zeegoeshere

Burning Like A Bridge
By Zee

Summary: To Bob, the rules have changed. Sequel to Shine It On And Stick Around and Throwing The Fight; might not make much sense without reading those first.
Frank/Bob, R, 2,729 words.


*

The tour throws a party for Gerard four days after his birthday, only it's technically not for Gerard, because Gerard had made a big show of not wanting anyone to throw him a party. But they're in Mexico after playing with the Smashing Pumpkins, everyone is recovering from that fucking red-eye flight, and the party just kind of happens.

Bob gets boozy fast, shotgunning beer with some of the dudes from Drive-by, and he feels huge and liquid after, the way he always does on beer, rather than liquor. It makes him feel fatter sometimes, but not tonight; tonight he just feels full with beer.

Mikey and Alicia duck out of the party early, and Bob is relieved that they go before Alicia starts begging Bob to let her braid his hair again. Gerard leaves soon after them, looking happy and grateful but exhausted, and after that things kind of wind down faster than they usually do. Frank had spent most of the party across the hotel suite from Bob, flitting from conversation to conversation and leaning on people. He looks drained; most people wouldn't be able to tell, but Frank is leaning on people instead of hanging off of or jumping on them. Bob kind of wants to tuck him into bed for two days straight until he's rejuvenated.

Bob rewinds that thought in his head, realizes that it's an entirely unironic urge on his part, and wonders if maybe he should move on to the hard stuff.

He finishes his beer and turns back to talking to... whomever he's talking to. Bob's unsure of the guy's name but thinks he's part of the lights crew, and whoever he is, he's handing Bob another beer. Bob gulps it down even though he doesn't really have room for it, and then there's a hand on his shoulder and the dude is leaving him, and Frank is there instead.

Bob squints. "Hey. It's you."

"The one and only," Frank quips, and Bob knows he must be pretty out of it, because that wasn't at all witty or offensive or annoying. Frank huffs out a breath and shrugs like he knows it, too, giving Bob's shoulder a half-hearted punch.

"'m fuckin' beat," Frank says, and Bob grunts in agreement. "Come back to bed with me?"

Bob's cheeks are immediately hot. "I--" It's unexpectedly brazen, except you have to expect that shit from fucking Frank, especially if you're fucking Frank, and Bob is not having any more beer tonight. "Uh. I'm not in the mood."

Frank actually, physically takes a step back, rearing away like Bob just uttered a shocking revelation. "O-kay?" he says, looking baffled rather than hurt.

"Sorry?" Bob offers. "I kinda just want to crash. In my room."

Frank snorts, and suddenly the weird tension between them is gone, suddenly it's just like Bob had refused an offer of playing video games or pranking Gerard or whatever. "No worries, old man. Rest those creeky joints, yeah?"

Bob snorts and gives Frank a light shove, and then Frank is gone, and when Bob gets back to his room he isn't tired at all. It takes him hours to get to sleep, staring at the wall with his sheets twisted around his ankles.

He wakes up to Frank's face above his, peering down, googly-eyed.

Bob grunts in surprise and swats, but Frank has already moved out of range. Frank just sits there on his knees on Bob's bed, staring, as Bob struggles to sit up and get awake and make his eyelids lose that sticky feeling.

"You were totally lying," Frank says, as if Bob is totally going to know what the fuck he's talking about.

"the fuck," Bob grunts.

"Last night! You were so lying to me!" Frank slaps one of Bob's knees for emphasis, and Bob kicks out at him, a maneuver ruined by bedding in the way. "Who the fuck says they're 'not in the mood'? Only, like, pregnant married women, dude. Why would you say that?"

Of course Bob was in the mood; he's always in the mood with Frank, which is pretty much the problem. He is absolutely in the mood now; he wonders if there's any way he can arrange the sheets to hide his morning wood with any kind of subtlety.

Bob is too sleepy to think fast enough to keep up any kind of convincing lie. He says, "What? I really wasn't," and Frank glares at him and grabs Bob's knee this time, shaking it emphatically.

"You're totally being weird. Why are you being weird? I mean, I'm not saying that we should bone all the time, but like." Frank blows out a breath, making his cheeks puff. "You're avoiding me when we're not naked, *and* now you have this stick up your ass about getting naked with me, so. So seriously, what the fuck?"

Bob opens his mouth. "I don't--"

"Don't try to pretend you're not being weird," Frank continues, and actually wags his finger in Bob's face. "Last night? Last night was weird."

