after a moment.

Oh. Oh, fuck. Ray is totally right, and Frank is so, so, screwed and probably soon to be a divorcé because he went and like, stealth-married Gerard and frickin' leashed himself to him without his consent and there has been a whole lot of uninformedness going on here and that is so, so, not cool. Frank is- Frank should really have paid more attention and thought about things a bit more when that old woman gave him a pair of cool-looking rings and talked about love and respect and commitment, and Frank is such an idiot. In retrospect, they were pretty obviously not intended as BFF rings, though, Frank thinks that, really, he wouldn't want to marry anyone who wasn't his best friend, and he's sort of glad that, if he had to accidentally fuck up and marry someone it was Gerard, because... huh.

"Huh," Mikey says, looking at Frank, and then goes back to eating his weird oatmeal thing.

Frank has apparently been missing all kinds of things. He pushes the pan of fiddleheads to the back of the stove top and races back to their bedroom.

"Gerard," Frank says.

Gerard is hiding under a shit-ton of blankets and basically dead to the world.

"Gerard," Franks says, again, louder, and pokes his shoulder.

Gerard turns over and pulls the blankets up some more, so Frank pulls his blankets back down and clambers on top of him. "Gerard," he says insistently.

Gerard blinks owlishly up at him.

"I love you," Frank says, intensely.

Gerard smiles a little. "Love you, too," he says, and closes his eyes again.

"Ger-ard!" Frank says, frustratedly. "I. Love. You."

Gerard peers blearily up at him. "I love you, too, Frankie."

"No! Like," and Frank leans forward and kisses Gerard and tries to, like, communicate love and passion, and, like, all of his feelings for Gerard, with his mouth.

Gerard hums into it and then catches up with him and gropes Frank's ass with both hands and pulls Frank down so that there's friction on his cock, and it's good, so good, but this isn't what Frank is trying to do here. He needs to break this up.

"Gerard," he moans, fuck, and Gerard kisses his neck.

"Gerard, I need-" Frank tries again, and Gerard starts sucking hard on his neck.

This isn't going the way Frank needs it to. "Gerard," he says, reaching down for Gerard's hands to where they'd drifted up to Frank's hips and peeling them off and circling Gerard's wrists. He grinds his hips down, because he's weak, okay, and moves Gerard's hands up over his head, pinning them to the mattress. "Stop," he says, and Gerard goes boneless, fuck.

Frank shakes his head a little to clear it. "I met the king last night," he says.

Gerard blinks at him.

"I asked him about the thing where I can't leave the forest, and he told me that I couldn't leave without my husband."

Frank feels Gerard goes tense under him.

"Mikey and Ray think that's you.," he says quickly. "I think that's you. Ray said- Our rings- I'm sorry, I- I didn't think- I love you and you're my best friend, and I didn't think I was marrying you when I gave it to you."

It had been a few months after Frank had arrived and they'd been hanging out in the stacks shelf-reading together, because apparently people had been able to invent highly effective dusting spells but things like alphabetising books were beyond the reach of magic, and Frank had been distractedly telling Gerard about the rings and that whole weird encounter, and how he was apparently supposed to find his BFF or something, and Gerard had been smiling kind of dreamily at him, his mind half on the books he was organising, probably. ...and Frank had just thought, You know, what? I love this guy. He is totally my forever friend., so he'd fished the ring out of his pocket and gone on his knees ridiculously, making a big spectacle of it, and Gerard had agreed to take the ring, laughing. They put the rings on for each other and giggled. Then Frank had planted this ridiculous sloppy kiss on Gerard's cheek and run off to help Ray move some stuff around.

So maybe Frank didn't actually successfully follow all of his tutors' advice.

"I didn't mean to magically bind us. I thought she - the woman who gave them to me - was just really into fancy wording and the power of friendship. I'm sorry, Gerard. I think we can write a letter or something? Ask the King to, like, magically divorce us? He seemed cool."

"Frank," Gerard says and jerks his wrists up. Frank tightens his grip automatically, before letting go quickly. Fuck, he pinned Gerard down and told him about how he'd non-consensually married and magically bound himself to him, fuck, of course Gerard wants out of there. He moves up onto his knees and starts scrambling off of Gerard but Gerard's snagged his fingers tight into the fabric of Frank's tunic.

"Are you divorcing me?" Gerard asks.

"Um, yeah," Frank says, "I mean, it's not like you ever wanted to be married to me, so-"

"I did," Gerard says. "I do. I want to be married to you. Um." Gerard flails his hands out of where he'd twisted them into Frank's tunic. "I-"

Frank's heart is soaring here.

"I don't want you to leave the forest without me, either? Frankie, I..." Gerard trails off nervously, and, just, that is not a thing that Gerard is allowed to be about this, not because of Frank, anyway.

Frank lets himself fall onto Gerard and then squeezes down, limpet-tight. "I love you. Marry me again."

"Yes," Gerard says, quickly.

They basically have an informal honeymoon, because they missed their wedding the first time around, that involves them hiding in their room to have sex and eating a lot of pizza. It's amazing. Then they pack up to go to Frank's kingdom, which Frank is super excited and nervous for. He can sort of not believe that he is actually going back this time, and it is already better than all the other times he decided to leave because this time he is taking Gerard with him and they’re heading right back to the Forest after, and are probably going to get married again to make his folks happy, which Frank is kind of happy about because he wants to do it right, do it seriously, even if it will just be a ceremony. It'd mean something to them, he thinks.

It'll probably be in the Enchanted Forest, he thinks. He wants to do it there, because the Enchanted Forest is awesome, and it's home, and Gerard's already nervous about leaving his library to visit Frank's kingdom for a month, no way would he be happy hanging out there waiting for all the wedding arrangements to be made. Frank's pretty sure he's going to be homesick for the Forest and Frank’s going back to where he grew up and has a Gerard with him, okay? So they'll go and come back again and be home, and live happily ever after, he thinks. It's gonna be awesome.