Chapter Text
The weed was Ray's idea, which meant it was probably a good one. He'd shown up to the living room with a zip-lock bag and the purposeful energy of a man who had considered the problem at hand — three adults trying to plan a bachelor party for their best friends on a Tuesday night — and he had arrived at the obvious solution, the kind of weed that you buy with adult money on your weekend trip to New York. Gerard had let him roll in the living room before Patrick arrived to complete their trio and not asked any questions, which was its own kind of answer.
Forty minutes later the living room looked like a still life of good intentions. Ray was horizontal across the couch.
Patrick had migrated to the floor at some point and was now sitting cross-legged with his back against the coffee table, staring at the ceiling with serene concentration. Gerard had the armchair, his laptop balanced on his knees, squinting at a website that appeared to have been built in 2009 by someone who had far too much commitment to a purple and red color scheme.
"Okay," Gerard said. "Male strippers."
"Obviously," Ray said, to the ceiling.
"Yes," Patrick said, also to the ceiling.
"I'm establishing a baseline. So we're all on the same page." The website was called Xclusive Gents and there was a midi file playing underneath everything, tinny and auto-looped. It was either charming or horrifying. Gerard scrolled past it.
"They do packages."
Ray made a sound between a laugh and a cough.
"Something to say?" Gerard quirked an eyebrow at Ray.
"Nothing." A pause. "Packages."
At that Patrick let out the laugh Ray was holding in before.
"You're an adult."
"Completely." Ray replied.
Patrick sat up and put his chin on the edge of the coffee table to look across at Gerard.
"I had a stripper at my bachelor party," he said. "You know this. You've heard about this."
"I was there," Ray said.
"So you know."
"Ray," Gerard said, "how much was that?"
Ray considered. "A lot."
"This is more than that." Gerard found the page he was looking for and turned the laptop around. "But look at the lineup. 911 trio. Cop, firefighter, doctor." He let that land. "Pete is going to completely unravel."
Patrick sat up straight and pointed at the screen. "That's the one. Stop scrolling. Book it."
"Are we sure—"
"Yes," Ray and Patrick said at the same time, with the absolute certainty of two men who were thoroughly high and therefore felt they were correct about everything.
Gerard looked at the page. It was a significant amount of money for one night. It was also Mikey, who was his little brother and in love with Pete Wentz and getting married at the courthouse in three weeks. The least Gerard could do was make the bachelor party genuinely good. He had a flexible schedule. He had the house. He had a debit card.
"Someone Venmo me," he said.
"Tomorrow," Ray said immediately.
"Ray."
"Remind me in the morning."
"I hate you," Gerard said, and clicked book-now. Ray kicked him gently, which felt like a sign, but he was laughing too hard to evaluate whether it was a good one.
Three weeks later, Gerard was in his kitchen at four in the afternoon rearranging foil taco trays on the stovetop and trying to remember if he'd sent the confirmation email or merely planned to.
"Ray!"
"What." Ray's voice from the living room, where he'd been doing something with the speaker setup for the last twenty minutes.
"The confirmation email. Did I send it, or did I compose it in my head and feel good about that?"
A pause. "You sent it. I was standing next to you."
"Okay." Gerard moved the trays a quarter inch to the left, decided that was worse, moved them back. His phone had three texts from Mikey asking what to wear, which confirmed that Mikey had no idea what was happening tonight, which was the whole point. He sent back ‘your black skinnies’ trying to be direct enough as to not arouse suspicion and put the phone face-down.
The logistics had come together well enough. Full-night booking, confirmed. Guest list, handled. Sashes, paper crowns, beer by the case. The one thing he kept skirting the edges of, thinking toward and then away from, was the part where he'd hired three people to perform in his living room, because every time he tried to look at that directly he felt the need to sit down and breathe. He was thirty-two years old. He owned this house. His heartbeat needed to calm down.
His phone buzzed. Unknown number: ‘Hi, FT Wilz from Xclusive Gents — confirming tonight's booking at 2467 2nd street. We have a few quick questions for you: what is the rough square footage of the performance space, and is there a space where we can change beforehand?’