"Frankie--"

"And I don't know what your deal is, but the rest of the guys are going to start noticing if you keep acting like I have cooties, man, so--"

"It's fast!" Frank's mouth shuts with a click, and Bob sucks in a breath. "We're just, fuck, we're going really fast, okay, and it's messy or it's going to get messy and I'm just nervous about--you know?" Bob digs the heel of his palm into his eye socket and glares at Frank, because of course he's going to sound like a babbling paranoid idiot before coffee and cigarettes, god damnit.

Frank crosses his arms. "So, you think we're going too fast," he says prissily. "Did that idea occur to you when you decided you wanted to fuck me twice in one night the first time I kissed you?"

Bob feels his face get hot, again, fucking Frank. "That's not what I mean, not--not fast like that, that's, whatever." He sucks in a breath, tries again. "I just think we need to be careful. We're friends, we have the band, and--and we don't want things to get out of hand."

"'Out of hand'," Frank mimics. "So I should leave you alone, then, huh?"

"No," Bob says quickly, because he's not ready to swear off sex with Frank, not yet, even if logically that's probably the best idea. "No, I just mean--I just think we should calm it down a bit. Keep it casual. That's all."

"God, it's just sex!" Frank says, suddenly explosive. "We're having fun, I think you're hot, it's not fucking up anything *yet,* so--" He had been bouncing up on his knees, and now he settles back down in a sitting position again, still glaring. "I don't want to calm it down," he says, and actually sticks out his tongue, and for a moment Bob is appalled at himself for choosing a 12-year-old for a fuck buddy.

"It's not like you can't find someone else when you're horny," Bob says. "You can probably find the whole damn tour, in fact. I remember last summer, dude."

Frank huffs and picks at a loose thread at the knee of his jeans; there's a big hole in the fabric there, and Bob can see a bruise on Frank's kneecap. "Fine. We can calm down, I guess." He smiles suddenly, wickedly, and Bob's stomach lurches a little. "But I still think you're fucking hot, Bob Bryar. Don't think I don't."

"Noted," Bob says.

"So will you stop being all awkward around me, then?" Frank's voice is soft now, like he doesn't know what the answer to his question will be. "I just, it's kind of sucky, having you be all stand-offish all the time."

"Jesus, of course I'll stop, I didn't realize--sorry, dude," Bob says, and it's okay now, he thinks, to reach out and pull Frank into a bear hug. Frank predictably clings back, and starts yelling and kicking and flailing out when Bob gives him a noogie.

The day of the next show, Bob sees Frank flirting with the merch guy out of the corner of his eye, and then later that night he and Mikey walk in on them making out in the dressing room.

"Ah," Mikey says, flinching and shuffling backward and covering his eyes. Bob just turns his head and backs up as well, groaning and laughing a little. It's an appropriate reaction, he thinks. He can see the guy's big hand stretched over the small of Frank's back, pushing up his t-shirt.

"Fuck, sorry," Frank says, tearing himself away from the guy's mouth and giggling. "We'll, uh--"

"Get a room, please," Mikey says, and Bob is pretty sure that Frank doesn't look at Bob any longer than he looks at Mikey before he drags his guy away.

Bob gets out of the dressing room and the venue with a pleasant expression pasted on his face and his posture purposefully relaxed. He gets outside to the bus and sags against it, fumbling to get his cigarettes out. He can feel the eyes of all the fans outside the fence on him, peering and stretching up on their toes to try and get a look and a picture.

He turns his face away from them and lights two cigarettes at once, sucking as much smoke into his lungs as possible. He closes his eyes and finally lets the images float up in front of his eyes, the flashes of skin, the other guy’s stubble, the flush in Frank’s cheeks as he pulled back.

The thought of it pulls up so many emotions that it’s hard to pick them apart. Surprise, though, surprise is right up there at the top, and why the fuck is he surprised? Frank didn’t do anything wrong. Bob knows how touring works: you do everything with everyone, from friendship to fucking to fistfights. Alliances and fuck buddies and actual, real relationships change on a daily basis.

But knowing this, he still genuinely wasn’t expecting that from Frank, and why? He and Frank haven’t touched each other for a week, so why wouldn’t Frank say yes when someone else offered? The only reason he might not is because Bob wouldn’t in the same position, because to Bob, the rules have changed.

But they haven’t to Frank. Bob realizes with horror that all along, he’s been assuming that Frank was going through the same confusion with this thing that they have, that he and Frank were on the same page. If they’re not, if Bob is alone in his attachment, than he is even more fucked than before.

When Bob finishes his smokes, he just wants another one. He has one in his hand and his lighter out when he sees Frank jogging up, his hat jammed onto his head and his hands in his pockets.

Bob desperately, *desperately* wants to know if Frank just came from having sex with that dude, or if they stopped before that, or if Frank wandered off to do something else in between now and when Bob last saw him. Who was the last person who touched you?

Frank smiles at Bob when he sees him, and trots quickly past him to the door. He looks over his shoulder at Bob when he goes inside, and Bob tucks the unlit cigarette away and follows him.

“Shit, man, fucking Denver,” Frank says, pulling his jacket tighter around him. “It’s too cold for April and I can’t breathe.”

Bob makes a noncommittal noise and shrugs his own jacket off, tossing it on the couch. When he turns back, Frank has a kind of gleam in his eye, and Bob takes a couple steps towards him. Frank closes the distance and Bob grabs him, and Frank’s mouth is still open when Bob kisses him.

Bob clenches his hands in Frank’s jacket and bites at Frank’s lower lip, pulling him in tight as he can. “Mmph,” Frank says after a while, and Bob breaks it off to discover that he has Frank half bent over, dipping him low like some actress in a classic movie.

“Sorry,” he gasps out, standing up and moving back, but Frank just propels himself into Bob’s arms again. They end up sprawled on the couch, and Bob tries to cool it down some, kissing Frank lazily and slow instead of anything that leads directly to sex. Frank gets the idea, settling down in Bob’s lap and only humping his leg a little bit.

“Where’s Ray?” Bob asks, mouthing at Frank’s neck under his jaw.

“On the Way bus,” Frank says, and pulls back a bit to meet Bob’s eyes. “You know that he wouldn’t really care if he saw us, right?”

Bob shrugs. “Yeah, I know, I just. I like—I’m a private person.”

“It ain’t nobody’s business but ours,” Frank says dramatically. “Or something like that?”

“I guess,” Bob says. Frank is sitting back now, his palms on his legs, his legs on either side of Bob’s hips. Bob doesn’t reach for him again; they’ve made the transition from Making Out to We Should Talk, and there’s no going back.

“I feel sort of lame about hooking up with that guy,” Frank says, laughing a little. “Like. Um. I feel all guilty and shit, like I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Why? It’s not like—I mean. You shouldn’t feel guilty,” he says, and he can’t help but feel like everything he’s trying not to say is coming out anyway.

Frank snorts to himself and taps on his thigh. “Yeah,” he says, which is nothing, which is unhelpful, which Bob can’t read at all.

They don’t say anything for a while and Bob watches Frank’s chest rise slightly and fall with each breath. The altitude is so high here, and Bob noticed that Frank didn’t throw himself around stage tonight as much as he usually does. Frank probably has really shitty lung capacity, now that Bob thinks about it.

Frank says “Bob, I—“ and Bob says “I think we should go back to just being friends.”

Frank blinks and stares, shutting his mouth. “Uh, oh,” he says. “You mean friends who don’t fuck?

“Yeah,” Bob says. “Yeah, that’s what I meant.” People tell Bob that he's a shitty liar all the time, but the thing is, they only ever realize he's lying when it's about stupid trivial shit.

Frank obligingly moves off of Bob’s lap, curling up on the other side of the couch. “Okay,” he says. “I mean, if that’s what you want.”

“It’s not because of that other guy,” Bob says quickly, because he doesn’t want Frank to think—whatever. “It’s just always been a bad idea, you know? Mixing the band up with anything else. It’s a really stupid risk.”

Frank opens his mouth, but then he just shrugs. “Sure, I guess.”

“And it’s already making things weird,” Bob points out. “You don’t jump on me as often.”

Frank cracks a grin. “And here I thought you’d appreciate that.”

Bob smiles, too, and knows that none of his dishonesty is showing right now. People are always telling Bob that he's a shitty liar, because they never know it when he's actually lying. “I just don’t want us to change because of sex.”

Frank nods. “Fair enough.”

Fair. Right. Bob wants another smoke. “You don’t seem upset or anything.”

Frank laughs. “Well, I sort of saw this coming. You’re not Mr. Subtle, dude. It was nice while it lasted, I guess, but." He looks away from Bob, his mouth in a thin line and a weird total lack of expression on his face. Then he springs up off the couch. “I’m gonna go see what they’re all so wrapped up in on the other bus.”

Bob retreats to his bunk to ice his wrist, and instead of putting his headphones on or watching TV or something, he just lets the cold numb his skin while staring up at the top of his bunk in the silence.