Gerard read this twice. He'd expected a form confirmation at most, not a direct text, not questions he actually needed to think about. He typed: ‘Living room, probably 20x20. Half bath off the hallway, you're welcome to it.’ Then: ‘Anything else? ‘
The response came back fast. ‘Sound system? We can bring one but easier if you've got it. Also heads up: we do an entrance bit when we arrive. Just play along, don't let it throw you.’
He looked up. Ray was in the doorway, apparently having materialized there silently.
"The stripper texted me," Gerard said.
"Which one."
"FT Wilz."
"Obviously not his name."
"Presumably not, no." He held the phone out. Ray read the thread, handed it back.
"Tell him we've got a good setup." He turned back toward the hallway. "It's pretty professional, actually."
"Right?" Gerard was already typing.
By eight the house was loud in the way parties got when the right combination of people ended up in the same place — a warmth accumulated, conversation overlapped conversation, the kitchen was perpetually at capacity. He'd gotten Mikey and Pete through the door and into their sashes without either of them catching on. The satisfaction of a plan almost perfectly executed helped ease his nerves.
Pete had hugged him for a long time and called him the best, which was either genuine or because of the beer he'd already had at the previous stop. Probably both.
Gerard was doing a headcount from the kitchen doorway when Ray appeared beside him and pressed a beer into his hand.
"I'm good," Gerard said.
"You've looked at your phone nine times in the last two minutes."
"I'm waiting on a text from the—"
"I know what you're waiting on."
Gerard held the beer. He wasn't going to drink it; he wanted to be clearheaded tonight, and wanted to actually remember this for Mikey's sake. Ray noted this and said nothing, which was one of the better things about Ray.
The text came at eight-forty-two: ‘Five minutes.’
At eight-forty-seven, blue and red lights strobed through the front window.
His stomach dropped. For one sharp, irrational second his brain served up the image of an actual police cruiser outside his house, an actual noise complaint, having to explain to his mother why he'd thrown a party like that— and then it finally caught up to him. Entrance bit. Play along.
Gerard breathed out a quiet sight of relief upon remembering. He crossed the room, the crowd parting ahead of him, and conversations going quiet as people clocked the lights outside. He opened the front door.
There were three men on his porch who were very clearly not officers of anything, wearing uniforms that had been engineered to suggest emergency services while leaving as little to the imagination as legally permissible. The one in front — cop costume, aviators, shirt undone to his sternum exposing a leather harness with shiny rivets — put a hand on the doorframe.
"Got a noise complaint," he said, loud enough to reach the back of the room.
The crowd exploded with cheers.
"You'd better come in, then," Gerard said. His voice stayed uncharacteristically level. He was proud of that.
He stepped aside. They moved through the door and the room was consumed by them, music shifting to something heavier, and within half a minute two of them had claimed the space in front of the TV and were already deep into a routine that bore no relationship to emergency response.
Gerard was about to drift back toward the safety of the kitchen when the third one peeled out of the crowd's edge and stopped in front of him.
He was shorter than Gerard had expected, stocky in a way that his open fireman's jacket and tight red pants did nothing to conceal, and he was covered — arms, collarbone, the visible strip of chest — in tattoos. Not decorated. Covered. Like the ink was the baseline and the skin between was an artistic choice.
"You're the host," he said. "You texted me."
"Yeah. Gerard."
"Frank." Direct, like he'd decided in advance to offer it. "Out there I'm FT, but — since we're talking." He tilted his head toward the speaker in the corner. "Can I just connect my phone to that? We've got a set list."
"Sure, yeah." Gerard led him across the room, which required navigating around several of their friends and the outer edge of what was already becoming a very enthusiastic crowd. Frank followed close behind — not crowding him, just present — and the distance between them was short enough that when Gerard turned to key in the Bluetooth code he caught something warm and faintly resinous.
Cedar, maybe. Something clean underneath.
Frank leaned past his shoulder to confirm the connection. His phone screen reflected in the dark TV panel: a playlist already queued.
"Good?" Gerard said.
"Perfect." Frank straightened. He had dark eyes and the kind of focus that felt like being looked at rather than seen, and Gerard was immediately, privately suspicious of it, because it was almost certainly occupational. "Thanks."
"Sure," Gerard said. "Is there anything—"
But Frank had already turned back to join his colleagues where they were working the room.
Gerard spent the first forty minutes of the show doing inventory.
Contrary to Ray’s opinion, this was not avoidance. The taco trays needed monitoring. The fridge needed restocking. There were two forgotten soda bottles in the cabinet above the microwave that he retrieved and organized in order of size, a task he invented in real time, while from the living room came the layered noise of Pete and Mikey’s combined friend groups having the time of their lives — cheering, individual screams, one extended sound from somewhere near the front that had to be Pete.
He was fine, an absolutely normal amount of anxious, for an absolutely normal situation.
"Gee." Ray abruptly manifested in the kitchen doorway, flushed and grinning. "You have to get the fuck out here right now."
"The tacos—"
"Are in the kitchen. Where they’re supposed to be. They're not going anywhere." He grabbed Gerard's shoulder. "You paid for this. Come watch it."
He was steered into the living room and deposited behind the couch, another cold soda pressed into his hand, and Ray gone before he could negotiate. The overhead light was off — he and Ray had repositioned the lamps into pools of amber — and the crowd packed every surface, sitting on couch arms and the floor, standing along the walls. It was warm from the bodies alone. The music was good, something with real bass, and in the open space in front of the TV all three of them were working in a way that made evident they knew exactly what they were doing.
The doctor had shed his scrub pants and was operating purely on the stethoscope and a pair of briefs that hid only a specific amount of information, to the widespread appreciation of the crowd. The cop was doing something with a chair and Ray, who was apparently there with enthusiastic consent.
And then there was Frank.
FT Wilz, Gerard reminded himself, firmly. This was his job.
The name on the booking. The professional operating in a professional capacity, in his living room.
Frank was looking at him.
Not staring, not making a thing of it. But every few measures he'd orient slightly across the room and his gaze would find Gerard with the precision of someone who knew where they were aiming for and was practiced at it. Each time Gerard registered it he felt it land somewhere in his ribcage, warm and unasked-for.
He took a long drink of his soda. The suspenders had come off at some point. Frank was in the fireman’s pants and the fireman's hat, an impressive amount of lamplight catching his inked skin.
Gerard was an adult who had encountered attractive people before and he was going to be absolutely fine.
He retreated to the kitchen at the forty-five-minute mark, just ahead of the intermission shift, and had the taco pan out of the oven when Mikey's arms came around him from behind.
"Best bachelor party," Mikey said into his shoulder. "I need you to know that."
"Also your only bachelor party." Gerard patted his arm. "How's Pete?"
As if on cue, Pete appeared at Mikey's side, slightly vibrating. "The cop's harness," he said, pointing at Gerard like this was urgent information to file. "Gerard. Did you see it."
"I saw it on the website."
"The actual physical harness, in person—" He turned to Mikey. "You saw it."
"I saw it," Mikey confirmed, with the compressed expression of someone saving a thought for later.
They fell into each other in the way that lovers often do, and Gerard used that as an opportunity to slide back toward the fridge. Through the living room doorway he could see the three of them in a loose cluster near the window, water bottles, talking. He went over.
"Kitchen's open," he said, pitching it into a gap in their conversation. "Food, drinks, whatever you need. It's been a really great show."
The other two thanked him and moved past. Frank didn't.
He looked at Gerard for a beat — weighing something, turning it over — then said, "This is your brother's party."
"Yeah."
"That's a good thing to do for someone," he said.
No performance behind it. Just a statement.
"Thanks," Gerard said.
"Are you married?"
"No. Do I seem married?"
"No," Frank said. "I like to check before I ask." He let that settle for a moment. "Next segment, we do crowd work. Lap dances. I was going to ask you to volunteer."
"Okay."
"You're the host, which makes you the most natural choice." Another pause. "You look like you might walk out of your own house if I do ask you, though."
"I'm not going to walk out of my own house."
The corner of Frank's mouth pulled — not quite a smile, but an expression that noted interest.
"Alright," he said, and went to find the kitchen.
Gerard stood alone in his living room, discombobulated by the way the night's events had proceeded so far despite his awareness of them. Then he remembered there were tacos and carried on to an ill justified trek back to the kitchen.